Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Red Eagle LXIX]

Are achievements not working in A20 known?  I've seen quite a few posts about it on Steam.  Can't test it myself as I have them all.

 

EDIT: I did check https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1ctmU1eMhVZYoUXCZtFijnbboLQ2r8FIj_D-Ui6b6YHU/htmlview#gid=0 but the word achievements did not come up in search.

[dcsobral]

12 hours ago, Aldranon said:

 

I hear that!  For me, the wasteland will be for when I'm getting bored and no longer mind dying "In a blaze of glory" (gory?) 

 

But its out there and I am sure that many people who are much more skilled in FPS (or don't mind dying and continue playing) will greatly enjoy that. 

I don't see anyone (of the people I normally watch) doing a playthrough in the wasteland on YouTube, I bet Games4Kicks has done or will do a playthrough on just that!

Kage went once to the wasteland. It was the funniest episode I have ever seen from him -- I've never seen him that scared!

[JCrook1028]

13 hours ago, Aldranon said:

That's very true.  For me, it would not make a lot of difference as the "waste" of gas bothers me and I like the feel of using a pickaxe for some reason. 

That's me too. I never use the auger. Yes I do mean Never. Never use the chainsaw either.

[dcsobral]

11 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

Has anyone done the restore power quest yet? I've avoided them at all cost because there rewards are the same as same tier fetch and clear.

 

It should be more rewarding.

 

1. It's a full clear at night,when zombies are more dangerous

2. It can only happen at night between certain times

 

 

It's basically more risk and danger for no additional rewards. And it is also restricted by time. I have had zero incentive to do them compared to other quest.

Supposedly they offer increases loot stage, but it doesn't seem to be the case.

[dcsobral]

11 hours ago, Gazz said:

I take the power quest like any other - but only if I can do them without standing around and waiting for nighttime and if they are as close as other quests. Given the time window and the fact that few POI are set up for that it, resulting in long travel distance, means that 95% of the time they are genuinely bad choices.

I take it if I think I might have time to do one of them during the night and, if not, I just delete them.

 

But, to be fair, I do quests at night all the time so the increased danger is not an issue to me.

[JoeDaFrogman]

I know random world gen is and should be random, however since b231/b233 came out I have generated a high number of worlds and it "FEELS" like a change has been made to the forest city spawning in what I would consider a negative way.     I am using non default settings in an attempt to get larger/more cities using the logic that mountains and hills will interrupt to spread cities out.  To limit my expectations, I know that there can't be a "whole map city", that is NOT what I am expecting, hoping, or looking for.  Base on my results, 13 is the most cities that can be generated on a single map and those by necessity must be spread out somewhat.   

 

Settings for all maps: 

Size: 8192
Towns: Many
Wilderness POI: Default
Rivers: Default
Craters: Default
Cracks: Default
Lakes: Default
Plains: 8
Hills: 2
Mountains: 1
Random: 0

 

These are some of the most egregious examples.   I have found a very small proportion of forest biome with decent city size/groupings, but they are few and far between, especially compared to b213.   It almost seems like the latest update moved the city grouping biome preference away from the forests.   

 

My concern is what appears to be a much smaller number of forest biome city groupings in the latest update.   If nothing changed that would make this be the case, then I will just keep generating more maps.

 

Sample size is roughly 200+ worlds in both b213 as well as b231/b233.

 

 

SavoyardDrumfishes

 

TamedAgglutinogen

 

AmusiveAir

[dcsobral]

On b233 it is much harder to kill sleepers without waking up the others. In fact, I haven't been able to do it. Hitting zombies now is essentially equivalent to missing a shot and hitting a wall are previously.

[irongamer]

On 12/13/2021 at 3:22 PM, Khalagar said:

For added fun, I highly recommend this mod to make the roaming hordes bigger. With feral senses on you can get some legit zombie movie moments when suddenly 20-50+ zombies come tearing their way into a PoI / your base. I spent several hours trapped in a trader's PoI as it was sieged by a horde, and early game I pretty much was always crouched all night with my lights off trying to stealthily open chests etc. 

Def added a lot of scary moments to the early game, and after using it I feel like vanilla roaming hordes should be at least 2x size

 

Moar Zeds

No joke!  This is fraking amazing!  Hands down the best 7 days experiences I've seen yet.  The x12 natural spawns mod is amazing for creating zombie movie like events at whatever stage screamers start to show up.  The thing to fear is the amount of mobs building on the outside of the POI while you try to clear asap, the longer you take the higher chance a horde breaks in somewhere.  Feral sense is on in the example below.

