[MOD] Better Than Giant Bees: Hardcore Survival

[BloodDeacon]

So I found a minor issue (at least I think it's an issue) when I raided a forest campsite recently and found several blue tools in a sports bag (so-called SportsBagMP01) and a cooking pot. Maybe I have an old prefab from a mod pack that I need to clear up?

 

I tossed the tools. Should I do the same with the pot? (i.e. is it possible to find a cooking pot in the "easier" biomes?)

[FlowerChild]

So I found a minor issue (at least I think it's an issue) when I raided a forest campsite recently and found several blue tools in a sports bag (so-called SportsBagMP01) and a cooking pot. Maybe I have an old prefab from a mod pack that I need to clear up?

 

That's very strange. "SportsBagMP01" doesn't exist within the stock config files, so yeah, I assume it's a prefab from elsewhere. Tools definitely should not be that easy to find in BTGB

 

I tossed the tools. Should I do the same with the pot? (i.e. is it possible to find a cooking pot in the "easier" biomes?)

 

The cooking pot is fine. You can find those in pretty much every house, and in any biome.

[BloodDeacon]

That's very strange. "SportsBagMP01" doesn't exist within the stock config files, so yeah, I assume it's a prefab from elsewhere. Tools definitely should not be that easy to find in BTGB

 

 

 

The cooking pot is fine. You can find those in pretty much every house, and in any biome.

 

Gotcha, thanks.

[sarudak]

That's very strange. "SportsBagMP01" doesn't exist within the stock config files, so yeah, I assume it's a prefab from elsewhere. Tools definitely should not be that easy to find in BTGB

 

You know I believe I've seen that very same prefab with the oddly named sports bag and I've never installed any other mods. I wonder if there's some hard-coded weirdness.

[FlowerChild]

You know I believe I've seen that very same prefab with the oddly named sports bag and I've never installed any other mods. I wonder if there's some hard-coded weirdness.

 

Well, if that's the case and we can track down where it's coming from, rest assured that I'll happily burn it with fire

[LorenzoMatterhorn]

Ah yes, the elusive sportsBag01MP and sportsBag02MP! I had to track those down back in A10 because they are accidentally used in one of the small campsites. Block id 540 and 541, they reference lootcontainer 23. I just changed that loot list because it's only used for those bags. Looks like a remnant from an old game mode.

[Glasssman1965]

I give up, Flowerchild, You win.... thought I was an vet player since I have over 1000 hours in game. But your mod kicked my a$$ and burnt me out. Never got past day 10 without restart. Never got metal tools, a gun, leather armor or past level 18. SO tired of getting the runs and having to find antibiotics for it / or virus or as I had 3 times both. but what really has me over worked is the 9 grasses for a stinking axe ... you win.... nice work but more then I can handle. You loot level is brilliant I was damn near orgasmic the first time I got the metal working book.... only to realize I still couldn't make clay..... brilliant... the stray feral in the city ment I never got close after the first time LOL. too many dog though... 20 secs into desert and I had a fleet of pound puppies... got them all and bled out..... just cant take another restart WELL DONE YOU SADISTIC BASTERD

[Angel_of_Wrath]

I have to say I have been playing this for a couple of weeks now and it has made the game way more enjoyable for me. Granted I play on a MP server but it has added so much longevity to the game. I used to restart like every 3-5 days because the game was basically over. Now I am on day 30ish and man is it a blast. I have found a lot of the books but dang it if the carpentry book is not elusive. I love having to find all the new books and having to find ways to survive with the limited crafting.

 

Funny enough by the time I found the metal crafting book and the forge ahead book and the pottery book I was high enough of a level to craft greens.

 

I am still looking for the carpentry book and the gardening book and god knows how many other lesser ones and I find that to be awesome.

 

+1 from me Flowerchild and thank you for all the hard work. Awesome mod.

[FlowerChild]

Ah yes, the elusive sportsBag01MP and sportsBag02MP! I had to track those down back in A10 because they are accidentally used in one of the small campsites. Block id 540 and 541, they reference lootcontainer 23. I just changed that loot list because it's only used for those bags. Looks like a remnant from an old game mode.

