katarynna

A partial solution to some of the complaints would be to simply add more destroyed dew collectors to different pois. add them to all the traders and maybe farms, or whichever they choose. That would eliminate the need to use the trader to obtain water filters, but of course the "no looting playstyle" would remain affected.

you can give yourself a t5 quest completion token from creative menu, which will complete the quest for you and allow you to turn it into the trader as if you had actually killed that last enemy or enemies. they added in the option to gift yourself quest completion tokens due to the bug this alpha.

The % chance for rage mode is one of the things that increase with difficulty level. There is zero chance of rage mode at the lowest difficulty, with the chance increasing with each increase in difficulty level.

i always just assumed they didn't stack because they have to be inserted individually in generators.

It doesn't say trader joel is closing soon. It says traitor joel's (the name of the store) is closing soon. Trader joel is not present at every traitor joel's store at closing time, just like the owner of the walmart franchise is not present at every walmart store at closing time.

Traitor Joel's is a company like walmart or target. Jen's compound is part of Traitor Joel's company, not a separate company named Traitor Jen's. So the closing announcement says "Traitor Joel's" like Walmart's closing says "walmart" and not "the walmart in dallas managed by bob reed".

After a decent amount of time playing a21, i have several thoughts and suggestions regarding the magazine system. I personally overall like both the magazine system as is and the potential of what it could be to me with a bit of balancing. Some magazines seem to come a bit too fast. some just right, and some either a bit or a lot too slow. Maybe too fast: cooking and first aid I think because they have exclusive containers that they spawn in plus also spawn everywhere that "any" magazine can be found, these are obtained much faster than anything else. This not a problem for these skills, but because other skills are lagging behind a bit, it might be better to just remove these magazines from spawning at all in generic containers such as mailboxes. That would decrease the leveling of these skills just a bit, while increasing the leveling of other skills that are lagging. Seems just right: armor, workstations, seeds By the time i can craft iron armor, i have either just crafted a workbench or am just about to. At the same time, i am looting q5-6 t0 and possibly q1 iron armor. Everything seems in balance, excluding quest rewards. and seeds are common enough in loot that crafting them is not even really needed early game and the magazines are fairly common. A bit too slow: all tools The tools you loot seems to outpace what you can craft fairly early in the game. For me, by the time i can craft q2-3 stone, i am looting q5-6 stone, and the gap widens as you continue leveling. Another source of tool magazines would help. Too slow: weapon magazines I think because you have so many different weapon magazines competing for very few exclusive containers, my weapon crafting experience lags way behind what i loot. I find i am almost never crafting weapons. Possible solutions: I think the problem with the things that seem to level too slow is that they need more exclusive sources for those particular magazines. The solution i came up with is pretty simple. Create a weapon crafting magazine bundle and a tool crafting magazine bundle. Maybe give the weapon crafting bundle 3 each of 3 magazines and the tools one 2 each of 2. Add these bundles to both the trader quest rewards and air drops. Give them equal weight to the generic crafting magazine bundle. See how that affects the speed of leveling up skills and adjust/change as needed. That leaves quest rewards as the major outlier. Any time that the trader would now offer a weapon, decrease the chances of a weapon appearing by 50% and substitute the weapon crafting magazine bundle for the other 50%. The same would work for tools. That leaves armor as the only thing with a tier and quality that the trader offers as a quest reward that remains unchanged. You could do the same thing as with tools and weapons, by creating an armor crafting bundle with say 5 magazines and 3 steel or military armor parts. I think it is fine and even desired to occasionally get a quest reward significantly better than what you can craft/loot, but maybe not 2 tiers higher or 5 quality levels higher, lol. To me, these changes should help balance the rate at which you acquire the different magazine types while also helping to balance crafting, looting, and quest rewards. If your experience with the rate of looting different magazines is much different than mine, please let me know what differences you are seeing. If you have any better ideas on how to balance, i would enjoy hearing those as well.

Jawoodle? Your friend obviously only watches his jawoodle park (creative mode world where he tries things out). In his playthroughs, he strives for minimal work and maximum efficiency, at least for early and midgame. I don't remember how long into the game he used his firehouse base, but it was at least through midgame and was less than 10 blocks. Often he starts building his horde base about 5pm on horde night and hopes it works. His most recent horde base was less than 10 blocks added to the red and white very high tower thing.... which collapsed (before midnight i believe). He had put down hay bales in case he needed to escape, so luckily he didn't die. He hopped onto a nearby wall and managed to not die by fighting from there for the rest of the night, which is great since he plays permadeath. He has some great ideas... and some really bad ones. He is a creative builder for sure, but he rarely builds complex things in his playthroughs. Creative and interesting, while using minimal materials for early and mid game. Late game, he may build something a bit more complex, like the crawling base he built in the wastelands. That one still wasn't large or super complex. It was just built so all the zombies were forced to crawl towards him, making it easy to get headshots. Kage builds larger and more complex though. But Josh... ANYONE could copy a lot of his horde base designs from memory without referring to his videos.

