Roland

@MaxTunnerX Don't listen to them. Try the 300% XP and see how it goes. If it turns out to be too tough THEN ignore it. But you specifically outlined how it took 3 points to get to the soup recipe you wanted to make and that took a lot of playtime to get there. 300% XP will get you your perks faster like you want it. It will make your gamestage go up faster but you are playing on Scavenger so those tougher zombies will still go down a lot easier to that fully perked weapon you have. That's why you play on Scavenger. These guys are thinking high gamestage on Nomad or Warrior but that's not you. Play 300% xp on scavenger and you'll thank me. The game does have those modes plus several intermediate ones. It's called playing with the settings to get the mode that works for you. I outlined some settings you could try to get a casual mode that reduces the challenge-- basically down to zero threat for the first three days...

Yeah...you both are probably right. I forgot about Higashi. Red Mesa was created before Higashi Towers and it was originally the site for the apocalypse as kind of an homage/spoof of Valve's Black Mesa. Higashi Towers does make more sense and I agree. The main sequence of events is correct while locations/particulars of the events themselves can still change.

More than you know....

CASUAL MODE Overall Settings Difficulty: Scavenger (This is the easiest setting in the game and disables the zombies from going into rage mode. Zombies die much easier needing fewer hits) XP: 300% (This will help you earn skillpoints the quickest so you can get all your perks sooner) Zombie Block Damage: 25% (This makes base defense easier and also lets you shut doors behind you in POIs and stay safe for longer so you don't get overwhelmed) Blood Moon: Frequency 14 days Range 0 (This reduces the urgency for building and prepping for the blood moon.) Loot: 300% (This will bring in more food and water and ammo for an easier survival experience. Zombie Speed: Walk day and night (This will make night time less stressful) Special Setting for Days 1-3 Zombie Spawning: Off (This will give you time to do some exploring and building and getting established before the zombies start coming. After Day 3, the next time you log on to play, change the setting to on so that zombies start spawning. I think this will yield a much easier and simpler game that is still mostly vanilla.

Proof that the game is still complex and challenging despite what you often hear from players on this forum with 1000's of hours under their belt who want it to continually evolve into even more complexity and a tougher challenge.

I tried updating the art gallery but was getting an error.

Another Story from this evening: So far in this world I was 0-2 on buried supplies quests which, in the past, I never failed. I was set on passing the quest this time. I headed over to Trader Joel and selected a buried supplies quest and set out armed with FIRM RESOLVE. (plus a stone shovel). This time, I was going to learn from my mistakes. I harvested a couple of trees on my way and crafted about 30 frames particle board blocks. When I got to the destination I was dismayed to see that it was on the border between the forest and snow biomes which meant lumberjacks in the vicinity. And they came. For a good 10 minutes I ran around the area killing zombies as they spawned and wandered in attracted to the noise of killing from wherever they spawned in. Finally, the flow trickled to a stop and I felt like I would have a window of time to dig before more might start spawning again. But I had learned my lesson and built a two block high wood wall around that magical glowing floating exclamation point. Placing and upgrading the particle board to solid wood planks required another tree as sacrifice but I finally got it done and only attracted one additional looky-loo who ironically lost her eyes with her head to my club. She was scratching up my wall!! Feeling safe I jumped down into my shield, activated the quest and started digging. Worked like a charm. I heard them pounding on the wall at some point and went topside to kill them and make repairs and then returned to my task until I finally found the chest and relieved it of its contents. Bam! the trap zombies spawned in but by this time I was tired of bashing Warrior level heads with a brown level club so I just waited until they came up to the wall and then heroically ran away using a shot of steroids because it was about 19:00 and I was encumbered by about 7 slots of overfill. I made it back in time to complete the quest, sell off some crap, and accept a clear quest for the next day. I had not yet established a safe base so there I was standing outside the trader compound as the clock struck 22. Hmmm....I should test sneaking at night with feral sense activated to see whether stealth is still relevant with feral sense. So off I snuck towards the nearby town with the plan to get to the first roof I could find. (Because sitting on a roof worked out so well for me last time...) As I crouch walk/ran along I noticed a zombie up ahead. Perfect. He was way far away so I thought I would bring him nearer to me rather than trying to sneak closer to him. I threw a rock a short distance away from me off to the right and tensed to see if the zombie would go to the rock and stop or if he would go to the rock and then continue to me. He stopped at the rock! He was about 15 blocks away so crouching still I readied an arrow and hit him in the head for extra stealth damage. It knocked him off his feet and I immediately backed away and to the left and stayed still. He jumped up and ran over to where I fired from and stopped! This time he was only about 6 blocks away. Awesome! I thought. As long as I employ good stealth practices, I should still be able to sneak around even with feral sense activated. Fun!! I killed him off and then continued on to my goal. I saw another zombie in the distance and readied myself to be death from the shadows when I heard the unmistakable growl of a nearby wolf. Wolves are never fooled by crouching doofuses in the night. I died again. What was interesting was that I stood up and got a few whacks on the wolf before it killed me but that other zombie way off heard the fight and ran over to eat his share. So there was a distinct difference in detection between stealth and non stealth and the good news is that as long as you don't run into wildlife, you should still be able to sneak around at night even with feral sense selected. But make any noise and they will come running from all over. Cheers!

