Why I like the new loot system (as an miner/crafter)

[Finnark]

i started playing this game in a18 and i specialize in mining, crafting, building, (basically anything that doesnt involve combat or cooking cause i dont enjoy those).
Heres the diffence in interaction between me and my friends at the night of day 4:

A18:

me: "I finally created a iron pickaxe!"

all my looting friends: "well we all brought back 10 steel tools of each type, an auger, and a bunch of m60s and pump shotguns along with swat and military equipment"

A19:
me: "I finally created a iron pickaxe!"
all my looting friends: "Great! But we still need that damn fireaxe!!!! We also need you to craft more blunderbuss ammo cause we can only find pistol ammo for a pistol we cant find!!!!"

at least for me and my friends, we became much more communicative trying to share our resources especially in the early game where were trying to figure out how to optimally split the precious 30 blunderbuss ammo we acquired for the day when it used to be everyone just doing their own thing and we are just chickening around by day 7.  i also get more requests to craft specific items which makes me busy and incentivizes me to plan out the prioritization of certain crafting and mining. even the looters (who im assuming makes up the bulk of the negative reviews of the new looting system) within my friend group thinks positively of the new looting system cause now alot of stuff they find have relevance (ex: "i found a m60 and 5 trashes" vs "HOLY @%$# I FOUND A LV 3 BLUNDERBUSS!!!!")

Any thoughts?

[Sjustus548]

I personally like the new loot system.  It makes crafting stuff feel useful again.  In A18 before the end of the first day we usually had iron, if not steel, tools and armor, shotguns and rifles, with plenty of ammo to go around.  This time we struggled a little at the beginning and that was a nice change.

[Gazz]

That was the plan.

Some players just have a harder time with withdrawal.

[iamnuff]

Honestly, making everything yourself is more satisfying because it's the product of your own efforts, instead of just opening boxes and seeing of RNG shines down on you today, but for basic stuff like tools, you kinda should be behind. 

 

You're mining an iron vein deep underground and smithing your own pickaxe, and the other guys are walking down the street to the tool-shop and grabbing random tools off the shelves. 

 

Yeah, they shouldn't be able to find m60's so easily, but iron tools should be available at the toolshop, otherwise why does the toolshop exist? 

 

It's a bit more complicated with guns, because you can't make a gun unless you already have a gun. 

Making gun-parts a lot more common than the guns themselves was a good step, because it allows us to loot, then use the things we looted to build the things we want. 

It does, however, require us to have a heavy skill investment in every weapon skill we want to try out. 

 

I like sniperrifles. I'd love to build a t3 or 4 hunting rifle to hunt deer with, or to pick off zombies from my rooftop. 

I need to put those points into Machine-guns instead though, because a hunting rifle won't save me on horde-night. 

 

That means that even if I learn how to craft a hunting rile (or a marksman rifle, or even a sniper-rifle) from a schematic, the versions that I craft will always be near-useless, because they'll be tier 1. 

 

Regarding the satisfaction of crafting though, it seems pretty clear to me that the 'Quality 6 tools and weapons can only be found, not made' idea is backwards. 

We should never be able to find max-tier weapons, we should only be able to make them. 

We should level up the skill, invest lots of points into it, find the blueprint for the best kind of that weapon (steel tools, m60s, sniper-rifles, machetes, ect) and then gather as many parts as we can from lesser tools that we've broken down, or loot-crates, or traders. 

 

And then we should create the greatest version of that item possible, which would never have been obtainable by random chance, without us putting this dedicated effort and resources into achieving it. 

 

You want a quality-6 steel pickaxe? Invest in mining skills and sacrifice ten or more quality-1 steel tools. 

You want the best pistol possible? you'd better be willing to break down every other pistol you own. 

 

You'll still need to loot to aquire these perfect tools, because you'll need to find the inferior items to break down for parts, or valuable items you can exchange for those parts at the trader. 

But you'll also need to actually be good at shotguns to be able to get your hands on a purple auto-shotgun. Not just randomly find it in a box one day. 

 

  

1 hour ago, Sjustus548 said:

I personally like the new loot system.  It makes crafting stuff feel useful again. 

 

Crafting what?

For tools, it's disappointing to open a crate and find a caveman's spare rock-breaking hammer instead of something useful, but for guns it's crippling. 

You can't craft guns until guns start to drop, because guns have guns as a crafting ingredient. 

 

If you want an iron woodaxe, you just need forged iron.

