Sorry to those accustomed to Normal who’ve had to make some expectation adjustments, but you have to be realistic. This expedition is not a permadeath.

The distinction between Survival and Perma is that in the latter, you literally lose everything. Not just the rewards; the entire save. The whole point therefore is to give a one-shot sense of realism that raises the stakes of an otherwise fairly easy (once you have the hang of it) game.

This isn’t the case in this expedition. Not even close. It’s more like going back to a save point, only even better for keeping certain progress, and actually progressing you further.

For actual permadeath players, this carries none of the risk or consequence of an actual permadeath save.

Also worth highlighting that this gameplay decision isn’t arbitrary: based on The Last Campfire, Hello Games include on occasion a deeper thinking as to the philosophy, to show players different points of view. Here possibly something like the “inevitability of death”.

The fact that so many of you are getting pissy about the dying part indicates they were probably justified in this as a beneficial writ large lesson–while it still also being just a game. That they even called it permadeath when it’s really a survival seems to give this theory some credence.

Another benefit, is the kind of enjoyment you’ll get out of the game after finishing an expedition like this. Like you’ve gone from Mordor back to Hobbiton.

These guys are high-concept developers who know what they’re doing. Trust in the game, and, seriously, stop with these fucking complaint posts. It’s not an actual permadeath.

Recently been seeing a significant number of people posting about hard locks and losing/corrupting their saves since Echoes. Don’t know if other platforms are experiencing this at all, and don’t know how common it is, but I’m seeing enough of it that when I started getting locked up I decided to give it a rest until it gets fixed. Just posting this in the hopes that someone who might otherwise wind up losing their main save to this could hold off for a few days or a week and save themselves a lot of grief.

And if you’re having these problems and/or have lost a save due to this, please report it to the Hello Games zendesk. I’m sure they probably have heard plenty about it already, but it helps to let them know how widespread things are (or aren’t).