 

Aha! Thank you sir! That was exactly the information I needed there

 

The initial post calling them "sportsBagMP0X" instead of "sportsBag0XMP" messed my search up.

 

+1 from me Flowerchild and thank you for all the hard work. Awesome mod.

 

Thanks man, glad you're enjoying it

 

just cant take another restart WELL DONE YOU SADISTIC BASTERD

 

Hehe...well, hardcore survival gameplay ain't for everyone

 

BTW: If you were playing with a full restart every time you died, I wouldn't exactly advise that with the current difficulty level.

[Glasssman1965]

Nope, restart only occurred when my health-o-meter was below 60 so 4 deaths or combination of deaths with the hershy squirts. Best game I had going I restarted when you fixed the town size. FYI, I was able to exploit the Fire Pits, as temp storage boxes until I got storage boxes...... 5 fire pits can hold 20 items.... felt like cheating, didn't know if there was anyway to stop that, just letting ya know. Also is there anything other then antibiotics to cure dysentery... seems like there should be an easier way to cure it other then one of the cherishes blue and white pills. Some home grown remedy like goldenrod and alcohol, anything other then antibiotics... in all my games I don't think I saw more then 4 of them unless I cheated and turned on the air drops.

[FlowerChild]

[**** NEW RELEASE ****]

 

Version 1.42 of Better Than Giant Bees is ready for download!

 

Download Link

 

This release contains the following changes:

 

-Changed (reduced) the amount of damage trash can take so that it can be more easily cleared after looting.

 

-Fixed problem with a couple of rare sports bags that were previously still giving out uber-loot.

 

Just a small release there primarily to fix the sports bag thing.

 

Enjoy!

 

-------------

 

Want to come back to this one and address a few points in it now that I have a bit of coffee in me

 

Never got metal tools, a gun, leather armor or past level 18.

 

Well, all that stuff is relatively late-game in 7 Days (with the exception of leather armor which is mid), so sounds about right to me.

 

Personally, I hate the fact that a usual game is essentially over in a couple of days, and the mod is designed to spread progress out more to mitigate that, and so that the player always has something to work towards rather than hitting the soul-crushing "So...what now?" that occurs in stock so quickly.

 

In BTGB you essentially have all the skills you need to survive indefinitely at the very start of the game. Everything beyond that is just a bonus.

 

SO tired of getting the runs and having to find antibiotics for it / or virus or as I had 3 times both.

 

If you keep getting infected then I'd advise fighting less and playing more tactically. You shouldn't really need to fight very often unless something goes sideways.

 

If you keep getting the dysentery, I'd advise thinking about when to drink rather than just scoffing everything down soon as you find it. But yes, you will definitely get it from time to time regardless which pushes you to keep moving/looting until you can eventually purify your own water via goldenrod.

 

 

but what really has me over worked is the 9 grasses for a stinking axe

 

Not sure why that would bother you so much. It's possible you didn't take note of a few things:

 

-A stick is the most basic tool in the 7 Days progression, not the stone axe. You might not have known that, but punching a bush is actually the best first thing to do upon spawning, rather than punching grass.

 

-You obviously don't want to do it all at once as stamina plays a big role in how much damage you're doing. Collect a bit of grass...walk a bit, harvest stones/trash until your stamina recovers, then collect a bit more grass. You'll have your stone axe in no time, and you'll be moving towards finding yourself a POI to act as shelter for your first night. Multitasking in this way initially really helps a lot. If you become too focused on any one objective at various points in the progression (like say obsessing on making a bow instead of finding shelter), it can put you in a world of hurt.

 

You loot level is brilliant I was damn near orgasmic the first time I got the metal working book.... only to realize I still couldn't make clay..... brilliant...

 

It's not so much clay that's gated there as much as it is making molds/pottery. Personally, I don't know how to do that from just raw materials, and I doubt many people do.

 

And again: metal tools are entirely end game in 7 Days. What's your rush for the game to be over?

 

the stray feral in the city ment I never got close after the first time LOL. too many dog though... 20 secs into desert and I had a fleet of pound puppies... got them all and bled out.....

