Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[playlessNamer]

Day 16, horde night. 60 minute days, 64 max alive, 20% AI block damage. Always walk.

At one point I was behind my wooden bars and it really felt like I had a massive horde on the other side, I couldn't see past them. And it ran really really well.

 

Congrats fun pimps!

 

 

We played the same style on our server (A17).

64 zombies per player, max zombies alive 800, always walk, ferals always jog and we removed every green zombie from the game and replaced them with feralversions of it. Breaking immersion, we dont like the green ones. Some special ones ares still in but very rare. antiSpawnrange around sleeping bags is 50, so they have to walk from far away and dont spawn in my sight, immersionbreaking.

4players coop build as neighbors on a basic (no commercial) Nitrado 14bucks/month server, nothing special, 6GB RAM.

 

The point is i have seen my very first HORDE in the hordegame. I think there are rough around 250-300 Zombies on my screen until the first lags show up. My mates have lags some earlier than me, even they have better PC specs, lol.

 

When its night and estimated 300-400 zombie walks straight to your base all over the view, its thunderstorm and in the moment the lightning lights up the night for a second you can see the massive amount its just epic. No runners, no phantasie green zombies, just a gigantic horde of walking deads.

 

No gamma cheating, turn gamma down to 30 from standard 38 and always walk is fine at night. Creepy enough!

 

 

contra: its just a waste of ammo, we needed to increase the craft ammo outcome by 4 and mod turrets to run with steel bullets + double gunpowder gain. Its to tedious to fill up ammo all the time.

 

This is the kind of gameplay i want from the game but still i couldnt figure out how to balance it. Its easier because nearly no greens anymore, i put in some special buffed ones (cops with spiderzombie run animation, tons of HP and Dmg, green ferals with other walk animations,..) but its still easier to handle the horde.

Find the sweet spot for ammocrafting to dont make it tedious. Make special recipe for turret only ammo because you need a lot of them.

[GrapeDrink]

You are clearing out a whole town in one day, and early game (initial exploration)? That is like 30+ houses, several big businesses, some factories that take 2 hours of real time and 500 rounds. I'd like to see you do a speed run of a full town early game. Sorry I'm not buying anything you say. Most towns are pretty big, I've got some with probably 60 buildings in them, or two so close that it is that many. Its not meant to be walmart where you camp outside and go get whatever you want, exploration and finding what you need over multiple cities is intended game play.

 

We might add options later that let you fine tune things.

 

Yea, I spent like 8 hours last night and managed to clear about a street and a half in an average sized town with like 5 streets, and avoided the hospital and big apartment building in town too. And thats not even doing any base building cause multiplayer.

 

Great thing about the game is there are lots of dials to play with. If you're clearing a city too fast, up the difficulty to suit how you play, change zombie speed, lower loot settings. Dont play on the easiest settings and wonder why there is no challenge

[Trankitas]

Yeah when i read his comment I thought.. meh.

 

Get it?

 

Meh.

 

Sheep.

 

Meh.

 

 

I'm so funny.

 

Yes you are, I mean, you broke my brother's house door, then you kidnapped me. Funny stuff!

[meganoth]

Also, from what I read on the forums, I havent seen many people specing into stealth either.

 

Your impression of the few people posting their stories on the forum is as statistically significant as me telling you that I specc into stealth atm, in a SP and a MP game at the same time.

 

And that might stem the desire for easier T2 bow crafting. To enable stealth builds early.

 

Stealth is not possible with a primitive bow? The game isn't meant to make you cruise through the zombies with single headshot kills on the first day.

 

I think the primitive bow is well balanced because he makes you want a better bow every time you use it And from what I've seen of other T1 weapons (except maybe the spear) this is always the case. Even and especially the club, don't you hate using it and wishing for an upgrade immediately after crafting it?