If you want a hunting rifle, you need rifle parts. Which you only get from hunting rifles.

The only exception to this rule is the blunderbuss, which can be made out of pipes and duct-tape, or the bow, which is just sticks, rocks and grass. 

 

A pipe revolver and a pipe rifle would ease those worries nicely, so long as ammo for them is as easily available as it is for the blunderbuss.

[ElCabong]

My trader had 8 pistol parts and a compound bow on day one. I had them all by the time he closed and feel lucky.

 

I mine with purple stone tools. Cheap repairs.

 

I would rather make my weapons and armor than loot them.

[Solomon]

39 minutes ago, iamnuff said:

It's a bit more complicated with guns, because you can't make a gun unless you already have a gun. 

Making gun-parts a lot more common than the guns themselves was a good step, because it allows us to loot, then use the things we looted to build the things we want. 

It does, however, require us to have a heavy skill investment in every weapon skill we want to try out. 

I think this whole deal could have been fixed by just making weapon parts craftable.

 

This would fix the progressive issue many people complain about like how can you be on day 19 and still not found any actual gun. Depending on a players settings on the map its too easy to fight hard zombies up on day 30 without the tools what are necesseary to kill them.

 

 

Honestly there is really no reason why we cant make weapons parts other than to slow down player progression.

[Liesel Weppen]

1 hour ago, Solomon said:

I think this whole deal could have been fixed by just making weapon parts craftable.

If you make weapon parts craftable, you can also remove them and just put more ingredients directly into the weapon receipes. The parts then are just craft-bloat, basically just a useless extra step.

 

I guess that was the point of weapon parts. They make you need to go out and loot.
Because on the other side, if you make everything craftable down to from base ressources, why should you even loot POIs?

 

It's like requesting being able to craft a forge without pipes, because you need a forge to craft a pipe...

 

What iamnuff is missing: You can find the parts themselfes and also buy them from trader, if they have some. They are rare, yes, but they are there.

 

Anyway i currently do my 4th playthrough in A19 and still don't craft much tools or weapons on my own. As said already above, i can only craft few items well, because i'd need many skill trees for crafting everything good. And i simply can't afford that.

 

For the T6-crafting... imho it's good that it is not craftable, because it is a reason to go out and loot. I could imagine a skill book that allows you crafting on specific item as T6 if you have the skills maxed out, too.

 

Not being able to craft everything without going to loot may be anoying for builder-only-players, but 7d2d is not ment to play "build only". It requires you to do both. If you don't like that, play creative, turn of bloodmoon or whatever will help you. In the end use mods.

[Solomon]

18 minutes ago, Liesel Weppen said:

If you make weapon parts craftable, you can also remove them and just put more ingredients directly into the weapon receipes. The parts then are just craft-bloat, basically just a useless extra step.

 

I guess that was the point of weapon parts. They make you need to go out and loot.
Because on the other side, if you make everything craftable down to from base ressources, why should you even loot POIs?

 

It's like requesting being able to craft a forge without pipes, because you need a forge to craft a pipe...

 

What iamnuff is missing: You can find the parts themselfes and also buy them from trader, if they have some. They are rare, yes, but they are there.

 

Anyway i currently do my 4th playthrough in A19 and still don't craft much tools or weapons on my own. As said already above, i can only craft few items well, because i'd need many skill trees for crafting everything good. And i simply can't afford that.

 

For the T6-crafting... imho it's good that it is not craftable, because it is a reason to go out and loot. I could imagine a skill book that allows you crafting on specific item as T6 if you have the skills maxed out, too.

 

Not being able to craft everything without going to loot may be anoying for builder-only-players, but 7d2d is not ment to play "build only". It requires you to do both. If you don't like that, play creative, turn of bloodmoon or whatever will help you. In the end use mods.

Even if everything is craftable from base materials you still need to go out and loot.

 

For an example, i play on a heavily modded game right now because i cant stand the looting system. As result i can craft several weapons from base materials and can directly make weapon parts. Even with this we still go out looting because its still better option to get that ton of iron and mechanical/electrical parts while you get glue, meat, ductape and whatever else in your way.

 

With weapon parts being craftable or weapons being craftable directly from base parts you dont really invalidate looting but just present another way to play in your own way what is never a negative experience.

[RipClaw]

59 minutes ago, Solomon said:

With weapon parts being craftable or weapons being craftable directly from base parts you dont really invalidate looting but just present another way to play in your own way what is never a negative experience.

