Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[icehot]

56 minutes ago, Demonoid74 said:

I really wish I could craft a Beaker right about now

 

Day 43, still not found a beaker, but luckily found a chem station for sale!

[pregnable]

5 hours ago, Tmodloader said:

This game is weird, I see so many complaints that it's too hard but I frequently find it too easy but upping the settings any more makes the zombies become bullet sponges which I don't like either. It took me a few runs to get going but I'm almost on my second blood moon in permadeath with nightmare speed at night and run speed at day with 300% block damage for player and AI (including horde night).

 

My biggest dilemma lately is whether to try feral sense or not to see if that makes it feel tough for me without bullet sponges. I fear feral sense will make me want to go guns blazing everywhere instead of trying to sneak around.

 

You should try nightmare run speed at all times.  That is probably the setting that made the biggest difference for me.  I would try that before feral sense. 

 

I would also try insane difficulty again.  It is true that they become bullet sponges, sorta, but it is actually not that bad.  I did not want that either when I started insane, but after playing it for a while I found it to be just about right.  Any more and it would probably be annoying though.  Depends on what weapons you like to use. 

 

If your computer can handle it, try upping the number of max alive zombies.  I go with 64, but it does not really start to matter until later hordes. 

 

 

I had the same thoughts about feral sense... I am not going with it at the moment, because in a way, it could almost be easier.  I would probably just find myself luring zombies in a larger area to a kill zone, and then being more safe when I go out. 

 

The other thing you could try is horde every night.  It is not as annoying as it sounds, but it will probably make night time quests impossible lel.  Or just make it more frequent. 

[Star69]

2 hours ago, Demonoid74 said:

I really wish I could craft a Beaker right about now

If they do allow us to craft beakers, it'll probably need 10 acid lol

[Khalagar]

6 hours ago, Tmodloader said:

I've only tried it for a little bit though so it's anecdotal, I'll have to see how it works in higher tier areas.

 

Try it in a laggy area, like T5 skyscrappers or cities when there are a ton of zombies chomping at your bits. That's when it starts happening for me

 

The sad part though is those moments are the times when you actually need a junk turret, and then it falls through the floor instead. I think I started having the no clip issues around t3 or t4 PoI

[Morloc]

 

Santa's helper says please!... "A command to either teleport your (missing) backpack to you, or teleport you to it."

Turning off drop is the cheese!

 

(Fixing missing backpacks would be most welcome of course.)

 

 

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

[Callum123456789]

* yeah i feel like intellect as a whole is busted right now i basically have done a speed run to get a motorcycle as fast as possibly and my result is literally in 4 in game days.. this is by buying it from the trader and not crafting it all i had done was sell a bunch of brass break into a few city atms for the old cash got some sugar butts took apart roughly 50 cars and bam motorcycle the traders most definitely need reworking eventually lol

[Khalagar]

Judging by the fact that you appear to be level 22, with steel tools and quality 6 primitive ones etc, you definitely don't look like you are playing on standard day length / exp etc, and are likely on a MUCH higher gamestage than anyone would normally be on day 4.

 

Also, none of your strat involved intellect lol, unless that was your point. I guess you could have put a couple of points into better barter, but on normal progression most people would be level 6-8 by day 4 and wouldn't have maxed out better barter so it wouldn't impact the price that much

[Callum123456789]

12 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

Judging by the fact that you appear to be level 22, with steel tools and quality 6+ primitive ones etc, you definitely don't look like you are playing on standard day length / exp etc, and are likely on a MUCH higher gamestage than anyone would normally be on day 4.

 

Also, none of your strat involved intellect lol, unless that was your point. I guess you could have put a couple of points into better barter, but on normal progression most people would be level 6-8 by day 4 and wouldn't have maxed out better barter so it wouldn't impact the price that much

i mean im on nomad 100% xp and 90 min days  all i had done was go on a non stop killing spree to get max better barter thats my strat and the good old double looting technique and non stop quests for the extra salvage same case goes for alpha 19 too it was incredibly easy to just punch out a scrapping spree and sell things to the traders the best things are when you scrap a whole lot of cars they have to be full cars and if the game blesses you with good rng like it did with me it gave me a lot of tier 4 some tier 3 batteries and like one tier 6 if one trader doesnt want to buy more you just go to the other one same goes for if you are to sell any brass and for my tier 6 primitive tools thank the snow biome for that lol the modifier makes things much easier for getting good loot but the wasteland is too much of a push either way i didnt spawn there but i did spawn in the snow biome though

 

the main point i am trying to make from this is that the trader speeds up the game too fast if utilised efficiently early game before i had a teammate when playing mp just buy a lvl 2 ak rather than using the pipe machine gun for example like i do like getting better stuff from the trader but its too powerful

[Callum123456789]

30 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

Judging by the fact that you appear to be level 22, with steel tools and quality 6 primitive ones etc, you definitely don't look like you are playing on standard day length / exp etc, and are likely on a MUCH higher gamestage than anyone would normally be on day 4.