 

Well...those ones are easy. Don't go in the city or desert until you're capable of handling them

 

For desert I'd recommend at least a blunderbuss and a good stock of ammo. For city/wasteland I'd recommend just staying the heck away from it unless you have serious heavy duty firepower. It's intended to be the very endiest portion of the end of the end game

 

just cant take another restart WELL DONE YOU SADISTIC BASTERD

 

I won't debate being a sadist, but it's also worth noting that I'm probably also a masochist

 

I say this because this mod represents how I personally like to play the game, and it's getting to a stage where I'm really starting to enjoy it. Last extended game I played went until around day 50 which is the longest I've played a single world in 7 Days for as long as I can remember (may have taken my very first world many alphas ago longer...not sure).

 

This is what is fun in the game to me. May not be to everyone's taste of course, but every single change I make is essentially inspired by what I personally want to see in the game, and what I find to be more fun through extensive playtesting.

 

So, "sadist" just really doesn't cover it on its own

[FlowerChild]

FYI, I was able to exploit the Fire Pits, as temp storage boxes until I got storage boxes...... 5 fire pits can hold 20 items.... felt like cheating, didn't know if there was anyway to stop that, just letting ya know.

 

Hmmm...good point and one I hadn't considered. Will put some thought into it.

 

Also is there anything other then antibiotics to cure dysentery... seems like there should be an easier way to cure it other then one of the cherishes blue and white pills. Some home grown remedy like goldenrod and alcohol, anything other then antibiotics... in all my games I don't think I saw more then 4 of them unless I cheated and turned on the air drops.

 

Goldenrod doesn't cure in BTGB, but it does act to purify water so that it's 100% safe to drink.

 

Beyond that, there are a few different ways to approach this:

 

-Drinking beer is one way. It's much higher value in BTGB as not only does it give you the drunk buff, but it's also a safe source of hydration. In order to find it though, you're going to have to risk at least slightly more difficult biomes than forest (which are the safest). As a rule of thumb: the more "dead" a biome feels, the more dangerous it generally is.

 

-Finding pharmacies is a good way to stock up on antibiotics. Again, to find them you're going to have to push into the harder biomes.

 

-Watch what you eat. Some foods provide hydration, others take it away. Don't eat the ones that take it away unless you really have to.

 

-Don't drink bottled water unless you really need to. You're taking a small risk each time you do, that you're going to get sick.

 

-Eventually, you'll find yourself a herb lore book, and that's when you're basically setup to hydrate at will with goldenrod tea. Of course, you have to push into a slightly more difficult biome to get the herb itself, but it's relatively easy to find once there.

 

But no, I'm unlikely to provide an additional method of purifying water for early game, as the above is what my change to bottled water was intended to do in making water an actual gameplay element beyond the first few minutes of the game

[FlowerChild]

Grrrr....I really hate the edit time limit on these forums. It basically forces double posting which I always try to avoid:

 

Nope, restart only occurred when my health-o-meter was below 60 so 4 deaths or combination of deaths with the hershy squirts.

 

BTW man, if you're restarting every time your wellness gets below 60 you may not want to actually do that. Wellness is important, but it's really secondary to your slow build up of skills and setting up shelters in various areas (so you can make use of them on respawn), and your slow build up in tech (so you can start moving into more challenging biomes) in BTGB. I believe the minimum it can hit is 50, and I've slowly recovered from that state on several occasions.

[Roland]

BTW man, if you're restarting every time your wellness gets below 60 you may not want to actually do that. Wellness is important, but it's really secondary to your slow build up of skills and setting up shelters in various areas (so you can make use of them on respawn), and your slow build up in tech (so you can start moving into more challenging biomes) in BTGB. I believe the minimum it can hit is 50, and I've slowly recovered from that state on several occasions.

 

This very notion dawned on me just the other day. I was frustrated because I ventured a bit too much into the dithered region between my safe forest home and the neighboring desert biome and a dog spawned and killed me. It took me down to 53 wellness. But I was level 12 and when I started crafting new gear (No way I was going after my pack....) everything was of higher quality than the stuff I had been using and I noticed the slight gain in efficiency and ease of gathering materials. So I am going to stick with it and try to come back from 53 wellness and stay out of dangerously dithered zones.

