[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

I think it could probably be added that snowballs could be boiled for murky water making some of the balance changes to quantities and stack size and yields so that it isn’t really worth it to try and mass produce water that way but if you’re dying of thirst and can dig some snow and convert it to a bit of water to not die that should be doable. @schwanz9000 would have to take a look at it and get the okay from Madmole. 
 

Adding your own snowball-to-murky-water recipe and adjusting how many snowballs you can carry in a stack and how many you get from a snow block is the easiest kind of modding there is.
 

But it would be nice to have some more ice smoothie recipes. 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

12 minutes ago, Krows said:

Like other workstations, as long as you've claimed an area, you can pick this up and move them, correct?

Also like other workstations, will we come across damaged ones that might contain pure water / components?

I don’t know about moving them. I assume so but haven’t tested it. 
 

That depends on the POI designers. They’d have to go back and add them to existing traders and use them for new POIs. There may be a ticket to add one to each trader compound. They would probably contain murk though. You really can’t find pure water in loot any longer! (Although you can buy it)

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

5 hours ago, FranticDan said:

So they changed that for A21?
Currently in A20, you start losing stamina regen at 75% hydration

No. I just remembered wrong. There is no change in that. 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

The dew collectors should be pretty easy to mod to deliver murk instead of pure water for those that want to test that.  Murk is everywhere and it does feel nice to have something you crafted produce something that is +1. It does utilize a filter. 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

I think the footprint is 3x3 and the height is possibly 3 or 4 blocks?  Can’t confirm right now but maybe someone else can. 
 

There is not a more advanced version of the dew collector.   It is not hard to build but it does take a lot of resources and a part( the filter) that can’t be crafted.  In the beginning it will be tough to get multiple made but later it will get easier. 
 

As for MP there is no need to modify vending machines or traders. Crafting teas will just be even more important. I am crafting more teas than I ever did before. You have less water now so you really want what you have to go farther and the teas really do help. Plus having a goldenrod tea on hand makes drinking murk less risky. 
 

I know that there is going to be a lot of debate over the next while over realism and gameplay and why jars have been removed except as a visual unit of drinkable liquid. I can’t fault anyone for thinking it is weird. This game has always been quirky and weird with the bottles. 
 

But it does play fun. It is fun getting the water part of survival managed and it does eventually reach a point where water survival is a breeze and doesn’t matter but the journey is much better……if you can forgive the oddities. 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

2 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

how will this new system work with things like buckets? why cant we take a cooking pot to the lake, carry it back full of water and then cook it to get a few bottles of mukry water? 

It just doesn't make sense that we cant turn snow into water though.

why can't we fill a cooking pot with snow, put it over the fire and get water?

Shouldn't we be able to bring back buckets of water to a fire to make water? 

it would be weird if things that worked in real life didn't work in a gamified way in a game.

I like the idea of making water more challenging, but  then doing it by  not allowing sensical ways to get water in a video game seems like nonsense.

I like the idea of water being a challenge after day 3, but the solution doesn't make sense based on the info we have been provided so far

Will there be a late-game way to automate water supply so that it becomes trivial other than building a farm of low tier dew collectors? or will there be a lategame version thats more expensive but also easier to manage?
 

do vending machines have Beverages in A21?

Buckets carry water to transport water voxels from one place to another. If you pour out water from a bucket you’ll get a water voxel. I believe that you could probably drink directly from that water voxel but you can’t change it to bottled murky water or get it into a pot. 
 

The reason likely has to do with how having easy to access infinite water destroys any chance of “the struggle”. @madmole would have to describe his thought process or maybe @schwanz9000 who worked on it with him could give more insight. 
 

I completely understand what you are saying about this being a weird limitation that runs contrary to reality. I can get water into a bucket and carry it with me. I have a pot on my campfire but I’m not allowed to pour the water in my bucket into the pot on my campfire. It’s just another strange concession of reality to gameplay. 
 

vending machines have beverages and they are considerably more expensive in A21. 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

2 hours ago, BenZ0 said:

Oh yes baby thanks for that answer, in that case I really like this change with the dew collectors. I was worried that they would be "just" a water source but since they also have other uses like for glue this makes the new workingstation fit really well into the game. Such a big brain move from the fun pimps there.

the dew collectors only produce water. You would then use that water at a campfire or chemistry station to make glue like normal. Glue isn’t going to spurt out of the dew collector. The apocalypse is bad but not THAT bad. 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

Snow can’t be crafted into murky water

 

I don’t know about Molotov Cocktails and can’t check for a couple more days. 

