Uncle Al

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.

Yes, the average yields are 2, 4, 4.5, 6.5 for 0,1,2,3 perk points. The main benefit of going to 2, except as a stepping stone to 3, is you get nearly all the useful seed recipes at 2 points. I imagine there may be a small tweak to yields when the new crafting comes in, as that benefit disappears.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Two pairings not lumping them all into a single perk!

Some love for the really sub-par perks as part of a general perk overhaul would be lovely, even if they're not directly impacted by the crafting change. Combining animal tracker and the huntsman, and also lockpicking and treasure hunter, into single perks is a standout quick win as far as I'm concerned. Oh and changing Rule 1 Cardio to a flat stamina regen bonus while we're at it. I'm still not convinced I'd ever take them but I might at least think about it.

I don't understand what they're seeing if that is their point? There are no dimishing returns except for zero perk points in that table. A diminishing return would be a negative number in the final column. There aren't any except for zero perk points. Even the really unlucky crops like only getting six corn seeds back with two perk points are showing a net gain. Diminishing returns on zero perk points is by design. The stated intention is that crafting seeds is a bad idea if you have no farming skill at all.

I'm not one for a daily limit. It just seems arbitrary and pressures a player to do particular quests (clears) because you don't want to 'waste' a quest slot on a fetch quest that brings lower rewards. I do like the way traders run out of work, and having them have more jobs but not refilling every day might be good. Moving to something like 10 quests and they restock when the trader does. There's also what I assume is a bug that logging out and back in again regenerates the trader's quests. I'd love it if traders prioritised each tier by distance, and had quite a high maximum distance, so they give quests further and further away as you progress in the tier. Especially if you keep repeating a lower tier you'll get more distant quests. This would also allow a rule that a trader won't repeat a POI until every POI of that tier, within their maximum distance, has been quested at least once. That would avoid the situation where you keep getting repeat quests to the same POI. Implementing such a system would require keeping track of which quests have been completed by each individual player, and might get problematic in multiplayer if everyone who starts together is getting identical quests, but those aren't insurmountable difficulties.

Specifically the spike on the DK Competence vs. Confidence graph known as 'Mount Stupid'

I see what you're saying, and to clarify: I wasn't looking for the exact formula, just the concept. Basically 'does a perked character loot slightly fewer magazines, on average, of the things they're not perked into, or do they loot the same average haul of their unperked subjects while also picking up a few extra magazines of the things they are perked into?' The repeated concern that some folks keep throwing out is that the new system will negatively impact co-op games if there are stay home characters on the team, and/or the team uses dedicated looters. If the weighting is a straight bonus that's not a concern. If it's a shift in weighting but doesn't add any more magazines for the same quantity of looting, it potentially is. As you rightly say, if the weighting impact isn't drastic, then even the 'reduce the things you don't have perks for' approach isn't the co-op play apocalypse that some Steam posters assume, but those concerns can't be dismissed out of hand. If the perk weighting is a straight up bonus, they can.

That's actually one of the things I like most about the change, as it inherently balances up traders a bit. Now 'do I go run tier 1 quests and loot mostly houses and get quest rewards while hopefully finding a cooking pot, or ignore quests and turn over hardware stores and gas stations hoping for forge ahead magazines to make a forge?' is a meaningful choice on day one. I love meaningful choices with no clear optimal answer.

It would be nice to get an official comment on how the weighting works, if somebody in the know has the time. For simplification we'll assume only three crafting skills: clubs, knives and bows. I go out and loot 30 magazines. With no perks let's say I'll average: 10 club magazines 10 knife magazines 10 bow magazines With some perk points in clubs (only) does the expected average become more like: A) 12 club magazines 10 knife magazines 10 bow magazines OR B) 12 club magazines 9 knife magazines 9 bow magazines

There's no World of Warcraft 'bind on pickup mechanic' though. If they loot a club magazine, they can just hand it to you. Also from almost everything we've seen stated, the 'find magazines appropriate for your skills' mechanic is a straight bonus. So specialising in clubs doesn't make you find less magazines for other weapons, it just gives you a chance to find bonus club magazines. If it works that way there's no need to get obsessive about who opens what container. My only slight worry is that there was a mechanic mentioned briefly that 'the skills bonus stops working when you reach max crafting'. That wouldn't be needed if the skills influenced looting was a pure bonus, so possibly you do find less magazines of types you don't have perks in if you perk heavily into specific skills. Even if the system works that way, a group should still be able to do fine by just looting freely and then sharing magazines. It does mean having one dedicated looter with max lucky looter could cause problems with mostly finding magazines that match the looter's other perks.