Don't try it unless you load up an older version. Or do try it but make sure to have the Jaws soundtrack playing while you do. haha...

The only strategies that have officially been stated as cheesing the AI were 1) Digging under ground, 2) Driving around all night, and 3) Treading water all night. All three of these strategies have officially been addressed by the developers in that special way they have to destroy "mah playstyle!". I never read a single staff member of TFP state officially that constructing an elevated corridor design is cheesing the AI. Instead, I have witnessed Madmole himself utilize a kill corridor design. Seeing as how we have gone from A17 - A20 and elevated kill corridors still work while the first three mentioned have systematically been dismantled since A17, I think that it is safe to say that forming an elevated corridor to bait zombies into lining up so that AP rounds can be utilized to maximum value is considered a valid strategy by TFP. As for the community, you will always get proclamations of cheese from one quarter or another. I wouldn't worry about it.

Luckily, a Smurf has taken notice. So, if OP can give a map seed and a screenshot showing location then the QA guys will take it from there seeing if they can replicate it. Those guys like nothing more than trying something 100 times to get one repro. If its rare and only happens every once in a while-- well that just puts the cream in the twinkie for them. Go Juggy go!

A19 is the most refined version to be sure. I have fond feelings for a few past alphas. A6 my first time playing + classic horde mode A10 with the really cool terrain features and endless worlds. A11 with caves A17 with relentless zombies and POI's packed with enemies.

It has already been established that the general sequence of events is: 1) An outbreak occurs due to exposure to a virus manufactured at the Red Mesa Facility 2) After unsuccessfully trying to stop the spread, the government nukes everything. 3) Some time after that, the Duke takes control of Navezgane 4) A small group of rebels led by a man named Noah begins to work against the rule of the Duke of Navezgane 5) You are dumped on the side of a road with minimal supplies and practically naked after displeasing the Duke in some way. 6) Noah and the White River Settlement faction watch you with interest.... So, yes, there were a few nuclear explosions. They did not cause the apocalypse but they definitely contributed to it.

There is very little released lore. What we do know is that there was an outbreak of some kind of virus that infected most of the population. The scientist responsible for the outbreak is the Asian man whose picture adorns many homes. At some point the government responded with nukes. The game takes place some time after that during which two factions have risen to power. The dominant force belongs to the Duke of Navezgane who rules from his casino (not yet added to the game). The rebel force is known as the White River Citizens and is led by a man named Noah. The player starts out having gotten on the wrong side of the Duke somehow and has been dumped naked with minimal supplies out in the wilderness. Noah and his faction are interested in the player. There are also portraits of Noah and the Duke in many establishments. That is really all that we know. The game is set in Arizona.

There is an A19 map thread pinned at the top of this page. Otherwise, I suspect you will get a long string of "download Nitrogen" suggestions.

My endgame usually consists of starting over some time before Day 100 so I would never last to day 700. I can't imagine wanting to stay on the same world for even 200 days...

Maybe an emoji countdown could help...?

The difference this time is that it is simply an option. So I'm sure it will stay since we can easily tell anyone who complains about it to just turn it off. Or rather, Stop turning it on if you don't like it since it is off by default.

One would think that by now, we all should be used to how TFP operates, and simply accept that A20 will release whenever it does and if A19 has grown stale to play and A20 news has grown stale to read then simply play other games and read other news to occupy your time and fulfill your need for entertainment. But I know that type of thinking is unpopular among those who want a faster development cycle.

Git gud dude!