 

BTW, a question about the dogs. I had two bottles of beer and so was able to run for quite a lot of seconds and that dog never gave up on me. I jumped off high cliffs into water and tried all sorts of parkour and nothing worked. That dog outlasted my beer buzzes and pathed around every obstacle and never gave up on me. Are they all feral in this mod? It was just a single dog and not a dog horde. All I had on me was a stone axe and so I eventually turned and fought but ended up dying. My 63 wellness, gray cloth armor, and stone axe just were not enough...

[FlowerChild]

BTW, a question about the dogs. I had two bottles of beer and so was able to run for quite a lot of seconds and that dog never gave up on me. I jumped off high cliffs into water and tried all sorts of parkour and nothing worked. That dog outlasted my beer buzzes and pathed around every obstacle and never gave up on me. Are they all feral in this mod? It was just a single dog and not a dog horde. All I had on me was a stone axe and so I eventually turned and fought but ended up dying. My 63 wellness, gray cloth armor, and stone axe just were not enough...

 

Yup, that's by intent. I wasn't down with the whole "undead dogs give up on pursuing you after a short jog because they obviously have better things to do" thing in one of the recent stock releases

[Glasssman1965]

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/529515390070292045/EB26ECB2BDBDAE96B097F27028383AFA82750574/

This picture is what you can expect with BTGB.... hope it works.... Incase it doesn't. currently on day 6 level 18 with 50 wellness... I had just died looking for the 3rd day for antibiotics bleeding from my rear end, 1 day from plague death, and I broke my leg jumping from a roof to escape dog, the next life, (the Pic) I got the runs, the plague, and got nausea from cat food.... went through 2 biomes walking (with bear and coffee stamina was 0) before a cuddley widdle puppy finaly put me out of my misery. LOL im still loving it you masochistic sadistic, magnificent mod maker you

 

PS anyone know if there is a way to change my name in here.... my game name is Quaker, no idea when I picked glassman but I cant see how to change it

[justanothersurvivor]

Hi,

I've been lurking around the forums for a couple of weeks and i also think that the base game is a tad to easy. So i ended up looking for mods that make things harder and ended up here.

 

I use the settings you recommend apart from the crafting timer which i set to "instant" and the night time being 20% only. I changed these as i've learned from previous sessions that nighttime is just a waste of time.. sitting in either an attic or on a cliffside which is not directly reachable for the zombies with nothing to do.. as you can't craft much nor do you have the resources to craft much anyway.

i usually restart if i die.. even tho i could circumvent the wellness loss by just alt+f4'ing while the respawn countdown still ticks down.. (you spawn more or less next to your corpse with no wellness loss).

 

While i enjoy most of your changes the one with the bottled water is one i really disagree with. The dysentery effect on bottled water imho goes even against your own "principle" - "In BTGB you essentially have all the skills you need to survive indefinitely at the very start of the game. Everything beyond that is just a bonus." In 3 games i got dysentery now from bottled water and once you got that you can watch your wellness trickle down + your limited mobility and attack power because of stamina drain.

Recipe Books are too rare.. with more then 20 buildings checked i did not find a single book which yielded a recipe with antibiotics being equally rare.. so you eventually have to drink bottled water and dysentery is more or less a delayed death sentence.

 

also in a previous post you said.. "You shouldn't really need to fight very often unless something goes sideways." there's so little to craft.. how are you supposed to gain levels and craft a tool that doesn't break in 20 swings if you don't kill zombies? (granted you are lucky enough to find the corresponding books..)

 

jas

[FlowerChild]

I use the settings you recommend apart from the crafting timer which i set to "instant" and the night time being 20% only. I changed these as i've learned from previous sessions that nighttime is just a waste of time.. sitting in either an attic or on a cliffside which is not directly reachable for the zombies with nothing to do.. as you can't craft much nor do you have the resources to craft much anyway.

 

While I agree there's too much downtime in night, adjusting the setting for length of night radically alters the balance of the game as you wind up under attack for far less time.

