Pernicious

It hasn't been consistently since A16 (The below is a screen cap from another part of the forum, sorry to be confusing): Original link that will get converted to some kind of internal forum redirect: Looks like there are conditions on getting XP from Molotovs: https://steamcommunity.com/app/251570/discussions/4/2791620699989847780/

Interesting observation that they can't jump. It does mean that any zombie you don't shoot in time will eventually die from the trap. One thing I just found out - and I'm not sure if this is an A20 change, or it changed back in A19 and I didn't notice - Area of Effect weapons now give full XP - So I can start incorporating those into my strategies. The obvious first thought is just throw it when hordes get a bit too dense, but wondering if there would be some way to get them to fall into a pit and just drop grenades on them

Thanks guys. Yeah, just to be clear, I did mean with default settings and not doing the log out/log back in trick. Horde night does seem somewhat tougher in A20, which is why I brought up this thread. Day 28/Gamestage 80 something and I'm already stretching to 4am, where as I'd be a bit higher level before that happened in A19. You know, I've never turned on Debug mode to see how much damage a fall pit took. I took for granted a Youtuber's comment that it was always 1/3rd. I've also got a staircase with an electric fence at the top. It does hold them still for a heashot, which was my aim, but not sure where the jump is involved? Keen to see the video @Kasad if you still have the link. @Whorhay I've always assumed a big flat area was best so I had the longest line of sight to shoot, as well as fewest obstacles for the spawns to get caught on. But you bring up a good point about reducing spawnable area for reducing run time... I'm gonna do some testing! Thanks.

You can tell I am a bit of a rules lawyer/min-maxer from this post But I decided to have a look at the Gamestages and Entity Groups XML files, and wondered when I started missing out on XP, because I wasn't killing them fast enough. Pretty early on in the game, you can finish all 3 waves well before 4AM with just guns. Easy. When things get a bit tougher, some players I note have strategies to slow down Zombies - Mazes, single width corridors, falling traps, etc. That's legit if that's how you want to play. However, if you can't kill the entire wave in 5 minutes, then you lose the rest of that wave - That's easy XP you're missing out on. Some players kill Zombies with traps, which either nets you no XP, or only partial XP depending on your perks - Again, legit if you want to play it that way, but I feel that's wasted easy XP. In A19, I took the strategy of using traps to "Soften up" Zombies without killing them. So, a deep pit so they took fall damage, then an electric fence to take off a few more points, and by the time I shot them, a single shot virtually anywhere on the body was enough for almost all zombies except some of the really tough ones like demolishers and feral soldiers who might need a couple shots. I'm now getting to the stage in A20 where I am finishing the 3rd wave about 3:30am. So soon I'll need to start softening. I also realised eventually though, it will get so overwhelming, that even with softening, you can't get 100% of kills by gun, and 20-35-50% of XP by traps is still better than none. So - TL:DR, what's your strategy for maximising bloodmoon XP, or am I the only one who dives down this deep?

Really frank admission - Probably get me scoffed at by Texans and other Americans that take pride in smoking meats. I have no idea how to make bacon and I have basic knowledge of how to smoke meats. I suspect it has to do with the cut of meat to start off with - pork belly? Then thinly slice, salt, and very low heat for a day or so? I could google now, but not in the apocalypse. {Reminder to self, download Wikipedia onto multiple flash drives to leave in bug out bag) Making bacon out of anything other than a pig? I've seen turkey bacon and facon, but even further removed.

Don't forget zero in the games isn't actually zero skill. For example, even with zero points in miner 69er and motherload, you're still getting a fair return on swinging your stone axe, and every weapon still works for you. Me personally? I'm fairly competent in maintaining things. With power tools at least. I can repair cars (including basic machining and jerry rigging if necessary), repair electronics, do most home maintenance. I know fairly advanced chemistry from my B Sc. At a firing range I'm fairly good. Terrible with a bow though and not particularly fit. Unless I banded up with others, I'd be dead before most my skills were useful.

I actually would like to see the food aspect of survival become much more difficult. In A19, I always felt the first week solo, and maybe the first 3 weeks in my team of 4, it was a bit touch and go (Longer in teams of 4, because you're sharing loot and even when you go opposite directions to hunt, not everyone is successful.) In A20, it's as simple as if you want food, you simply go to the snow biome, and at worst, you can have charred meat for as long as you like - as long as you can avoid bears and mountain lions - wolves and stags are fairly easy to take down. Maybe it's in my head, but I feel like the hit boxes for Chickens and Rabbits have enlarged, and even the worst player amongst us can hit it most times with a primitive bow without too much difficulty.

Wish I had saved the screenshot, but I had the carcass of a bear, a mountain lion, two wolves and a stag when my team sent me to hunt in the snow biome. This was literally a few metres into the snow from the forest one. It has made starvation less of a thing if you're into keto or the carnivore diet.

