[MOD] Better Than Giant Bees: Hardcore Survival

[FlowerChild]

I don't think it works very well at all currently, I mean, once you've got a forge you can craft ingots, one ingot makes 4 refined bars which makes 12 pipes, 12 pipes makes 60 strips, so one ingot is enough to fully repair any tool.

 

Sure, but the forge is end-game content in the mod. Once you have that, the game is largely over in terms of progression anyways.

 

Hey FC, on a whim I removed Weapon repair kits from the game (using your mod) and I've been pretty happy with the results. It makes finding guns or parts much more exciting and useful after you have already got a gun. In vanilla, once I had one of each gun I wanted I wouldn't even bother looting most safes or munitions boxes. Now, I'm constantly thinking "this shotgun only has 50 shots left before it breaks, do I want to waste them on this fatty?"

 

It's an interesting idea, but I fear it would really mess up the flow of the early game in the mod. In stock, it makes sense given the overabundance of firearms, but like in my previous BTGB game, I had only found a single rifle, and no other firearms, over the course of 14 days.

 

Servicing that rifle became a major consideration of mine, and it was part of the attachment I developed for it as my prized possession within that save. That's definitely part of the vibe I've been going for here.

 

Also, I reduced the amount of oil you tend to accumulate in the latest release, so the balance might already be rather different there from what you're used to.

[Xamllew]

Sure, but the forge is end-game content in the mod. Once you have that, the game is largely over in terms of progression anyways.

 

That shouldn't mean resources are so abundant they're trivial, I still like to feel like I need to work toward the resources I need to upkeep my fort and equipment. Otherwise it really becomes a bore.

[FlowerChild]

That shouldn't mean resources are so abundant they're trivial, I still like to feel like I need to work toward the resources I need to upkeep my fort and equipment. Otherwise it really becomes a bore.

 

Well, that's fair and all man, but what I'm saying is that if you hack in skill unlocks, you haven't experienced the full progression and thus aren't really playing the mod. Thus comments on how easy/hard things are, or general balance, become less relevant as you've already dialed the difficulty of getting to that point of the game way way down.

 

I'm not even really at the point of balancing the portion of the game you're at right now, having focused almost exclusively on early to mid game at present. Like I know for example that crops are going to need a major overhaul once I get to that point.

 

And with regards to resource abundance relative to tool repair it's a bit of a sticky problem given that if you make the costs of repair too high, then just making a new tool instead of repairing your current one becomes much more attractive. So, then you're also talking about also dialing the cost of making the tool initially way up, and at a certain point, the amount of resources required will tend to get a bit silly.

 

This is another reason I suspect the current design has the repair of tools revolve around the primary resource required to create an item (metal for most tools), as there needs to be a balance between creation vs repair cost that gives the advantage to repairs, in order for the player to actually want to maintain their equipment.

[Xamllew]

Well, that's fair and all man, but what I'm saying is that if you hack in skill unlocks, you haven't experienced the full progression and thus aren't really playing the mod. Thus comments on how easy/hard things are, or general balance, become less relevant as you've already dialed the difficulty of getting to that point of the game way way down.

 

Touche, however due to the random nature of the game I could have been at this level at day one if luck were on my side, I simply decided the game was being unfair to me. Sorry I'm just not a fan of progression based on discovering one item, maybe if recipes were split up more it'd take the frustration out of it.

 

As far as repair vs creation cost goes, I think its just a matter of finding the sweet spot where the two are equal in cost but repairing is still a better option because it's quicker to do. So for example, an axe requires 2 ingots to make, but if you only got 3 metal strips per iron pipe rather than 5, then for 2 ingots you could make 72 metal strips, you need 50 strips to repair a fireaxe fully, so that gives repairing a slight advantage over creating a new one and now you don't have as much of an overabundance of metal strips in the end.

[FlowerChild]

Sorry I'm just not a fan of progression based on discovering one item, maybe if recipes were split up more it'd take the frustration out of it.

 

Yup, I hear that, and it's something I've been moving towards with most of the recent releases with my adding of additional skill books and upping the probability of finding one in the process.

 

Unfortunately though, there's just not a lot of depth to the progression in the game at present, so there's a limit on how much I can break up the skills while still trying to make each individual unlock useful and worthwhile. Already I have a couple of skill books in there (pottery comes immediately to mind) which aren't of any real immediate value and only serve to delay the acquisition of end game abilities like forging.