One thing I that is quite funny to me is all the complaining right now about the emptiness of the world and lack of zombies. WIth feral sense, I couldn't do anything for very long without getting interrupted by zombies coming over to give me a hand...or eat one of mine. I wonder whether some of those who have been wishing for more zombies in the world will end up turning off feral sense in the long run because they'll get sick of constantly having to deal with all the zombies...haha. I do remember people complaining about the constant wandering hordes and random zombies damaging their base, or interrupting mining, or destroying the POI the player was trying to explore back when we had more zombies in the world than we have currently. Is the brain always tastier on the other side?

Wandering hordes work the same in A20 as they do in A19. Actually, wandering hordes have always had a "pitstop" that they would herd towards and then stop and and stand around in the area. I think that before A19 that target area was always a ways beyond the player's location but almost always the path went right through the player's location. With A19, the programmers (faatal) put a lot more variation in their path, direction, and target stopping point. That means they might reach their stopping point beyond you, close to where you are, or before they reach you. Their path could take them anywhere up to 30 or 40 blocks away from your location and in a random direction which means you may never see them wandering and by chance might come upon them after they reached their pitstop and spread out in the area waiting for their life timer to run out. Feral Sense will cause all those wandering hordes to notice you even from 30 blocks away so they will always turn and come at you and so you will notice just how many hordes there are that you never noticed before. A lot of people thought that hordes were turned off for A19 until people started modding the horde numbers and THEN saw how much more noticeable they were. The flat areas are vast. The first time I played A20 I came out of the noisy bumpy terrain of a mountainous area into a huge open area and figured I must be on the border of city-- you know the way it stamps the terrain flat in a big circle around where the city is going to go? Nope. I traveled for a long time before I came upon any buildings. It was just a vast wide open area of woodland. In fact, I commented in the dev chat that it would be cool to thin the trees a bit or perhaps have random clearings where trees didn't spawn in flat areas so that the flat areas would seem more like the meadows of Valheim and then the mountainous terrain would be more like the Dark Forests of Valheim-- basically two pseudo biomes from the same basic "forest biome". They patted me on the head.

One man's throw up is another man's apocalyptic terrain after cataclysmic upheaval. I hesitate to say that RWG is "fixed". It seems a lot better to me. As I've said in the past, it almost seems like there are two completely separate and new biomes now: Wooded Flatlands and Mountainous Wilderness. The roads seem for the most part to stick to the flat areas and go around the mountainous regions instead of trying to cut through or go over them which resulted in huge cliff drop offs from the sides of roads or roads that took drastic turns of slope. That being said-- it is random gen so I would expect there probably exists some edge cases and it will always be an ongoing project to get a result that is pleasing to most people but still random. I, personally, feel the world layout is much improved but we will have to wait to see the verdict from the masses. I did not see a slider. It was either feral sense on or off-- but I suspect you'll easily be able to go into the xmls and change values to get something in between. You could designate it for Day or Night or all. So there is a setting that makes it feel like you are engaging more zombies during the day while out exploring but also be able to go out at night and sneak without undo danger-- plus with feral sense on at night you would have zombies attacking your base every night or digging down to get you while mining. Depending on who you are that probably sounds like torture or paradise... I set mine to All which is why a large group attacked the POI I was on top of and eventually stacked themselve high enough to get in the attic and then onto the roof. WIth it set to Day I would have been perfectly safe on that roof all night. Yes, mods can be amazing and thank goodness we have them for long development cycles like A20 is turning out to be. The problem with huge overhaul mods is that the mod author didn't read my mind when they made the mod to know all that I like and don't like. The nice thing about the feral sense is that it is one feature that can be added to vanilla so that if you like that but don't want other alterations to the gameplay, you can do it. Feral Sense does give the illusion of more zombies because without it many zombies spawn in past the point where they can sense you and so they just stand around or wander aimlessly and if you never come across them you never knew they were even there. Once people start modding in larger zombie spawns it could get to be a constant attack by zombies which would make building, mining, digging, exploring POIs etc.. a very different experience.

The ones I’ve seen are a lot better than anything in the past— even better than handcrafted Navezgane cities of the past. not sure. I’ve never been picky about road aesthetics. They seem better to me in general. The fail radius doesn’t shrink like the dig guide does. You can fail by leaving the area after activating the beacon. I’m sure it will be configurable just as it is now. I’m not sure. I thought that it just increased the distance that zombies would detect you but it also seems to improve their pathing. It did not cause sleepers to wake up easier. I’m not sure how it affects their forget timer nor how stealth perks might defend against feral sense.