 

Sample Experience

There is one poi that is rather deadly with this mod.  It is a pharmaceutical factory with the underground section and the elevator shaft with the glass side.  I was mopping up the last room and I'd been hearing a lot of noise outside.  Dropped to the floor in the last room to check on a wall, it burst open and a massive horde starting flooding into the room.  I turned to run to high ground and there in the f'ing floor was a new hole and a zombie head sticking out!  They had dug in multiple ways at once!  I fought the horde from high ground but they were just taking too much ammo and a screamer (that I couldn't find) kept them pouring in that wall breach.  I finally decided to fall back to the elevator shaft.  There was just as much noise at the elevator shaft and then I saw it,  a 3 story tall wall of zombies pummeling the reinforced glass wall.  It was then when zombies started raining down the elevator shaft.   I panicked and tried to ascend the stairs around the shaft but kept failing a jump only to land on a horde below.  The window was broken at this point and I had to flee back to the final underground room.  At this point I was starting to run low on ammo,  I had to get out.  I lured zombies out of the elevator shaft and finally managed to make my way up and out.  It was an amazing experience!

 

I've taken another mission or two at the same poi and it resulted in similar experiences.  Just stupid dangerous with hordes outside breaking in and having to fall back or up to the roof only to find out i forgot the cache pickup and having to descent back into the hell hole.  Should be recording this insanity.

 

Performance notes

I tried a few varieties of this mod, x4, x8, and x12.  I'm running a 5800x and a 3060 ti and had to kick resolution down to 1080p to maintain ~100 fps, this works in most tier 4 poi, but most of the tier 5 poi will drop to 40-50 fps.  Especially the skyscrapers, not sure if the performance drop is just high poly count or the extra pathing due to the huge horde sizes building on the outside of the location.  The x12 results in the most insane situations and is just amazing, but you may have to lower the graphics or avoid some pois.

 

Summary

I'm hooked, the zombie increase mod is amazing.  Would be great if the default menu options had sliders for natural spawns and wandering horde sizes.  If not, or until then, this mod will always be installed.

 

https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/1310?tab=description

 

 

 

 

[Lemmers]

On 12/13/2021 at 8:39 PM, Khalagar said:

Clubs are OP AF lol, especially when you perk into them. Clubs get barbed wire and spikes mods as well, which makes them even more ridiculous. I ran a series of tests in A19 to test how each weapon did against an incremental number of irradiated wights, and clubs absolutely destroyed everything besides junk sledges. Junk sledge seem much weaker in A20 though with the new zombie dodge system, so club is very likely king of melee in all situations

Unless I'm mistaken... With clubs you are perking into the Strength tree, so besides being a really powerful melee weapon you also get access to Pack Mule and Miner 69er which are two huge quality of life improvements that I always want when I'm playing.

So I didn't choose the club life. The club life chose me.

[dcsobral]

Does the drone affect stealth? It seems it's much harder to be stealthy when using the drone, even in quiet mode. I don't particularly mind it, but it does not change the stealth meter.

[gpcstargate]

Ok found some missing Parts in the shapes ... if anyone cares. 

On the rounds ... there is a 3m corner the other 2 corners are missing _ 5M and the 7M ... I tried a 3m it does not work.

[RBN]

In the last BM some electric fences lost connection. The blue one that connect both.

 

Is a new dinamic when they are near to break or a bug?

[Callum123456789]

3 hours ago, dcsobral said:

On b233 it is much harder to kill sleepers without waking up the others. In fact, I haven't been able to do it. Hitting zombies now is essentially equivalent to missing a shot and hitting a wall are previously.

well about that....im pretty sure that sleepers now have trigger points meaning if one gets killed they all wake up and if the player goes to a certain location no matter how detected or undetected they are they will wake up stealth is mostly pointless for poi's now if you ask me well atleast some of the tier 3's have use for it but most up don't 

[mstdv inc]

30 minutes ago, Callum123456789 said:

well about that....im pretty sure that sleepers now have trigger points meaning if one gets killed they all wake up and if the player goes to a certain location no matter how detected or undetected they are they will wake up stealth is mostly pointless for poi's now if you ask me well atleast some of the tier 3's have use for it but most up don't

Do not speak "for the majority", speak only for yourself. YOU do not use secrecy.
A few pages ago, the developers wrote that now there is a new detection system in the game and it is still being finalized.
Conclusions about its work can be made after correcting all errors.

[POCKET951]

8 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

I don't think there are tier1 restore power quests. If you don't see an acceptable quest on your level just select one from the 5 tier1 quests offered.

 

 

 

Not speaking for TFP, but restore-power quests actually have buffed loot in them because it is night and often in the town center. I actually got stuff out that looked better than the stuff out of normal POIs. TFP could reason that it is a choice like going to the wasteland for the higher loot gamestage.