I remember back in A17, when you could craft everything without parts. The forum was full of complaints that looting has become meaningless and that people never leave their base.

[Pichii]

42 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

I remember back in A17, when you could craft everything without parts. The forum was full of complaints that looting has become meaningless and that people never leave their base.

The divide between these two play styles is immence.
But yes. The devs have very lightly insisted they dont want people to be able to just stay in their base for whatever reason. (If thats how you enjoy the game, i think it should be possible but w/e)
At the same time, its not really somthing they can force too much without risking your bases destruction and that would suck if you lost 10hours of work on your crafting base just cuz ? lol.

All parts craftable mod. Thats where the gold is.
That mod makes it so all weapon and junk turret parts are craftable and disassembleable. You still cannot make things like glass beakers, acid without the book, ect.

I personally think that when the devs come thru with 'no more infinate durability on weapons and LIMITED repairs' that crafting parts becomes much more neccisary. (Like it was back in A15?) I want a reason to craft 5 shotguns and keep the best-rolled stats. Itd actually be kinda nice.
Add a repair perk so you can repair things more than other ppl? Good times. Lets build an armory!

I dislike this systems focus on traders tho and feel like weak and low-stat weapons SHOULD appear at low levels like a really bad pistol from a toilet like the old days.
The devs have also said they are adding 'pipe' weapons similar to fallout 4s for starting projectile weapons so maybe that will fill the void and make it feel more complete.
I really hate being stuck in the stone age with no way out cept buying weapons.

[Kalen]

4 minutes ago, Pichii said:

I personally think that when the devs come thru with 'no more infinate durability on weapons and LIMITED repairs'

That absolutely should be what they do.... however, sadly, they've stated categorically that item degradation will not be returning.  Unfortunate decision, IMO.

[RestInPieces]

12 hours ago, Finnark said:

A18:

me: "I finally created a iron pickaxe!"

all my looting friends: "well we all brought back 10 steel tools of each type, an auger, and a bunch of m60s and pump shotguns along with swat and military equipment"

There were other ways to prevent that, ...like e.g leaving lootlists alone and not adding guns everywhere (when we complained about that MM said it's realistic cause 'murica), or like... keep degradation in the game, which used to be just fine, to keep looting/crafting relevant after getting an item just once.

[seagas]

I agree with the tier 6 items only be craft-able, you want tier 6 steel club, you have to put the effort and a ton of XP points into it. I like this rather than luck of the draw RNG, spending your time specializing and XP expenditures in one area only to never find the top item that you specialized in. 

[Boidster]

1 hour ago, seagas said:

I agree with the tier 6 items only be craft-able

As all right-thinking people do... 😉

[JCrook1028]

11 hours ago, iamnuff said:

because guns have guns as a crafting ingredient

Nope, they have gun parts as an ingredient. Guns are only 1 way of obtaining said parts.

6 hours ago, Pichii said:

bad pistol from a toilet like the old days

Those still exist...

[Liesel Weppen]

20 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

Nope, they have gun parts as an ingredient. Guns are only 1 way of obtaining said parts.

Those still exist...

Jep, but very rare and only if your gamestage is high enough to even find pistols.

In our current playthrough i found like 4-5 lvl1 pistols in toilets. Amongst 100s from other sources.

[iamnuff]

1 hour ago, JCrook1028 said:

Nope, they have gun parts as an ingredient. Guns are only 1 way of obtaining said parts.

Yes, but you have about the same chance of finding gun-parts as you do of finding a full (low-grade) gun, so that doesn't actually matter. 

 

Early on, the only weapons or items that will drop are stone tools and the occasional blunderbuss, and the only gun-based item you will ever find is gunpowder or blunderbuss ammo. 

 

By the time parts for other gun start dropping, those guns themselves will already have been added to the loot-table. 

9 hours ago, Liesel Weppen said:

I guess that was the point of weapon parts. They make you need to go out and loot.
Because on the other side, if you make everything craftable down to from base ressources, why should you even loot POIs?

Because living in a hole in the ground, looking for iron and lead and nitrate and then melting those all down in a furnace and then crafting the thing you need out of it will take a very long time and be really boring? 

Depending on where you set your base up, you might not find a vein of the ore you need until late, and you might not be able to arm yourself properly for horde-night. 

 

Look, it should never have been about 'crafters vs gatherers' 

That was a stupid concept from day one. 

 

You have to do both to make it in this game. Looting and scavenging should be for immediate short-term gain, and setting up your own mineshaft or farm should be for long-term sustainability. 