 

And yup, as I've mentioned many times, I'm not a huge fan of how random the progression is at present either. The game can wind up being way too hard or way too easy based entirely on luck, where you could theoretically wander into your very first house and walk out with pretty much everything in the game, or theoretically never find a single skill book no matter how long you play. It's exceedingly unlikely, but it can happen.

 

Without some fundamental changes to how skills work though, which is not really something I can do on my end at present, best I can do is focus on the average play experience and try to minimize variance through tweaking the loot tables.

 

Don't get me wrong though: I'm not entirely against randomness in this game as I think looting is a significant aspect of the play experience, and that's an inherently random activity.

 

Also worth keeping in mind: as I've said many times, you start the game with all the skills required to survive indefinitely. Everything beyond that is just a bonus to what you can do, and with stuff like the log changes I've just made, even early game construction isn't off the table.

 

As far as repair vs creation cost goes, I think its just a matter of finding the sweet spot where the two are equal in cost but repairing is still a better option because it's quicker to do. So for example, an axe requires 2 ingots to make, but if you only got 3 metal strips per iron pipe rather than 5, then for 2 ingots you could make 72 metal strips, you need 50 strips to repair a fireaxe fully, so that gives repairing a slight advantage over creating a new one and now you don't have as much of an overabundance of metal strips in the end.

 

Oh yeah, if you're talking about that kind of fine-tuning balance, I don't disagree, and it's likely that I'll be making those kind of changes once I get to balancing that part of the progression.

 

I'm not at all opposed to making those kinds of tweaks, however, they may have minimal impact, because once you have a forge, I'm not certain any amount of iron will really put the squeeze on the player.

[Xamllew]

 

Oh yeah, if you're talking about that kind of fine-tuning balance, I don't disagree, and it's likely that I'll be making those kind of changes once I get to balancing that part of the progression.

 

I'm not at all opposed to making those kinds of tweaks, however, they may have minimal impact, because once you have a forge, I'm not certain any amount of iron will really put the squeeze on the player.

 

It might not make much difference to a player with a large mine and plenty of ore, but I could see such a little change making a large impact early on out where you're restricted to finding iron pipes in trash and containers, gives you that strong "yes!" feeling when you find iron pipes laying around.

 

I don't know why TFP has it set to 5 metal strips right now, I was trying to think of what might need that many but no tool goes above 500 durability which needs 50 strips = 10 pipes. That means you can repair 2.5 tools for the cost of making one tool, seems way too much.

[FlowerChild]

Returning to this for a moment to address the specific points:

 

hardcore survival like to die of thurst or to die of getting raped by zombies? In my opinion both of them belongs to survival in 7D2D. One thing to makes the difficulty more balanced is, to reduce a bit the zombie count at day especially outside of towns and buildings. Why? Because zombies at day are just a pain in the ass and thefore no challenge because a walking zombie at day is just a reason to run around.

 

I view day zombies as a hazard the player has to deal with rather than a true threat. Yes, if you're playing vanilla they're largely trivial to deal with mostly due to the overpowered crossbow you can get immediately at start or due to the overabundance of guns.

 

In the mod, you're mostly dealing with them with melee weapons, and mistakes can easily be made which will get you killed. How to deal with them around a POI thus becomes a consideration, and I myself use a variety of tactics ranging from running through the draw them out and lead them on a wild goose chase before taking a wide circle back to the POI, to driving animals into it so that the zombies will go chasing after them.

 

So I think the game very much benefits from having that constant low level threat around, and I do not think it in any way needs to be toned down. On the contrary, as recently came up here, I'd like to see it intensified by having zombies go into night time behavior in low light areas.

 

In my opinion bees just suck around and doing almost nothing atm except of stressing the server performance. Dogs are OP with the highest grade difficulty and are mostly the sentence of death without weapons. Thats no challenge.

 

There are likely problems with both dogs and bees at present, but I'm not going to start balancing around what are temporary bugs.

 

As is probably apparent from the title of the mod, I severely dislike giant bees thematically. HOWEVER, what I do acknowledge is that they serve a valuable gameplay role which is why I'd never take them out. In combination with spider zombies, they're what brings any vertical defense consideration into base building, and that alone is huge.