 

Setting the crafting timer lower mind you contributes to that problem, as managing it is one of the few night time activities.

 

Honestly, just from that I don't think the mod will be to your taste overall. It's a very slow progression that requires a lot of patience. I don't get the impression that's the kind of gameplay experience you're looking for.

[ajaxjs]

I have to agree that the dysentery even from bottled water is annoying and arbitrary. I get what's being attempted, but it feels unfair, since in real life, you can boil the ♥♥♥♥ out of water and be just fine. I know the mod isn't about realism. But ehh...that just feels weird. It's basically the same effect as only having dirty water and goldenrod tea. Although, I like that goldenrod is gated by a book.

 

Similarly, I wish there was a way to keep the xbow but balance it to be less gamebreaking.

[FlowerChild]

I have to agree that the dysentery even from bottled water is annoying and arbitrary. I get what's being attempted, but it feels unfair, since in real life, you can boil the ♥♥♥♥ out of water and be just fine.

 

In real life in a post-apocalyptic nightmare where some kind of super-pathogen is causing the dead to come back to life?

 

What has the zombie plague or whatever started it done to bacteria and/or parasites? Is boiling water still entirely sufficient to make it safe? Who knows.

 

It's basically the same deal as the gated seeds: it's not a matter of seeds being hard to collect. It's a matter of how do you cultivate crops in a thoroughly contaminated environment?

 

Similarly, I wish there was a way to keep the xbow but balance it to be less gamebreaking.

 

The crossbow is irrelevant. Game plays fine without it.

[FlowerChild]

Just to follow up on the crossbow thing (damn the lack of ability to edit posts after 15 minutes! Damn its bones! ), all the reasons I've ever heard for why people want it in the game boil down to one of the two following reasons:

 

-It's super overpowered in stock (easy to craft, infinite easily available ammo, totally silent, 100% precise, outclasses firearms in every conceivable way), and they miss being a super ninja.

 

-Daryl.

 

For the first, if I were to balance it, I'd make sure it had actual disadvantages relative to firearms, much like I did with the wooden bow. If that's the reason you like it, you likely wouldn't enjoy my version of it anyways. So, I'd essentially be putting a bunch of work into balancing something that people who miss the crossbow wouldn't really want anyways, and which I see no gameplay/progression hole that I'd be filling with it. We've got an early game makeshift ranged weapon with the wooden bow. We've got a midgame boomstick great for taking out dogs before they nibble your bits with the blunderbuss. We've got late-game firearms in various shapes and sizes.

 

For the second, as much as I like The Walking Dead, and Daryl's character, I really couldn't care less about pretending to be him, or in terms of it being a game feature

[justanothersurvivor]

While I agree there's too much downtime in night, adjusting the setting for length of night radically alters the balance of the game as you wind up under attack for far less time.

 

Setting the crafting timer lower mind you contributes to that problem, as managing it is one of the few night time activities.

 

Honestly, just from that I don't think the mod will be to your taste overall. It's a very slow progression that requires a lot of patience. I don't get the impression that's the kind of gameplay experience you're looking for.

 

i can't really say that i ever winded up at night. because even on a wooden garage you can survive a normal night because if you place yourself properly the zombies swarm below you doesn't attack the still intact and carrying parts of the building.

also keep in mind cooking time is not reduced by the crafting timer.. so i still can spend the time cooking but even after that is done, i still got plenty of time to open the overlay and browse the web. Also i'm not using water to get my stamina up ever. Your mod even made me walk most of the time so that i can kill engaging zombies without too much Muhammad Ali style dancing around them waiting for my stamina to recover.

 

the thing with your mod is.. on day 5 i don't feel i gained anything apart from a surplus of sticks, stones and if everything went well a poor quality "stoneaxe" and loads of items that fall in the category "in situation X and if i have Y this could be useful.. maybe".

 

So yeah.. maybe you are right

[FlowerChild]

the thing with your mod is.. on day 5 i don't feel i gained anything apart from a surplus of sticks, stones and if everything went well a poor quality "stoneaxe" and loads of items that fall in the category "in situation X and if i have Y this could be useful.. maybe".

