Found a fun way to play.

[Mephistopheles]

I encourage everyone to try this if you are bored with the game like I was. Here are the guidelines...

 

1. Start a new RNG map, 4096 in size.

 

2. Craft what you need to complete the noob quest but then destroy everything you have crafted. This will enable you to get the starter xp reward and find a trader, but from here on out, no crafting of anything is allowed.

 

3. I repeat, no crafting. Ever. The only items you can use are items that you have scavenged or bought from a trader.

 

How does this affect gameplay?

 

For starters, your immediate focus is on finding food, water, and tools, as well as questing at the trader. Don't accept any Buried Supplies quests until you have a shovel, unless you like digging with your fists. Finding a Hardware store should be in the back of your mind until you get all the basic tools you need. Gas stations also have tools sometimes. No nerdpoling unless you have found some frames, so you'll need to think about escape plans and safe night spots because dogs and wolves will appear out of nowhere and if you haven't found a weapon, they're not going to be fazed much by your punches. All the points you used to spend on crafting, you'll want to use instead on bartering, loot quality, strength, stamina, etc... While you cannot craft anything, you're still able to add complete mods you find, or even assemble a minibike if you can find all the components. Wrenching will be a good source of income. Since you'll be selling everything you used to use for crafting, take special care with determining if something is worth more after scrapping it. There's a lot more nuance to playing this type of game that I'll let you discover. But I will say that it's a LOT more fun.

 

Worth mentioning is that I have modded my xmls so that there are more traders, more xp for killing tougher mobs, among other changes. This style of play would be really bad if there's only 1-2 traders on your 4k small map. So if you're interested in my modded xml files, feel free to ask and I'll upload them somewhere.

 

Let me know what you think about this.

[warmer]

I love this idea! The main change to vanilla I would make is extending the day to 2 1/2 hours with 30 min of night. Thanks for the idea. I think I will give this a try on my next serious playthrough. My first level points would be put right into lucky looter. maxing that out first would be a priority. along with a point in "living off the land"

[Beelzybub]

In this scenario, is cooking considered crafting?

[Mephistopheles]

I love this idea! The main change to vanilla I would make is extending the day to 2 1/2 hours with 30 min of night. Thanks for the idea. I think I will give this a try on my next serious playthrough. My first level points would be put right into lucky looter. maxing that out first would be a priority. along with a point in "living off the land"

 

Why living off the land? No crafting means no cooking. You can still farm, but you can only eat the raw stuff you farm, no crafting any dishes with it. So I guess if you found some Super Corn it would be worth having points in LOTL, but eating anything else raw isn't really viable.

 

In this scenario, is cooking considered crafting?

 

No cooking.

 

Also, a heads up for those wanting to try this. It also means no crafting first aid. And since first aid items are hard to find at traders, you'll want to make sure and find and scavenge pills stores, or at least all the medicine cabinets and little medicine stashes you can find. And until you get a weapon, you'll have to be very careful in combat. You'll have to punch everything to death and try to stay out of their reach, which isn't easy. I also recommend saving up any arrows and ammo you find so that when you do find a bow or gun, you'll have some ammo for it.

 

EDIT: Also, keep in mind that finding rebar frames and then upgrading them with concrete mix that you bought is legit. But crafting concrete from scratch is not. You can upgrade anything you find, you just can't create anything from scratch.

[Hazeree]

Then by your own definition, crafting a vehicle (even if you found parts), is prohibited. Same goes for arrows huh?

[jdm311]

In my current game I play an easier version of this. I couldn't make any tools/weapons/vehicles (except the bike and starter items). I wanted to simulate crafting as close to reality as possible. It's not realistic that I could craft a shotgun or auger or motorcycle. Crafting medical supplies and food doesn't seem that unintuitive. So while it is restrictive to progression, it makes scavenging a lot more fun (especially since the loss of books). Finding higher tiers of tools/weapons is also exciting due to the collection of mods amassed. The only things I've yet to find are the gyrocopter chassis and a steel shovel above tier 3.

[Mephistopheles]

Then by your own definition, crafting a vehicle (even if you found parts), is prohibited. Same goes for arrows huh?

 

Assembling and adding mods is fine, just no crafting of any kind. If you found a minibike chassis, minibike handlebars, engine, battery, and 2 wheels, you could assemble that without any crafting. No crafting arrows, I sell or scrap any arrowheads I find. But I haven't assembled any vehicles because finding all the parts is nearly impossible, not to mention you'd have to find a working workbench. But I haven't really sought out finding vehicle parts because it's a 4k map and only traveling on foot is more challenging.

[Mephistopheles]

I agree, and there are plenty of variations to this playstyle that could make it more or less fun and more or less challenging/frustrating. I'll probably continue to tweak my own rules for my own playthroughs, but figured this was a pretty good starting point because it really makes you think about every decision you make, and you have to keep a LOT of priorities in mind just to find a path to easier survival. My first playthrough using this, I died 8 times in the first week. But I loved it because there was real tension the whole time I was playing. So in a way, this let me feel like a noob again instead of someone who has thousands of hours and just going through the motions and never really facing any real danger.

[Hazeree]

Assembling and adding mods is fine, just no crafting of any kind. If you found a minibike chassis, minibike handlebars, engine, battery, and 2 wheels, you could assemble that without any crafting. No crafting arrows, I sell or scrap any arrowheads I find.

 

In A16 you could assemble the minibike without a workbench. Now, you have to use the workbench to craft vehicles. If you refuse to 'craft' food but allow yourself to use the workbench, I guess I'm lost.

[Mephistopheles]

In A16 you could assemble the minibike without a workbench. Now, you have to use the workbench to craft vehicles. If you refuse to 'craft' food but allow yourself to use the workbench, I guess I'm lost.

 

Like I said, I haven't used the workbench to assemble anything. You don't have to either, so I'm not sure why you're lost.

[Sawth77]

Honestly, ideas like this (or other types of Survival modes) without having to use mods would be an incredibly welcome addition to the game. Maybe something like that can be put into the game at some future point?

[eXSe]

Why no cooking? You're not making something from scratch, you have the ingredients, just like for the vehicle.