mod: hearth1an.ChristmasStory

[giscus[bot]]

mod: hearth1an.ChristmasStory

Story mod about Christmas adventures! Translations: EN, ZH, FR, DE, IT (by @hearth1an)

https://outerwildsmods.com/mods/christmasstory/

[BURG3R5]

Nicely made! Liked the subquests and inclusion of lesser known characters ;)

[Ultrinik]

With that title I was expecting a shitpost experience, but what I found really surprised me.
Also, Gabbro made me kill Esker 10/10

[Annyastalya]

I just finished the story mod, and I gotta say, for a moment it made me feel something similar to the first time I played!! The puzzles are the perfect excuse to revisit the solar system, and since the mod knows you already beat the game, it takes advantage of that to explore everything with a different focus! I really liked it, amazing work.

[Tina96Volts]

I don't know is this bug or feature, but every time I die and new loop starts, I wake up in the main game, not in the mode with snow. When I exit to start menu and then enter again, I'm still not in the mod. Meditation doesn't help either. The only way to continue playing in the mod is restarting the game. I must restart the game after every death, and this is very uncomfortable.

[CovertCoderI0I]

It's tied to the profile you use. In order for the mod to work properly, you need to start it up on a new profile since it changes a lot of things in the base game and DLC.

If you play it on a profile you've used before to beat the game, then it'll keep restarting you back on the normal version of Timber Hearth and not the one with snow.

[AfterglowAmpharos]

This mod starts off with a cute premise: the Hearthians want you to bring all the astronauts home to the village to celebrate Christmas. Then it turns out that bringing each astronaut home involves a different challenge, something that we don't quite see in vanilla.

In every case except one, these little missions were a delight to experience. I'd certainly recommend this mod. But I have critique for the mod designers. There is one part of this mod's design, inside the mod's longest optional mission. This made me very frustrated and I can't discern why Hearth1an and Xan designed the level this way.

Spoiler warning

When you're at the point when you're inside the diving bell with precious cargo that cannot get wet, the seemingly only method of exit is through the bottom. The mod's level design deliberately places a piece of broken bridge under the diving bell so you can fall on that and not get wet. This piece of broken bridge defies the logical way that the river is flowing, making it very obvious that it's been placed here just for you. From here, you can hope to a small island, again without getting wet. From here... There is nowhere to go. I've tried countless methods to bring a raft TO this location, but it's not possible. The rafts come from the opposite side of the very wide river, and by the time I've pulled them toward the diving bell side of the river, they get stuck on the dam. The other option is to drive the raft all the way around the loop. By the time I've done that, the sun is exploding. My point is, this bridge was placed here on purpose to show the player a path. But this route simply does not work. This red herring is super frustrating. Only the next morning did I get the idea to try to exit a different way. To Hearth1an and Xan's credit, this other route IS telegraphed with a beam of light which I DID notice.

[CoincidalRS]

For information regarding the hardest traveller:

Spoiler warning: Click to reveal

So the 2nd intended method with the beam of light is the one I chose in the end. But I was able to do the first method you mentioned with the broken bridge (I ran out of time flying to timber hearth though). I got to the bell and used the river chains to park the raft just upstream. I did the bell stuff then came out just as the dam broke. I dropped down onto the bridge piece. I put down the artifact and flew upstream to the raft that I left there. I took this raft back to the bridge grabbed the artifact and started heading down the river. Where I made the mistake, was thinking I could exit the stranger in river lowlands. So that ate up a lot of time with me trying to figure out how to get out with the dam broken. Eventually I realized I had to go to hidden gorge and out of the damaged laboratory. At that point I was 21 minutes into the loop. But it definitely is possible.

Some extra notes I didn't realize were that after you free the prisoner the first time in the dream world, you do not have to waste time going inside the vault again. Just open the vault and snap out of the dream world. Grab the artifact and go.