 

If I suddenly find myself desperately short on food, i'll go out and raid a food-looking building and see what I can find. 

Once short-term survival is sorted out, i'll see about setting a small farm up so I don't end up in that situation again.

 

If I need a pistol for the first horde, then i'll go looting and see if I can find a gun in a toilet or at the trader, but if I'm already doing pretty well and I want to upgrade from my current mid-grade pistol to a top-grade one, then i'll set about making a long-term project to collect all the pieces I need for it. 

 

Same with materials. If I need a bit of iron, i'll go out and find some. If I need a lot of iron and i'm willing to wait a long time for a big pay-off, i'll dig a hole. 

For lead, you can smelt down batteries and fishing weights, or you can look for a lead vein. 

 

For ammo, you can find a fair bit out and about, to keep you afloat and maybe handle a horde or two, but if you want to arm up like you're looking to take over a small nation and prepare yourself for endgame hordes, you're going to need a coal, lead and nitrate mine so you can churn out 1000's of rounds of ammunition at a time. 

 

TLDR: Scavenging should be a reliable way to find low-grade tools and resources in common but small amounts, to keep you going without letting you stockpile overmuch. 

Mining, farming and crafting should be time and effort intensive methods that allow you you create huge amounts of food, supplies and top-tier weapons and tools. 

 

Currently it's the opposite. Investing enough into a skill to make a t5 tool can be made immediately worthless by just finding something better while you're out and about, and it's disappointing every time. 

It feels like an absolute waste of effort. 

 

The most satisfying loot is skill-books and schematics, because they increase the amount of things you can craft. Second is low-grade guns or steel tools, because they allow you to scrap them and build high-grade versions for yourself and your buddies. 

 

"Oh hey, I found yet another another crappy pistol. This means I can use the parts from this and the resources I already collected make my buddy that t5 revolver he wanted so he can threaten traders with it." 

"Oh, great. I found the pump-action shotgun schematic. We can finally break down all of those rubbish double-barrel shotguns we've been using for over a week and pop out a pair of pump-action shotties." 

"I like this hunting rifle I found at the trader, but it's only T1 so I can't put a scope on it" "Give it here, i'll scrap it and make you a better one." 

"Anything good in the chest?" "Nah, just some crap iron armour." "Take it anyway, we'll toss it on the forge. Can always use more iron." 

 

Give me crap loot, but make the crap loot valuable enough that I want to take it with me anyway. Either because the iron content is high, or because it's worth a bunch of dukes, or because it scraps into otherwise unobtainable weapon-parts. 

[Solomon]

21 hours ago, RipClaw said:

I remember back in A17, when you could craft everything without parts. The forum was full of complaints that looting has become meaningless and that people never leave their base.

Thats a question of balancing honestly.

 

For example lets take the pistol, to make one you currently need:

 

• 4x handgun parts
• 10x forged iron
• 2x ductape
• 5x scrap polymer
• 2x spring

Now springs are not craftable so they are loot only but are still plentiful. Lets say that the handgun parts get the following recipe:

 

• 1x Forged Iron
• 1x Bottle of Acid
• 2x Spring
• 20x Scrap Polymer
• 1x Oil
• 5x Paint

Now with this one you still need to loot the base because bottle of acid is not craftable, oil needs shale to be made and empty cans, springs are again not craftable and paint again requies a part what is loot only so its loot only.

 

Nothing is unreasonable here and players still have to loot to a degree for these items like they always did but they no longer need to only rely on looting to get them before anything else.

13 hours ago, iamnuff said:

Depending on where you set your base up, you might not find a vein of the ore you need until late, and you might not be able to arm yourself properly for horde-night. 

Our base has tons of lead lying around with nitrate but theres not a single iron vein or coal veil around.

[Liesel Weppen]

If you do that, why not make a pistol cost:

- 11x forged iron

- 2x ducttape

- 25x scrap polymer

- 4x spring

- 1x oil

- 1x acid

- 5x paint (why ever should a gun (part) need paint?)

 

And remove the parts entirely...

[Boidster]

7 hours ago, Solomon said:

Our base has tons of lead lying around with nitrate but theres not a single iron vein or coal veil around.