 

Also, none of your strat involved intellect lol, unless that was your point. I guess you could have put a couple of points into better barter, but on normal progression most people would be level 6-8 by day 4 and wouldn't have maxed out better barter so it wouldn't impact the price that much

another thing id like to mention i also bought the steel axe from the trader lol

[Khalagar]

Default day length is 60 minutes I think? So that's an extra 50% time per day, so day 4 on 90 minute days is about day 7 normal I think? A motorcycle on day 7 is still fast, but not like absolutely insanely unheard of fast. And yeah if you super sweaty min max it traders are good, but I think that's just one of those "Don't super sweaty min max it if you don't want end game gear that fast" situations imo

 

Traders could use some rebalancing, but I don't think the devs are balancing it based on hard core min maxing veteran player strats vs just making sure new players playing a normal pace don't buy a motorcycle before they've even got a bicycle

 

Honestly the main reason the traders out pace loot so fast is because the loot perks aren't as impactful as better barter + rng rolling from multiple traders is. If you just head straight to the wasteland with all the loot perks + loot candy and googles etc and rush to the top of a t5 to the loot room, you can find some pretty crazy stuff day 7 too. Day 1 alone I think you can find entire stacks of ammo per ammo container and you will very likely be finding level 1 steel tools etc there as well.

 

IIRC Wasteland adds like 50 to the loot stage, and a tier 5 PoI adds another bonus to it, so you can push your loot stage pretty high if you min max it

[Callum123456789]

6 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

Default day length is 60 minutes I think? So that's an extra 50% time per day, so day 4 on 90 minute days is about day 7 normal I think? A motorcycle on day 7 is still fast, but not like absolutely insanely unheard of fast. And yeah if you super sweaty min max it traders are good, but I think that's just one of those "Don't super sweaty min max it if you don't want end game gear that fast" situations imo

 

Traders could use some rebalancing, but I don't think the devs are balancing it based on hard core min maxing veteran player strats vs just making sure new players playing a normal pace don't buy a motorcycle before they've even got a bicycle

 

Honestly the main reason the traders out pace loot so fast is because the loot perks aren't as impactful as better barter + rng rolling from multiple traders is. If you just head straight to the wasteland with all the loot perks + loot candy and googles etc and rush to the top of a t5 to the loot room, you can find some pretty crazy stuff day 7 too. Day 1 alone I think you can find entire stacks of ammo per ammo container and you will very likely be finding level 1 steel tools etc there as well.

 

IIRC Wasteland adds like 50 to the loot stage, and a tier 5 PoI adds another bonus to it, so you can push your loot stage pretty high if you min max it

i mean i have some sort of idea where the trader has 4 tiers of inventory stages for example stage 1 player level 0 to 15 is the primitive stage stage 2 for player levels 15 to 30 with iron tools and slightly higher tier weapons foods and all the sorts stage 3 for player levels 30 to 45 with a moderately higher chance for higher tier weapons and finally stage 4 player level 45 to 60 where high end gear is almost guaranteed this is what i thought up in literally 2 minutes so of course it might be flawed

[POCKET951]

where do you find high quality weapons and armor in the late game? currently tier 3-5 end POI containers only have ammo and medical supplies. you occasionally get stuff in the weapon bags and other containers.

is this the intended philosophy?

[Callum123456789]

43 minutes ago, POCKET951 said:

where do you find high quality weapons and armor in the late game? currently tier 3-5 end POI containers only have ammo and medical supplies. you occasionally get stuff in the weapon bags and other containers.

is this the intended philosophy?

Hit up some tier 3 4 and 5 poi's in the snow biome or wasteland that'll do the trick try wearing some lucky goggles and popping some eye kandy too

[POCKET951]

1 minute ago, Callum123456789 said:

Hit up some tier 3 4 and 5 poi's in the snow biome or wasteland that'll do the trick try wearing some lucky goggles and popping some eye kandy too

I have been... lvl 90 ish, loot stage 200+ in the winter biome and with goggles, and all I get is heaping piles of ammo for the most part

[Callum123456789]

43 minutes ago, POCKET951 said:

where do you find high quality weapons and armor in the late game? currently tier 3-5 end POI containers only have ammo and medical supplies. you occasionally get stuff in the weapon bags and other containers.

is this the intended philosophy?