Yeah, I guess that was my point - For people to be able to search that, and see that it's impossible to keep everyone happy, and that this iteration, it just happened to be their turn to be unhappy.

Tangent, but your post was what gave me the idea... you know, it would be funny if this forum has a "search by latest Alpha version feature". So you know, when they chang the skilling system, we can go back to see what people thought of the old system when it first came out. Get rid of learn by doing? Go back and see the feedback when learn by doing first came out. I think it'd be very illustrative.

Was the player anywhere unstable? I've had a couple times where I was on a mine or near the debris of a collapsed building, stopped to sort inventory, then walked forward a step, walked through the debris, and died instantly.

Maybe in such a bleak dystopian world, it's the animal equivalent of suicide by cop?

The stack trace at the end of your log shows the parents of the threads that caused the issue. I'm no programmer, but to me, that looks like the operating system called UnityPlayer (The engine on which this game is based), it called a lot of other resources, including DX11, and it crashed. So I agree with other people. Check your video drivers, reinstall DirectX, etc.

Wait. 7d2d is a MMO too right? Haven't tried it yet, but heard there were absolutely no problems with having 100k users on my server!

Welcome to the club. 43 for another few weeks.

There was a dagger in World of Warcraft that was meant to have a 0.1% drop rate that was considered a twink weapon. (Over powered for its level) For almost 2 years there were groups who ran the dungeon hoping it would drop. It sold on the Auction house for insane sums of money. It sold on ebay for up to $300 real dollars. I never got one, neither did any of my friends. WoW remained the most popular MMO for another decade despite the frustrations, despite the whining of players. In life many of us aspire to be rich, famous, have an attractive spouse, the accolades of our peers, and to make a difference in this world. Few of us ever obtain even one of those, let alone all. But to co-opt the old joke "Despite the high cost of living, it remains a popular option". Maybe it's a generational thing. I'm on the border of X and Y, but they keep telling me Younger Y and Millenial all expect to join a company and be at the top in 5 years. And even articles are written why entire generations of people are unhappy: https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-unhappy.html (That's worth the read whether you agree with me or not by the way. I expect to be cancelled posting it in this day and age, but oh well).

I scrolled past this, as I don't usually like to get too much into mud slinging. But it annoyed me, so I'm coming back to it before it distracts me all day. I have been in Cybersecurity 25 years now. First job was virus analysis - code reverse engineering. I am currently an enterprise security architect, so a few years removed from getting my hands dirty, but 6 years of my career was in what is now known as Appsec with a bit of overlap into DevSecOps. I came here to say that Banking and Finance code is pretty much the simplest production code there is out there, short of OT/ICS/SCADA. It's almost universally true the more critical a system is, the simpler the code to run it is. There is more code in a basic, non self driving car, than there is in an F35 which can deliver a precision guided bomb. The code that runs nuclear reactors is only a few megabytes large typically. And banking code? They keep it as simple as possible because they want the user to be so constrained. You can buy or sell a stock. You don't animate that stock sale, and change the price based on the trader's experience. In other words, you're comparing your girlfriend doing quality control on an army land rover - that uses gravity fed pumps, a detuned diesel so that it can run on dirty cooking oil in a pinch and no electronics so it can operate after a EMP blast, against a Tesla, which is designed as an experimental car, is self driving, runs an entertainment system... and claiming she's doing a better job of keeping the car running. Of course she is. But is that the kind of car you want to be driving for your daily commute?

Over the years and over many games, I came to realise that some people play games to be challenged, and some people to feel like a hero. I'm mostly the former, though I have to say there is often a thrill of excitement and a sense of achievement when I get a new, more powerful gun, a new spell, a new vehicle. Not sure how many people here are futurama fans, but remember this episode of The Scary Door? He wins on the first pull and thinks it is heaven. He wins on every pull and thinks it's hell. Imagine how hard it would be to balance a game with the two types of players I mentioned above. At its peak, World of Warcraft had a team of 30+ psychologists tweaking loot probabilities to get to that sweet spot of effort vs reward to keep you playing just that little longer. The game feels right for me. But I am clearing T5s primarily with a steel sledge hammer because I am still on a double barrelled shotgun. A storage crate 2/3rds full if looted shotgun shells mind you. But it's a challenge I wouldn't have otherwise put on myself, and I have to say, while I failed my first 3 runs, after that, the sense of achievement was sweet!

I kind of think that may be the point, and one that many players miss and get frustrated about. In many other games they talk about the "META", and so everyone goes straight for whatever the META is, does the grind, eventually gets the right combo of weapons and mods and is happy. This is a survival game. While there may be a META, the point is No kevlar plates? Stitch together some leather and cloth and call it padded armour. No AR-15? Duct tape some pipes together. No beaker? Stir chemicals in a cup, or just buy it from a trader. Or just do without. Almost every problem has multiple solutions in this game, and part of the game is that some of the best ones are really difficult.

