AllTheGoodNamesAreInUse

Yep. Welcome to why I'm just sticking with Alpha 20 for the foreseeable future. It's no longer a survival crafting game, it's a magazine collecting looting game. If what you find fun doesn't align with that, A21 is just a frustrating mess.

This. My group is well-accustomed to this, and we make a point to pick up our vehicles before logging out in order to avoid it. Can't tell you how many times we lost bikes, gyros, 4x4s before we developed that habit. 😬

Indeed! In fact, for our next reset, we've been contemplating doing an Alpha 17 map just for fun. I don't think it's particularly difficult to make servers for previous alphas.

I've introduced a few new players to the game by having them install A20 rather than A21 to avoid that issue. While it has its issues, A20 can still be played like a crafting and survival game, rather than a magazine collecting trader job game.

The tourist zombie my group calls "Fat D**k", or occasionally "Plump Richard". Wights it depends. Regular ones we call "Walter", but the feral or rad wights we call "Betty".

This. So much this.

No, I actually think dew collectors shouldn't need a filter. That's just stupid. They should produce pure water without, since it's coming from evaporation/condensation cycle. The water filtration workstation would be for purifying murky water.

I've always actually thought there should be a "Water Filtration Station" workstation in the game. You should be able to input murky water and output pure water (with a "crafting time" inserted because that's how it would work IRL too). Making part of that workstation a consumable would make sense (charcoal filters are easy to make but they wear out and stop being effective over enough use). Easily doable in-game. Side note, we already made a "craftable water purifier" recipe for A21 as a mod for our group's server that includes coal as a component. This kind of thing doesn't need to be as heavy handed as TFP seem dead-set on making it.

Really, I think to make that simpler (but still a cost over time) would be charcoal (or using current game materials, coal). In a post-apocalyptic situation, a charcoal filter would be the most straightforward and most common way to purify water, so make water filters craftable, simple, but a consumable. Raise the output, but have the filters degrade over time and require replacing. Also, you should be able to purify murky water with them. That would be logical.

Crafting. C R A F T I N G. Not drinking. Water for crafting.

No, it is a looting game. Survival games allow you to use containers to gather water.

That helps nothing with the water needed for crafting. Water needed for crafting is 10x the problem than drinking water is.

The solution seems to be to just give up on base building and just spend 100% of time looting and doing trader missions. Not enough water? FIND IT IN LOOT Not enough ammo? FIND IT IN LOOT Not enough Dukes? DO TRADER JOBS Can't craft anything? FIND IT IN LOOT I get it. Loot, Trader, Loot, repeat.

"Learn by dying" sounds better than the whole magazine mess. Dying is something I can do rapidly, and often!

This. It's like if they decided that wood is too plentiful in the game, and their solution to that problem was to remove axes. EDIT: Oh crap, I probably shouldn't say stuff like that. They might take that as a suggestion.

PROBLEM: Jars exist SOLUTION: REMOVE JARS! Success! Oh no.... PROBLEM: Where to get water? SOLUTION: Dew collectors give you 3 water per day! Success! Oh no... PROBLEM: Players are building tons of dew collectors because 3 water per day is pretty useless, especially for multiplayer groups. SOLUTION! DEW COLLECTORS ATTRACT SCREAMERS The ridiculous chain of solutions to problems TFP created themselves to begin with. What next, are dew collectors going to require electricity?

You won't be able to find many magazines either, so no building things like forges or workbenches or higher than Q1 weapons/gear. But you're right, you'll probably die from the water issue way before that's a problem.

They need to introduce some sort of container you can fill up when at a water source on the map and bring water back to a fire so you can boil it. That seems like an intuitive mechanic to me. Maybe some sort of bottle? Or a jar!