 

Mineral water is a rare find. Most of the time you’ll find murky water.

 

Dew Collectors take quite a bit to build. You won’t be whipping several out in the first couple of weeks. 

 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

21 minutes ago, BenZ0 said:

So how will this be now with crafting glue? Do you still need murky water? And if yes that would kinda suck tbh cuz in the later game stage you kinda want to mass produce murky water since you need later ALOT of glue/duc tape. Since you cannot craft glas jars anymore to fill them up is there a way to get murky water easy or are we left alone with collecting murky water while looting?

Glue uses pure water now. So build lots of dew collectors to support your glue production. 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

12 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

 

I actually like this change.  In the modded game I am playing, I removed all liquid except murky water from loot containers so you always have to plan ahead.  You can't just go with no food and water and expect to find edible food / drinkable water as you clear out a POI.

I definitely feel it’s an improvement. Before, you would often find enough pure water in cabinets and water tanks to keep your hydration up without consequence. Now, it’s only murk anytime you have a chance to find water. When your hydration slips below 50%, suddenly you start considering slurping on some murk to trade a bit of health to avoid stamina loss.  
 

The nice thing is you can find a nearby water source and drink directly from that to save your bottled murk to take back to your base and boil it.  
 

1 hour ago, Guppycur said:

Oh.  Dew, not rain.  Yeh okay I'm fine with that.  Good call whoever decided to say dew and not rain... Good call indeed. 

 

I look forward to your chicken coop reimplementation. 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

5 minutes ago, NekoPawtato said:

Thanks for all your responses. A follow up question to this -- Does this also mean you can no longer "craft" bottles of murky water either? (since empty jars are going away)

If they are no longer craftable, I'd imagine mass producing glue (and by that extension, duct tape) will be more difficult in A21 if the recipes are left as-is. Are there any plans to address that, (such as recipe changes)? Or we just have to use our glue/duct tape more wisely moving forward?

 

(for context, I burn through a ton of duct tape making exploding arrows and frag rockets and occasionally repair kits when I resell stuff for more money)

Correct that we cannot craft nor collect murky water. Glue now uses pure water in its recipe. For your production needs you would probably want a dew collector farm of at least a dozen collectors. 
 

Also, while on the subject, for boiling murky water into pure water on the campfire you must have a pot in A21. No more can you boil murk without a pot. Sometimes we just have to drink murk. Rekt swears by it. He prefers murk to anything else. 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

37 minutes ago, jorbascrumps said:

 

Interesting reveal. Not to sound ungrateful, but does it unlock any recipes or only generate water? I am VERY curious how drinking water has been rebalanced to warrant introducing a whole workstation for it.

It is a passive station. It just does it’s thing once you place it and the interface is only to collect water from it. It isn’t a crafting station and it doesn’t unlock new recipes. But when you have three set up it makes your base look cool and you always feel happy opening it and removing pure water. 
 

12 minutes ago, bdubyah said:

So when you drink something you don't get the jar back anymore?

Nope. You can’t craft empty jars, find empty jars, or wind up with empty jars. Go craft up 1000s while

it’s still A20…. 😜

 

14 minutes ago, NekoPawtato said:

Does dew collector have same or similar restrictions as plants growing (where you need exposed sunlight), or can we have the dew collector indoors/in a closed room and still have it collect water?

I don’t know. I hope so. I think they should only work outside. Putting the plant property on them to force them to have open sky above them would be a great idea if it isn’t already implemented. I could never bring myself to build one inside and go against the theme. Plus they are humongous. They look awesome on the exterior of your base. 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

35 minutes ago, NekoPawtato said:

I'm curious what this means for the current strategy which is to just go to a body of water like a pond or ditch and fill up empty jars with murky water to then boil into drinkable water -- is that not going to be possible in A21?

No longer possible. You can drink straight from a river or lake but you won’t be able to fill up a stack of empty bottles. There are no longer any empty bottles in A21. Bottles only exist as long as there is a liquid contained in them. They simply represent one unit of that liquid and not a literal bottle any longer.
 

Murky water is now the standard drink of the apocalypse. You will only ever find murky water when looting containers that have  water. You will always have to boil your own pure water. But dew collectors generate pure water so they are very nice. 
 

The struggle for water lasts longer than three days now. I’ve actually found myself resorting to drinking murky water at times. Murky water works like the spoiled sandwiches. It recovers your thirst but damages your health slightly just like the sandwiches recover your hunger but damage your health. Makes for some interesting choices. 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

Whelp…since it’s been outed…The dew collector is the new workstation. It is the lowest tier workstation and so will be the first one unlocked by reading Forge Ahead magazines. 
 