 

I'd very much like to see them return to their Alpha 9 aggressiveness level, and can only assume them often flying around randomly is some kind of temporary bug. I would also love to see them be swapped out for another creature, like zombie vultures or something, that behave essentially the same but which aren't cheezy giant brightly colored buzzing insects in an otherwise fairly dark game. However, the gameplay considerations trump all that in my mind, which is why I'd never remove them.

 

Dogs serve a valuable gameplay purpose in that they're largely what makes the wasteland and city so dangerous, making them places to be feared and avoided (and with correspondingly more valuable loot). I've run into a few in Alpha 10 outside of there, mostly after leaving my base in the morning due to them being present in night time hordes, and I've had no issue dealing with them one at a time, even with just a spiked club (heavily nerfed in the mod as well), and a mix of cloth and leather armor. So no, I'd never want to remove those either, even if they have temporary problems in Alpha 10.

 

It might not make much difference to a player with a large mine and plenty of ore, but I could see such a little change making a large impact early on out where you're restricted to finding iron pipes in trash and containers, gives you that strong "yes!" feeling when you find iron pipes laying around.

 

Early game is already pretty tight in that regard though man. I know I often find myself debating whether to use the pipes I find for a cooking grill or to scrap them down for tool/weapon repair.

 

But yes, if late game would benefit from such a change, I can always up loot probability on pipes so that the early game remains essentially the same.

[Cork55]

I have run your mod on my private hosted server and it worked just fine. We did not require anyone to download the mod. The xml files are synched with the client files, but sometimes the files don't synch properly which causes recipes to dissapear.

[FlowerChild]

I have run your mod on my private hosted server and it worked just fine. We did not require anyone to download the mod. The xml files are synched with the client files, but sometimes the files don't synch properly which causes recipes to dissapear.

 

Ah, cool, thanks for the info. I was going by something posted in another thread where people were having problems with custom items on servers.

[FlowerChild]

Just to make one additional point about day zombies to add to what I said above: one key thing to keep in mind is that time is one of your primary resources in a survival game.

 

How long it takes you to do something is a big factor in determining say if you have enough food and water to keep you alive. Thus, the longer you take to loot a POI, the more strain you're putting on your resources, and the more difficult the game is becoming overall.

 

Zombies are obviously a big factor in this. If the place is swarmed, sure, risks aside, you can take all day to bonk them over the head one by one, or you can start getting creative with how you approach the situation to try and get them out of there quickly. Which approach you take will ultimately affect your overall survivability.

 

Zombies basically put pressure on everything else you are doing. Without them, or with lesser numbers, I'd essentially have to reduce the availability of all other resources to keep survival pressure up, and I suspect the result would also be less fun as it would result in a lot less gameplay diversity if you were able to just constantly loot unmolested (The Long Dark has this problem in its Coastal Highway map where all the looting without interference gets extremely tiresome).

 

Anyways, I was just analyzing the ramifications of my actions as I lead a huge conga-line of zombies out of a rather epic POI and wanted to add a bit more to my above description of how they benefit the game.

[Cork55]

Ah, cool, thanks for the info. I was going by something posted in another thread where people were having problems with custom items on servers.

 

Really liking version 1.4 of your mod. Keep up the great work. Here is another one for you to add if you want to.

 

For some reason the pimps must have forgotten about canned pears. Add this to the canned food group for some tasty pears.

 

<item name="canPears"/>

[FlowerChild]

For some reason the pimps must have forgotten about canned pears. Add this to the canned food group for some tasty pears.

 

<item name="canPears"/>

 

Maybe it's because you might be able to harvest a seed for them or something, and given growing pear trees isn't an option, they decided to leave it out for now?

 

Granted, I have no idea if a seed can remain viable in canned food like that, but it's a theory

[Cork55]

Maybe it's because you might be able to harvest a seed for them or something, and given growing pear trees isn't an option, they decided to leave it out for now?

 

Granted, I have no idea if a seed can remain viable in canned food like that, but it's a theory

 

There are no pear seeds currently in the game. I think it's just another case where eating a balanced diet goes out the window in a zombie apocalypse

[InfiniteDice]

Better Than Giant Bees

 

Hey man, this is exactly what is needed. I have a server I've been running MegaCity Project. The idea is to run the game as MP Survival but with zombies spawn set to 0, in this first phase of the game I am allowing people to join and 'Claim' a chunk of the city to build. So we remove all the garbage, tear down and refurbish the older buildings and/or build shiny new things. Plant trees, crops and grass... etc.

