I'm playing my second A21 game, since I wanted to see if the experience was kinda similar to the first one.
I'm not noticing much difference. I'm in the third in game week.
In the main weapon magazines, I'm rolling with a crafted T5 stun baton, and I'm almost reaching the T5 robotic turret.
On the secondary weapons, I just reached T5 AK-47, but didn't crafted it, since I got early a bundle from an air drop that gave me a T5 AK. Thinking about crafting a T1 Tactical to see the difference.
In armor, I put a point in heavy armor pretty late, around the second horde time, and just reached iron armor. But I got lucky with the trader rewards and have a T4 steel helmet and a T4 military boots. Gonna craft the other parts when I reach T3 iron, to not lose all the mod slots.
The medical and food magazines are slowly getting there, not too fast. But I didn't had any points here, only got to physician 1 because I sprained my leg in a POI and wanted the insta-cure.
The tools, in this game I got some luck and got a T5 steel axe, no luck with any pickaxe, so gonna need to craft one iron pickaxe. In my first game I had to craft all the set of T5 tools.
So far, so good. I'm having a bit more luck this time with the rewards than in my first game. Particularly those armor drops. In my first one, since two T6 scrap armor pieces, I never got any better than what I crafted, all the way into full T5 steel. And at day 71, still rolling with T5 crafted things, since I never found any T6.
I think that they could make so in the container that drop weapons magazine, there's an extra chance to get an additional magazine, so you don't end with a weapon leveling fast and others lagging behind.