jwsdev Posted December 17, 2014 Share Posted December 17, 2014 Just a small note here: feral zombies aren't GPS, EXCEPT at night. Interesting. I will give feral another try then, I had assumed the setting was always feral. Any thoughts on the spikes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlowerChild Posted December 18, 2014 Author Share Posted December 18, 2014 I have been, with 25% loot. There were four of us in the group and we found all of those books collectively by day 4. Even without the rest of the group I personally found the forge book on day 4 (and a duplicate on day 6) and every other book plus some tools on a trip to the city for the book store and hardware store. As for the ammo, there wasn't really enough looted to do anything with. This may have just been a symptom of a larger group but most of the ammo came from looting an entire gun that simply had a full clip. Ah ok. Yeah, I've really balanced things for single player here, and the number of people that you have on a server will of course multiply the rate at which you can find stuff, thereby multiplying your rate of progress if you're working together in an intelligent manner. Out of curiosity though, how did you manage a trip into the city at such a low tech level? Was that by virtue of having other players to work with? Are you playing on the recommended settings from the OP or is there some other factor that you've changed to make that easier? Is the wasteland just too easy to get through? Getting into the city is really intended to act as a soft gate that the player will only be able to pull off after they've already teched up a fair amount, because yeah, once you do, finding all the skill books you may be missing becomes trivial. If it's not difficult enough to get to, to really warrant that being the payout, then yes, I need to make some changes there. Finding the forge book alone in the description above really doesn't mean anything though given you need the combination of the three books I mentioned in order to actually make effective use of it. Interesting. I will give feral another try then, I had assumed the setting was always feral. Any thoughts on the spikes? Well, I definitely don't like the spikes being the ultimate defense solution, so I will certainly consider it further, but I'm also wondering if you playing on non-feral zombies might have something to do with why they feel so overpowered in your case. Feral zombies basically results in your base coming under nightly attack, so your defenses have to be more solid to handle that. Accumulating row upon row of spikes is also rather problematic if all you have is a stone axe at your disposal. In my past couple of play throughs I've only managed a single row around my base before the day 7 horde hit, and even doing that put huge pressure on my food supplies given I wasn't scavenging while setting them up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadTeddyBear Posted December 18, 2014 Share Posted December 18, 2014 Ah ok. Yeah, I've really balanced things for single player here, and the number of people that you have on a server will of course multiply the rate at which you can find stuff, thereby multiplying your rate of progress if you're working together in an intelligent manner. Out of curiosity though, how did you manage a trip into the city at such a low tech level? Was that by virtue of having other players to work with? Are you playing on the recommended settings from the OP or is there some other factor that you've changed to make that easier? Is the wasteland just too easy to get through? Getting into the city is really intended to act as a soft gate that the player will only be able to pull off after they've already teched up a fair amount, because yeah, once you do, finding all the skill books you may be missing becomes trivial. If it's not difficult enough to get to, to really warrant that being the payout, then yes, I need to make some changes there. Finding the forge book alone in the description above really doesn't mean anything though given you need the combination of the three books I mentioned in order to actually make effective use of it. The run I did was without the rest of the group (they didn't think we could make it), but multiplayer will always be inherently easier because you are either working as a group, or the zombie cap has to be split among all players. We are playing with some easier settings, basically use all of your suggested changes but don't leave the rest default. 30 minute days 25% block durability Drop toolbar on death High zombie spawns 30s Memory These DO make things easier, but more because they cut through some of the tedium rather than actually eliminating a challenge. It's not hard to recover a backpack, and the wellness hit is enough to avoid death, block durability makes it easier to break into buildings but also easier for zombies to follow. Zombie memory should probably be bumped back up. That being said, all you need to get into the city is a stone axe and a small amount of healing supplies (3-4 medicated bandages/pain killers would work). Grab a few cinderblocks on the way in, circle the wasteland to find some canned food and water to make it through the day. The only challenge right now are dogs which can be stunned so they should only get one good hit on you before you lock them down. If you handle it right you can get 1-2 dogs for every bandage or painkiller you bring. Once you're inside the city ignore everything that isn't a hardware store or bookstore on the first trip, and specifically just mark the bookstores to come back with a fireaxe. Once you reach the hardware store smash a hole in the windows, hop in and plug the hole. At most you'll need to kill 3-4 zombies that spawned inside the store but you'll be able to loot most of it before anything has a chance to break. Then the tools make it easier to get into the bookstore. This time break down the door and camp the door until zombies stop filing in. Then plug the hole and loot away. It usually costs most of your resources to do it this early, but with a good string of luck it's doable (and very risky) on day 2 or 3. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlowerChild Posted December 18, 2014 Author Share Posted December 18, 2014 30 minute days 25% block durability Drop toolbar on death High zombie spawns 30s Memory Well...that's the thing man, each of the above other than the high zombie spawns makes what you're doing easier to pull off. First, with regards to tedium vs. challenge: time is what I view to be the player's primary resource in a survival game. If things take less time to do, you're consuming less hunger and burning less daylight in the process. This means that you have to scavenge for fewer supplies to keep yourself going. So yes, things taking longer definitely makes the game more challenging overall. With the day night cycle set to a shorter length, and thus the night being shorter, this means the zombies spend a greater proportion of the night moving into position to attack your base, and less time actually attacking it. This again makes things easier. With the lower block durability, breaking into buildings is less of an issue with primitive tools, which means you're saving time overall affecting your survivability as described above, AND in situations you describe above like breaking into the hardware store in the city, you're exposing yourself to attack for less time while doing so. By nerfing the death penalty, you're also removing some of the teeth from death, and making recovery from it a more trivial affair. I'll take a look at the city myself and see how difficult it really is to get into as with the Pimps having nerfed dogs in the last release and with bees still apparently broken and just wandering about aimlessly most of the time I can imagine that it may have gotten easier than I would have liked. However, I also suspect that your settings are having a far bigger impact on things than you may have thought. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cork55 Posted December 18, 2014 Share Posted December 18, 2014 Remember with the advent of the new buildings, one does not even need to venture into the wasteland cities to find what is needed. One bookstore will provide many books, one shotgun messiah will take care of a lot of weapon needs and the pill store will take care of medical needs. The new buildings should only be located in the wasteland cities in my opinion. The rural towns should be a source of can goods and other assorted lower level items. The odd bookcases can also provide a few books, but the city should be where the "uber" loot is. I have a mod question for you. Do you know if it is possible to make getting water from toilets a one shot deal? I have not had a chance to look at this and was wondering it you might have stumbled upon something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlowerChild Posted December 18, 2014 Author Share Posted December 18, 2014 The new buildings should only be located in the wasteland cities in my opinion. That's already the way the mod works. The only new building I left outside of the city is the pharmacy, and I move move that in there as well. I have a mod question for you. Do you know if it is possible to make getting water from toilets a one shot deal? I have not had a chance to look at this and was wondering it you might have stumbled upon something. I changed it so that you can't. In vanilla you can get as much water as you want from toilets, and that ultimately acts against biome diversity as it makes it easy to get water in places like the wasteland and desert. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadTeddyBear Posted December 18, 2014 Share Posted December 18, 2014 The settings I choose do make it easier overall, but that doesn't make the city particularly difficult. Just to make sure and see if I was full of crap I made a fresh game with the recommended settings. Then I put together a stone axe and dove into the city. After finding 3 book stores, 1 gun store, and killing 4 dogs I was finally killed by the 5th and 6th dog together who managed to land a hit that left me bleeding. Without the foresight to make a plain bandage I bled out before getting inside any of the buildings. A set of cloth armor, spiked club, and half dozen or so painkillers probably would have been enough survive and get inside to learn everything I could. I wouldn't recommend that course, but so many things are tied to the forge so it almost becomes a necessity to go beyond scavenging for more food. I didn't have enough ammo to protect anything, I didn't have the tools to setup a farm, and I didn't have enough supplies to build a base without starving. Before a forge my only option was to really keep looking for the forge book, and once I had I really only needed to get a pickaxe for convenience. Having expensive options outside of the forge lets a player work towards an end-game without it, and removing it entirely stops you from ever becoming truly safe and stable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlowerChild Posted December 18, 2014 Author Share Posted December 18, 2014 The settings I choose do make it easier overall, but that doesn't make the city particularly difficult. I will certainly take a look at that aspect and try to tweak the city to an appropriate level where it acts as more of an end-game goal than something you can pull off in your first few days. On your