It slowly collects three bottles of pure water (irrespective of biome or weather sorry Gup).  Drinking water has been completely rebalanced for A21. Setting up multiple dew collectors will definitely become fundamental to survival and for building your base. 

[Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow]

5 hours ago, Walder said:

A very arrogant point of view imo

It’s not arrogance. You are coming from assumptions speculation and opinion. I’m coming from actual knowledge. I have access to all team meetings, work flow logs, and every build for every alpha. I don’t say this to brag but simply so that people will know that rather than me giving my own speculation that sounds arrogant if you think it’s just my opinion, I’m giving facts. 
 

5 hours ago, Walder said:

This said i am happy with what the game gave me, entertainment-wise, and all the hours i managed to put into it, i just hope it doesn't take another decade to actually reach it's final destination.

If this is so, why are you so focused on them finishing quickly?  If the journey so far has been great why demand an end? What is objectively wrong with working on the game for 10 years especially since there has been no period of abandonment or unresponsiveness. The development has been constant. 

[Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow]

6 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

I don't see your point, sorry. Maybe be I misunderstood, but are you saying that in your group only one person opens containers? 

So you never spread out in a big POI and always wait for the PER guy to come open any container you find?

Nobody ever opens a container for me no matter their gamestage. Letting some top gamestage perception maxed player open your stuff for you is basically playing with the creative menu enabled. I like to progress through the stages of scavenging rather than have some buddy of mine help me skip it. 
 

And if someone berates me for opening a container because I’m not the top level dude then I don’t play with that guy any more. There are some things more important than min/maxing loot containers…

[Are there any Role Playing groups?]

Yeah, I was more talking about people who play actively actually acting out a designated role in the world and always staying in character and behaving in ways that preserve the character rather than ways that are optimal for gameplay. The skills and stats and attributes only contribute somewhat to the role but it is mostly acting and only doing those things the character would do based on their knowledge.

[Questions about Zombie behaviors]

39 minutes ago, doughphunghus said:

If the bandits can do this, that will be a nice touch. basically "they're human so they can navigate right to you". especially if there are wandering bandit hordes or similar so they all come up/into buildings as a gang.  it would also be kinda neat if they had helmet/gun/flashlights so you could see them searching and when they got right in front of you the lights kinda blinded you (like a brief debuff) or were hard to look at if in the dark (like real flashlights do when shined in your face) if you weren't wearing the sunglasses.  I think they should be able to put down the wooden ladders/stairs/lattice in front of themselves to scale walls to get to you, only breaking doors/blocks when you're sealed in. then those ladders would remain for zeds to get to you unless you broke them down.

Devious!  I love it!!

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

🤐

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

Are you sure 1 and 4 didn’t get switched?

[Can not get 3 generator to start.]

@Laz Man @Jugginator

[Questions about Zombie behaviors]

The length of the path that zombies can sense is variable. Some see paths to you from a great distance and others don't. A Short Pather is more likely to go into destroy area mode since they can't detect a pathway to you. In A17 all zombies had the ability to see very long paths as well as many alternates and could even break obstacles specifically to make a path. That has been cooled quite a bit and while there are plenty that can find their way to you there will be some Medium Pathers and Short Pathers that will struggle or completely fail and just go into destroy mode. On horde night it is quite apparent which ones are dumb but that isn't the only time. When exploring POIs you will find that some zombies can navigate anything and wind their way through several rooms and across catwalks and relentlessly stalk you while others will be right in front of you but turn to a window or wall and start banging on it because they can't see the path to you, bless their hearts.

 

Damaging a zombie that is in destroy area mode is supposed to kick them out of it and put them back to trying to reach you.

 

I, personally, really miss the Terminator like zombies of A17 that never stopped coming for you and knew (even better than you did sometimes) what routes to take to get to your brains. But, admittedly, it wasn't very zombie-like behavior even if it was frantically horrifying fun at times.

[Songs of 7DTD]

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes, Knees and Toes, Knees and Toes.

Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom

Eyes, Ears, Mouth and Nose

Nom!

[Songs of 7DTD]

Throw your left hand in throw your left arm out

Throw your right hand in and shake your head and growl

Do the Hoky Poky as you turn yourself about

Brains is what its all about

[7DTD theory time!]

I like the idea that this was a localized outbreak and the nukes were dropped to create a radioactive barrier and the rest of the world is still there. It’s a bit better than the the theory we are playing some dystopian Running Man games, imo.