Crater Creator

It's always interesting to read about how others are playing and progressing in the game. Me, I played a lot of A20.0, with its high quantities of ammo (despite playing with reduced loot abundance). For one thing, that meant not worrying about using guns liberally during horde night. For another, it meant the need to dig a mine never came up, which is part of why I didn't feel like I was that far into the game. One thing that surprises me about Vaeliorin's experience is how many repairs they're making. For several horde nights now I've been using a machine gun, and a shotgun when I run out of rifle ammo: all quality 5 or less. Also, my base is designed to slow and funnel zombies rather than kill them, so my guns (and molotovs) do most of the damage. With this setup, I've never had to repair a weapon more than once during horde night. If a weapon needed 3-4 repairs in a night, I might be more reluctant to make the repairs require parts. Perhaps there's a bigger gap between the durability of melee and ranged weapons than either of us realized, since Vaeliorin says they've only fired maybe 20 rounds. If the distribution of parts for different classes of weapons isn't even, I'm all for balancing that better. As for the issue of clutter, I would argue that what we have now is clutter. E.g. I have a storage box filling up with miscellaneous parts that don't get used. Making the parts a consumable repair item would be something to counteract the unlimited growth of that clutter. True, it means a lot more different kinds of repair items. But it's not like I carry around 10 different weapons that need repairs. A couple of good ones is plenty, and again, they don't wear out that fast. I haven't needed to repair a gun more than once when doing a Tier 5 quest, either. Just as it may be worth carrying a certain type of candy, food, or clothing that complements my character build, play style, or local environment; so too may it be worth carrying a certain type of parts, so that I can use my favorite weapon for longer.

That's the thing, though. I got a level 6 machete as a quest reward. I wasn't even that far into the game yet: no crucible, no chemistry station, and just started doing Tier 5 quests. And I'm just... done with machete parts now I guess? Any more I accumulate are worthless to me, forever after. And all players will reach this state if they play long enough, because unless you're spam crafting for better stats you only use the parts to craft one thing once. That's why I say there should be a place to sink these resources, so that they're always good for something. Plus, if your best gun wears out and you can't repair it until you find some more parts, you definitely have other guns by then. A reason to not always use the same gun, and maybe use up some of that ammo type you never use, sounds good to me. I modded my game over the weekend, so that all items that need unique parts to craft also need those parts to repair. I'm still trying it out, but it already feels so right to me. Finding non-craftable parts will, hopefully, always be valuable now, at least among the set of weapons & tools I'm interested in using.

Score as in, Buzzards 11, ElCabong 0? Must have your bedroll close by.

I guess someone should’ve clarified. In this context, “dig” means the AI’s ability to attack a block below it, not the ability to attack dirt or other particular types of blocks. So a frame, a hatch, or any block would protect you in the ‘dig down 3 blocks’ era (2 blocks for your character to occupy + one un-diggable block over your head).

“Dig down 3 blocks” is a reference to when zombies couldn’t dig. It didn’t matter whether you were too far away for them to sense you. They could hear you or smell you all they wanted; they couldn’t do anything about it because there was a dirt block between you and them. It was like this for many Alphas. I’m glad that I can build above ground or underground now and they have comparable viability. In a game where zombies can scratch their way through concrete and steel, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be able to also scratch through dirt and raw stone. In other words, digging zombies keep the game self-consistent. If you have the Blood Moon and zombies turned on, then you deserve a compelling horde night experience. And any setup where you can sit inactive through it with no losses is not compelling, in my view.

Yeah. And even when I'm paying attention and weighing that before I upgrade the skill, my calculus goes like... well I don't want to use up the parts I have to make a worse weapon, if I have enough skill points that I could make a better one. And I don't want to upgrade the skill if I won't have enough parts to make it at all anymore. So the parts go back in the box, to be forgotten until I stumble on the same weapon in loot. And somebody's going to say, "Just stop min-maxing; you'll be happier." But I can't shake the survival mindset, where resources are precious and not to be wasted on redundant items.

I feel pretty paralyzed from crafting any weapons. It feels wasteful, because if I make what I can now, I won't be able to make a higher-quality one later, without taking even longer to find the increasing number of parts I need. And even if I wait to make a quality 5, not wasting parts to make qualities 1 through 4 first, it still seems wasteful since there's a quality 6 out there somewhere if I loot long enough. The end result is, I don't put points in weapon skills until I already have a high tier weapon in that class. I have a big box of weapon parts that ultimately just get sold to the trader. What if the game crafted a weapon of the highest quality level you can, given the number of weapon parts in your backpack at that moment? Then you wouldn't need a one-off UI element to select the quality you want. I also think it would be a really good idea if you repaired weapons with weapon parts, so there's a mechanic to consume that big box of parts. I mean, if the idea is you amass all these parts and craft a bunch of them to roll slightly higher stats on one of them... that's just another form of spam crafting. 😕

If you placed something like a block - that is, if it snapped to either this voxel or that voxel - then it's a block, and blocks aren't entities. That's how you know a blade trap or SMG turret doesn't count. If you turn on debug mode (dm in console), then you can press F6 to get the entities menu. That's your comprehensive list of everything that counts. Bonus points for getting a backpack or supply plane to damage a zombie.