 

 

The bone shiv (T1 knife) though might be on a level of its own

[Laz Man]

I'm not buying it either. In my first world, set to 90 minute days, I made the decision to strip the nearby town of all valuable resources. This town was fairly small - consisting of about a dozen remnants, two dozen houses, a bunker (the one with the well on top), and some trailer parks. Still, to cannibalize the entire town, it took me over an in-game week. (Every electrical component was salvaged, every couch broken, every car wrenched, every sink and fridge harvested of resources.)

 

But one day? Nah. Naaahhh. *Waves finger*

 

He meant with assistance of god mode and the CM..🤔

[Laz Man]

We played the same style on our server (A17).

64 zombies per player, max zombies alive 800, always walk, ferals always jog and we removed every green zombie from the game and replaced them with feralversions of it. Breaking immersion, we dont like the green ones. Some special ones ares still in but very rare. antiSpawnrange around sleeping bags is 50, so they have to walk from far away and dont spawn in my sight, immersionbreaking.

4players coop build as neighbors on a basic (no commercial) Nitrado 14bucks/month server, nothing special, 6GB RAM.

 

The point is i have seen my very first HORDE in the hordegame. I think there are rough around 250-300 Zombies on my screen until the first lags show up. My mates have lags some earlier than me, even they have better PC specs, lol.

 

When its night and estimated 300-400 zombie walks straight to your base all over the view, its thunderstorm and in the moment the lightning lights up the night for a second you can see the massive amount its just epic. No runners, no phantasie green zombies, just a gigantic horde of walking deads.

 

No gamma cheating, turn gamma down to 30 from standard 38 and always walk is fine at night. Creepy enough!

 

 

contra: its just a waste of ammo, we needed to increase the craft ammo outcome by 4 and mod turrets to run with steel bullets + double gunpowder gain. Its to tedious to fill up ammo all the time.

 

This is the kind of gameplay i want from the game but still i couldnt figure out how to balance it. Its easier because nearly no greens anymore, i put in some special buffed ones (cops with spiderzombie run animation, tons of HP and Dmg, green ferals with other walk animations,..) but its still easier to handle the horde.

Find the sweet spot for ammocrafting to dont make it tedious. Make special recipe for turret only ammo because you need a lot of them.

 

This would be an awesome game setting or mod in the future. Definitely would play it. 😎

 

To make horde nights a challenge, maybe just kick up from walking to jogging for all zeds at the least. That should quickly up the ante imo.

[GrapeDrink]

I decide what I'm using before I kick off the random world gen. You can get a couple ranks right away and be using whatever you want to specialize in. There is no waiting, you just do it. Leather wraps for brawler, wooden club for strength, etc. The only one you have to wait for is stun baton every other build just get right into it and perk melee immediately. A perked anything is better than an uperked anything IMO. As long as you spend those early game points correctly you can make any primitive weapon badass. Stone sledge I'd get one perk for it and one for sex rex right away so I can use it better. For fort I put 1 into brawler, 1 into regen, and two on the attribute since I won't have an AK right away. Two into brawler on my first level, etc.

 

I don't spend points on heavy armor until I can actually craft it. The armor rating is just as good with no perks and movement diminish good enough with mods.

 

Ive done a few fort setups across the updates and found taking points into brawler in the first few levels really to set me back too much personally. I push 2 into fort and 2 into regen for the starter quest points cause lets be real, when you hide the first few nights, that free regen is baller. Brawler is rough with zombie rage, you dont have the range of something like sledge/spear/bow or even club to give you that extra second to react, and you cant take hits like you need to to apply the fast attack speed that makes brawler great.

 

Then 2 points into pain tolerance, and 2 points into heavy armor off exp from doing some initial trader quests and figure out the resources for scrap armor as I go (had issues with that in my current game till I found a bear ). Only after getting the 3 defensive perks at level 2 do I think brawler starts to shine. Take very little damage, basically never get stunned, regen what little damage you do take, and start knocking off those heavy armor penalties before you can find the armor mods, which you can add 2 of to the level 3 armor you can make when you do find them. Then you can just go in and unleash without worrying so much and use that fast attack speed to decapitate everything

 

This is the first run I haven't died in the first few days and its def because I avoided knuckles for the first 2 hours

[Onarr]

Your impression of the few people posting their stories on the forum is as statistically significant as me telling you that I specc into stealth atm, in a SP and a MP game at the same time.