For what it's worth, a few months back (18.4) I used FileMachete's ore vein mod to scout around underground and discovered, to my surprise:

 

1) all ores are available in all biomes, except for oil shale

2) there is a lot of ore underground that is not signaled by a surface rock; like, a LOT a lot - branch mining a'la Minecraft ought to be pretty productive if you don't have any surface iron rocks

 

For example here's what a tiny portion of the desert under ground looks like (A19.1):

 

Burned biome:

 

Snow biome:

[Liesel Weppen]

32 minutes ago, Boidster said:

1) all ores are available in all biomes, except for oil shale

2) there is a lot of ore underground that is not signaled by a surface rock; like, a LOT a lot - branch mining a'la Minecraft ought to be pretty productive if you don't have any surface iron rocks

Yes. We already noticed that since the surface signals have been introduced. If you dig anywhere you still have good chance to find ores. The surfaces rocks are just signals for surface near occurences. And if i dig at an coal sign i basically always end up finding also other ressources that have absolutely no sign on the surface nearby.

[JCrook1028]

On 9/21/2020 at 2:47 PM, iamnuff said:

Because living in a hole in the ground, looking for iron and lead and nitrate and then melting those all down in a furnace and then crafting the thing you need out of it will take a very long time and be really boring? 

Yea, maybe even a couple of days! Oh My! Now with the resource nodes sitting right on the surface it's not you have to search for raw materials anymore...

[Roland]

On 9/21/2020 at 3:50 AM, RipClaw said:

I remember back in A17, when you could craft everything without parts. The forum was full of complaints that looting has become meaningless and that people never leave their base.

You aren't the only one. The entire dev team also remember and will never again go back to a crafting only model. They are still dialing in to the perfect balance between crafting and looting and I personally like A19's stab at it. Crafting definitely got a boost over A18. Once the gamestage modifiers for locations are in, there will be places you will be able to go to in order to have a better chance at getting weapon parts and weapons in loot earlier if that is what you want.

 

Craftable gun parts? Never going to happen outside of a mod.

[Gobarg]

On 9/21/2020 at 9:34 AM, Finnark said:

i started playing this game in a18 and i specialize in mining, crafting, building, (basically anything that doesnt involve combat or cooking cause i dont enjoy those).
Heres the diffence in interaction between me and my friends at the night of day 4:

A18:

me: "I finally created a iron pickaxe!"

all my looting friends: "well we all brought back 10 steel tools of each type, an auger, and a bunch of m60s and pump shotguns along with swat and military equipment"

A19:
me: "I finally created a iron pickaxe!"
all my looting friends: "Great! But we still need that damn fireaxe!!!! We also need you to craft more blunderbuss ammo cause we can only find pistol ammo for a pistol we cant find!!!!"

at least for me and my friends, we became much more communicative trying to share our resources especially in the early game where were trying to figure out how to optimally split the precious 30 blunderbuss ammo we acquired for the day when it used to be everyone just doing their own thing and we are just chickening around by day 7.  i also get more requests to craft specific items which makes me busy and incentivizes me to plan out the prioritization of certain crafting and mining. even the looters (who im assuming makes up the bulk of the negative reviews of the new looting system) within my friend group thinks positively of the new looting system cause now alot of stuff they find have relevance (ex: "i found a m60 and 5 trashes" vs "HOLY @%$# I FOUND A LV 3 BLUNDERBUSS!!!!")

Any thoughts?

I am Gobarg and I endorse this

Seriously though I am loving the new system

I too am a mining/gatherer and for me the game just got better and better.

We usually play two up coop and between the two of us we are able to keep up with the gamestage and progression in a way that we couldn't do solo

I've said it before but this game is MADE for great coop play, notwithstanding the fact that it is a brilliant solo experience.

For instance, we are still using the tools I was able to make and haven't yet found anything better

Same for some other things but not for others

Armour seems to be something that you find before making but it's a close thing sometimes. ie you may be a point or two from being able to make the lvl5 stuff but find it in loot.

All in all though I reckon this system with a few tweaks is on or near the money

 

I would however bloody love to find a lvl6 steel tool every now and again

 

[Solomon]

14 hours ago, Boidster said:

For what it's worth, a few months back (18.4) I used FileMachete's ore vein mod to scout around underground and discovered, to my surprise:

 

1) all ores are available in all biomes, except for oil shale

2) there is a lot of ore underground that is not signaled by a surface rock; like, a LOT a lot - branch mining a'la Minecraft ought to be pretty productive if you don't have any surface iron rocks

 

For example here's what a tiny portion of the desert under ground looks like (A19.1):

 

Burned biome:

 

Snow biome:

Then i think im on the weirdest streak of bad luck because we just mined down an entire hill next to our base and not a single iron or coal vein was around.