There is a developer tool for raising and lowering terrain. That doesn’t make this idea moot, though. In my experience, adjusting terrain density with the prefab editor tool is a pain. A new tool designed to easily smooth things out would be nice, especially if it could both add and subtract mass granularly. OP’s is similar to requests to add a lawn mower to swiftly remove large areas of grass, which I understand there are already mods to do, for what that’s worth.

You describe this as bridging a gap between 'full' aiming down the sights and not aiming at all: in other words something between firing from the hip and firing from the shoulder. But doesn't using this bug look and behave exactly like aiming down the sights, with the one difference that the weapon isn't drawn up close to the camera? If this were a real implemented feature to provide a middle ground like you propose, then to make all three options worthwhile it would have to give you only part of the benefit of actually aiming down the sights. But if I understand you correctly, it's currently giving you the whole benefit that aiming down the sights gives you, plus arguably more since the sights and the rest of the weapon aren't blocking part of your view. So there may be a salvageable idea here, but the design doesn't sound viable as currently 'implemented' by the bug.

I think we should dig into a larger issue here. Why is it preferable to zoom in without the iron sights? Iron sights are supposed to be better than nothing. That's why they exist. So if anything, TFP should improve the iron sights so that they're more desirable than using this glitch.

I think cheats are the only way. You'd turn on debug mode (dm in console) and press F6 to open the entities menu.

I gave up and bought the Intellect skill to make one. My plan was to buy one from the trader, but every trader besides my starting one was 5 km away or farther and I couldn't be making trips all the time to check them. For what it's worth, I'd been spending most of my time in the low-loot-stage forest up to that point.

According to the A20.0 files, Since RWG has changed so much, I'm less clear on whether some POIs are guaranteed on all maps.

It doesn’t read like Ghostlight wanted an answer, so much as they want a fix. To that end, it’s not clear what more this thread could accomplish that creating or adding to a bug report couldn’t. Let’s skip the name calling please, even if you think “fanboy” is mild.

I guess they’ll just have to keep giving her bigger floatation devices until this stops happening.

Also, I would place temporary torches more often if they looked like they were meant to be placed, rather than floating above the ground, which looks ugly. An entity with physics would work better than a block for this purpose… and since someone will complain about performance, give it a 1 minute timer before it disappears… in fact, forget torches altogether and make them consumable flares. That’s what we’re really talking about here when it comes to lighting up a room so you can clear the zombies.

I'm not sure how they decide who to target within a group. Maybe your wife is the noisiest, if she's mostly using guns and you're mostly using fists. You could try throwing stones or snowballs to redirect the zombies' attention.

Well then, at least RNG is giving me the highest quality bedrolls every time.

Starting the game with a drone with a light mod would be skipping over too much of the tech progression for me. To get a similar effect (if you're going to cheat anyway), you could give yourself a burning shaft mod and add it to your main weapon. The effect on lighting is the same as if you held a torch in one hand and the weapon in the other. In fact, since we have burning shaft mods for weapons, I think you could modify the xml to duplicate the effect with a chest armor mod, like the OP suggests.

It seems the blue ones drop from tougher enemies, like cops. They theoretically have better loot.

Sure, sure. But my stipulation was more that cornbread is intuitively drier than corn on the cob. The stats shouldn’t be the same… and yet, cornbread takes more effort to make, so it shouldn’t be worse than corn on the cob, either. So forget cornbread. You just use cornmeal wherever you’d use cornbread now. Cornmeal’s stats would be somewhere between where it is now and cornbread’s stats, with its crafting time adjusted if necessary. I think all would agree that eating cornmeal with no water would be dehydrating. Then, for corn on the cob, make its stats match boiled meat instead of charred meat, since boiling is how you’re cooking it.

Perhaps you have dynamic resolution turned on, and your system is struggling to render the horde in particular so that’s when it reduces resolution and things look blurry as a result.

I searched and didn't see this mentioned anywhere. I know many have discussed Living Off the Land and other changes to food in A20, but I wanted to focus on one lasting oddity in particular. Corn on the Cob Cornbread ingredients ingredients 1 ear of corn 1 cornmeal 1 boiled water 1 boiled water effects effects +10 food +10 food +5 health +5 health -5 water -5 water +10 max stamina +10 max stamina And to craft 1 cornmeal requires 1 ear of corn. Therefore, the only difference between these two items, as foods, is that cornbread requires an extra step. It's also counterintuitive to me that these two would have the same effect on hydration (-5 water). Maybe cornbread should be merged with cornmeal (or more accurately corn flour, given the recipes where it's used). Then the distinction is clearer: if you want to turn raw corn into a 'good' food to eat by itself, make corn on the cob. If you want to turn it into a refined crafting ingredient, make cornmeal. This would eliminate the extra step for tuna fish gravy on toast and chili dogs, which currently you actually have to cook once to make the cornbread and then re-cook to make the finished product. If you want something more in the style of down-home fresh baked comfort food, you can still make blueberry pie or pumpkin bread with the cornmeal. As is, cornbread's role in gameplay is extraneous.