 

That sounds a tad slow, but not much. Usually by the end of the first day I'm up to a stone axe, have a wooden club, am working towards accumulating enough nails for a spiked one, and have turned the 2nd+ story of a house into a shelter having torn down a bunch of curtains to make cloth armor. Second day I'm usually putting together a wooden bow while moving out and looking for additional POI's. Once I get the spiked club going and have full cloth armor, I usually decide to head into a plains biome for increased looting opportunity.

 

Yes, progress is much slower than vanilla. By day 5 in stock SP, the game is essentially over unless you're into interior decorating as a post-apocalyptic activity. Last extended game of BTGB I played, I was up to day 50 or so before I had all the basic skill books as well as a few advanced ones, and only stopped playing because I really had other stuff to get done

 

But yeah, I don't think this is likely to be the kind of experience you are looking for as most of your comments seem to be oriented towards faster progression, and that's definitely not where this mod is at.

[justanothersurvivor]

your progression is exactly what i mean. you follow the next road you find to loot all the trash piles on the road & kill zombies for the nails. cut down the occasional bush and the first house with curtains you find equals full cloth armor. at this point you probably got a cooking pot (50% chance) and a few glass bottles (+depending on your luck or how eager you were in engaging the fat zombies). Also i think in the beginning you are better off just harvesting grass with a wooden stick as the stick doesn't loose quality and even if your stamina is down to 0 you can still harvest grass with 4-5 hits. So you i usually have a bow, club and a stoneaxe in the first 30 ingame minutes. (gotta use these no-spawn in-game hours you got for free in your spawn area after all )

 

maybe it would be interesting to know your biome challenge order.. like after i got the above items.. and was like level 13 (i was able to make poor stuff instead of faulty ones) i went into the snow biome and the far reaching iced zombies took way to long to take down to even bother engaging.

 

so it's forest, plains, desert, burned, snow, city?

 

while desert has cops and dogs they are still easier to kill then iced zombies..

[FlowerChild]

Also i think in the beginning you are better off just harvesting grass with a wooden stick as the stick doesn't loose quality and even if your stamina is down to 0 you can still harvest grass with 4-5 hits.

 

You are definitely better off harvesting grass with a stick than with your fists. I don't think you're better off than with a stone axe though. Takes less time and you can repair the axe with a stone, which aren't exactly in short supply.

 

I usually walk a bit, recharge my stamina, take a few swings with the axe to collect more grass, walk a bit more (sometimes repairing the axe while I'm walking), recover stamina, etc.

 

So you i usually have a bow, club and a stoneaxe in the first 30 ingame minutes. (gotta use these no-spawn in-game hours you got for free in your spawn area after all )

 

I don't. I start walking almost immediately looking for shelter and crafting as I go, as described above. Zombies aren't a serious threat during daylight hours (in the forest biomes anyways), and you can just navigate around them. No reason to beat on grass 4-5 times burning daylight hours, then go for a long walk to find shelter, when you can be doing both at the same time and just hitting grass once with a stone axe here and there.

 

I don't usually stop in one place on the first day unless I find a POI and haven't yet built up to a point where I can take out a few zombies as I clear the area (and I usually just lead most off).

 

so it's forest, plains, desert, burned, snow, city?

 

I avoid talking about that as it's something that I think players should have the opportunity to enjoy discovering on their own. The one general rule of thumb I provide is that the more "dead" a biome feels, the more dangerous it is, and the bigger loot payoff that goes along with it.

 

You can hang out in forests indefinitely (which are the safest), and experience little in the way of danger, but your progress will be much slower as a result.

 

while desert has cops and dogs they are still easier to kill then iced zombies..

 

Why do you need to kill them in the first place?

 

Frozen zombies are basically just a relatively slow-moving anvil on their own. I'll leave what the hammer is for people to discover for themselves

 

In the future I'd really like to decouple experience and zombie killing. I think it's lead people to the mistaken impression that killing everything that moves is the appropriate strategy, when I really don't think it is in most cases, and while experience is nice, it really isn't a priority most of the time relative to the time you waste killing stuff.