 

I think an easy fix to the trader loot would be to have tier3 restore-power quests use tier2 POIs, tier4 use tier3 POIs, and so on. This would make the quest overall easier at a specific tier while keeping the higher trader reward of that tier

 

 

 

I like this, but then what about Tier 2 Restore power quest?

also what about instead of doing a full clear, you have to instead fetch a battery or a part of the generator in the POI to get it to work? so its fetch and do the gen,  not do the gen and clear?

[Callum123456789]

4 minutes ago, mstdv inc said:

Do not speak "for the majority", speak only for yourself. YOU do not use secrecy.
A few pages ago, the developers wrote that now there is a new detection system in the game and it is still being finalized.
Conclusions about its work can be made after correcting all errors.

i didn't say that im speaking for the majority i said IM pretty sure not saying its official i don't really see whats the problem lol

[Guppycur]

On 12/18/2021 at 5:22 PM, Roland said:

 

There are zero negative consequences to a downvote. Reputation can only be gained or stay where it's at. None of the reactions carry a negative reputation penalty. A like, thanks, and Prime Bless You all give positive reputation and the rest are neutral.

Laughing isn't a positive?  

 

...the forum game is broken!!! 

[dcsobral]

downtown_filler_09. How's that a tier 1 quest? Even being downtown already makes it non-tier 1, but the final fight is way above tier 1.

[meganoth]

8 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

Hmm, I might mod that in for next playthrough to see how it works, or I can do it now and just craft new guns.  Thing is though, I don't have any 44 cal ammo so far so my pipe pistol will stop being useful.  I already got a higher damage reduction and slower fire rate on the pipe machine gun to see how it feels with a stronger nerf.

 

If that change were incorported, .44 ammo would have to drop in quantities more like the other ammo types. It doesn't now because there is no early .44 gun in the game.

 

[Demonoid74]

Just be glad they didn't push for more "realism" and give us even more ammo calibers...

 

 

"Ah F$%$! why did I loot more garbage .25 ammo!!!"

"Ok , who needed the 20guage shells? we got a small pile of them in this storage box..."

"COOL! I found this Smith and Wessen Model 500!"

"Damnit...anyone...anyone at all find a S&W 500 magnum round? even one?"

[MisutoM]

10 hours ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

I've done two play throughs and I have been short on ammo for the first week (default days).  If my first playthrough I had very little 9mm and a little more 7.62. In my second playthrough I had more 9mm than 7.62.  In both playthroughs, the 7.62 ammo I received had to be saved for emergencies like bears, dire wolves, and dog hordes. In my second playthrough I had finally amassed a small cushion of 7.62 and that cushion disappeared after clearing the Bear Den on a quest. I have serious doubts about the ability to consistently obtain "hundreds of rounds" in the first 2 days. I haven't included shotgun shells here because I've found the pipe shotgun to be less useful than the blunderbuss. And shotguns seems to be somewhat rarer drops than in A19.

 

In terms of the pipe machine gun being better than the AK, it has a lower magazine capacity and I've never had enough ranged mods drop early enough in the game that mod capacity on the pipe machine gun matters. 

 

 

Everyone I've spoken to on twitch has had the same issue of too much ammo early game - whether or not they are rushing quests.

 

But for a few examples, I'm on my 4th run of the alpha and here is my day 2; I have 200 shotgun shells, 300 9mm, and over 100 7.62. Here's a random youtube from a player not rushing quests at the end of day 3; He's sitting on having looted ~200 7.62, ~200 9mm, and 150 shotgun shells. Efficient questing does seem to be a large source of the ammo flood in the early game, but even with just a handful of quests and good looting you'll still end up with a lot of ammo early on. Variance is one thing, but I'm on my 5th world of the alpha with ammo beginning to pile up as early as the morning of day 3 consistently; each game I just stopped using melee entirely by day 2.

 

This could just be variance; we're hearing from the people getting super lucky 10x in a row and the people getting super unlucky 10x in a row while all the average case users are just staying out of the issue, but having such a gap of play experience does merit some looking into by the devs to make sure nothing needs retuning. All content creators I've checked out have been getting consistently flooded with ammo, so maybe it's a skill thing which TFP think needs no action because it doesn't affect the average player base, or maybe there is some glitch somewhere that is causing me and other streamers to see loot bags roughly 1 in 20 zombies, while a developer (madmole) says that loot bag drop rates are around 1 in 50.