 

The idea is to then flip the switch on the whole Zombie nightmare and see that city descend into ruin. Should be fun to see what happens.

 

Underneath all that I've made some significant changes to the way the game will play, zombies don't do much more damage than a player with bare hands (why would they, aside from feeling little to no pain?). Weapons are extremely hard to find whole and must be assembled from found parts. I find crafting weapons not very realistic... you need pretty exact tolerances on all parts of a firearm, so I increased the crafting time 10x.

 

Increased the resistance of metal and concrete to most tools/weapons... this leaves the pickaxe as the best tool for these. Augers are meant for dirt/ice and chainsaws with standard chains are only for wood. Using these on anything else in reality will either destroy the tool or maim you.

 

Really in 7dtd there are some things that could be added... namely a jackhammer for concrete, and a cutting torch for steel/metals. Perhaps a gas portable bandsaw with diamond blade... lol

 

For the bees... lol I've made their attacks do far less damage and instead cause a nasty stun. The cop zombie that pukes, I've reduced the range and frequency.

 

After all this you are left with a few possible issues. 1) Even with a strong base - players MUST need to venture out for something. 2) Zombies that can't break through everything like a rhino on roids, must be effective in some way at taking out players.

 

1)

a) I don't think that the water bucket is a good idea, frankly this isn't minecraft and having a stream of unlimited wate come forth is totally unrealistic. I think the bucket should go, keep it for drinking and putting out fires (soon I hope). Or if you fill a pond with it... you need to fill every square. Then using that water would need to cause the level to go down. Unlimited water from a bucket is a surefire way to keep people in a fort unrealistically.

b) Food, needs to take a lot longer to grow, needs to spoil within days if cooked etc. Food needs to play a major role in getting people out looking.

 

2)

a) Lying in wait... we need zombies that look like they are just those dead guys everyone loots.... then whammo.... as soon as you open it to search it, it grabs your leg or something.

b) Silent zombies. Watch some zombie movies guys... stick to the George Romero ones and you're fine. Most zombie kills come from 1) the human stupidly falls and can't move quickly and gets caught 2) the human unknowingly moves into or puts their hand into and area where there is a dormant zombie, or last most common... the human moves into an area where they get boxed in by a horde of zombies.

 

Only in rare circumstances do we see zombies breaking into a boarded up area.... they might knock a board off... or break a window... but they aren't superhuman, in fact due to previous injury, broken bones and rot, they would be probably much weaker than an average human. With some exceptions of course... yes maybe one might run (Dawn of the Dead - Remake), one might be able to talk even (Return of the Living Dead)... one might even be able to use a gun (Day of the Dead).

 

Anyways I think I'm going to break my fingers or the forum if I keep typing. I'll wait for some responses

 

Great idea, I think Better than Giant Bees moves this in the right direction.

[FlowerChild]

There are no pear seeds currently in the game. I think it's just another case where eating a balanced diet goes out the window in a zombie apocalypse

 

Yes, I realize. I'm thinking that might be the problem they're trying to avoid with leaving the canned pears out, or that they are anticipating a bunch of "where are the pear trees?!" whining from the community if they put them in.

 

1)

a) I don't think that the water bucket is a good idea, frankly this isn't minecraft and having a stream of unlimited wate come forth is totally unrealistic.

 

That's already in the mod. It's actually in my Minecraft mod too

 

I agree with some of your other points, but one thing to note is that I don't strive for realism, so it's rare I do anything strictly for that reason.

[FlowerChild]

Ok, more detailed response now that I have a bit of coffee in me

 

Underneath all that I've made some significant changes to the way the game will play, zombies don't do much more damage than a player with bare hands (why would they, aside from feeling little to no pain?).

 

See, that's the kind of change I'd never personally make, and the kind of thing I was referring to above about not striving for realism.

 

My answer to your "why?" here is "gameplay". To me, the game is more fun when zombies are more dangerous to the player with bare hands than the other way around, so it's a non-starter for me.

 

I could also provide counter arguments like saying that maybe zombie damage also assumes some bitey-bitey action going on too.

 

Weapons are extremely hard to find whole and must be assembled from found parts. I find crafting weapons not very realistic... you need pretty exact tolerances on all parts of a firearm, so I increased the crafting time 10x.

