Uncle Al

They're additive. My understanding is you add the flat bonuses (Biome, POI, things like lucky goggles) then take that number and apply multipliers like lucky looter skill or candy.

I definitely agree that the balance between biome modifier and POI Tier modifier is out of whack currently. That's a numerical balance change so I'd expect to see it revisited right up into beta. Currently at a gamestage of 100 a T5 POI gives something like a +75 loot stage bonus. Being in the wasteland gives +180. That seems problematic.

I believe this is a key point. The issue isn't a quest one at all, it's that some POIs of the same tier have vastly different risk/reward ratios if the loot room is too easily accessible. I appreciate the balancing of risk/reward while still promoting smart strategies that allow getting decent loot out of a POI without requiring pretty much a clear every time. If the risk/reward was well balanced for different types of foray (e.g. total clear, surgical strike, maybe something in between for the largest POIs) so that a reasonable effort (in terms of time and zombie kills) had to be spent to achieve success, that would also make things like T5 fetch quests an option. I totally see why they're not with the current setup. On that note, variable rewards in terms of trader progression for different quest types would be fantastic. Currently fetch and fetch clear both score 'reputation points' = POI tier while being wildly different in resources invested to complete. I have a feeling this is stuff you folks are already looking at as a part of the factions, reputation system and whatnot slated for later alphas.

If it was a standard converter, maybe, but we're talking about legendary items so it almost certainly converts corn bread to cronuts:

It's worth noting that Joel states they have a desired timeline for A21 release to tie in with external factors (I'm betting a dime to a dollar that's 'in time for the holidays and associated Steam sale' but he's not that specific) but they'll delay A21 release past that desired date if they cannot bring performance up to an acceptable level with the new features added in. His tone doesn't indicate they're having especial performance problems with the new content, just that this is standard practice for a deployable release (which it is). It does highlight the 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' nature of optimising before feature lock, though. If they do too little, the game would be nigh unplayable on most systems. If they do too much, alphas would be coming out at a significantly slower rate than they currently do. Either way they get flak from vocal members of the community. I'm guessing you'll only start demanding gold once working showers are in.

'Rare item required to craft top tier/legendary' has occured to me too. It's worked quite well in other games. Roguestones/White Diamonds and what have you. Having loot only rare craft ingredients is not the same as having top quality gear be completely uncraftable. The differences between looting the weapon and the crafting item are: You only get the full benefit of the 'rare crafting item' IF you've also invested in crafting skill. On the flip side, you get some choice as to how it's used rather than a weapon/armour drop where the item may be completely useless to you. Your investment in crafting skill isn't suddenly invalidated by a drop. Spending your game obsessively chasing specific crafting magazines only to have a Q6 drop make all that effort totally redundant feels bad, even though you've mechanically improved. Getting a Q6/legendary drop should not feel bad. You can promote hard choices: Imagine a rare optional crafting ingredient that raises the quality of what you craft by one level. Do you use it now or save it for later? Do you craft a top quality mid tier item, or a mid quality top tier item or save it until you can craft Q5 top tier stuf (maxed crafting skill) and use it to craft a Q6 top tier? That's an interesting choice... Definitely 'I can sit at home and craft everything' is not good gameplay, but 'looting eventually makes my crafting skills pointless' isn't either. 'I'm a great crafter so occasionally my looting gives me the chance to craft something just as good as what can be found by looting' is good game play, to my mind.

This isn't a 'just use mods' response, merely an observation on one area where I think the devs missed a trick, and realistically we're probably too close to release to see significant changes in vehicles in the official game. One of the things that's really impressed me about Bdubs vehicles mod is how varying the ability of vehicles to handle rough terrain makes for some interesting choices. The Humvee, for example, is slow to accelerate and pretty fuel thirsty, but will drive over wasteland terrain without too much difficulty. Proper all terrain vehicles like the SHERP and the big armoured personnel carriers laugh at wasteland terrain - I've discovered they'll actually drive over a roadside crash barrier with no trouble at all. A bit of I-beam wreckage really isn't an issue. They're relatively slow and fuel inefficient though. At the other end of the spectrum you have stuff like the dune buggy that's fast, holds good storage and is very fuel efficient, but drives like a drunk hog on ice and will bottom out on a stiff blade of grass. It's great in the desert, who knew?, but a death trap in the wasteland. I don't see the sort of vast proliferation of vehicles in that mod happening in the base game, but improving the 4x4s performance in rough terrain a little seems like a possible tweak. Its vanilla performance as far as hill climbing and rough terrain goes is pretty horrible. If there was even one other high storage vehicle option added to the base game then moving the current performance of the 4x4 to a pickup, sedan or similar and giving the existing 4x4 decent off road capability, at the cost of a little speed and fuel efficiency, would seem like a reasonable solution. I'm not sure vehicle mods that affect off road capability are feasible, as the shape of the vehicle object probably has as much to do with handling terrain as the unity vehicle stats (top speed, acceleration, handling, etc.).