other points: you can survive indefinitely without a single skill book or a gun (if you had a gun at all in the early game you got very lucky, never mind not having enough ammo for it), so no, I don't think things are required to be changed there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Renegrade Posted December 19, 2014 Share Posted December 19, 2014 Weapon stocks are initially locked behind a recipe book and become available later. Ornamental blocks have been removed because base defense is part of the progression and the ornamental blocks contain many exploits for bypassing the building system in recent releases (frames etc.) Oh regarding ornamental blocks - one thing I'm sorta missing from stock is the Old Wood (Pole) block. It's used ornamentally on the side of some houses, and to support roofs over porches and such, but it also has quite a good use for structural reinforcement inside of a base or mine... NB: It does burn a bit too long as fuel in stock, as the recipe makes 4, and the fuel line seems to assume the recipe only makes 1, but that's an easy fix (should be 9s rather than 36s or whatever) (Also, according to the patch notes, they've reduced the spinning derp animal/zombie issue! Yay!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlowerChild Posted December 19, 2014 Author Share Posted December 19, 2014 Oh regarding ornamental blocks - one thing I'm sorta missing from stock is the Old Wood (Pole) block. It's used ornamentally on the side of some houses, and to support roofs over porches and such, but it also has quite a good use for structural reinforcement inside of a base or mine... NB: It does burn a bit too long as fuel in stock, as the recipe makes 4, and the fuel line seems to assume the recipe only makes 1, but that's an easy fix (should be 9s rather than 36s or whatever) It's a fair point. I'll consider adding it back in as an unlock with the carpentry skill book or something. I'm in the middle of updating for 10.4 right now, but I might try to fit that into the next release too after pondering it a bit more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlowerChild Posted December 19, 2014 Author Share Posted December 19, 2014 [**** NEW RELEASE ****] Version 1.17 of Better Than Giant Bees is ready for download! Download Link This release contains the following changes: NOTE: Version 10.4 of 7 Days to die contains a bug where a console error will be displayed if you put a hat on a *bald* character profile. This has nothing to do with the mod, and if you create a profile with hair, everything should be fine. -Updated the mod to Alpha 10.4 of 7 Days to Die. -Changed (increased) the wellness loss for food poisoning and restored the health loss (the Pimps removed it in 10.4). -Changed (reduced) the repair value of cloth to revert the change the Pimps made in 10.4 to increase it. Cloth is already way too common a resource with too limited use to have its one remaining mid to late game use buffed. -Changed (decreased) the growth rate of all crops in the game. This doesn't represent my planned balance pass for farming, but upon reviewing the changes in the config files for 10.4, it was obvious the stock increase to growth rate was far too timid to have a significant impact, so I applied an additional multiplier across the board as a temporary measure pending further tweaking. -Changed all mod skill books to stack up to 50 to match the corresponding vanilla change in 10.4. -Changed the pharmacy so that it only appears in the city, similar to my previous changes to other other high value buildings (gun shop, etc.). -Removed the Santa Hat loot drop as while it was a cute seasonal addition it also had an unbalanced armor value and didn't fit the overall dark vibe of the game. -Removed book stores entirely from random world generation given they're so super powered, use the same loot blocks (bookshelves) as other areas of the game making them difficult/impossible to tweak independently without affecting balance elsewhere, and have the potential to completely break the progression if players manage to make it to one at the beginning of the game. I'll be attempting to rebalance the city in the future to make it more difficult and worthy of containing such loot, but removing these stores entirely is a good temporary workaround for the time being. At present, the city remains valuable as a potential source of tools, guns, and medical supplies with the corresponding shops. -Removed yucca fruit drops from destroying cactus. I had actually completely forgotten they were even in the game until I noticed them in the config files, and making the desert not only one of the easiest places to get water and wood in stock, but also to find food. I'm really not down with the whole "deserts as the horn of plenty" thing Enjoy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MadTeddyBear Posted December 19, 2014 Share Posted December 19, 2014 -Removed book stores entirely from random world generation given they're so super powered Hooray, I'm useful! On your other points: you can survive indefinitely without a single skill book or a gun (if you had a gun at all in the early game you got very lucky, never mind not having enough ammo for it), so no, I don't think things are required to be changed there. I don't want it to be easy or abundant in the early game, just more of a middle ground between "I found a gun? who cares" and "let's make 1000 shells from a day's mining." The idea behind turning scrap into bullet parts is the ability to get small benefits from each skill book or rare loot rather than having them so closely linked that they are useless on their own. The numbers I threw out were just a quick figure, personally I'll be testing a ratio of 5 scrap