 

I think BTGB is actually already more hardcore in that regard. Firearms are also extremely rare, and the *only* ones you can craft completely from scratch are shotguns. Ever.

 

 

For the bees... lol I've made their attacks do far less damage and instead cause a nasty stun. The cop zombie that pukes, I've reduced the range and frequency.

 

I have no issue with the gameplay on bees (other than it currently suffering from a bug where they tend to just wander around aimlessly), just the use of bees as a thematic element. If they were replaced by another creature with identical gameplay, I'd be happy.

 

Don't see a need to tone down damage on either them or zombie cops either.

 

 

b) Food, needs to take a lot longer to grow, needs to spoil within days if cooked etc. Food needs to play a major role in getting people out looking.

 

Yeah, this is something I still need to address, but I'm still focused on balancing early and mid-game while I consider farming to be a late game activity. I have the first of my farming changes coming in the next release actually, and there will be more to follow.

 

2)

a) Lying in wait... we need zombies that look like they are just those dead guys everyone loots.... then whammo.... as soon as you open it to search it, it grabs your leg or something.

 

That's beyond what can be modded strictly through config files at present and it sounds like it might be similar to what the Pimps have talked about in the past with their "zombie wake" system.

 

b) Silent zombies. Watch some zombie movies guys... stick to the George Romero ones and you're fine. Most zombie kills come from 1) the human stupidly falls and can't move quickly and gets caught 2) the human unknowingly moves into or puts their hand into and area where there is a dormant zombie, or last most common... the human moves into an area where they get boxed in by a horde of zombies.

 

That's easy enough to mod in as you can easily disable sounds on particular creatures, but I don't think it's a reasonable thing to do. Situational awareness in a game is extremely limited compared to what you get in the consensus reality. Sounds are one of the ways to compensate for that and given the variety of zombie types found in different fiction, I see no reason for the game to be pigeon-holed to such a narrow version of them.

 

Only in rare circumstances do we see zombies breaking into a boarded up area.... they might knock a board off... or break a window... but they aren't superhuman, in fact due to previous injury, broken bones and rot, they would be probably much weaker than an average human. With some exceptions of course... yes maybe one might run (Dawn of the Dead - Remake), one might be able to talk even (Return of the Living Dead)... one might even be able to use a gun (Day of the Dead).

 

Again, this comes down to gameplay for me, and is one of the reasons I recommend feral zombies in combination with this mod in the OP.

 

Having to worry about base defense in a voxel game like this is fun. I'd say it's actually one of 7 Days' strongest gameplay features in comparison to something like Minecraft.

 

So, to me, that should be emphasized as much as possible, not nerfed out of existence, "realism" be damned.

 

Great idea, I think Better than Giant Bees moves this in the right direction.

 

I'd really advise reading through the full change log for the mod (found in the readme with the download), as I don't think we're heading in as similar direction as you might think on first glance, and some of the things you mentioned are already part of the mod.

 

Like the bucket thing for example: we both are in favor of the same change in that case, but for very different reasons. Yours are largely about realism, mine revolve around the variety of gameplay exploits that can be achieved with buckets and a desire to make farming more interesting (eventually...if I can make it dependent on irrigation again).

[FlowerChild]

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

 

Version 1.15 of Better Than Giant Bees is ready for download!

 

Download Link

 

This release contains the following changes:

 

-Added a gardening skill book that provides recipes for turning blueberries, corn, potatoes, goldenrod, and cotton into their related seeds and removed all seed drops as loot. This essentially turns farming into a skill that needs to be learned so that it can't be used as a food supply early on in the game, and ups the value of finding whole veggies as loot substantially. I have more farming changes planned for the future, but for now this at least gates it so that it isn't immediately available should you get lucky and find a hoe.

 

-Changed (increased) the chance of finding books slightly since there are now more of them.

 

-Changed (increased) the running speed of all animals so that they are all faster than the player. This is to increase the difficulty of hunting with a melee weapon, thereby increasing the value of both firearms and ammo. You can still manage to kill them with a club if you put a little thought into it, but it generally won't be easy.

 

-Changed (increased) the field of view on bees to help reduce their current problems with just flying around harmlessly. It doesn't resolve it mind you, but does help slightly.

