meganoth

You are doing something wrong. One possible hitch: steam changed steamcmd a while ago so you first have to change the directory it downloads to and then login. Did you see steam downloading something? If yes, it probably has updated something, just not in the location you were hoping.

If that's the case shouldn't you have been able to buy/loot a motorbike or its parts by now? Did you try to loot car-centric POIs? It is actually still quite random. In our game I can already craft a quality 5 turret while I haven't looted or been able to buy even a quality 1. But there are other magazine types where we are behind our finds.

You are sure you didn't start this game in B313? Sorry I am asking, but I have seen floating trees in my game **because** of the update to B317.

Possibly. I have experienced such a situation once or twice in my SP agility game as well where zombies seemed to come from nowhere. If it is an exception it is ok. But if POI designers have switched to making all new POIs full with such surprises then this might eventually make stealth unplayable or at least undesireable. On the other hand: I had a fight in a warehouse that was difficult but perfectly stealthable. A zombie did drop on my head, but I had heard him before so he had obviously spawned. I just couldn't locate him because I couldn't see over a balcony. And then I got careless while trying to climb the balcony. I survived, narrowly. Please remember that the zombie spawning is done this way because of performance. It is not what anyone wants, least of all TFP themselves, but they need to keep FPS up and there is no easy solution. Many many compromises in the game are only there for performance reasons. A voxel game with a fully destructible world can not use many of the tricks used by games with a static world.

No, I won't change how you **feel**, that is very clear. If someone plays this game just for its crafting aspect, he could actually, from his viewpoint, argue that his progression is almost fully governed by Learn-by-Reading. The difficulty for such a player (in all alphas) was to make a main occupation out of something that was designed as one of many small side jobs.

Weapons and food can easily be found in loot. The joke would be on the one who can read but gets eaten by zombies while reading a magazine 😁

Regarding the trader I am fully on your side. I think they need to tone down the rewards and distribute that money into the loot boxes of the POIs. I don't know if they will listen to the argument that a no-trader game isn't possible anymore. But I am pretty sure that the balance between SP and up to 8 players MP is important to them and I think that is currently very far from a balanced state. And the solution could be to place more loot inside POIs instead of into the quest reward But I need more playtesting myself to make sure I have a good case to bring forward. I don't expect them to listen to someone who is just on day 5 or 6 in his first game with a group.

Wasn't that always the case? I remember that I had to do tricks in the bear den for years to get the bears to spawn. The mechanism works well when the threshold is horizontal, but when you have to drop down it always was a problem triggering it without losing stealth. Just for completeness sake, what I did was put a ladder so I could go down slowly and even when I fall off could exit again. I did do this on all occasion when I had to drop down somewhere, not only in the bear den

Check FPS on the clients and the server. Server should always be well above 20 and clients above 50.

Sorry, it is still LBP. The only difference now is that instead of finding complete schematics you find them "in pieces". And the alternative of getting them via perks was removed.

I think water consumption depends on activity just like food. If am correct, you should not run distances in heavy armor for example or start digging through the night in your first nights. What you can do is invest in iron gut and rule 1 cardio. What you definitely always should do is not drink water. Drink tea. Especially Red Tea as it also reduces food consumption when you are doing something. Teas give you 25 water while the water only gives you 20. Charred meat is normally only needed on the first day as emergency food if at all. Make grilled meat, needs no water and has no penalty. I think the balance is meant to be one dew collector is enough to supply one player. Additionally you can add further collectors for glue OR buy that stuff regularily at the trader and loot it. I find lots of glue in loot but you will see only half of that, so I think dew collectors are your best bet. If you have loot at 50% and you play as a group you definitely need to buy food and water at the trader in the first days. Dew collectors reacting to rain would pose implementation problems and lower FPS. The problem is that areas where no player is are not loaded and not simulated. So either they load areas with dew collectors anyway (FPS draw) or dew collectors only collect rain when you are standing beside them

The perks main function is to boost your powers. The small buff to magazine finding is just a safeguard for single players mainly for bad luck and could actually be removed. Would make the game harder for novice players though and vanilla has to be a good starting point for new players. Remember that crafting of weapons and armor in the last alphas was practically nonexistent. You almost always found better weapons before you could craft them. Crafting was inconsequential. Now you make it sound like the ultimate goal of progression in A21 is the crafting and anything else does not matter and the new system is simply Learn by Reading. For me it is still a perk system. Only recipe learning is handled by some magazines. It isn't. A16 to A17 with the complete perk overhaul was a much bigger change than this. A17 to A18 was also changing the perk system and waswhere the weapon system overhaul was (or was that A17 too?). The difference is that only this change now seems to have affected **your** game-play loop. For me not much has changed compared to A20, I don't care much whether I find or craft my weapons.

