Less weapon/tool/gear crafting

[Jihh]

Hello guys and girls.

This is my first thread in this forum, so please be nice.

Beforehand: I'm not crying, whining, complaining, blaming, ..., I'm just curious to know, if others have the same experience, and if it's meant to be that way. But since english isn't my first language I might sound too serious or even salty.

 

I'm at day 29 now in A18 and I wear not a single weapon, tool oder gear I crafted myself. I started the game with A15. Back then and in A16 I crafted most of those items myself. In A17 I had a good mix between self crafted Items and found items / quest rewards in early and mid game, while I crafted all items myself in the endgame.

 

Now in A18 it isn't surprising that at least half the items are found, like they were in A17, but actually it isn't just half, it's all of them. I can craft bows (up to compound bows) and knifes on the same quality (4) I already found, but since I already found them, I won't craft them, so (at least for the bow) I will have the mats to craft a level 5 one, as soon as I can build one. All the other items, I can craft at quality level 1 or not at all, so naturally I found better ones than I can craft already.

I don't dislike it so far. It's actually more realistic, that my character can't craft everything at the start and has to learn everything and that this process takes time. A lot of time. And it actually makes fun, to not farm tons of iron (what is mostly used for tools and weapons) everytime I reach a new tier and craft everything, but instead play with what I have and hope for upgrades. Every chest, crate, quest, ... has the chance to strengthen my character.

But I'm not completely sold on not being able to craft better stuff for the items I'm specialized in. This isn't a huge problem, but I find it sad, since it lessens the impact of the perks I bought. They still provide more damage, so they aren't wasted, but at that point there is little reason to stick to those weapons (and I'm actually using my javelin more often than my knife). Most of my damage comes from agility and stealthing. With a good weapon and good mods, it doesn't matter if it's a bow/knife or not.

 

Now, what to expect further in the mid game and later on in the end game? As far as I know the maximum crafting quality is level 5, while items can be found with level 6. So while I haven't been in the end game yet, it's very likely that I won't wear any self crafted weapon, tool or gear then. At least if nothing big changes in the end game that I have overlooked so far. So as I see it, the crafting part of perks is of limited use, while lucky looter seems to be the most valuable perk in the game now.

 

While I do like this new experience overall, I don't really like that I can't contribute to my gear with crafting at all. Imho I should at least be able, to make the best items on the type I'm specialized in. I also don't like the spot it puts lucky looter in, since it seems like a waste to not bring it up to 5 right from the go. It also devalues weapon parts. I do like them (despite them filling up my bags on looting tours), but if I won't craft anything with them, why even bother carrying them home?

I haven't specced into lucky looter yet, so my experience isn't related to it yet. So aside from lucky looter existing, I wish for a bit more self contribution to my weapons/tools/gear. On top of more self contribution I'd like for weapon/tool/armor parts to be more useful. So even without the existance of lucky looter, I feel like the system can be improved so that perks and parts get more value. But I can't conceal that lucky looter makes it even worse by devaluing those things even more.

 

How did you all experience it? Do you craft your own weapons/tools/gear, or do you also rely completely on found stuff? What's the experience in the end game for those who already reached it?

[Psychodabble]

Your observations fit pretty well with my experience, but I have the opposite conclusion. I'm totally biased because my playstyle is focused on scavenging for loot and crafting only for building and going Perception/Lucky Looter heavy is my jam.

 

That being said, I think it's super fun looting for upgrades. I look at perks as a fallback mechanism to fill the gaps of stuff that RNG denies you that you don't want to wait for. I waited close to a week looking for bike parts, but after finding none, I decided it was worth the perks point to not have to walk everywhere. I would've preferred to just find them, but at the end of the day, I was happy just to be mobile and had more points to spend soon enough.

 

I'm specializing in spear fighting and still finding way better spears than I can craft. I'm fine with that. It may just be the new meta to find stuff instead of crafting it and I think that's great because I'd much rather spend time exploring and scavenging than whacking away at a wall in a mine. JMO I guess.

[Jihh]

It may just be the new meta to find stuff instead of crafting it and I think that's great because I'd much rather spend time exploring and scavenging than whacking away at a wall in a mine.

 

Yeah, that's my observation and as I said, I actually like it. I just don't like that I can't contribute to my gear at all, not even the two items I'm specialized in. And I don't like the devaluing of perks and parts that come with it.

 

As it is now, I still bring everything back home and scrap unused weapons for the off chance I won't find a good item, before I can craft a better one of that type. But I think it would be more efficient to just leave behind what I don't use und save my carrying capicity for more universal materials.

[meganoth]

MM said he is thinking about lowering the chances of getting higher quality gear early in the game. This is a balancing issue and might change. It may even happen that crafted items also get random stats giving you an incentive to build weapons of a quality you already have.

 

Generally I don't see much impact if you can build your own weapon once or twice. I find crafting interesting when you craft tens or hundreds of those items. Crafting cobblestone, medicine and food are "good" examples of crafting in my book that don't interfere with scavenging.

 

For A18: One of my co-players would have built a lvl3 stun baton today if we didn't have a shortage of glue just now. I myself still have a lvl1 pistol and will possibly build a better one shortly (if we find enough bones). So even now the balance isn't totally off, depends on luck and play style (if you play min-max with the knowledge where all the weapon boxes are in POIs you can scavenge so fast that crafting can't compete, but a novice player doesn't have that option and vanilla is balanced for novice players)

[Katitof]

I don't mind it, it finally makes non crafter playstyles viable choice and since low quality items aren't really trash as they used to be in previous alpha, its a very welcome balance adjustment.

 

Plus, to craft better quality tools/weapons you still need to find these weapons for parts.

[Luzifer]

I'm having a good time as Quester&Looter rn. I bought a full Bicycle from my local trader at day 3.

Also the minibike later on at d10.

Its remarkable how using the earlygame with questing, catapults you through the early- directly into the midgame at d14.

Right now i Have My Stash in a claimed POi and am building my Hordedefense base near it with Concrete blocks.

I skipped past flagstone 'n' Bricks by just looting\questing, gettin myself a chainsaw+auger.

[Brian9824]

Yep - see this enhancement thread in part because of what your noticing - https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?128416-Tie-in-repairs-of-items-to-crafting-skills

[Gazz]

MM said he is thinking about lowering the chances of getting higher quality gear early in the game. This is a balancing issue and might change. It may even happen that crafted items also get random stats giving you an incentive to build weapons of a quality you already have.

Merging the weapon parts as in the last patch was one step. It makes it far more likely that you will be able to craft a weapon that you don't have, yet.

 

Given the current parts economy, I would not be furious over the idea of random stats on crafted items.

Sure, minmaxers would still craft The Perfect Stone Axe or iron pick but... that's nice but not end game gear.

However - that comes with the risk of crafting a very crappy T1 weapon and a new player would in no way be aware of that and come to the conclusion that iron tools are not worth it.

So this is not something that can be tossed in there without taking a long hard look at edge cases.

[Brian9824]

Merging the weapon parts as in the last patch was one step. It makes it far more likely that you will be able to craft a weapon that you don't have, yet.

 

Given the current parts economy, I would not be furious over the idea of random stats on crafted items.

Sure, minmaxers would still craft The Perfect Stone Axe or iron pick but... that's nice but not end game gear.

However - that comes with the risk of crafting a very crappy T1 weapon and a new player would in no way be aware of that and come to the conclusion that iron tools are not worth it.

So this is not something that can be tossed in there without taking a long hard look at edge cases.

 

 

A lot of that would be resolved though if you did display the stat range of the gear. So that people were aware for instance their stone axe was only 10 damage out of say possibly 25.

[Gazz]

Yah, but tailoring the game to minmaxers' needs is not a good idea. =P

[Brian9824]

Yah, but tailoring the game to minmaxers' needs is not a good idea. =P

 

I don't really see that as being really a min maxer thing. It's like buying a car and being told it gets 20 mpg. Without a reference to what your other options are you'd have no way of knowing if that's good or bad. Like if i'm gonna spend dukes to buy tool or weapon from trader i'd want to know roughly how good it is or if i'd be better off just saving my money.

 

I mean the min/maxer's could always just look at the XML to know, or the wiki that will get updated with the ranges. The one that gets hurt the most is the new players who don't know that info.

[Carl_Bar]

This more than matches my own experiance. Myself and a relative are playing a 2 person fresh start in A18 and despite deliberately cranking the XP multiplier way up, (we didn't want to transfer an old save as we weren't sure what would happen and we wanted to get stuck in ASAP to get a feel for things), what we're looting is nearly allways as good or better than what we can craft. Crafting feels completly supflervous for weapons, tools, and armour. With an XP multiplier that high the amount of chances we have to get such good gear on a per level gained basis is way lower than typical.

 

And it's not just a case of finding odd items like this, where routinely finding items equal to or better than the best we can craft, this has been true across many days, player levels, and tiers of gear. There's been many times where we've looted somthing better than we can craft, only an in game day or two later to loot somthing else better still.

 

It's primarily food, farming, and base building that where using crafting for, (and ammo).

 

Now don't get me wrong, it's no bad thing that crafting can't replace looting near completely. But right now we've got the opposite situation. Looting is replacing crafting. Neither is desirable as either one renders an entire game system non-functional.

 

Honestly 90% of the issue, (now they're seriously reduced the range of part types, though i think further tweaking is needed there), is to make actual functional item drops much rarer and replace the removed drops with parts drops instead. If it was that much harder to find anything functional the number of good drops would be significantly reduced as well and that means that whilst you can and, (thanks to T6 being loot only), eventually will find better looted items, your very unlikely to be able to find everything or even a majority of items before you can craft them unless you delibretly ignore crafting. But you'd need to reduce intact items spawns at least and order of magnitude IMO, probably more.

[Darthjake]

Right now I'm frantically searching for more steel tools to scrap so I can make my maxed out quality 5 tools. Will we be able to make quality 6 items? Or will be stuck at quality 5 for both tools and weapons?

 

Also a side question, how long do thrown spears persist in the world. I got killed by a boar, and lost my quality 3 metal spear. Since it's day 3, and it was a lucky find, it's going to be a while before I get another one of that level, much less the flaming shaft mod that was on it.

 

I happened to miss the boar with the spear, so I scoured the area harvesting all the plant fiber trying to find where it might be, but that's another question, when you get killed by a boar, they wander off / despawn I guess. What would happen if I had hit the boar would the spear also go away then too?

[meganoth]

Now don't get me wrong, it's no bad thing that crafting can't replace looting near completely. But right now we've got the opposite situation. Looting is replacing crafting. Neither is desirable as either one renders an entire game system non-functional.

 

Honestly 90% of the issue, (now they're seriously reduced the range of part types, though i think further tweaking is needed there), is to make actual functional item drops much rarer and replace the removed drops with parts drops instead. If it was that much harder to find anything functional the number of good drops would be significantly reduced as well and that means that whilst you can and, (thanks to T6 being loot only), eventually will find better looted items, your very unlikely to be able to find everything or even a majority of items before you can craft them unless you delibretly ignore crafting. But you'd need to reduce intact items spawns at least and order of magnitude IMO, probably more.

 

First of all crafting isn't replaced, only crafting of weapons and armor.

 

Personally I like it how it is at the moment. Crafting weapons and armor is merely a safety valve if you can't find a good weapon of your specialization, but otherwise the weapons you use can be relatively random. This creates the need to adapt. One playthrough you have to depend on the tier2 weapon for a long time, the next you have your tier3 early, the next you might even rely and put some points into a weapon of a different attribute because it is just too good. That the game is providing these hard choices is excellent and would be lost if you could find weapon parts readily.

 

For me crafting versus scavenging works best when they don't step on each others feet. Crafting could be the best way for specific items or item groups. But it should not make the game into something where you can plan your progress from beginning to end. For example specific mods could be very seldom in loot but the recipes drop in normal frequency or are given out by books.

[Gr.o.m.]

Looting & buying also makes farming & cooking less viable. Why sink points into farming if you can get the better food (canned) via buying?

By getting leves in better barter you get discount in the vending machines and since they replenish every day, you have a verry reliable foodsource. So bet better barter and "farm" the traider and the vending machines

[Katitof]

Looting & buying also makes farming & cooking less viable. Why sink points into farming if you can get the better food (canned) via buying?

By getting leves in better barter you get discount in the vending machines and since they replenish every day, you have a verry reliable foodsource. So bet better barter and "farm" the traider and the vending machines

 

You'll know instantly the moment you'll start playing multiplayer.

Drops and traders/vending machines are fine for solo, but a group will not survive on cans alone.

[Feycat]

I don't mind it, it finally makes non crafter playstyles viable choice .

 

But it pretty much makes crafters a non-viable choice. That's not fun.

[Ralathar44]

Merging the weapon parts as in the last patch was one step. It makes it far more likely that you will be able to craft a weapon that you don't have, yet.

 

Given the current parts economy, I would not be furious over the idea of random stats on crafted items.

Sure, minmaxers would still craft The Perfect Stone Axe or iron pick but... that's nice but not end game gear.

However - that comes with the risk of crafting a very crappy T1 weapon and a new player would in no way be aware of that and come to the conclusion that iron tools are not worth it.

So this is not something that can be tossed in there without taking a long hard look at edge cases.

 

 

TBH I don't need to minmax, I just want crafting to be useful. If all crafting did was craft rather weak or meh baseline versions of things I replaced later with better looted items I'd be happy. This is actually kind of the way it works with leather/iron armor, T2 melee weapons, T2 tools, etc that are not parts limited and that feels satisfying. However the parts economy completely breaks that ability for T2 weapons. I'm ok with T3 being something I have to heavy scavenge for.

 

The problem I find with the parts economy right now is that skill ranks make your parts requirements increase faster than parts availability even if you account for all available parts via scrapping, found, trader. At low quality levels you'll prolly just find the weapon. At higher quality levels it's extremely difficult to get enough parts before you find a weapon at that quality. Then when you DO craft the weapon your crafted weapon is often worse than looted weapons 1-2 quality tiers lower. So weapon crafting really doesn't seem to have a place in the current implementation of the parts economy.

 

Crafting for parts based T2 items currently serves neither the purpose of giving you a reliable baseline nor the purpose of min maxing. In it's current implementation it's just superflorous. I think I've vendrored literally every parts based Item I've crafted so far because my looted stuff was better and while that was worth more dukes than the parts and my needs for that weapon were covered by looting, the results of that crafting felt frustrating rather than satisfying.

 

I understand that balancing is always hard and edge cases and exploits about. I can give ideas like choosing quality levels of unlocking the ability to craft parts at x/5 skill ranks, or changing the distribution of the parts vs full weapons economy. But I understand each of those is a complicated balancing puzzle with it's own considerations.

 

All I can do is give you my honest feedback of my experience and how it made me feel, and right now the parts economy based crafting system is not there yet for T2. I'm totally fine with that scavenging scramble for T3. But for T2 it just feels not useful, frustrating, and bad. This is the baseline most builds run off of.

[Katitof]

But it pretty much makes crafters a non-viable choice. That's not fun.

 

No, it makes crafters actually leave their cozy cave.

 

Also, everyone is a crafter in this alpha, crafting perks IMPROVE weapons, tools and armor effectiveness, they are ALWAYS useful.

You also aren't getting showered with purples all the time.

[Gr.o.m.]

You'll know instantly the moment you'll start playing multiplayer.

Drops and traders/vending machines are fine for solo, but a group will not survive on cans alone.

 

I only play multiplayer. And I firmly belive that investing your time into something substandard, like cooked food (substandard because it can cause food poisoning) instead of getting the good stuff in not efficient. You force either your group to invest into perks to reduce the chance of food poisoning or wasting time and resources.

You could instead adapt. No need for your group to waste perkpoints into farming when your Trader can farm a couple of vending machines.

While he sells the meat to trader rect.

[Jihh]

Crafting could be the best way for specific items or item groups. But it should not make the game into something where you can plan your progress from beginning to end.

 

Actually drops are too reliable atm. If they weren't I would be able to craft better stuff. So my progress is even faster than I planned it to be. I'd love to not be able to completely plan my progress and have my crafting skills to at least get some stuff safe, while hoping the rest will drop. But as it is now, the progress is planable.

 

Offtopic:

 

 

By getting leves in better barter you get discount in the vending machines and since they replenish every day, you have a verry reliable foodsource. So bet better barter and "farm" the traider and the vending machines

Yes, Lucky Looter and Better Barter and you are done. Buying all my food from vending machines feels cheap, but since any other food has the risk of food poisoning, that's the way I go. On my second morning I wanted to quickly eat a snack before I go out, so I don't have to carry any food with me. I got food poisoning droping my stamina to ~25. So I had to eat three more bacon and eggs to be back at where I started. That was all the food I had. So the next day I used the vending machine and didn't stop. I still do farming, I still hunt game and I still gather eggs, because I like to do that part of the game, but all that stuff gets into an extra chest, because I don't use it.

 

 

You'll know instantly the moment you'll start playing multiplayer.

Drops and traders/vending machines are fine for solo, but a group will not survive on cans alone.

 

I started a new game with two friends today, after I opened this thread. We made it to day 8 and haven't eaten anything besides canned food. We have three vending machines in less than 300m distance (two near to each other, the third at the trader). We've also found three additional vending machines in less than 500m distance, but we don't want to spend all money on food, so we don't use those.

Currently we have enough food for 3-4 more days and have enough tea to fill a pool with it. With a bigger group you will need more vending machines (I guess about one per person), but then again you just need one player to visit all vending machines first thing in the morning. That's less work than hunting enough game for everyone to eat.

In a third game I started, but played for just two days, I had a fire station as my base. There are already two vending machines in. With a trader nearby you are completely set as a three man group.

 

 

[Ghostlight]

Day 13 and I have level 6 Pump Shotgun, AK and Pistol, and level 5 most Steel Tools. All found in the world. Balanced?

 

Also I can swing a level 5 Steel Pick all day with zero Stamina issues having only 3 points in Sexy Rex. Balanced?

[beHypE]

Same experience here. And that is actually ONLY if you decide to heavily invest from the get go in a specific item type, in order to keep up with found loot. Every type of gun has its own specialization which makes it so you can actually only keep up the crafting with the looting for one specific item type. For all the rest you simply won't ever craft any sort of item because it would be way overshadowed by what you'll have found by then.

 

A first step into the right direction could be to lower the perk requirement for quality by one. Right now the first perk doesn't even grant you any quality boost. You're still crafting level 1 stuff and it takes you an additional 2 points to actually craft level 2. From a strategic point of view that is probably never a good idea unless you plan on specializing. Being able to craft level 2 stuff if you invest one point, along with some damage boosts, would make crafting tremendously more appealing early game, until you find good stuff at higher gamestages.

 

To compensate we should be able to find packs of 3-6 parts a decent amount of the time, while finding fully functional items a bit less often.

 

Finally, crafted items should have a randomized range and i'd argue for a "1/4 to 3/4 range", making a crafted item always at least a decent version but never one of the best.

 

It would at least bring back that "makeshift" phase of the game where you try to get a forge running and scramble some parts together in order to craft some low level tools & weapons as a decent starter pack. The part system should be such a huge part of the game to be honest, when you think about it it's the best of two worlds, you get to loot AND you get to craft !

[Jihh]

No, it makes crafters actually leave their cozy cave.

 

Also, everyone is a crafter in this alpha, crafting perks IMPROVE weapons, tools and armor effectiveness, they are ALWAYS useful.

You also aren't getting showered with purples all the time.

 

Uhm yeah. I don't need weapons and armor to stay in a cozy cave, but to get out and do stuff.

 

As I said earlier, I don't want to craft my whole gear and actually enjoy finding most of it. But I'd love to craft at least those items I'm specialized in. I'd love to craft my shiny new weapon, after farming materials for some time, go into a big building and smash zombies with it. But instead I go in and change gear every few meters, since something better drops. I don't know, it doesn't feel rewarding at all. Where is my contribution in being lucky?

 

If I were managing a shortage, in a way that my gear is always just a few zombies away from breaking and I would have to use whatever I get and try to save something powerful for some harder rooms, then I'd have some contribution in getting the managing done, but that isn't the situation we have. We have an oversupply of weapon, tools and armor, so my contribution is comparing tooltips.

 

I'd love to see a better balance betweend found and crafted gear.

 

Regarding crafting perks improving weapon damage: Currently I get 260% headshot damage from agility, and +150% damage from hidden strikes and +40% from archery. I could've put those four points in perception and lucky looter and probably would have even better gear now (in almost all slots). With 5 points in archery (I'm still at 4) you could get 3 in lucky looter. The damage on it's own doesn't stand up to lucky looter. At least not in early and mid game when talent points are scarce.

If those talent points would help me in getting a better weapon and thus even more damage, they would be way more worthwhile.

 

 

But as I also said before, it's not just the talent points. It's also the whole mechanic that gets devalued. What's the point of adding all those weapon parts, if you don't craft any weapon at all?

 

Now please don't anyone get me wrong. I'm pretty confident that TFP is on the same page and want perks and mechanics be valuable. It's probably hard to balance and they had more important stuff to do. So I'm not complaining that the balance between found and crafted gear is off in the current version. I'm just sharing my experience to see if others have the same experience and so that TFP get some feedback on that balance.

[Feycat]

No, it makes crafters actually leave their cozy cave.

 

Also, everyone is a crafter in this alpha, crafting perks IMPROVE weapons, tools and armor effectiveness, they are ALWAYS useful.

You also aren't getting showered with purples all the time.

 

You literally just proved my point. Being a crafter is no longer a viable playstyle in multiplayer.