to 1 bullet part to see how it works out. Of course it's ultimately up to you as the author. The mod's great either way and I still love it over the vanilla game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asthor Posted December 19, 2014 Share Posted December 19, 2014 [**** NEW RELEASE ****] Version 1.17 of Better Than Giant Bees is ready for download! Download Link This release contains the following changes: [...] -Changed all mod skill books to stack up to 50 to match the corresponding vanilla change in 10.4 [...] We talked about it just few post back! XD and they shifted the storage item in the secureloot items as i used to have on my dedicated ^^ Anyway, anyone else got an error with the new xml files version? Because when i put them i got an error when try to open the inventory Null referenceexception object reference not set to an instance of an object i'm totally sure it depends on this new file because i made all crossing verification Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlowerChild Posted December 19, 2014 Author Share Posted December 19, 2014 I don't want it to be easy or abundant in the early game, just more of a middle ground between "I found a gun? who cares" and "let's make 1000 shells from a day's mining." See...I'm definitely not getting the "who cares?" on finding a gun. Guns are basically what make hunting in any volume and leather armor feasible. When I find one it tends to be my prized possession and I wind up considering it carefully before firing off every round. I am also aiming for the point where each skill book is useful on its own, regardless of whether it is primarily used as part of a greater whole. I'd say most of them already are, with a few lingering ones that I need to assign secondary uses to. Null referenceexception object reference not set to an instance of an object i'm totally sure it depends on this new file because i made all crossing verification I do know you'll get that kind of error with bald character profiles as I mentioned in the release notes, and likely also with old worlds as I've seen mention of that in other threads. I'd really advise starting a fresh game with 10.4, but let me know if that's already the case and you're still having problems. EDIT: Actually, I just noticed they put out a hotfix an hour ago. I'll verify the mod is working with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xamllew Posted December 19, 2014 Share Posted December 19, 2014 Quick suggestion: Have you considered making all armors take higher damage? I've been wearing one set of leather since about day 10, I'm now on day 49 and have taken next to no damage to my armor after tens of zombie hits. I need something to do with all this surplus leather. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LorenzoMatterhorn Posted December 19, 2014 Share Posted December 19, 2014 Funny story about guns... on day 10 of my latest game I finally found my first gun, a 9mm pistol. I had 12 bullets. So I went to work finding lead, coal, and potassium nitrate to mine. Then I spent the night making bullet casings and bullet tips. And then I discovered I didn't know the recipe for gun powder!! So yeah, right now those 11 bullets (used 1 for the tip) are my most precious possessions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlowerChild Posted December 19, 2014 Author Share Posted December 19, 2014 Quick suggestion: Have you considered making all armors take higher damage? I've been wearing one set of leather since about day 10, I'm now on day 49 and have taken next to no damage to my armor after tens of zombie hits. I need something to do with all this surplus leather. It's not a bad idea to be sure. I'll keep it in mind during my next play through and see what would make sense to tweak there. I feel the same way about cloth actually, which was one of the reasons I was so surprised by the Pimps increasing the repair value on it for 10.4. I really can't figure out what motivated that change. Funny story about guns... on day 10 of my latest game I finally found my first gun, a 9mm pistol. I had 12 bullets. So I went to work finding lead, coal, and potassium nitrate to mine. Then I spent the night making bullet casings and bullet tips. And then I discovered I didn't know the recipe for gun powder!! So yeah, right now those 11 bullets (used 1 for the tip) are my most precious possessions. Don't forget that if you're in need of a particular ammo type and have others, you can scrap down the others for parts the same way as you can guns (drop ammo in the output slot of the crafting grid), assuming you have the ammunition nation skill book. So, if you have a surplus of 10mm rounds or shotgun shells for example, you can scrap those down for the gunpowder you need for your 9mm pistol rounds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asthor Posted December 19, 2014 Share Posted December 19, 2014 [...] I do know you'll get that kind of error with bald character profiles as I mentioned in the release notes, and likely also with old worlds as I've seen mention of that in other threads. I'd really advise starting a fresh game with 10.4, but let me know if that's already the case and you're still having problems. EDIT: Actually, I just noticed they put out a hotfix an hour ago. I'll verify the mod is working with it. ok, i managed to fix it, somehow i had to manually upgrade the .xml files client side, do you know what can cause that? Another things, how can i set the drop respawn to 0 in cfg file? Thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlowerChild Posted December 20, 2014 Author Share Posted December 20, 2014 ok, i managed to fix it, somehow i had to manually upgrade the .xml files client side, do you know what can cause that? No, sorry man, but the inner workings of how the Pimps transmit various portions of the .xml files from server to client are a bit of a mystery to me. I do know I've seen similar problems reported for other mods within this sub-forum though, usually related to custom recipes for custom items that mods add not being properly synced by the game. Another things, how can i set the drop respawn to 0 in cfg file? Thank you Not sure I fully understand the question, but you can set items to never respawn through the options screen. Not sure what the corresponding server setting would be though. Maybe try setting it client side and see what changes in the options file? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imapseudonym Posted December 20, 2014 Share Posted December 20, 2014 We talked about it just few post back! XD and they shifted the storage item in the secureloot items as i used to have on my dedicated ^^ Anyway, anyone else got an error with the new xml files version? Because when i put them i got an error when try to open the inventory Null referenceexception object reference not set to an instance of an object i'm totally sure it depends on this new file because i made all crossing verification I'm receiving this error too on a fresh build with the new update. No bald characters. Not sure what the problem is. We rent a server so I'm not sure how to update the xml files like Asthor did either :/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imapseudonym Posted December 20, 2014 Share Posted December 20, 2014 For reference, whenever I hit "i" and look at the crafting tab it throws out the error. Also when I'm trying to pick things up it will also throw out the error and open my console with the "Null referenceexception object reference not set to an instance of an object" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Asthor Posted December 21, 2014 Share Posted December 21, 2014 No, sorry man, but the inner workings of how the Pimps transmit various portions of the .xml files from server to client are a bit of a mystery to me. I do know I've seen similar problems reported for other mods within this sub-forum though, usually related to custom recipes for custom items that mods add not being properly synced by the game. Not sure I fully understand the question, but you can set items to never respawn through the options screen. Not sure what the corresponding server setting would be though. Maybe try setting it client side and see what changes in the options file? yeah, i'm gonna try that way...thank you for the info i wanna ask you about the crossbow: i agree that is op in early game and too easy to obtain...but do you think there's a way to implement it in the future to enlarge the base items of the game? maybe make the recipient more complex and locked? I'm receiving this error too on a fresh build with the new update. No bald characters. Not sure what the problem is. We rent a server so I'm not sure how to update the xml files like Asthor did either :/ just pick the xml files from you server, they are in the directory /Data/Config and put them in: Steam\steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\Data\Config on each client wanna join...i know it's tedios but it's the only thing i found out to work Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imapseudonym Posted December 21, 2014 Share Posted December 21, 2014 yeah, i'm gonna try that way...thank you for the info i wanna ask you about the crossbow: i agree that is op in early game and too easy to obtain...but do you think there's a way to implement it in the future to enlarge the base items of the game? maybe make the recipient more complex and locked? just pick the xml files from you server, they are in the directory /Data/Config and put them in: Steam\steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\Data\Config on each client wanna join...i know it's tedios but it's the only thing i found out to work Tried that last night and it still didn't like me. Not sure what the deal is now if it's working for everyone else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OreoJackson Posted December 21, 2014 Share Posted December 21, 2014 Swapping the xml files worked for me: not that it was too big an issue - if you just relogged the error would go away. However i have an entirely different bug: Me nor any of my players on my server can cook Golden Rod Tea or Cornbread even after using the prereq. recipe books. We put all the ingredients into the campfire (it even lists the item in Green in the recipe sidebar) but clicking on cook does nothing.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlowerChild Posted December 21, 2014 Author Share Posted December 21, 2014 Me nor any of my players on my server can cook Golden Rod Tea or Cornbread even after using the prereq. recipe books. We put all the ingredients into the campfire (it even lists the item in Green in the recipe sidebar) but clicking on cook does nothing.... I received a similar report awhile back. Looks like what's happening is that unlocking campfire recipes in single player works fine, but only the server has them unlocked in MP. This is obviously a larger problem with a dedicated server as it means none of the players have access to them. I've been planning on putting some intermediate items into place which are crafted normally and which are the ones unlocked for awhile now to get around this. So say for example "crushed goldenrod" made in the regular crafting grid as the unlock, which can then be made into tea on the campfire. I'll get right on that and try to have a fix for you in the next few hours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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