A little peak of enthusiasm, but then a steep fall into disappointment...

[White-Gandalf]

After starting the first A18 trial and overcoming the first hurdle with abysmal fps, it looked promising at first:

 

• The concept with the simple predrawn biomes picture for RWG is a functional workaround for the moment to get a sensible world structure.
  
• The landscape structure in RWG is rather nice - at least in comparison to A17.
  
• The new icons are nice. Not necessary for playability, but nice.
  
• The block shape switching concept is the one best thing about this alpha in my opinion.
  
• The weapon swinging concept is promising. Not ideal, but better than A17.
  

 

But then the disappointments accumulate:

 

• The graphics performance goes down every now and then without any recognizable reason. You have to go into the video menu to switch ANYTHING forth and back for the graphics engine to calm itself. It's obviously bugged.
  
• The loot list 25 is seriously meant to be so? In difficulty "nomad", you have to impact about 5 arrows into one single of the most simple zombies to get him defeated (not to mention any of the more difficult ones). So you have to find two birds nest PER SIMPLE ZOMBIE?!? You have to find 20 birds nest for one of the most simple POIs to be cleared out? Let me guess: You want to deprecate ranged fight with bows alltogether, but you didn't want to say that openly, am i right? For comparison: You find A LOT more ammunition than feathers. Which you cannot use, obviously, because you miss the correspondent weapons.
  
• The "rage" concept seems to contradict the previous point: Since you are unable to avoid being hit in melee combat because of the rage, you are forced to use ranged combat to weaken the enemies beforehand. But you have to invest a whole day in gathering enough feathers for one single most simple POI.
  
• The gardening is completely screwed: Multiple people with multiple different and antagonal ideas worked on the matter so that the descriptions contradict the facts in the xmls. You ones again have to comb through the xmls to become able to at least get an idea of what concepts may have been in the minds of the developers. There are ways to implement changes "incrementally", you know?!
  

 

Well: At this point i temporarily give up.

[Khulkhuum]

I sometimes find no arrows and sometimes 5 or more in a nest. Investing into bow skills sometimes allows me to kill a zombie in one hit (beheading it) or need a couple arrows (unless sneak attack bonus kicks in). This isn't different from A17 though. If you didn't invest into bow damage (or didn't have the CompoBow), nor didn't use sneak attacks, you also had to put a couple arrows into their heads to kill them.

 

Can't say much about performance. Started out at low quality, but pimped up my texture settings to high, with Reflection Quality OFF and most cumbersome video settings on low. Runs pretty okay so far.

 

Rage mechanic is something you have to get used to. It's something new and different the regular playing. Similarly as A17 AI was different from A16. You have to take into account more variables, be careful in different ways, not simply hit and backpedal. I'm fairly capable of doing melee against Zs. I died 2 times against Boars, once against a Dire Wolf and once while stepping on a mine. Got my share of hits from zombies, but also had quite a few spectacular kills.

 

No say on gardening, haven't done that yet.

 

It's also a pity you're giving up, as the game offers so much more to players. Try different strategies, use different weapons. You don't have to only use a bow. You also don't have to use only a single map. A lot of gameplay is pure chance. Perhaps you'll have better luck on another world? Better spawning position, better loot in nearby POIs, etc.?

[beHypE]

Jesus I can't help but saying it, stop whining and git gud. Your concerns aren't even issues to begin with, you're just frustrated that you have to relearn stuff you thought acquired. And your list of "promising stuff" is laughable, you didn't even mention the major features of A18.

 

- Performance has been discussed over and over again. It's experimental, it's getting worked on, chill.

- Regarding nests, start by destroying them, you'll get more feathers than by simply looting them. And yes, FINALLY, the day 1 quality 1 bow actually doesn't 2-tap all the zombies with deadly accuracy. How's that a bad thing ? If it bothers you, turn down difficulty ?

- Rage is in no way uncounterable when you melee, again, just get good

 

Finally the game presents a challenge and you cry about it ? Spawn yourself some guns with godmode and call it a day, or play something else.

[Scyris]

After starting the first A18 trial and overcoming the first hurdle with abysmal fps, it looked promising at first:

 

• The concept with the simple predrawn biomes picture for RWG is a functional workaround for the moment to get a sensible world structure.
  
• The landscape structure in RWG is rather nice - at least in comparison to A17.
  
• The new icons are nice. Not necessary for playability, but nice.
  
• The block shape switching concept is the one best thing about this alpha in my opinion.
  
• The weapon swinging concept is promising. Not ideal, but better than A17.
  

 

But then the disappointments accumulate:

 

• The graphics performance goes down every now and then without any recognizable reason. You have to go into the video menu to switch ANYTHING forth and back for the graphics engine to calm itself. It's obviously bugged.
  
• The loot list 25 is seriously meant to be so? In difficulty "nomad", you have to impact about 5 arrows into one single of the most simple zombies to get him defeated (not to mention any of the more difficult ones). So you have to find two birds nest PER SIMPLE ZOMBIE?!? You have to find 20 birds nest for one of the most simple POIs to be cleared out? Let me guess: You want to deprecate ranged fight with bows alltogether, but you didn't want to say that openly, am i right? For comparison: You find A LOT more ammunition than feathers. Which you cannot use, obviously, because you miss the correspondent weapons.
  
• The "rage" concept seems to contradict the previous point: Since you are unable to avoid being hit in melee combat because of the rage, you are forced to use ranged combat to weaken the enemies beforehand. But you have to invest a whole day in gathering enough feathers for one single most simple POI.
  
• The gardening is completely screwed: Multiple people with multiple different and antagonal ideas worked on the matter so that the descriptions contradict the facts in the xmls. You ones again have to comb through the xmls to become able to at least get an idea of what concepts may have been in the minds of the developers. There are ways to implement changes "incrementally", you know?!
  

 

Well: At this point i temporarily give up.

 

Archery is pretty much garbage in A18 due to lack of feathers, and generally low damage. I find more ammo in average poi's then i'd find running around to try to get feathers, use a gun, any gun. Also most melee/archery weapons are REALLY weak without perks. Only exception really is blunts if you can find a sledge (or craft the stone one), or a iron club (or better a baseball bat). Guns are generally the go to, and there is much less risk to using them in A18 due to less zombies both in poi's and outside.

 

The Rage concept is more of a git gud thing, I mostly melee and I rarely if ever get hit, learn the timing. Go in to hit them after they swing at you when you first approach, gives you enough time to go in get a hit and get back, this is coming from me doing a knife melee build, which is by far the worse early game weapon. I also play on warrior, so my zombies hit about 50-75% harder than they do on the default. I also don't think the bleed from deep cuts is working right either. a single bleed does 1 hp/sec damage, a power attack with deep cuts lv 3 is supposed to stack 4 instantly, but somehow thats 2 hp/s, which is 2 normal swing bleeds stacked, so something is not right there.

 

As for Farming, i'm on day 9 or 10, and have had no need to even cook meat yet. I have 300+ meat sitting in a storage chest I never ever had to use, canned food is everywhere, including in vending machines. There is more than enough for a player to live on with how slow food/water drains. Especially once you get the book that unlocks pure mineral water, which the recipe for that is: 1 murky water, 1 coal, 1 chrystemum and 1 golden rod. Makes a 60 water thing that stacks to 10. Then again, I find so much boiled water in poi's I have a stack of 10 of these on me and have never had to use one yet. I just drink the boiled water as I find em and its been enough to keep me capped.

[Scyris]

Jesus I can't help but saying it, stop whining and git gud. Your concerns aren't even issues to begin with, you're just frustrated that you have to relearn stuff you thought acquired. And your list of "promising stuff" is laughable, you didn't even mention the major features of A18.

 

- Performance has been discussed over and over again. It's experimental, it's getting worked on, chill.

- Regarding nests, start by destroying them, you'll get more feathers than by simply looting them. And yes, FINALLY, the day 1 quality 1 bow actually doesn't 2-tap all the zombies with deadly accuracy. How's that a bad thing ? If it bothers you, turn down difficulty ?

- Rage is in no way uncounterable when you melee, again, just get good

 

Finally the game presents a challenge and you cry about it ? Spawn yourself some guns with godmode and call it a day, or play something else.

 

Pretty much how I feel about people whining about the rage mechanic, I just didn't word it so.. bluntly. Destroying nests however, means they won't respawn. I've just stoped using archery, its a waste of time in A18, It did need some nerfs on the damage size as some crossbows were stronger than guns. Nerfing the birds nests though as hard as they did in terms of spawn rate and feather drop rate, hurt it even more, as now it does lower damage, and its much harder to get ammo.

 

I do have a tip though, get below 75% hp and go to the wasteland, zombie vultures spawn like crazy in there, and they give 30 feathers each unperked, and some bones too!. Much faster than looking for nests if your willing to take the risk, only nasty thing there early game is zombie dogs.

[dregonazure]

For melee, day 1 I made a spear and rarely did I ever get hit, mostly just gotta poke em a lot when they go rage mode and you should be fine.

[Khulkhuum]

I pretty much use arrows most of the time. Yes i put 1 point into them and have 3 in AGI, but i'm doing fine. Perhaps it's due to it being before 2nd HN (early game still). I am not swimming in feathers (as in A17) and don't have an abundance of arrows, but always above 50 in backpack, even when i lose some. Used a lot during 1st HN, but i'll be sure to rely on gun turret and pistol next. Exploring POIs with a bow feels similar as in A17 though, just more balanced in sense of sleeper amounts.

 

And no, still using T1 primitive bow, no fancy variant.

[White-Gandalf]

Late addition after the second playthrough: I adapted to the abysmal low feather count as well as to the tough gardening/cooking system. Since all of them were reshaped to tough knapsack problems concerning skill points, too (beside of the low count of feathers), finding feathers as well as eggs in the first days has proven crucial for me. So i went to explicit hunting parties, where i did nothing else than gathering birds nests, and, by the way, gathering some dears and wolves, which seem to be provided in plentiful counts in relation to feathers and eggs (i now always have multiple stacks of mead lying around).

 

Aside of that, i switched from bow to pistol and have plenty of ammunition for the latter, as well as feathers - because i mostly do not use them anymore. Obviously, the balance between bows/crossbows and Guns has been heavily shifted, as many commentators confirmed.

 

Thus, for later game balancing, i would recommend to slightly (! not meant sarcastically, but honestly) shift the balance back to bows. Of course, all that is a matter of personal preferences. I think people preferring guns are very happy with the current state.

[Ghostlight]

OP, sorry to be "that guy" but it sounds like all you need to do is lower the difficulty and you will enjoy things more. Bullet sponge enemies are crap design and there is no shame whatsoever in removing them via a setting.

 

And yeah bows are pretty much dead in the game now. Period.

[Xtrakicking]

Couple things:

 

[*] The loot list 25 is seriously meant to be so? In difficulty "nomad", you have to impact about 5 arrows into one single of the most simple zombies to get him defeated (not to mention any of the more difficult ones). So you have to find two birds nest PER SIMPLE ZOMBIE?!? You have to find 20 birds nest for one of the most simple POIs to be cleared out?

 

Arrows stick to zombies more often than not. You don't need anywhere near "20 birdnests" to clear a simple POI.

 

[*] The "rage" concept seems to contradict the previous point: Since you are unable to avoid being hit in melee combat because of the rage, you are forced to use ranged combat to weaken the enemies beforehand. But you have to invest a whole day in gathering enough feathers for one single most simple POI.

 

Since when does the rage thing make the player unable to avoid being hit? I still melee a lot in A18 and, while the new rage mechanic has increased slightly the amount of times I get hit, I can still avoid zombie attacks and swings with no further issue. Saying the player is unable to avoid being hit with the new rage sounds a bit exaggerated.

[White-Gandalf]

Since when does the rage thing make the player unable to avoid being hit? I still melee a lot in A18 and, while the new rage mechanic has increased slightly the amount of times I get hit, I can still avoid zombie attacks and swings with no further issue. Saying the player is unable to avoid being hit with the new rage sounds a bit exaggerated.

 

That, for sure, depends on the PC system you have: If you have a high end PC, you will surely have no problems going melee. I cannot argue on that, because i don't have such one. If you have a PC that was middle class 4 years ago - like the one i have - you are in serious trouble with A17/A18. The microlags have increased hugely - you have up to abut a tenth second lags running all the time. The enemies on the pother hand are jerking with frequencies in the order of 10 Hz. So on my system, you effectively get snapshots from their movement in battle where it looks as if they warp through time and space. You will only by accident and much randomness eventually score a hit.

 

There are many possible mitigations against that behavior:

 

• don't go into melee
  
• attack from the shadows, waiting till the enemies stand still, only shaking their heads, which by the way is annoying enough
  
• throw molotovs or pipe bombs or granades
  
• change the code so that microlags vanish
  

 

I prefer the first and second mitigation. Cause the others i cannot execute, at least not yet and not on everydays targets, sorry. The last one can only be handled by the funpimps.

[Laz Man]

OP, sorry to be "that guy" but it sounds like all you need to do is lower the difficulty and you will enjoy things more. Bullet sponge enemies are crap design and there is no shame whatsoever in removing them via a setting.

 

And yeah bows are pretty much dead in the game now. Period.

 

Even with the explosive variant? 🤔

[Ghostlight]

Well I never tried that in fairness.

[Laz Man]

Well I never tried that in fairness.

 

Me either, I recall someone on forums stating they were great late game.

[Laz Man]

That, for sure, depends on the PC system you have: If you have a high end PC, you will surely have no problems going melee. I cannot argue on that, because i don't have such one. If you have a PC that was middle class 4 years ago - like the one i have - you are in serious trouble with A17/A18. The microlags have increased hugely - you have up to abut a tenth second lags running all the time. The enemies on the pother hand are jerking with frequencies in the order of 10 Hz. So on my system, you effectively get snapshots from their movement in battle where it looks as if they warp through time and space. You will only by accident and much randomness eventually score a hit.

 

There are many possible mitigations against that behavior:

 

• don't go into melee
  
• attack from the shadows, waiting till the enemies stand still, only shaking their heads, which by the way is annoying enough
  
• throw molotovs or pipe bombs or granades
  
• change the code so that microlags vanish
  

 

I prefer the first and second mitigation. Cause the others i cannot execute, at least not yet and not on everydays targets, sorry. The last one can only be handled by the funpimps.

 

What are your system specs and what settings are you running? I have a 5 year old system and I get good performance with a mix of medium/high settings. (Gtx 960 video card, 12 MB system memory)

[White-Gandalf]

Well: You meant GB. But my specs are nearly the same. Same graphics card and an AMD CPU, 16 GB RAM.

 

To be fair: The funpimps have possibly worked on the issues, thus with A18.1 b6, just yesterday, i tried to switch shadows back on. Initially only to get a glimpse of how the scene would look like if i would have been able to play with shadows enabled. And to possibly take a new screenshot.

 

But then i realized that with this A18.1 b6, shadows do not pull down FPS so badly any more. With the first A18 exp, i got drops to around 10 FPS with shadows (in a 27x27 base filled with spikes, and a tree farm nearby). Now, FPS drop by about 20%, but that is still playable. Nearly the same relations as in A16.

 

That, i consider a major advantage. Well done.

 

The microlags, however, are still there. Fingers crossed that they manage to find causes and mitigations!

[Laz Man]

Well: You meant GB. But my specs are nearly the same. Same graphics card and an AMD CPU, 16 GB RAM.

 

To be fair: The funpimps have possibly worked on the issues, thus with A18.1 b6, just yesterday, i tried to switch shadows back on. Initially only to get a glimpse of how the scene would look like if i would have been able to play with shadows enabled. And to possibly take a new screenshot.

 

But then i realized that with this A18.1 b6, shadows do not pull down FPS so badly any more. With the first A18 exp, i got drops to around 10 FPS with shadows (in a 27x27 base filled with spikes, and a tree farm nearby). Now, FPS drop by about 20%, but that is still playable. Nearly the same relations as in A16.

 

That, i consider a major advantage. Well done.

 

The microlags, however, are still there. Fingers crossed that they manage to find causes and mitigations!

 

Not sure why I said 12 MB lol. I actually upgraded to 16GB actually. On hirde nights I'm get pretty decent FPS. Here is one of my videos. Not getting any micro lag that I can remember.

 

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?133930-LazMan-vs-Day-35-Horde

[Hollowprime]

Well: You meant GB. But my specs are nearly the same. Same graphics card and an AMD CPU, 16 GB RAM.

 

To be fair: The funpimps have possibly worked on the issues, thus with A18.1 b6, just yesterday, i tried to switch shadows back on. Initially only to get a glimpse of how the scene would look like if i would have been able to play with shadows enabled. And to possibly take a new screenshot.

 

But then i realized that with this A18.1 b6, shadows do not pull down FPS so badly any more. With the first A18 exp, i got drops to around 10 FPS with shadows (in a 27x27 base filled with spikes, and a tree farm nearby). Now, FPS drop by about 20%, but that is still playable. Nearly the same relations as in A16.

 

That, i consider a major advantage. Well done.

 

The microlags, however, are still there. Fingers crossed that they manage to find causes and mitigations!

 

People have pointed it out many times the reason for the megalags is actually memory leak issues. The game doesn't need more than 8 gb of ram to run, it requires a decent memory pooling system which requires knowing how the garbage collector works.

[jbartosevich]

All of you are talking about feathers being rare, and I'm over here playing so much buzzard baseball that I can't use them fast enough. Mid level bow (wooden, not primitive) with iron arrows is treating me pretty well.

 

Seriously though, the feather delivery service (vulture attacks) works overtime for me. I tend to build my base in the desert though.

[ZombieSurvivor]

My main weapon of choice is a bow, as I am always playing a stealth build. I always have plenty of arrows. Never forget to destroy the bird nests as that will give you another 1-3 feathers per nest. Investing in the right perks will help a lot. Most times i can kill a zombie in 1 shot.

so 1 zombie = 1 feather and 8 our of nine times i can get the arrow back out the zombie.

[Khulkhuum]

I'm way into mid game (past 35 day horde) with quite a lot of different equipment and most (if not all) workstations placed in my base. Also, i've built a decent horde defense base, which withstood two hordes so far, with me getting minimal damage. I've got an abundance of ammo, using pistols and bows, but for HN i also use a T3 machine gun to use up some of that ammo i stockpile. I got 5 full stacks (250) of feathers so far, probably due to the last 2 HN containing lots of vultures.

 

One important thing to note about performance. After you start the game and get into any world, change the video quality settings at least once, even if to go back to the previous. I noticed that when you change one option and click apply, the FPS magically rises up. I had some serious lag at one point after entering my world and decided to use the old "change setting" routine (as it helped before). It turns out it (maybe?) flushes some memory/settings/cache/whatever and the FPS rises up to the regular they should have. Even if you have decent FPS on startup (20-30) it's good to do this, as the numbers could still scale up by 10-20. When i had that lag, it downed to 5-15 to come up back to 30-45 (my regular).

[ZombieSurvivor]

I'm way into mid game (past 35 day horde) with quite a lot of different equipment and most (if not all) workstations placed in my base. Also, i've built a decent horde defense base, which withstood two hordes so far, with me getting minimal damage. I've got an abundance of ammo, using pistols and bows, but for HN i also use a T3 machine gun to use up some of that ammo i stockpile. I got 5 full stacks (250) of feathers so far, probably due to the last 2 HN containing lots of vultures.

 

One important thing to note about performance. After you start the game and get into any world, change the video quality settings at least once, even if to go back to the previous. I noticed that when you change one option and click apply, the FPS magically rises up. I had some serious lag at one point after entering my world and decided to use the old "change setting" routine (as it helped before). It turns out it (maybe?) flushes some memory/settings/cache/whatever and the FPS rises up to the regular they should have. Even if you have decent FPS on startup (20-30) it's good to do this, as the numbers could still scale up by 10-20. When i had that lag, it downed to 5-15 to come up back to 30-45 (my regular).

 

Yeah the graphics options are bugged out and has been since like A17. I'm glad someone is finally noticing this. I was going to write up a bug report but had a feeling no one would actually listen so why waiste my time u know. But yeah u are right, apply graphic settings or else u get fps drops

[Hazeree]

Everybody says archery is worthless due to day 1 bow. Just deal until you find a good bow or even better a crossbow. Early game, its your silenced weapon. Late game, explosive bolts are better than even frag rockets. They do not damage blocks, and fire immediately (grenades are not so great at night when Z are running everywhere). 70 explosive bolts can take out an entire horde.

 

Archery is the shizz.

[asmosnuts]

Cant move for feathers most of the time, vultures give plenty and iron arrows come up in loot very regularly. Never really use guns ,bows are still fine apart from the missing the head shot from 4 feet away syndrome lol.

[Khulkhuum]

Yeah the graphics options are bugged out and has been since like A17. I'm glad someone is finally noticing this. I was going to write up a bug report but had a feeling no one would actually listen so why waiste my time u know. But yeah u are right, apply graphic settings or else u get fps drops

 

Don't know much about how the problems with graphics options evolved, but i am sure they are contantly reworking things on this front. At the beginning of A18 (still in EXP i think) there was a brightness bug, where you had to change Reflections Quality in any way to not get oversaturated view on everything really. It's gone now.

 

I can understand this can be overwhelming. My initial thought when my FPS dropped radically (for the first time so low and when no updates went in) was of sheer dissapointment. I walked around trying to find the source, basically unable to pinpoint if it was a POI, a group of Zs or something else. That was until i changed the settings. On the other hand, it could have been a spontanious problem, which was resolved with changing the Video Quality settings.

 

I think TFP should go the long way around, determine what changing the Video Quality settings resets or clears and find every source of a potential problem. This is not the usual "we got a bug from point X, let's investigate area around X", but more of a "we know the symptomts and let's reverse engineer what causes it". This could take A LOT of time and effort, but i think it could solve most of the problems the game currently has with dropping FPS.

 

EDIT: I'm deep into mid-game and still enjoy shooting Zs with a bow, especially as i got my hands on a compound bow. Deeply satisfying, not to mention all basic and some mid-tier Zs get headless before they can approach me. Always liked how you can shoot arrows from big distances in this game.