I would love it if tfp could add functionality to the land claim block to name my self-built base or rename a poi i have taken over. It's a little thing, but I hate seeing the previous owners' name every time i come back home.

I have been playing since a15 and have several thousand hours in the game. I think we can agree that I am part of "the players" that you are speaking for. However, everything that you claim "the players" (which includes me) want is either unimportant or unwanted by me, except for the story which they have already said is coming. More zombie variants are fine, but not important to me. Bandits are fine, but i don't even know if i'll enjoy them so they are currently not important to me. NPC's that offer quests and trading opportunities are not something i want. Upgrades beyond steel are not something i want. More pois are also fine, but i vastly prefer upgrading the pois we already have. The art update for this alpha is amazing. I will clear the zombies from a room in a poi i have been in hundreds of times, and just walk around admiring how much better it looks now. We have a LOT of pois already. Making the ones we have better and more impactful IS important to me. Refining the behavior of the zombies we already have is important to me. When they added ragdolling, to me that was better than one new zombie type. The addition of the zombies eating dead animals and prioritizing them above trying to kill me... THAT is so cool. I would rather they add to the things zombies do and how they react other than adding a couple new zombie types because things like that affect me more. I would rather they add a biting animation than a new zombie type. I would rather they add the fat zombies also stopping to eat zombie corpses, or make arlene stop to stare at herself in mirrors, or make the construction worker stop and try to interact with the cement mixer.... more interesting behaviors and actions for what we already have. I would also love some qol things... lockable slots is already in the code and is loved enough that i really wish they would make the time to do whatever bug testing or refinement needs to be done to get it in vanilla. Being able to craft with items in nearby storage containers is also so nice. I wish they would add that. I would also love a lawn mower or something like that, to quickly clear away grass. More qol stuff is always welcome. and more (or better) paint textures. I would take 10 new, clean paint textures over 10 new zombie models and added npcs to trade with. MY wants don't invalidate yours. Everyone has their own set of wants. But speak for yourself and what you want, because you have no idea what "the players" want.

I use the melee weapon I am perked into exclusively. Ranged is different though. I always have a bow/xbow on my bar. Sneak attacks with a bow in a poi are my preferred kills, even without a single point in bows. If it isn't a one shot kill, it generally takes just one melee hit or headshot with my perked ranged weapon to finish them off. I usually have a shotgun on my bar, unless i am using a machine gun or an smg. It's great when there are multiple mobs rushing you. When i thin the herd or slow them enough, i'll switch to melee or my perked range. If i'm low on shotgun ammo (or for early game pipe machine gun always), i'll have a machine gun to use in similar situations that I would use the shotgun. Early to mid game, I will bring a gun for each ammo type to horde night if there are any concerns about ammo supply for my perked weapon. I may not use any of them, or i may use all of them just to get use from the ammo, depending on the situation. Explosives are always useful, whether perked or not and whether early game or late. I don't play on insane, so not sure about that difficulty, but I have seen content creator videos where they have used unperked weapons even on insane and seem to get good use out of them. Especially the compound crossbow for stealth shots. Different guns have different strengths and weaknesses. I may be fully perked into rifles, but if i see 4 ferals rushing towards me i want a shottie or machine gun to deal with them.

You can choose which beta you want to play from a8 to present. I believe there is another way to play alphas before 8, but am not positive and don't know how to do it.

I can confirm that on windows, it also "remembered" all of my previous settings, regardless of whether i started a new game on a same or different map. having to redo all my game settings for every new game is especially annoying during experimental, with it's frequent restarts. I am hoping this is a bug that will be fixed, because it is one of the few things i dislike about a21 so far.