 

-Changed bloated walkers to have a bit more junk loot so that their inventories don't wind up being completely empty so often.

 

-Changed (decreased) the chance of finding antibiotics slightly, as some of my previous changes (like removing blood draw kits and blood bags) had inadvertently increased the probability of them showing up, and they were a tad too common as a result.

 

-Changed antibiotics so that the immunity buff they provide doesn't last as long, and to remove the wellness increase from them, as they were way too open to abuse.

 

-Changed storage chests to fall if unsupported to prevent base-defense exploits involving them.

 

-Changed (increased) the value of loot found in chests. This is one of the few times I made things easier, as the cycle of hope and disappointment in finding a chest, which is relatively rare, only to have it contain nothing or junk, just wasn't fun. They're now interior "survivor cashes" similar to hollow tree stumps with a small chance of high value loot like firearms. They'll still occasionally be empty, but will often contain valuable supplies.

 

-Changed (decreased) the durability of the bone shank, and increased its stamina drain, as it was open to abuse.

 

-Changed (reduced) the stamina boost provided from coffee as it felt rather cheaty before, to the point where I didn't even want to use it. It still helps but should no longer allow you to do stuff like sprint indefinitely.

 

-Removed the ability to plant coffee beans. Coffee thus can not be grown and can only be found as loot. I did this to accomodate the new gardening skill book above given it would require me to either add a new item for coffee seeds of some kind, or eliminate coffee as loot which didn't seem very fitting given how common a household item it is. Plus, growing coffee from what are likely roasted beans just always seemed rather odd, and given coffee is very much a luxury item, it seemed best to just remove farming it entirely.

 

Enjoy!

[Xamllew]

 

-Changed (decreased) the chance of finding antibiotics slightly, as some of my previous changes (like removing blood draw kits and blood bags) had inadvertently increased the probability of them showing up, and they were a tad too common as a result.

 

 

Aw, I thought I was actually getting lucky with finding 3 in a day. >:C

 

-Changed antibiotics so that the immunity buff they provide doesn't last as long, and to remove the wellness increase from them, as they were way too open to abuse.

What option do I have now but to eat a ridiculous amount of meat for wellness to go back up? Antibiotics are one of the biggest reasons for me to go looting. We need some sort of multivitamin or something.

 

-Changed (reduced) the stamina boost provided from coffee as it felt rather cheaty before, to the point where I didn't even want to use it. It still helps but should no longer allow you to do stuff like sprint indefinitely.

I approve of this, always felt being able to run several kilometers on a single buff was ridiculous. Not sure about taking away coffee farming though, coffee beans aren't very common as loot and if all the POIs nearby are already scavenged well then say bye bye to coffee. I do understand it needed to be done, just sucks a lot.

 

Overall a good update, just really against the removal of coffee bean farming.

[FlowerChild]

What option do I have now but to eat a ridiculous amount of meat for wellness to go back up? Antibiotics are one of the biggest reasons for me to go looting. We need some sort of multivitamin or something.

 

Don't die

 

What it will basically come down to is that death will take a very long time to recover from, which is good by me.

 

I approve of this, always felt being able to run several kilometers on a single buff was ridiculous. Not sure about taking away coffee farming though, coffee beans aren't very common as loot and if all the POIs nearby are already scavenged well then say bye bye to coffee. I do understand it needed to be done, just sucks a lot.

 

Well, you in no way need coffee right? As I said in the notes, I basically wasn't using it at all, whether that be in vanilla or with the mod, because it felt so cheaty previously.

 

So, what it is now is a nice little bonus you occasionally get from looting, and one which you will likely want to carefully consider before using given it's limited supply, and that's that. There's really no need for it to be in constant supply, and drinking coffee is in no way a core gameplay mechanism.

[Xamllew]

Don't die

 

What it will basically come down to is that death will take a very long time to recover from, which is good by me.

 

 

 

Well, you in no way need coffee right? As I said in the notes, I basically wasn't using it at all, whether that be in vanilla or with the mod, because it felt so cheaty previously.

 

So, what it is now is a nice little bonus you occasionally get from looting, and one which you will likely want to carefully consider before using given it's limited supply, and that's that. There's really no need for it to be in constant supply, and drinking coffee is in no way a core gameplay mechanism.