Since we are just players and forum users like you we don't need to help either, we could just choose to ignore you 😉 But anyway: You seem to start the game with "-force-feature-level-10-0". Did you set that in steam? If yes, maybe remove it. An error message just before the crash seem to indicate that some capability of the graphics driver is not available to the game. If that is not the problem then it might be a good idea to start the launcher of the game, change to the tools tab and clean your settings.

I think initially it was said to be 1 day per jar, but looking into the XML it seems now to be between 6 and 10 in game hours per jar, which means on average the dew collector is full after just one day. Ok, if you want the maximum out of it it actually is a daily chore.

Ah, ok. Well, TFP's "story" is that A) most of the systems in the game were placeholders they had to include first so they had a workable game for Early Access and B) that they use EA for real alpha development (where actually experiments and redesigns seem to be quite normal) and their development method is heavily on the side of experimentation. I think they never said it, but my impression from watching the development over the years is that their goal nr.1 is that they want an original game, i.e. one with features and mechanics that do not mirror other games. A player can be sad about it when he feels there are concepts out there that have proven effective, or he can be happy because he gets something different to play than elsewhere. But the thing is, to make something original and make it work you have to experiment, a lot. Copycats have it easier and develop faster.

Since INT (AFAIK) was designed to be not a combat centric atttribute it rewards players by investing in utility or money-centric perks first. I am not surprised. You think players will feel their perk points affecting their game play when they can buy the water filter earlier than other players because they simply get more money out of the quests? 🤔 😉 It doesn't need to be as subpar, but what is the reason for it to be stronger? I mean, TFP would need to design a complete new weapon line for a weapon whose damage or effectivity at killing zombies has to be less than (effectivity T3 weapon - effectivity 1 turret). I don't think that can be very far from an unperked weapon, if it is stronger at all. Again there are other posters here on the forum already claiming INT to be the new meta. Someone even calls it the new baseline to just go with better barter and daring adventurer as fast as you can. INT was never weak, it was just slightly weaker in combat. You want INT to be like all the others. I don't want that. I want INT to be special.

I am sure the novice players will ultimately speak for themselves. They turn up instantly in the forum and on steam as soon as the stable is out. And inevitably (like in every alpha before) TFP will tune down difficulty quite a few steps. It often feels like experimental is the goodie for the veterans and then the multiple stable versions are tuned again to novice players as they enter the "tuning arena" That is not the baseline, that is already optimized play. I don't see any reason why a new (or old) player can't just play any attribute and be happy with it. I would guess most new players will first distribute their points all over (including better barter, but also clubs probably). But then they will notice that the costs increase for the second point in a perk and eventually specc into the attribute that governs the best weapon they found or a weapn they like. Which usually won't be INT Yes, at the moment doing quests is not optional at the start because without them you have a very hard time getting the money together if you want a filter in the first few days. But the game leads you to a trader and your options there aren't in the hundreds but there are just two options I would assume everyone tries out even if he is new to the game: Buy/sell stuff or get a quest. And they will immediately experience that they get money with doing quests. And they see that the first workstation they can craft will always be the one they want most at the time and that it costs money. There are big flashing signs for the novice player right there to do some quests. What they probably will have a harder time with is how to get food and water early in the game. Part of the fun learning process we veterans can never experience again. And there is a safety net already in the game. The player is factually immortal. I agree somewhat with the workstation magazines but even workstations can be bought at the trader. There is good and bad in the randomness of recipe learning: BAD: You may be stuck without some essential item and have to work around it or feel like you have no other choice but just look for the magazines for it. GOOD: You may be stuck without some essential item and work around it 😉. Some people love different challenges each game GOOD: As recipe learning is automatic you may sometimes have to wait a long time but success is inevitable. GOOD: Player agency is sitll there in what you actually craft and where you specialize into, not what you can craft. Sure, with workstations there is no real decision, everyone wants every workstation. But with weapons, mods and traps the choice is still there. BAD: The sequence you get recipes IN a series is always the same, so in that regard the game feels predictable. GOOD: The sequence you get recipes IN a series is always the same, maybe beneficial for novices players?