I do think your poll is flawed, because learn by reading also includes learn by perks (one for crafting, the other for skills). To me, the choices should be lbd, lbd + perks. perks, lbr + perks. I manage to be the exact opposite of what Riamus expected. I started in a15, so played all 3. I vastly prefer the magazines for crafting. I can learn to make the things i want/need, while spending my perk points where i really want them instead of where i NEED to put them in order to improve crafting/learn recipes. However, I still prefer perks of lbd. I don't mind the way lbd is done in some of the overhaul mods, but i still wouldn't choose that over pure perks or perks + magazines. I mix in various overhauls with vanilla game play, but i do it for variety and not because i feel vanilla is lacking in any way. I feel vanilla gives the most balanced experience, df is for qesting/story progression, ul for building/crafting slow steady progression, wotw for loot extravaganza. I play probably 70% solo, 20% 2 players, 10% 3-8 players. I've only done solo and duo so far in a21. In both, the magazine system worked beautifully. Granted, my duo game we decided to have one crafter, so the 1st read all mags and the 2nd didn't read any. We progressed MUCH faster than solo, but not so fast that it felt broken. I could consistently craft better than we could buy or loot. However, some groups are complaining that while they play IN a group they don't play AS a group, so they are having issues. And just to be clear, i wanted my duo partner to be the crafter, but he wanted me to do it. We both enjoy it, but he wanted to focus on exploring and looting and didn't want to commit to extra time at base for his first a21 game. For me personally, lbr + perks gives me the most freedom plus endorphin rush.

The reason I suggested polymer rather than mechanical or electrical parts is i feel that a dew collector should be craftable by anyone who tries by day 2. Gathering mechanical and electrical parts, barring extremely good looting luck or availability at the trader, requires a wrench which can take a bit to obtain. It is easier now that a workbench isn't required to craft a wrench, but polymer can be gathered right away just by breaking tires and such with a stone ax. However, that could work too, i guess. It just depends on how soft-gated you want the dew collector to be. I could deal with either, and am fine if it doesn't change. Again, i just think the choice between quickly buying a water filter to use as a tool to get clean water vs just gathering murky water and trying to build a 2nd quickly makes it more interesting.

You misunderstood me. Maybe i didn't phrase it well. The filter would cost the same as now, 1500 dukes at the trader. The dew collector recipe currently includes 100 polymer. I was suggesting increasing the amount of polymer required for the dew collector to 250. Just so you couldn't spam craft 3 or 4 dew collectors immediately because they would no longer require the water filter as a rare, non-craftable ingredient. Getting your first dew collector would be arguably more difficult because of the increased polymer requirement. However in reality it would be about the same, as gathering 1500 dukes at the start of the game could take a similar amount of time as gathering an extra 150 polymer. Also, that was one extra change to the dew collector beyond removing the water filter requirement. Any change that would greatly decrease the ability to spam many dew collectors if the filter was a tool instead of an ingredient would work.

I am enjoying the changes to drinking water as is, but i do think zztong's idea would be even better. I don't see how meganoth's point makes sense, because you would still just be getting 3 murky water per day per dew collector. With the change to cooking times, which is significant, getting clean water will still take some effort. If this was a change tfp actually considers, you could change the dew collector recipe in other ways to make it difficult to spam them early game. Increase polymers to 250 from 100, for instance. Gathering bulk polymer early game is not super trivial. For mid to late game, even if it stays the way it is now, everyone will be able to have enough dew collectors to ensure they have all the water they want. Currently on day 3 (160 min days), i have 2 dew collectors and enough dukes to buy a third water filter if i want, but i don't need it yet. I have enough water as is. Having the option for gimped dew collectors that only give murky water adds to my choices in a way that i don't feel is op. Just interesting. Either way is fine with me, but i do feel zztong's idea would make the changes more interesting to me.

You say it is a problem, but i see it as an interesting choice. Which do we need more? 12 mechanical parts or 3 workstation magazines? If you try the system and hate it, provide feedback based on actual gameplay in a constructive manner, detailing how you tried to work with the system and where it failed you. Feedback like that is valuable for balancing purposes. Feedback based on how you fear it will work.... not so much.

Archer, another thing you are not considering is that your looters don't need to read ANY magazines. ALL that the magazines affect is crafting quality. You can have all of the other up to 30 people feed magazines to the one builder/crafter that is on most often until he finishes a category, then start a second crafter on magazines. If you want to speed rush one particular item... say workstations... you could also have your looters sacrifice 1 point each into the perk related to workstations so that they will get more of those magazines. Or have each looter put one point into one assigned specific perk so that looter A finds more workstation mags and looter B finds more cooking magazines, etc. If you are concerned about weapons specifically, have them prioritize questing at locations that have a high rate of shotgun messiah crates. If you are concerned about tools specifically, focus working stiff crate locations. Since you say most of your group are stay-at-home builder types, you could go together once per day to do a t1 quest as a group. It will take 2 hours max in game time in a large group, you never need to move up to t2 or higher quests to keep it quick and easy, and you often get magazines offered as a reward. Those are just some of the things that came immediately to mind. I am sure there are many others. Also, all the perk points your builder/crafters used to use to get recipes can now be spent on other things to improve yourselves. If you are creative and positive, you almost definitely won't have problems. And if you do, provide feedback in a constructive manner. Note what methods your group used to try to make the system work and how it failed you. This is the first implementation of this system. Feedback based on actual gameplay by people who tried to work with the system but couldn't get a successful outcome will be invaluable for future balancing passes.