 

Let me ask you, have you ever had wellness of 30 with always sprinting zombies? It's nigh impossible to not be run down when your stamina recovers to 30. Coffee for me is vital at that point because you have two options, fight them and hope you don't get exhausted or run all the way home with a horde on your heels.

[FlowerChild]

Let me ask you, have you ever had wellness of 30 with always sprinting zombies?

 

Nope, both because I don't die that often, and also because the mod is intended to be played with non-sprinting zombies during the day as per the recommended settings in the OP.

 

I basically support a single set of play options. If you want to play things a different way, that's your choice, but not something I'll design the mod around.

[VegasGoat]

I found the skill books to let me make lumps of clay and the forge last night, but it's only day 5. Seems like I just have to find some clay now and I'll be able to make all sorts of iron tools. I don't feel like I've earned that through survival yet, since I haven't even faced a day 7 horde yet. It got me thinking about the skill books.

 

I'm not sure if it's possible, and you've probably already considered it, but why not use recipes to build a tech tree instead of finding skill books randomly? Bookcases and safes could have the components instead of the books, and each crafted skill book could unlock the recipes for the next set of books until you have a full tech tree. Seems like you'd have a lot more control over the progression that way.

[Renegrade]

Thanks for the update, man!

 

The changes all look very good, except perhaps the very last one..

 

-Changed (reduced) the stamina boost provided from coffee as it felt rather cheaty before, to the point where I didn't even want to use it. It still helps but should no longer allow you to do stuff like sprint indefinitely.

 

This bit is good, and was a necessary change as the buff was crazy, but..

 

-Removed the ability to plant coffee beans. Coffee thus can not be grown and can only be found as loot.

 

Given how rare these are without growing, this change seems to be going a step too far. It's now a rather mild effect, which almost doesn't exist. My feelings on this part is that either of these changes alone were fully justified (ie an uber buff that's uber rare, OR a post-farming on-demand buff that's just so-so), but together are a bit too much.

 

Disclaimer: My last full-scale co-op BTW semi-automatic farm had 1760 growing plots. I might be a bit too enthusiastic about farming and my views here are therefore probably (most likely? almost guaranteed?) biased~

[FlowerChild]

I'm not sure if it's possible, and you've probably already considered it, but why not use recipes to build a tech tree instead of finding skill books randomly? Bookcases and safes could have the components instead of the books, and each crafted skill book could unlock the recipes for the next set of books until you have a full tech tree. Seems like you'd have a lot more control over the progression that way.

 

Oh wow man. That's actually an extremely interesting idea, and no, it hadn't occurred to me

 

I'm going to mull it over as the ramifications are a bit too extensive for me to just say yay or nay on it, but regardless of whether I use it or not, that's an awesome and creative idea for how to handle skill progression within the confines of the current system.

 

Given how rare these are without growing, this change seems to be going a step too far. It's now a rather mild effect, which almost doesn't exist. My feelings on this part is that either of these changes alone were fully justified (ie an uber buff that's uber rare, OR a post-farming on-demand buff that's just so-so), but together are a bit too much.

 

I'll continue to consider it, as yeah, you're right in that end game content is rather limited and in terms of just having an activity to work towards, coffee farming is a potentially interesting thing to do.

 

What I may do is just bight the bullet and split say beans and coffee grounds into two separate items and replace the drops you find with the grounds. I'll still need to figure out a way of gating the player's ability to create the beans, out of say finding the plants as a rare drop or something.

 

May have to wait on my further balance pass on farming, but I'll definitely take a second look at it.

[Renegrade]

What I may do is just bight the bullet and split say beans and coffee grounds into two separate items and replace the drops you find with the grounds. I'll still need to figure out a way of gating the player's ability to create the beans, out of say finding the plants as a rare drop or something.

 

May have to wait on my further balance pass on farming, but I'll definitely take a second look at it.

 

Cool, thanks for the second look

 

(It's not a time critical thing of course - I'm not going to die in game from lack of coffee, unlike in real life hehe)

 

Anyhow, I'm loving the other changes, especially animal speed and fat zombie loot. Those rabbits really tear off now, and the fat zombies are a lot less disappointing now. My current save (started in 1.13) finally picked up the making-frames book and I've been having a ball upgrading my base

 

By the way, the fire axe seems to be a good upgrade from the survival knife - it can one-shot the basic zombies with head shots (nurses, normal walkers, nude dudes, etc). Is it supposed to be that way?