Water in loot isn't really the current issue, it's that you can regenerate water infinitely with a campfire. Something had to happen to break the 'empty jar + body of water + campfire = drinkable water' paradigm. Visualise how trivial food would be if eating anything left a dirty plate behind and heating dirty plates in a fire made food... Sure there's other ways they could have done it, mostly revolving around different purification methods and different grades of water cleanliness, but some kind of rework was needed if water scarcity was going to be an actual gameplay driver beyond day one.

Because spears are getting a proper power attack like other weapons. Spear throwing was always a gimmick and no power attack made spears pretty much the worst weapon choice going, so it's a good trade off.

Sorry, you're right, that's not my intention. As far as I'm aware the stealth distance calculation only matters the instant you trigger the spawn. You can't 'increase the distance' after they've spawned. A zombie either spawns with sight of you or it doesn't You can restealth, obviously, but that's a totally different thing. Thanks for testing. I never actually tested the auto fail for carrying a light as it was a flat out developer statement that this was the case. I habitually don't stealth with a light source active in game so it never really comes up. Always better to have tested though.

Hmm looks like they changed the behaviour of type 2s, not the number of them. I've updated my previous post accordingly. Basically it doesn't matter now whether it's a 0, 1 or 2, zombies will only have you as a target if they're closer than the stealth distance calculated when you tripped the spawn. There's some direct testing of stealthing up to a spawn in a '2' volume in the thread I linked earlier, which shows that type 2 volumes no longer automatically break stealth. Certainly that's been my experience, I haven't found any spots that cannot be stealthed, just some that are really hard, because where you trigger the spawn is in very bright light and/or you get spawns appearing very close to the trigger spot.

I don't now the correct terms for them to be honest, in the code they're just 0, 1 and 2. 0 - Zombies spawn alert but with no target 1 - Zombies spawn asleep 2 - Zombies spawn targetted on the location of the triggering player Zombies that spot the triggering player (closer than the calculated stealth distance) will target the triggering player directly. Generally seems folk call 0 an active spawn, 1 a passive spawn and 2 an aggressive spawn but your milage may vary. Stealthing to the loot in the shooting range works (the zombies will activate and move towards the centre but they don't have a fix on you) but you'll almost certainly have to do it at night. The centre area is totally exposed and will be very brightly lit in daytime so even with maxed out From the Shadows I think you'll get spotted by at least the closer zeds.

Laz Man is talking about 'From the Shadows' i.e. the stealth perk. When a volume is triggered now, a distance in meters is calculated based on your ranks in the perk and how well lit you are (and if you have an active light source you automatically fail and all spawned zombies see you). That distance is then checked for each zombie that spawned from the trigger. If a zombie is closer than the calculated distance, they saw you and have aggro on you. You don't get a sneak attack damage boost either on those targets unless you disengage and restealth. If a zombie was further away than the calculated distance when it spawns then it hasn't seen you. It will probably be active but it is not directly tracking you and you do get stealth damage boost on those zombies. There are a few 'sleeper spawn' volumes still in the game, where the zombies don't even spawn active, but the majority were changed to attack volumes which behave as described above. All the auto-attack volumes were also changed to attack volumes, so zombies always have to pass the stealth check to see you upon spawning. There are a few spawn volumes here and there that are pretty much unstealthable unless you've broken into the volume by a non standard route, because one of the triggered zombies spawns basically on top of the entrance way and will always spot you as their distance from you is less than a meter, but those are very much a rarity.

Awesome! That alone is great but... Don't tell me that means 'The Penetrator' perk will also function when using a spear? That would be like, I don't know, synergy in the Perception tree or something.

I'd say it's totally different. The old auto aggro totally ignored stealth, no matter your skills or approach. The new version always gives you the chance to avoid the aggro if you can successfully remain hidden - the zeds will target your position not you.

Are you sure that's 'auto' aggro? I'm pretty certain that only applies if you failed the stealth check for that particular zombie. There was a definite statement that the true attack volumes, like the ones in the really wonky fire station where the designer had made every single encounter an auto aggro, were totally removed. Part of the trade off for the changes to stealth.

Think the change was around January of this year. There's a long discussion thread, including @Boidster 's extensive testing, which I've linked to below. The change to volumes happens during the course of the thread.