 

And consider that with loot bags always having a stack of ammo in their first slot now, this makes a huge difference. Consider, on survivalist difficulty a shotgun can 1 or 2 HKO any unarmored zombie. With a 1 in 20 drop rate and a 1 in 3 chance of the bag dropping shells, that means on average every 60 zombies you kill will give you between 100~150 shotgun shells, while only needing between 60~120 to kill that many zombies, then you'll also be getting 200~300 9mm and 100~150 7.62 for free. Where as, if it were closer to the 1 in 50 that a dev said it should be, you'd be losing on ammo and wouldn't go infinite from just killing zombies efficiently. Again, it could just be luck, but I measured and recorded over 40 hours of my gameplay since then and was consistently getting slightly better odds than 1 in 20 for loot bags which is massively more frequent than 1 in 50.

 

As for shotgun shells being not included, I still managed to pick up a pump action shotgun on day 3 in that playthrough (and auto shotgun day 5) which I would consider early enough to be relevant, but I can see how some people just don't like shotguns, different strokes and such. 

[Kosmic Kerman]

1 hour ago, MisutoM said:

 

Everyone I've spoken to on twitch has had the same issue of too much ammo early game - whether or not they are rushing quests.

 

But for a few examples, I'm on my 4th run of the alpha and here is my day 2; I have 200 shotgun shells, 300 9mm, and over 100 7.62. Here's a random youtube from a player not rushing quests at the end of day 3; He's sitting on having looted ~200 7.62, ~200 9mm, and 150 shotgun shells. Efficient questing does seem to be a large source of the ammo flood in the early game, but even with just a handful of quests and good looting you'll still end up with a lot of ammo early on. Variance is one thing, but I'm on my 5th world of the alpha with ammo beginning to pile up as early as the morning of day 3 consistently; each game I just stopped using melee entirely by day 2.

 

As for shotgun shells being not included, I still managed to pick up a pump action shotgun on day 3 in that playthrough (and auto shotgun day 5) which I would consider early enough to be relevant, but I can see how some people just don't like shotguns, different strokes and such. 

 

There must be something specific about your playstyle or settings (day length, XP% gained) but that is definitely not my experience. In both of my playthroughs I may have had that amount of ammo by Day 7.  My first playthrough was a strength build. I did not find a pump shotgun in the first week. I did not even get a double barrel until around day 4. I did not have a combat shotgun until week 3 or 4 at the earliest.  You may be so used to your particular playstyle (or settings) you may not realize how atypical those results are.

 

I have no doubt if someone rushes progression they will end up with more ammo than I did because their loot stage will be higher than mine.  In my current playthrough, I'm on Day 18 and have 1100 rounds of 7.62, 1100 rounds of 9mm, and 600 shotgun shells. This is an agility build that is mostly melee for clearing POIs and guns for horde night.  For reference, I have a Q2 AK (trader reward), a Q4 pistol (purchased from Trader),  Q3 double barrel (trader reward), and a Q4 Tactical Rifle (trader reward). This is similar to my last playthrough except the trader has not offered me a pump shotgun yet.

 

As to loot bags from zombies I honestly haven't seen that much. I've gotten less than 10 on each horde night so far.  And I rarely see them drop when completing quests. I agree that ammo is more plentiful in A20 overall. For example, I never needed to craft ammo in my first playthrough that got to about Day 50. But in terms of the first week or so, I have had much less ammo than I ever did in A19.

 

[Aldranon]

13 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

 

There must be something specific about your playstyle or settings (day length, XP% gained) but that is definitely not my experience. In both of my playthroughs I may have had that amount of ammo by Day 7.  My first playthrough was a strength build. I did not find a pump shotgun in the first week. I did not even get a double barrel until around day 4. I did not have a combat shotgun until week 3 or 4 at the earliest.  You may be so used to your particular playstyle (or settings) you may not realize how abnormal those results are.

 

I have no doubt if someone rushes progression they will end up with more ammo than I did because their loot stage will be higher than mine.  In my current playthrough, I'm on Day 18 and have 1100 rounds of 7.62, 1100 rounds of 9mm, and 600 shotgun shells. This is an agility build that is mostly melee for clearing POIs and guns for horde night.  For reference, I have a Q2 AK (trader reward), a Q4 pistol (purchased from Trader),  Q3 double barrel (trader reward), and a Q4 Tactical Rifle (trader reward). This is similar to my last playthrough except the trader has not offered me a pump shotgun yet.

 

As to loot bags from zombies I honestly haven't seen that much. I've gotten less than 10 on each horde night so far.  And I rarely see them drop when completing quests. I agree that ammo is more plentiful in A20 overall. For example, I never needed to craft ammo in my first playthrough that got to about Day 50. But in terms of the first week or so, I have had much less ammo than I ever did in A19.