Last night I thought I would try out a random world of A20. I chose to play Warrior difficulty, zombies jog during the day, Feral Sense activated, and 40 minute days. Everything else was default. I spawned in near a trader compound and so knocked out my opening quest in no time and took a buried treasure quest. As I traveled to the marker I noticed that zombies started populating the world and all of them zeroed in on me. By time I got to the quest location I had a mini horde tagging along that I needed to clear out before I could start digging. I got going on the finding the buried supplies but was constantly interrupted by wilderness spawns that now would jog over to me as soon as they came into the world. Worse...you now fail the quest if you leave the area and it is a pretty tight area to scramble around trying to kill without getting hit back with that starter club. Finally, they seemed to stop so I got back to digging and let old habits take over. I let myself get into that sweet rhythm of digging instead of coming up and looking around every couple of minutes. I heard a noise and whipped around just as three zombies jumped down into the trench with me. I tried my best to knock them down and run but they had me cornered and I died. Lesson learned: A20 with feral sense is like classic 7 Days to Die when everything just GPSed to you. Back to the days of paranoia! Tonight I spawned anew with a firm commitment that I was going to be ultra aware of my environment and not let anything eat me within the first three days. I almost returned zombie speed back to walk but my pride wouldn't let me. The extra bit of speed that jogging gives is very deceptive. You see that dude in the distance and think you have time to look in the car but he is coming up faster than you think he is..... scary. Anyway, this time I spawned near a full fledged town with a well defined residential area. I decided to skip the tutorial and just start exploring a POI I had never seen before. Nearby, was a culvert with a dead body and duffel bag and when I opened the duffel inside was a pipe machine gun! Awesome!! After a year of blunderbusses and stone weapons, this was like finding the holy grail. Oh man it sucked as a machine gun but I figured it would be good for any spray and pray situation I might find myself in. I took some time after all before going in to the house to quickly do the opening quest up to the point of making a bow and plenty of arrows. So armed with my stone axe, a club, a bow and about 40 arrows, and a pipe machine gun with 18 rounds I went in through a 1 1/2 block opening that I needed to duck through to enter. As I walked forward a zombie fell through the ceiling and ragdolled hilariously onto the floor. Even a year later since they put that in it still never gets old...haha. I shot a couple arrows at it and then hit it with my club before backing out of the opening. It did some dumb typical AI reaction of walking to a nearby window inside and started bashing to get out. I ducked back into the house and hit it from behind and it whipped around and smacked me good so I backed out of the house. IT BENT DOWN AND CRAWLED THROUGH THE OPENING AFTER ME! It was super creepy seeing it do that. However, we were outside now with plenty of room so it had no chance. I explored the new place and it was pretty cool going through somewhere new. The way to the treasure room was cool but no spoilers and when I got into it there were two zombies inside that I hadn't seen. They killed me. So much for the 3-day goal. I spawned in at the other end of the city which was a commercial district that looked....AMAZING. It had those awesome intersections that we've seen and more that I won't spoil but I will say that the commercial districts of cities are just fantastic. I wanted to stay and explore a bit but I wanted my pack and the loot from that room and the death of those two zeds that griefed my goal. By time I got back to the house it was getting late and yet again thanks to Feral Sense I had tag alongs. I just ignored them and ran into the house and back to the loot room. I was able to off the two spoilers and get my gear and loot the room but I heard several zombies all around banging on walls trying to get to where they could sense me. It was a very nostalgic feeling right then that I haven't felt for quite awhile in this game. Night fell so I worked my way up to the roof and just listened to all the banging and growling going on below me as I sorted and combined and managed my stuff. Then things sounded closer than they had. I walked over to where there was a hole and I saw that a mass of zombies had worked their way up to the attic even though I had chopped the ladder that led up there. In another moment they had torn through a wall that gave them access to the roof and they were on me again and I was dead. Wow. A17 anyone? I LOVED IT!!! Feral Sense is everything that people who just wanted to be left alone by the zombies used to complain about. Now, it is a feature you can turn on if you want and believe me it makes a huge difference. If you played this game back in the day when zombies always seemed to know right where you were and so it was completely unsafe to venture out at night, well...you'll either avoid the option or bask in the nostalgia of it all. I think it will be a very popular setting that will result in some pretty amazing stories-- mostly about dying horribly.