And maybe when the lore comes out, it will be revealed that corpses can't be reanimated unless their brain has reached a certain level of development, so children and the mentally disabled can't turn into zombies. Or maybe child zombies are physically much weaker and have been killed off in the time since the zombie apocalypse started. Or maybe becoming a zombie increases your hunger because it greatly increases your metabolism and how much you need to eat in order to power the virus and your reanimated body.... being smaller and weaker, the child zombies were unable to meet the needs of the virus and hence the virus cannibalized the child zombies' bodies until they died again. The fun Pimps can certainly create their own lore to explain why there are no child zombies. There are countries where games that allow children being killed (even if they are zombie children) are banned. Each game development studio gets to weigh for themselves how much those markets mean to them as well as their own personal values when determining whether their will be killable child antagonists. Luckily, TFP have made the game very moddable, so if killing children in zombie form is super important to you, you can add them in.

I know some people have trouble with this concept, but if you don't have fun double looting, eating glass, etc.... just don't do it. I just logged off a bit ago from a new game that will be my last a20 game. I had intended to find a remnant poi and restore/rebuild it for a base. However, just north of the starting forest trader was a beautiful lake with snowy mountain peaks across on the other side of the lake. With such a beautiful spot, i decided i had to build my own base. I did one quest. I didn't spam quests, because i was in the mood to explore the town to see what was there, plus loot mailboxes/newspaper stands because i am going to focus archery. I did what i found fun and interesting with absolutely no concern what was optimal. After exploring for a while, i focused more on resource gathering on the way to my lakeside base location. When i got there, i had enough materials to build a small starter base, get my campfire and forge down, make a cooking pot, and start making bacon and eggs. I do what i feel like doing and what makes sense in a "what do i need most now to survive in a zombie apocalypse" frame of mind, not in a "what can i do to min/max the game mechanics" frame of mind. I don't double loot because i find it boring. I don't eat glass because suicide is never the choice for "what do i need most to survive". I learn the things that help me with my survival goals. If i have no current important goals, i choose to do what feels fun, interesting, or rewarding at that particular moment. I have played since a15. I still find the vanilla game to be my favorite game. I play several of the overhaul mods and enjoy them too, but i play them for a change of pace, not because i find vanilla lacking. Some people seem to intentionally do things that make the game no longer fun for them. I just don't do that.

One way to do it would be one choice amongst the 5 is guaranteed to be of that trader's specialty.

Your a20 save will still work fine with a20 and you can play it as long as you want until you update the game to s21. You will get to start a new save with a21. There are too many changes between major alpha versions for an a20 save to work on a21. However, even after updating to a21, you can roll back to a20 and continue working on that world whenever you want. The save itself is not damaged by updating. It just won't work on a21.

I really think part of the issue with the desert woman's outfit may be heavily influenced by where you live. I grew up in Tampa, Florida and saw women in similar clothing everywhere i went. Malls, restaurants, amusement parks, mini golf.... whereever. I look at her and don't really see a skimpy or overly sexy outfit. I see a hot weather outfit. Not even a super cute hot weather outfit.... just something many women and girls would wear. The woman herself is attractive, with a very toned body and large boobs. But again, i know many women and girls with a similar body type, so i didn't really notice it until it was pointed out. If you were always surrounded by similar outfits, and wore them yourself when you were much much younger and thinner, it just registers as attractive and well-designed. Having that outfit being the only one presented doesn't concern me in the slightest. Their zombie females include both the sexy party girl and sexy big mama. I think tfp have already proven to me that they are pretty diverse in the body types and clothing they present. However, my character will quite happily wear either the desert outfit or big mama's dress, depending on which fits my mental image of the character more. Having a variety of choices that represent the various characters that we create is wonderful. I personally wouldn't care if there was a completely naked outfit for each sex that gave nature-related buffs, If i was channeling my inner hippie, i would go for it.

Maybe i'm missing something, but isn't the party girl the only somewhat scantily clad female? Jen has big boobs, but her clothes are normal clothes you might see any female anywhere wearing. The old nurse had more of a sexy costumely look, but the new one is wearing scrubs and looks completely normal. Marlene, Arlene, darlene, and big momma are all covered. So is the lab worker. I can't think of a single other female zombie that is scantily clad. I am fine with adding one scantily clad male zombie for those who really want parity, but i personally don't find it necessary. As for specifically female character clothing, the only thing i can think of is the skirt, which is below the knee if i remember right. Definitely not a short skirt. As a female, i neither feel like the female characters are made for the sex starved nor that tfp are giving me the middle finger. I absolutely don't feel the same as you, despite the fact that we are the same gender.