 

 

 

Stealth is not possible with a primitive bow? The game isn't meant to make you cruise through the zombies with single headshot kills on the first day.

 

I think the primitive bow is well balanced because he makes you want a better bow every time you use it And from what I've seen of other T1 weapons (except maybe the spear) this is always the case. Even and especially the club, don't you hate using it and wishing for an upgrade immediately after crafting it?

 

 

The bone shiv (T1 knife) though might be on a level of its own

 

Look you cannot take my arguments in isolation. One by one they might not have incredible weight but try to think about them in relation to each other. Its as with science, you get strong teories with multiple small studies, that point in the same direction. Try thinking the big picture.

 

Also why would I bother with stealth playstyle with primitive bow in early game, when I get other t2 weapons from loot almost immediately? I rarely use the first club for more then the first PoI. Stealth playstyle has little incentives in early game compared to other playstyles. You are slowed to a crawl and reap almost no benefits whatsoever. Add to it the fact that you get no resource gathering perks and conclusion is AGI is just weak.

[MechanicalLens]

Now, I've seen dog hordes. But none that had 9 dogs. That was... intense.

[Hek Harris]

Just for information, the recent reviews on Steam are now "very positive"... Halloween will never be scary anymore for the devs.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/251570/7_Days_to_Die/

[LeeRoyTitanium]

@khzmusik

 

Yep, that sounds right. I would love to see up-gradable traders even if it is just a mod in the future.

[Ezed]

This would be an awesome game setting or mod in the future. Definitely would play it.

 

To make horde nights a challenge, maybe just kick up from walking to jogging for all zeds at the least. That should quickly up the ante imo.

 

 

I've been playing a somewhat similar game in SP with horde night every night to compensate for them not running (and the general impression there are less zombies out in the world). Kinda cool to stand in the street with a bat and take on a horde...of course I don't have that many zombies spawning and it's only Day 11. Once the cops and greens start appearing I'll probably have to make other arrangements.

[MechanicalLens]

Unless this is an intended feature, I can't craft any items at the workstations at my trader. (Namely the workbench.)

 

Edit: Nope, my world is bugged. I can't craft anything outside of my inventory or the forge. Nice to know. :/ Oh well.

[Drithyl]

Unless this is an intended feature, I can't craft any items at the workstations at my trader. (Namely the workbench.)

 

Edit: Nope, my world is bugged. I can't craft anything outside of my inventory or the forge. Nice to know. :/ Oh well.

 

What's the behaviour? Because I noticed a bug when using workstations that was introduced in this latest patch, where if you hit the max quantity arrow it will add 1 too many items for which you don't have materials, so you'll have to hit the left arrow to reduce it by one to be able to craft, otherwise the craft button won't do anything.

[MechanicalLens]

What's the behaviour? Because I noticed a bug when using workstations that was introduced in this latest patch, where if you hit the max quantity arrow it will add 1 too many items for which you don't have materials, so you'll have to hit the left arrow to reduce it by one to be able to craft, otherwise the craft button won't do anything.

 

Well, I've narrowed it down to this: I cannot craft iron spikes. That's literally it. I'm posting a video, for proof.

 

Edit: I created this world 2 days ago, so it's not an issue of me upgrading worlds between experimental versions.

[Doombringer101]

What's the behaviour? Because I noticed a bug when using workstations that was introduced in this latest patch, where if you hit the max quantity arrow it will add 1 too many items for which you don't have materials, so you'll have to hit the left arrow to reduce it by one to be able to craft, otherwise the craft button won't do anything.

 

Backpack crafting has the same issue.

[MechanicalLens]

Crafting bug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjG-yH6-Eng

 

UPDATE: Fixed it. It said I could craft 98, when I only had the materials for 97.