 

 

This is pretty much my experience.

I don't have any loot bonus perks so that might be something.

 

I notice that Tier 4's can drain my ammo a bit over what I gain.

Also as I run into stronger zombies I am using more ammo.

 

So from my viewpoint, MM is correct that things are working OK in the end. 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

If that change were incorported, .44 ammo would have to drop in quantities more like the other ammo types. It doesn't now because there is no early .44 gun in the game.

 

 

I got the .44 revolver around day 14-21 from the trader if memory serves.  But its been unused as no ammo found and the ammo I do make is always 7.62 (most bang per brass spent).

I suppose I could sell it and melt the dukes down for more ammo! 

[MisutoM]

12 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

 

There must be something specific about your playstyle or settings (day length, XP% gained) but that is definitely not my experience. In both of my playthroughs I may have had that amount of ammo by Day 7.  My first playthrough was a strength build. I did not find a pump shotgun in the first week. I did not even get a double barrel until around day 4. I did not have a combat shotgun until week 3 or 4 at the earliest.  You may be so used to your particular playstyle (or settings) you may not realize how abnormal those results are.

 

I have no doubt if someone rushes progression they will end up with more ammo than I did because their loot stage will be higher than mine.  In my current playthrough, I'm on Day 18 and have 1100 rounds of 7.62, 1100 rounds of 9mm, and 600 shotgun shells. This is an agility build that is mostly melee for clearing POIs and guns for horde night.  For reference, I have a Q2 AK (trader reward), a Q4 pistol (purchased from Trader),  Q3 double barrel (trader reward), and a Q4 Tactical Rifle (trader reward). This is similar to my last playthrough except the trader has not offered me a pump shotgun yet.

 

As to loot bags from zombies I honestly haven't seen that much. I've gotten less than 10 on each horde night so far.  And I rarely see them drop when completing quests. I agree that ammo is more plentiful in A20 overall. For example, I never needed to craft ammo in my first playthrough that got to about Day 50. But in terms of the first week or so, I have had much less ammo than I ever did in A19.

 

 

 

To clear up settings, I change them each world to try new things. I always play 1 hour days, my first couple of playthroughs were just warrior, the linked one is survivalist. I've done some worlds at 100% exp, 150%, and the latest at 200%. Feral sense always on. Everything else was default. Encountered the ammo flood on all 4 worlds I've played so far regardless of setting. In 3 of the 4 worlds I retired my melee weapon before night 3 and exclusively used guns on enemies. In the most recent world I even went so far as to use the shotgun to open doors. Still inundated with ammo and finishing quests consistently with more than I went in with. Each world I've done different builds and had different books so it doesn't seem to be any particular perk or lucky looter book as far as I can tell. 

 

As for not realizing how abnormal the results are, I have a discord and stream as a full time job, I talk to 100s of other people playing this who all seem to be having similar ammo flooding problems. Heck, I even got a key for one of my mods who had never played this game before, he played the first week on warrior difficulty and he too, on his very first game ever, was sitting on more ammo than he could use. Where as, I've only seen ~4 people on the forums here mention having any ammo scarcity. From my perspective and level of involvement in the community, I'd say that scarcity seems to be the abnormal result in this alpha. That or I only talk to people who have freakishly good luck. 

 

As for rushing progress, the youtube video I linked, that player had only done 1 quest per day and otherwise was just checking out new POIs as he saw them and slowly raiding them to show them off to the viewer. So I'd say that was anything but a rush, yet he's still got over 600 collective ammo at the end of night 3 after he already fought the horde. So while quests and speedrunning might make a big difference, they don't seem to be the only difference if a slow playthrough is also sitting on earning over 200 ammo a day for the first 3 days. 

 

There very well could be some content creator specific playstyle at work that is causing most if not all of us to experience having too much ammo even on days 2 and 3. Heck, it could even be just a skill thing and not something to worry about because a non-competitive game shouldn't be balanced for top X players. But, it's still worth sharing these experiences so the devs can make sure it's not some silly glitch like feral sense is making loot bags 3x more likely to drop, or ammo is scaling off game difficulty or some other unintended consequence. Especially when devs said ammo should be more rare from day 1-70 and they've added in a whole new scaling system to ammo, if everyone is getting too much by night 21, but most people are having a fair amount before then, then maybe it's just scaling too high in the mid game too soon but the early game is a non-issue. 

[Red Eagle LXIX]

1 hour ago, Hated said:

• Shape MaterialHitpointMultiplier scales a blocks upgrade, repair and harvest values

Yay! 

 

1 hour ago, Hated said:

• Block shapes with 25% and 50% HP are now back to 100%

What?  Umm..