Woot! Spear love! I've always loved perception and it might finally be coming into its own soon. It always suffered weapon wise because spears were....spears and sniper rifles have rather limited utility when you're only fighting enemies who don't shoot back. Spears sound to be getting a significant boost and for rifles, being able to outrange opponents might actually have some value once bandits make an appearance.

Brutus the Hunger Games character has some association with spear throwing it appears. I have this second hand, I've neither read the books nor watched the films. Brutus Denied = removal of thrown spears in favour of an actual power attack? That ignores the number elements though. I must also remind myself 'Do not mistake wishes for truth', too. I really, really want spears to be good, or at least not absolutely @%$#ing horrible.

That's exactly how stealth works now, for all spawns. The 'they know where you are and are actively targetting YOU' spawns (I believe they are termed attack volumes) have been removed. So long as you pass your stealth check, alert spawns are just moving to your location at the time they spawned, not actually targetting you, the player. Note that the stealth check generates a distance value dependent on your stealth skills and light, so a zombie or two close to you might 'pass' and be coming for you but the majority probably aren't. The key thing is you have to react when a spawn happens. If you just sit still and try and snipe, even if you passed the stealth check on all the spawned zombies, eventually one will walk close enough to actually see you and start hitting you. If you move stealthily as soon as a spawn happens, you can usually happily knock all of them off from hiding without ever actually being under threat. Even if you fail the initial stealth check for some or all of your targets, repositioning allows you an opportunity to restealth so long as you're not under direct observation from the zombies. I only really find this useful once you hit level 5 skill, as I'm not patient enough to wait on a restealth timer longer than 10 seconds, but it does work.

Stealth is a lot more useful than you're giving it credit for already, but you have to know how to use it. 'Auto aggro' spawns have been removed. The zombies can either notice you as they spawn, because your skills are too low or the light is too bright or both (light is really important now), or they don't. Note that carrying an active light source means you will automatically fail stealth checks. If they don't notice you they may be aggroed on your location but they're not locked on to you as a target. You can move quietly out the way, distract with rocks, and you still get a full stealth damage bonus even though they may be moving towards you. Even if they do notice you on spawn, you can withdraw and rehide, which takes only 10 seconds at max stealth skill. The old 'auto aggro' would effectively knock you out of stealth straight away in all cases, and that has gone. Stealth still isn't great, just because in the face heavy weaponry often gets the job done faster, but the agility tree is awesome anyway so dropping a few points into stealth when you've already paid for the attribute itself to access other benefits is totally worth it.

I don't think risk of exploit is really a concern. Maximum spawn distance is at least 100 blocks so to pave an area enough to block horde spawns you'd need 40,000 blocks. You're probably not doing that without using the creative menu, and if you have access to creative you can just turn off horde night in the game settings. Or were you proposing horde zombies should only spawn in the player's active chunk? I thought a chunk is 16x16 so doing that will prevent horde spawns if you sit in the middle of a medium size base. Even if you don't block spawns, zombies would all appear magically at point blank range. That seems exactly what you don't want. TFP, rightly, seem a lot more concerned about people accidentally doing stuff that breaks their game, like digging a basement and being totally safe by accident back when zombies couldn't dig, than preventing someone who is setting out to game the system with foreknowledge.

Land claim blocks and bedrolls don't influence horde night spawns at all. They only affect POI respawns (LCB) or wilderness spawns (bedroll). You're correct in that the closest a horde night zombie can spawn is about 35 blocks, so bases bigger than this can get problems with spawns inside the walls. The solution appears to be to pave inside your walls. Horde night zombies have to spawn on dirt, rock, asphalt, topsoil or snow. There might be some other viable materials but generally speaking paving your courtyard stops the problem of spawns inside the walls. Even a wood floor will do the job. Oh horde night zombies won't spawn on water, so theoretically flooding your courtyard would work. That's a bit of a pain to do with the messed up water mechanics but something I'm definitely going to try once new water is in.

From what I've seen, looted and crafted both have variable stats. I've seen a comment somewhere it's +/- 15% for looted and more like +/- 10% for crafted, but couldn't swear to that. Crafted items do seem to have less variance though. Bought items have no variance, and you can reset the stats on an item to normal by selling it then buying it back. I believe stat variance is set to change next alpha, to remove overlaps beween quality levels - so a worst possible Q3 will never be worse than a best possible Q2 etc.

Careful judging bow damage as a newly found bow will be displaying stats for stone ammo, and you probably have something better in the bow you're using. You need to load the new bow with whatever you're actually shooting (iron/steel) before you can make a fair comparison. I'm sure I've seen a dev post that removing the overlap is planned, so the bottom of Q3 stats can never be lower that the top of Q2 etc. but I can't remember where I saw it. Was this Alpha, i.e. probably planned for A21.