[Doombringer101]

Crafting bug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjG-yH6-Eng

 

UPDATE: Fixed it. It said I could craft 98, when I only had the materials for 97.

 

Yes Drithyl told you this initially.

Perhaps not all recipes are effected but certainly several are.

[MechanicalLens]

Yes Drithyl told you this initially.

Perhaps not all recipes are effected but certainly several are.

 

Yeah, I misunderstood him; there is (was?) a bug in the forge where you couldn't max craft/pump out everything; you had to hit max craft multiple times and cook out items in forges several times. (800, 101, 67, 34, 20, 3, 1, 1, etc.) I thought he misunderstood me there.

 

Welp, good to know.

[Doombringer101]

Yeah, I misunderstood him; there is (was?) a bug in the forge where you couldn't max craft/pump out everything; you had to hit max craft multiple times and cook out items in forges several times. (800, 101, 67, 34, 20, 3, 1, 1, etc.) I thought he misunderstood me there.

 

Welp, good to know.

 

All good, it has been reported apparently.

[MechanicalLens]

All good, it has been reported apparently.

 

That's good to know. Hey, at least this bug doesn't affect every craftable item in the book. *Shrugs*

[Drithyl]

It's only a mild annoyance too, just have to hit the other arrow once, so it's not a big deal, but it'd be nice if that one and the one you just referred to (the one where max craft doesn't craft the max amount in the forge) were fixed.

[madmole]

From the latest EXP build

"Removed the blood draw kit is no longer used"

 

The blood draw kit removed? how am I supposed to get blood for the blood god now?

 

Seriously though Is there another Semi-reliable source of medkits or blood bags now or are these meant to become Essentially scavenge only?

 

Edit: Also does anyone know if any of the perk magazines affect sledgehammers?

 

People were suicide farming 100s of blood bags, so there was a buff that was added on death, that TFP didn't approve of, death should clear all buffs for consistency. Without that inconsistency they could farm all the blood bags they want for a one time maximum loss of 50% xp.

 

Furthermore, the large first aid kit violated one of 18's key principal designs which is all good crafts require a loot only trinket. As it was they were 100% farmable which also goes against everything we've done making odd loot only trinkets to craft anything decent.

 

More blood kits are in loot now, so it should be fine, just no endless best medical item in the game.

[madmole]

Honestly, I wouldn’t worry about that madmole. Whatever you guys did between A17 and A18 seems to be the recipe for success and completion. Repeat that a few more times and this game is all set. A18 is strong enough to hold up a good year as we wait for A19. I can’t speak for everyone, and of course there will be that set of impatient people as always, but if a year means the same level of improvement like we have just been given, then I’m all for it.

 

We're set up now internally to deliver some small updates, so I'd like to try it at least. If it turns out to be a hassle we can always go back to yearly updates but its too much stress. It feels good to complete some stuff a-z and get it out there. THen we can get focus testing too instead of "here what do you think of our whole new game". If we do a small book update the entire conversation will be about the new books and not about 4 million possible changes, giving proper attention to each new thing we do.

 

Updates are good for business too, and for sustaining the community, so I feel like some small updates will be good. We can test and fix those things up fast too instead of getting a lot of bugs all over the place from larger builds.

[MechanicalLens]

People were suicide farming 100s of blood bags, so there was a buff that was added on death, that TFP didn't approve of, death should clear all buffs for consistency. Without that inconsistency they could farm all the blood bags they want for a one time maximum loss of 50% xp.

 

Furthermore, the large first aid kit violated one of 18's key principal designs which is all good crafts require a loot only trinket. As it was they were 100% farmable which also goes against everything we've done making odd loot only trinkets to craft anything decent.

 

More blood kits are in loot now, so it should be fine, just no endless best medical item in the game.

 

That's good. Especially with the new death debuff (which I highly approve of), I wouldn't have found it worth it at all to farm blood bags. Heck, I can't say I've ever used a blood draw kit.