How many experimental alphas have you witnessed with 7D2D? Just asking because I seem to remember that early and quite heavy-handed balancing in the experimental was the rule not the exception. Madmole explained once that he doesn't like small incremental balance steps and prefers a binary search approach, i.e. make a big change down that is sure to be too much, then half up again, all steps half the distance of the previous. Accordingly the players noticed something being too scarce, then too frequent, then slightly too scarce again. And this happened in all or almost all alphas I witnessed. And yes, they toss it out for us to do the ultimate playtesting. Most people are fine with that though, or at least they don't quit when they actually play experimental in an EA. Many players don't wait for the stable even though they would be spared the biggest imbalances and bugs. What I am saying this happened in every alpha. And I concluded that the devs and testers were probably just too "close" to the game to get a real feel of where the balance might be. And this alpha had 1.5 years time, but other recent alphas were close to that and at least a year as well, so they had practically the same time to balance it, A21 is not really special ------------------------------------------- @Lasher By the way, just interests me: Did you intent the third option (learn by magazine) to represent the current system in A21 or did you intend for it to be some new system where actually **skills** and not crafting alone were governed by magazines (i.e. like the description of the third option says) ?

Hey everyone: There is a poll here: https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/32143-poll-which-progression-system-did-you-prefer/ Please take a few seconds and vote.

This is so silly. TFP made the wasteland with better enemies+loot exactly for veterans like this youtuber so they have the choice to skip the novice-friendly normal progression and get on the fast track. In your version it sounds like the better loot in the wasteland was an undiscovered bug introduced by the janitor. 😁

Thank you for all the detail. It seems you have been getting lots of magazines, probably the amount that would be expected at that time. So not a bug. You say you can't build at the base because tools or items are missing. Which tools or items would that be exactly? If it is the cement mixer: Can't you work with cobblestone and upgrade later? Is it something else? You mentioned the bellows somewhere else but that can't be it as it is optional and can be substituted easily by building a second forge. Also I read your discussions with some posters and I noticed that you said that some of the scavengers would need to read magazines so they would find more of those same magazines. But that does not help at all, that was a false rumour. And to make sure I just looked at the XML and there is nothing that would increase loot change for magazines by reading those magazines. You need to put one or two points into the associated **perk** to get the boost to find more of those specific magazines. For example if you want to stay in the base and still have one looter find more "Forge Ahead" books tell him to just put one measly perk point into Lockpicking (and/or Advanced Engineering) and he will get that boost as well. Which perk is applicable is always listed in the description of the magazine. I mean lockpicking is even beneficial for a looter and it helps with finding "forge ahead" books just like Advanced Engineering, I don't think you would need much convincing there. Also, since you asked: Yes, the game officially supports 1 to 8 players, anything else is neither guaranteed nor balanced by TFP. No idea where it is written exactly, but that topic already came up a few times and this was always the official answer. It means that servers working with more players is not by design but because the game is flexible enough to work with more than 8 players. But especially balance can be wonky because nobody at TFP is testing those situation. Usually server operators adapt through modding, server scripts and adjusting options. For example I have heard that many server operators reset chunks from time to time so unlooted buildings and unwrenched cars resurface in already looted areas. And TFP also added a config option (default off) so chunks can auto-reset if not visited for a while.

Since they fill up in the same time as plants grow up the easiest option is to harvest them at the same time you harvest your farm plots (if you have any), i.e. only every 3 days.

The basic leveling didn't change, they overhauled how you learn crafting recipes.

Huh?

In A15/A16 when there were really big lakes I "liked" them for their map-dividing characteristic or for them providing "structure" to the map. You might see a city on the other side of the lake, but getting there was often not that easy. But I never needed them specifically for the water, especially after lots and lots of POIs with swimming pools and small ponds were added. But everyone has a different view about this. I'm just saying a need for them as water source was even in earlier alphas entirely in the eye of the beholder.