After spending some points upgrading my X-ray rig, I decided to stick with Standard difficulty for one more trial.

I’ll be honest — this decision was influenced by having a fairly miserable time on Day 5 of my
Stalker Instinct run in The Long Dark.
Sometimes you don’t need to make things harder.

This time, the trial was Feed the Children.

Going purely by the name, this one sounded… nice.

It was not.

I was tasked with feeding the children soup.
Not just any soup — one made with a corpse, and finished off with a generous amount of bleach.

My upgraded X-ray rig helped a lot here.
I’d upgraded it enough that it recharged my night vision and provided objective information.

What it didn’t help with was the ex-pop.

Every time I spotted a bottle, an ex-pop seemed to appear out of nowhere.
They got hold of me more than once, and did a fair amount of damage.

Thankfully, Hide and Heal pulled its weight.
The X-ray rig did too.
I’ll need to experiment with the other rigs eventually, but this one definitely earned its keep.

I’d like to say things got easier after collecting two bottles.

They did not.

I somehow managed to walk into the same ex-pop at least twice —
both times in the exact same area.

Once I finally fed the children, I had a feeling Mother Gooseberry was going to make an appearance.

She did.

I managed to sneak past her once again, and make my way out.

After everything that happened, I was genuinely surprised to walk away with an A.

I was fully expecting a B at best.

Watch the Trial