By the time you get T1 ranged weapons, zombies aren't significantly harder at night anyway. Unless the roaming horde is huge, or the POI you are raiding has a very high density of Zombies and is difficult to move while fighting, they never get within melee range, so the speed they move is largely irrelevant.

They've dropped a fair few hints in the game, like Trader Jen making references to making protection payments. Put that together with the note you get at the start of the game, and I'm assuming that the Duke is extorting money out of the good people in Navezgane by sending Zombies every 7 days if they don't pay. Perhaps one way of getting a very simple story in, is that for each trader in the game, when you do enough T5 quests, you get one final "Special Quest", but instead of going to a new trader, they send you to a special POI with a clue as to where the Duke is, and/or an item needed to get to him (perhaps parts of a hazmat suit). Once you have maxed out every trader and finished their last special quest, you get your gyrocopter and hazmat suit, fly out to an island somewhere just off the normal map, and face a horde night level of zombies with no base to protect yourself. If you manage to beat the horde and get into his base, you finally get to the Duke, and you can either blow his head off and become the new Duke of Navezgane, or pay him your debt (Yeah right, like anyone's going to take that option). Alternatively, you could choose to free the people of Navezgane by killing all the zombies. I'd be happy with a simple story like that - Wouldn't need any cut scenes (well, maybe one at the end scene), very little dev work, etc.

You're aware it doesn't change anything except the display time, right? All mines that have been depleted stay depleted, cars that were scrapped stay scrapped, all POIs which have been looted stay looted aside from normal container respawn etc.? Most people I know that don't want to play on older servers is because it is much harder to find resources except for in quests (which reset POIs) and the fact that other players are much higher than them (for PvP)

First few play throughs, I did get the feeling that it got a lot harder. It took me a while to figure out what it was. 1) It does seem like significantly more zombies spawn in general. 2) It does seem like wandering hordes are slightly more common. 3) Wild animals appear to be way more common, and I don't think I saw wolf packs in A19 Then there seem to be rebalancing of weapons: A) Primitive bows seem to be less accurate B) Although you get pipe weapons much earlier, the old tier 1 weapons seem to come a little slower. I've had to adjust tactics to survive. i) Stealth seems to be mandatory early game now, even without putting points into it. You won't always succeed, but stealth killing 50%, and getting hurt only 50% of the time is still better than 100% melee. This means POI and outside. ii) Especially near anything I intend to spend any significant time in - home, mines, POIs, you can't afford to walk past single zombies any more. Too many times in my first few play throughs, I'd run or bike past a few zombies and think "Okay, they didn't see me, I'm good", only to find 5 minutes into the POI, there's 3 or 4 zombies all trying to get into the POI, which are not part of the clear. iii) Melee is mandatory for longer early game now, as pipe weapons don't reload fast enough to be meaningful except 1 vs 1, and then it's just a waste of ammo.. They're your last ditch effort to survive. iv) Instead of food just for hunger, food has to serve a medical purpose now. Instead of eating 5-10 steaks in one sitting, I now have to eat a steak to get a couple hit points back, and top up my hunger. v) It did use to seem like "Animal = food!" even very early on, especially if you were willing to cheese it. You know, drop nerd pole, upgrade to 2nd level wood, then stealth arrow head shot (3.5x damage for stealth + 2x damage for headshot) and a few body shots netted you wolf meat. Maybe a 4x4 nerd pole if you had a bear. That's no longer viable. They seem to be able to take wood down, and a wolf pack can even take down cobblestone, so I've really had to decide whether I desperately need the meat or not, and then it's empty all pipe weapons before going back to bow. Every time game mechanics change, you need to relearn your play style and tactics. I guess you could call that harder, or you could say that it's just the start of a new learning curve. I did a few play throughs to test new mechanics because I am a bit over-competitive with my friends, but it has meant that in my latest playthrough, I made it to day 21 before my first death - and that was just bad luck. Once you re-learn the mechanics and tactics, I think it'll go back to A19 difficulty for you.

Yeah, you're right. I started just putting down some dot points first on the hardware, then how it's configured, then software, and all the different settings, then different types of optimisation. It started looking more like a book than a post. It just is a bit frustrating that there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of players, playing without complaint (but we never hear about them because they're not having problems), and the forums - Especially General, not just support, is jammed up with posts about the game being slow, who just assume that it's the game's fault, even though they're only one of dozens having the issue.

It has frustrated me that so many people do not understand how PCs work. I mentally know that they have no reason to, any more than I know how quantum computing works, but then even when you explain it to them, they go on complaining as if they did not understand. I've seen people claim they are running GTX 3090s, "and if the game can't get 60fps on the best GPU there is, it's @%$#"... Then you point out that their 7700k and 8Gb of RAM is killing their performance, and they'll keep posting that the game is not "optimised", as if they know what it means. Would it be worth putting up a sticky regarding how to assess whether a player's PC is likely to be the bottle neck? I'm happy to write a draft if a dev wants to then confirm it is correct and polish it.