ijese

Same here, but so far happy on these settings: No traders, 50% loot, dead-is-dead, random map on default settings. It's day 13, set up shop on city outskirts. I have q5 wooden club with some mods, some pipe weapons, q6 primitive bow and just made a forge. Days 3 and 4 was dying of thirst half of the time, but then found the water purifier. If I didn't, I would have 'crafted' myself a dew collector from creative menu once unlocked. Eggs are fine now on 50% loot, found 20+ so far (which wasn't happening on prior versions with these loot settings).

Well, that whole game is grindy, but in specific way. You fight a lot, and combat is pretty hard. You could switch weapons and "train" yourself in anything, but improvements are very slow. So even being aware of that, you end up mostly using what you are most comfortable with for particular situation. 20 hrs later you are are an expert with one-hand weapons and relatively good at throwing stuff - you could become expert in everything, no problem, but the sole real-time investment discourages that for most people. With old LBD I hoped the Pimps would go in that direction, but didn't really mind they chose not to.

+1 If they keep updating the game, I wouldn't even mind paying for DLCs. Maybe similar to Stellaris, each DLC brings substantial free updates to base game, but that way they can continue working on already released game for years.

Mount & Blade: Warband. It is grindy but both feels natural and can't be fooled.

Hide and stay completely still: e.g. if you are on top of some ruin but with path to you still available, especially if in wasteland Do home chores: cook stuff, boil water, etc. Plan your next move, e.g.: study map, plan your next expedition, next upgrade, priorities for tomorrow, check how many of what you need, etc <= this is useful even later on, but at the beginning is critical, especially if you are playing with no traders and/or reduced loot

What challenge? Sorry, couldn't resist. I'm also one of those that can't play on defaults any more. So far though, I have been very happy that vanilla options exist to do e.g. permadeath run, no traders, 50% loot, random blood-moon etc. I perfectly understand that I'm in minority there, and I *want* devs to focus on income and audience so *I* get more of what I want in future releases. What I would like to see is more of such options in vanilla itself, and implemented better. Reducing loot is far from ideal, due to loot calculations (e.g. you need zillion nests to find 2 eggs etc, I don't know whether a21 fixes this), or stuff that you can get only from traders, etc. Sometimes I fiddle with XMLs myself, but it's far from ideal. It's rare that I have time to do it, including finding out imbalances for my own settings in the first place. Just keeping at least some focus on open-style play, is probably what I'm trying to state as my wish. Not saying it's easy, though.

Sound direction is also very confusing. Often I have no idea whether zeds are coming from left, right, front or behind - so I run few steps in each direction and try to judge by loudness of the noise. This might easily be the most annoying thing for me currently.

Needed to think for a minute, and there are two things that actually keep me playing - survival and variety. For both, it's just better fit to play permadeath with no traders, at least for me. For survival, lesser loot without respawn is a must. And for variety, limiting myself with different self-imposed restrictions does the trick - single biome, single perk tree, etc.

+1

Oh, forgot: - watch for mines. really Use roads for walking. Don't run randomly, whatever your emergency. Clear the mines around your base. Clear the "corridors" so you can visually pick the safe route, even in the dark/bad visibility. Check surroundings before fighting even a single zombie. Check surroundings before back pedaling. Maybe take a perk that gives you half a sec/sec more. I'm not completely convinced about the perk. Tried it couple times, sometimes it lets you survive, but it's better to learn how to avoid the mines completely. And with such setup, you are starved for skills so each one is precious.

Tried dozen times wasteland-only run, the key is NOT to use traders - then it becomes completely different game. Best I got was to day 80, with this setup: wasteland only map without traders, permadeath, no nerdpole, no gimmicky bases, 75% loot, 75% exp, no airdrops, loot doesn't respawn. Several things that I found crucial: - don't get infected - live on snakes and bear fat - don't go out at night - watch for birds constantly - fortify your mines and make them with a way out - as your range expands, build safe spots every couple hundred meters - once you have AK or better, carry it at all times How not to get infected: Watch for birds. Put first point into brawler perk that gives you immunity if you hit zeds firsts. Watch for birds. Put padded armor asap. Watch for birds. Don't walk around with less than full health, even if it means waiting for a day. F*cking birds. Often I give myself the book for honey from trees right from the start - no stumps in wasteland and you won't be looting left and right any time soon, so a book gives you a fighting chance without making it easy. Why and how to live on snakes and bear fat: You will be killing a LOT of zombie bears and dogs, so you'll have a lot of fat. But you need some meat for proper meals to take them together with fat, to avoid losing health. Put second point into animal tracker. Stop and crouch often to find snakes, kill them with a spear while walking backwards, whatever your primary melee might be. Make 4-cobblestone-pillar platform on road crossing in front of your base, with wooden bars making the platform itself, and ladders on all 4 sides so you have a clear run&jump when chased by a bear/dogs. Have a chest up there FULL of spears. Throw spears at dogs/bear. Note that all the spears might not be enough for a bear if you miss the head enough times - you will need to jump off, pull some spears out from the bear or the ground when he's distracted, run around and come back up to finish him. Sounds tricky but if you need to do it only once it shouldn't be too dangerous if you are careful. As your radius grows, make such platform (with spears and everything) every couple hundred meters. You can even build partial "roof" from wooden bars. Because visibility is often lacking, painting the ladders yellow can be quite helpful. Note that bears have quite a few glitches in their animations - they can glitch through doors, tight spaces, glitch-jump 3 blocks - this is the only safe way I found how to kill them early. Once you have a proper base, good weapons and a farm running, it becomes pretty similar to any other run. You just need to be careful random bears don't surprise you while mining, looting cellars, etc. ps. difficulty is usually warrior but sometimes nomad, depends how I feel

That was it - after reinstall, I needed to tell 7dtd to prefer eGPU (from osX info sreen you get when selecting 7dtd app and Cmd+I). Now it works very nicely on medium settings Thanks! Off to investigate KingGen.. ps. just as info for anyone who might read this one day: openGL 4.1 is the last available version for MacOS, and can't be updated since it's integrated

Back home, i.e. trying now with same setup (with Radeon RX570 eGPU) that worked 3 months ago. Uninstalled the game via Steam, deleted 7dtd folder in steamapps/common, installed latest stable. The problem still persists, tried with Navezgane. Here is the log I found in steamapps/common/7dtd, there are some warnings but also it mentions some shader not available: https://www.dropbox.com/s/amru7f9squiop89/output_log__2021-08-26__09-02-18.txt?dl=0 Thanks everyone for suggestions. Will investigate eGPU drivers next. And KingGen once I get the game working again. edit: typo

Macbook has integrated graphic drivers, not sure how to check whether anything got updated. It's late here, will investigate tomorrow. Everything worked fine 3 months ago, with a19. With both vanilla and Darkness Falls. Currently the issue is with vanilla, I wanted to play it so did (or tried to do) clean install. Performance is horrible, which wasn't the case before, but haven't yet tried to optimize video settings because I can't really play with wrong textures. Edit: Usually I'm playing with eGPU which is currently not the case (for whole Summer I'm relocated). Last time I successfully played 7dtd without eGPU was exactly 1 year ago, during last Summer. It was on pretty low video settings but managable.

Thanks BFT2020! Cleaned game data, validated files, started new game - unfortunately still the same.