Balkoth

Finite resources is the idea, yeah. Can't just respawn PoIs with quests, come back a week later to loot the best stuff, or get unlimited resources from the traders. Well, it took me until day 45 or so to clear a medium sized town I started near. I managed to get a motorcycle in the high 30s I think and explored around a bit, finding a bigger city nearby...but that might take me until day 100+ of going building by building just looting. Which would be fine and dandy if I was still progressing XP wise but feels like a dull grind without that. Yeah, it definitely clutters the compass, wish there was a way to not do that. And yeah, sleepers respawn in the already looted houses How are we defining restore? Like build them back with nice glass and furniture or something? Right now, unless something drastic changes (which it might), I could last quite a few horde nights. I have like 10k+ rounds of both .762 and shotgun ammo. So far I haven't even lost a single block on my horde base, which is basically a big brick with layers of iron spikes outside it, nothing fancy. If radiated zombies or other things start showing up then that could change, but so far I've *gained* ammo and resources from each horde night I think. So I could beeline max int and have the gyro by maybe day 60-70 I guess? Or faster if I power level via crafting. Seems weird to have max int be a goal but not max any other stat. Are wastelands guaranteed on all RNG maps? What makes building a BM base on top of a skycraper significantly worse than a normal BM base? If anything I'd worry the zombies would spawn on the ground and not get to the top easily.... I'm trying to figure out goalposts Originally I figured I'd be finishing in the day 40-50 range having "proven" this can be done without a problem...but I also thought I'd have electricity and steel and end game zombies and everything. But as of day 45 or so I don't have any of those (despite being level 60+). Which is making me reevaluate things especially given how slow leveling has gotten (a level every two days roughly) -- slow grindy progression coupled with an end goal that looks much further away than anticipated is making me think things over.

I've been doing a solo playthrough on difficulty five (Survivalist) without using traders, doing quests, or allowing loot respawn. I'm on day 45 now and so far my only death has been to a pack of dogs on day 5. But it seems like leveling is super slow at this point -- by the end of day 28 I was level 50 but then at the end of day 42 I was level 61. To be clear, gaining three levels a day from base-building early on was probably too much but now it feels like it's shifted to the opposite end of the spectrum -- even at Intelligence 6 (Nerdy Goggles for 7) I'm looking at 12-16 days to get Steel. And this is with no points in things like Shotguns or Heavy Armor in Strength, wanting to be able to craft a quality 5 AK-47 (another 5 levels so 7-10 days), no points in Perception, only one point in Flurry of Blows in Agility, etc. On one hand, it feels like just focusing on Steel to be able to make things like Blade Traps, figuring out electricity, and gaining more XP from Horde Nights might be the best option...but I'd also really like to be able to get Heavy Armor and a quality 5 AK-47. My problem isn't having to pick between those, my problem is looking at 25-34 more hours of play to get that. Which again still leaves out Shotguns, rank 2/3 in Flurry of Blows, any points in other weapons like Bows/Magnums/Rifles, stuff like Salvage Operations/Pain Tolerance/etc., and so on. I didn't mind relying on finding random stuff like mods, schematics, t6 items, weapon parts, etc as long as I was making constant level progression. But admittedly the slow leveling is killing my enthusiasm. And the longest previous playthrough I ever did was also to day 40ish I think so it felt like I'd be in the end-game now but I haven't even seen a wight or irradiated zombie on horde night yet. I guess they're really stretching out the tail of this game compared to previous alphas (mostly played in the alpha 13-16 era and admittedly alpha 14 or 15 where you could get steel on like day 5 was way too fast of progression). I don't know. But I'm trying to figure out what an "end-goal" would even be for this playthrough -- at first it wasn't something I was worried about but like I said the slow leveling is now grating on me. And I don't want to turn up the XP or something since that defeats the entire point of such a challenge! So what are people's thoughts? Playthrough is here for those interested: