How soon do you expect to see better than primitive loot?

[katarynna]

34 minutes ago, Stingerwolf said:

Thanks Boidster.  With no Trader in my world , I'm totally reliant on searching for items. I was unaware of the new loot progression but it's beginning to explain why I'm getting the same low-level stuff over and over again.  35 days - no wrenches, 2 blunderbusses, one pistol on day 30, very first Bow part today.  The struggle is real.

wrenches drop early, even with the new loot progression. you are just having really really bad luck.

 

Keep hitting the kitchen and bathroom sinks as often as you can. I usually target a small apartment building or something like that when i am on the hunt with close to 100% success.

[Boidster]

1 hour ago, Stingerwolf said:

35 days - no wrenches

That's amazing. Amazingly bad. Definitely search every single sink and toolbox you find! Usually I make kitchen sinks a very high-priority loot item for the first few days or until I get a cooking pot and wrench. I don't think I've ever gone past day 3 or 4 without a wrench (though I do play on 120 minute days, which helps).

 

(Edit: in other words, what @katarynna said!)

[Kattla]

9 hours ago, Stingerwolf said:

Wait, wrenches are steel, aren't they?  Is this why, at Day 35, I have yet to find a single wrench?

In A19 they are iron tools, and can be crafted fairly cheap. Might require a point in salvage operations and some mechanical parts, can't quite remember.

[Stingerwolf]

12 minutes ago, Boidster said:

That's amazing. Amazingly bad. Definitely search every single sink and toolbox you find! Usually I make kitchen sinks a very high-priority loot item for the first few days or until I get a cooking pot and wrench. I don't think I've ever gone past day 3 or 4 without a wrench (though I do play on 120 minute days, which helps).

 

(Edit: in other words, what @katarynna said!)

 

1 hour ago, katarynna said:

wrenches drop early, even with the new loot progression. you are just having really really bad luck.

 

Keep hitting the kitchen and bathroom sinks as often as you can. I usually target a small apartment building or something like that when i am on the hunt with close to 100% success.

Thanks guys.  I do this too, pots and wrenches are highest priority for me in the early part of the game.  I've been pulling apart sinks, cracking every crate I could find I've got nada.  I've been playing this game since Alpha 8 or 9 and I've never had this much trouble.  I play at 75% loot but that's never been an issue previously.  I'm wondering if my game is borked seeing as there's no Trader on my map either

[iamnuff]

100% of primitive loot feels absolutely completely worthless. 

 

I should be crafting blunderbusses, not finding five of them in the same building, and stone tools are... they strain SoD (who put this stone hammer inside this Working Stiff crate?) and generally useless. 

Any tools you care about, you can make decent quality versions by the end of the second day. 

Give us more crafting parts for basic low-tier weapons instead, or just chunks of forged iron. 

 

Edit: To answer the op directly, I want to see better look (or rather, different loot) on minute one. 

 

Stone axes could be a drop in specific types of container (survivor backpacks or such) but they have absolutely no place being on the standard loot-table. 

What an absolute waste of a Loot-crate or a supply-drop. 

 

Edit: If pipe-guns existed (besides the blunderbuss) it wouldn't be too bad. 

Blunderbuss is a fine weapon, a pipe-pistol or a pipe-rifle would be perfectly serviceable (if still weird to find inside a shotgun messiah)

But there aren't, so you'll get four primitive bows, a stone-sledge and six stone axes from one looting trip, and you'll scrap every single one of them because you made yourself one of each during the tutorial. 

 

For tools, I'd suggest a whole other tier that sits between stone and iron. 

"Scrap" 

Jury-rigged metal tools, pre-forge but after you've had a chance to do some looting and collect some scrap-iron from a car or two. 

 

Much less weird to find on some dead-guy. He'd properly look like a post-apocalyptic scavenger, rather than a stupid caveman. 

[Tourist]

I really don't like the linear loot system we have now, but i can work with it.  What i really, really hate is getting that safe or munitions box open and seeing yet another stone ax or blunderbuss.  It's some serious b.s., imo.

[Roland]

16 hours ago, iamnuff said:

 

100% of primitive loot feels absolutely completely worthless

 

Wrenches

Oil

Duct Tape

Glue

Pipes

Ammo

Brass

Schematics

Books

Mods

Plastic

Paper

Gunpowder

PainKillers

Vitamins

Honey

Armor

Food

Water

Old World Money

Nails

Iron

Clothes

 

yep...all the 100% worthless stuff you find during the primitive stage. 

 

[Tourist]

18 minutes ago, Roland said:

Wrenches

Oil

Duct Tape

Glue

Pipes

Ammo

Brass

Schematics

Books

Mods

Plastic

Paper

Gunpowder

PainKillers

Vitamins

Honey

Armor

Food

Water

Old World Money

Nails

Iron

Clothes

 

yep...all the 100% worthless stuff you find during the primitive stage. 

 

I think you're being deliberately obtuse, but hey, i'll bite.  I think what he's referring to are the stone axes, stone hammers, stone arrows, the primitive bows, the bone knives that we get over and over, in every kind of box, safe, sealed crate, munitions box, etc.

[Roland]

2 hours ago, Tourist said:

I think you're being deliberately obtuse, but hey, i'll bite.  I think what he's referring to are the stone axes, stone hammers, stone arrows, the primitive bows, the bone knives that we get over and over, in every kind of box, safe, sealed crate, munitions box, etc.

My obtuseness was an ironic response to his overly dramatic statement. Trust me I didn’t miss his point deliberately or otherwise. But it is just laughable to say there is 100% worthless loot now in the early game. Almost every treasure room has ammo along with the primitive weaponry and often mods or armor as well. When I find my first pistol or hunting rifle or AK, I have lots of ammo banked for those weapons. Yes, I have all primitive gear but it is all upgraded to the max with all the mods  I’m finding. 
 

People who are against this system keep insisting that it’s not just because they want OP weaponry on day 1 but in all their posts they ignore all the great other kinds of loot we get starting on Day 1 as though none of that matters. Stop quacking like a duck if you are insisting you’re an eagle....

[Laz Man]

36 minutes ago, Roland said:

My obtuseness was an ironic response to his overly dramatic statement...

 

[Sunlight_Swift]

I think what the real issue is with the first tier is that the jump in difficulty between the lowest and next is too much. The next tier makes everything so much easier that people just want to get there right away. So I think what needs to happen is a lower tier of enemy that dies a lot faster to the lowest tier so the first few days aren't so much more difficult. The first days are thrilling but the games difficulty starts high, goes low for most of it then gets high again at the end. So I think people just want more stuff because the beginning feels too frustrating and creates a strong want for more.

I think the focus should be more on the resistance than the loot than how soon the loot improves. I just think that indicates that the primitive is insufficient to the challenge.

[RipClaw]

15 hours ago, Sunlight_Swift said:

I think what the real issue is with the first tier is that the jump in difficulty between the lowest and next is too much. The next tier makes everything so much easier that people just want to get there right away.

If people want it to be easier then I don't understand why they don't just start at a lower difficulty? I play on Nomad and the game seems very balanced to me. The zombies aren't bullet sponges on Nomad difficulty and a wooden club just works fine. You can always increase the difficulty later if you want. For some this is a game mode. They increase the difficulty in steps up to Insane with Nightmare speed.

 

[Sunlight_Swift]

6 hours ago, RipClaw said:

I play on Nomad and the game seems very balanced to me. The zombies aren't bullet sponges on Nomad difficulty and a wooden club just works fine.

 

What do you want even? You don't want stone arrows and wooden clubs, but then you say they are fine. I can't understand what you want. The only things that come out of those boxes are easy mode if it isn't stone tools at that stage.

[RipClaw]

Just now, Sunlight_Swift said:

What do you want even? You don't want stone arrows and wooden clubs, but then you say they are fine. I can't understand what you want. The only things that come out of those boxes are easy mode if it isn't stone tools at that stage.

You got me wrong. I like the primitive weapons and that you finally don't find several firearms with lots of ammunition in the first week. 

I enjoy fighting the first horde in close combat with the stone sledge hammer.

[Kazgrel]

I'm baffled over how much crying the whole primitive loot thing has caused in general because I'm easily well into T1 loot by day 7-10 (usually much sooner, 4-5 to be specific).  No points in LL, playing on Insane difficulty, loot % at default.  Maybe because I'm usually on with 1-2 other folks, tho.

 

In my only solo run of A19 (and period, since I prefer to play MP), I was in T1 loot consistently after day 7.  I did put points into Int and bought a bunch of decent stuff, tho (g4 auto shotgun on day 12, lul).  So it'll be interesting to see how trader loot balancing + the proposed biome + poi modifiers make looting in later builds (be it A19 patches or A20 and beyond)

[Sunlight_Swift]

44 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

You got me wrong. I like the primitive weapons and that you finally don't find several firearms with lots of ammunition in the first week. 

I enjoy fighting the first horde in close combat with the stone sledge hammer.

Sorry totally mistook you I just woke up totally apologize for that silly assumption.

[RipClaw]

1 minute ago, Sunlight_Swift said:

Sorry totally mistook you I just woke up totally apologize for that silly assumption.

No problem at all.

[Sunlight_Swift]

34 minutes ago, Kazgrel said:

I'm baffled over how much crying the whole primitive loot thing has caused in general because I'm easily well into T1 loot by day 7-10 (usually much sooner, 4-5 to be specific).  No points in LL, playing on Insane difficulty, loot % at default.  Maybe because I'm usually on with 1-2 other folks, tho.

 

In my only solo run of A19 (and period, since I prefer to play MP), I was in T1 loot consistently after day 7.  I did put points into Int and bought a bunch of decent stuff, tho (g4 auto shotgun on day 12, lul).  So it'll be interesting to see how trader loot balancing + the proposed biome + poi modifiers make looting in later builds (be it A19 patches or A20 and beyond)

I'm where you are I personally don't want anything to change. If anything I would like the guns to be nerfed slightly but bullets remain easier available if not more abundant to compensate for nerf. I feel like t1 and 2 are where the issues are. Early and late game are fantastic other than demolishers feeling like there aren't enough tools to kill and not enough t5 quests or the loot with them is not enough, and lack of inventory space in them slightly.

[Tehnomaag]

On 9/7/2020 at 8:42 AM, iamnuff said:

100% of primitive loot feels absolutely completely worthless. 

 

I should be crafting blunderbusses, not finding five of them in the same building, and stone tools are... they strain SoD (who put this stone hammer inside this Working Stiff crate?) and generally useless. 

Any tools you care about, you can make decent quality versions by the end of the second day. 

Give us more crafting parts for basic low-tier weapons instead, or just chunks of forged iron. 

 

Edit: To answer the op directly, I want to see better look (or rather, different loot) on minute one. 

 

Stone axes could be a drop in specific types of container (survivor backpacks or such) but they have absolutely no place being on the standard loot-table. 

What an absolute waste of a Loot-crate or a supply-drop. 

 

Edit: If pipe-guns existed (besides the blunderbuss) it wouldn't be too bad. 

Blunderbuss is a fine weapon, a pipe-pistol or a pipe-rifle would be perfectly serviceable (if still weird to find inside a shotgun messiah)

But there aren't, so you'll get four primitive bows, a stone-sledge and six stone axes from one looting trip, and you'll scrap every single one of them because you made yourself one of each during the tutorial. 

 

For tools, I'd suggest a whole other tier that sits between stone and iron. 

"Scrap" 

Jury-rigged metal tools, pre-forge but after you've had a chance to do some looting and collect some scrap-iron from a car or two. 

 

Much less weird to find on some dead-guy. He'd properly look like a post-apocalyptic scavenger, rather than a stupid caveman. 

A "primitive" pipe gun/pistol/rifle in a pre apocalypse could just use a different icon (while keeping the in-game model the same, or put a gray paint on it if it must be different) to try to appear as factory produced stuff but be stats wise exactly equal to a player crafted primitive weapon/tool. 

For role players, justification could be that it is some kind of hobby stuff for weapon/survival nuts which was, for some reason, cheaply mass produced pre-apocalypse. And then it is no problem if you find a pre-apocalypse seal container to have a Q3 "Stone Axe" in it. It was just an expectionally poor quality mass produced "survival axe" which can be, somehow, repaired by spending 1 piece of stone. It looks like a stone axe, it behaves like a stone axe, only it's icon is different because its, supposedly, pre-apocalypse. Should be a relatively simple change, to leave true stone axes craft-only and change an icon for looted primite tools/weapons. Basically an XLM edit and a set of alternate icons for primite tools/weapons. 

 

"Primitive" weapons firing 9mm/7.62mm/.44 actual bullets might require a little more effort to explain, but hey, maybe it was also some kind of brand for low quality / simple stuff for survival nuts. I mean if you can find M60 under some dudes bed in a random house it is pretty obvious that the people in these parts pre apocalypse were pretty serious survival nuts. So its not such a stretch that they bought also a little Timmy one of these simple 7.62mm "primitive" guns for his 4th birthday. 

[RipClaw]

58 minutes ago, Tehnomaag said:

"Primitive" weapons firing 9mm/7.62mm/.44 actual bullets might require a little more effort to explain, but hey, maybe it was also some kind of brand for low quality / simple stuff for survival nuts.

It's not really hard to explain. Rifles and pistols are very simple in design. They are just pipes with a spike that hits the back of the bullet. You could improvise something like this with a pipe, a nail and a hammer from the hardware store.

 

In this Wikipedia article you will find many improvised firearms that work with standard ammunition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm
 

The main difference between these guns and industrially manufactured guns is that they are mostly unreliable, inaccurate and do not last long. Most of the time they are single action guns.
 

I hope the pipe guns in A20 will look like they were welded together in a garage. The melee weapons already have this Mad Max look.

[Sunlight_Swift]

16 hours ago, RipClaw said:

It's not really hard to explain. Rifles and pistols are very simple in design. They are just pipes with a spike that hits the back of the bullet. You could improvise something like this with a pipe, a nail and a hammer from the hardware store.

 

In this Wikipedia article you will find many improvised firearms that work with standard ammunition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm
 

The main difference between these guns and industrially manufactured guns is that they are mostly unreliable, inaccurate and do not last long. Most of the time they are single action guns.
 

I hope the pipe guns in A20 will look like they were welded together in a garage. The melee weapons already have this Mad Max look.

This sounds cool