Hit up some tier 3 4 and 5 poi's in the snow biome or wasteland that'll do the trick try wearing some lucky goggles and popping some eye kandy too

26 minutes ago, POCKET951 said:

I have been... lvl 90 ish, loot stage 200+ in the winter biome and with goggles, and all I get is heaping piles of ammo for the most part

Well that's really odd hmmmm is your loot abundance lowered by any chance?

28 minutes ago, POCKET951 said:

I have been... lvl 90 ish, loot stage 200+ in the winter biome and with goggles, and all I get is heaping piles of ammo for the most part

I guess just keep on looting id probs recommend doing a lot of tier 3 and 4 poi's rather than 5 because they take a long time 

[POCKET951]

11 minutes ago, Callum123456789 said:

Hit up some tier 3 4 and 5 poi's in the snow biome or wasteland that'll do the trick try wearing some lucky goggles and popping some eye kandy too

Well that's really odd hmmmm is your loot abundance lowered by any chance?

I guess just keep on looting id probs recommend doing a lot of tier 3 and 4 poi's rather than 5 because they take a long time 

loot abundance is 100%, and yeah I plan on sticking to 3 and 4's

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

@Any developer - I saw recently on a mod to reduce zombie digging damage and slow them down, a disclaimer stating the reason digging could only be lowered and not removed is because of hard coding.

 

Can we expect the flexibility of this either being exposed to modders within this alpha, next, or gold as an added option to disable this?

 

It's another annoying addition that would be good to be able to disable or at least mod out.

[Aldranon]

Long days tend to make the game easier just like higher exp multipliers tend to make the game harder.

Based on time to loot useful items / Experience gained for the same time.

 

This is dependent on average RNG rolls for loot and average zombie spawns.

As RNG seems to be straight up wacko sometimes, this has room for error. 

[meganoth]

6 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

I have been... lvl 90 ish, loot stage 200+ in the winter biome and with goggles, and all I get is heaping piles of ammo for the most part

 

The alternative (if you have found or bought the schematics) is to craft them by scraping lower quality guns and armor. Another alternative is to buy yourself forgettin elixier and change your career to an attribute where you already found the right stuff.

 

[dcsobral]

15 hours ago, Morloc said:

 

Santa's helper says please!... "A command to either teleport your (missing) backpack to you, or teleport you to it."

Turning off drop is the cheese!

 

(Fixing missing backpacks would be most welcome of course.)

 

 

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

Or you could make it drop nothing, which has been an option for a while now.

[dcsobral]

9 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

I have been... lvl 90 ish, loot stage 200+ in the winter biome and with goggles, and all I get is heaping piles of ammo for the most part

Speaking of which, that's something that has been sneakily bothering me. As gamestage increases the amount of ammo in loot increases to keep up with the demands of horde night and m60/auto shotty-clearance. It bothers me because I focus on melee and ammunition-light approaches, so it feels like I'm getting more and more useless loot at the expense of things that would have been useful to me.

[Callum123456789]

25 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Or you could make it drop nothing, which has been an option for a while now.

missing back packs? hmmm the only times i have had a missing back pack is either by dying again to  get my other backpack then losing it by quitting out when you die without spawning on your bedroll and by dying in uneven landscapes it could be  a good thing but i dont think it needs to be focused on as of right now

[Morloc]

47 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Or you could make it drop nothing, which has been an option for a while now.

 

I know 🤔. That's why I'd originally said this:

 

15 hours ago, Morloc said:

Turning off drop is the cheese!

 

(Too much cheese binds me up.)

 

 

 

The command to summon a backpack gets put on the back burner each time this come back because, well...

"It's only alpha, just add your stuff back as best you can using the console"

But, if it's only alpha, then why not just add a bunch of purple stuff on day 1?

"That defeats the point of the game, it's about the journey, not the destination"

Okay, then describe the feeling that prevents you from just dropping all your stuff every so often.

"No, that's the gear that I got...on my journey"

But...the missing backpack was also gear I got...on my journey.

 

 

Bleh. There's been a fair amount of weird clipping/hitbox/whatever issues this alphagh. I'm presuming that the missing bags will get fixed as those are straightened out, but the command to summon a backpack?.....a solid gold crutch.

 

 

 

- Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

 

 

[Aldranon]

44 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Speaking of which, that's something that has been sneakily bothering me. As gamestage increases the amount of ammo in loot increases to keep up with the demands of horde night and m60/auto shotty-clearance. It bothers me because I focus on melee and ammunition-light approaches, so it feels like I'm getting more and more useless loot at the expense of things that would have been useful to me.

 

If your doing a theme-based build, I salute you!

However, the old saying: "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight", holds water with late game A20, especially in tier 5 POI's.

 

Regardless, a person who can melee a bunch of radiated all at once in a POI is heroic IMO. 

[meganoth]

54 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Speaking of which, that's something that has been sneakily bothering me. As gamestage increases the amount of ammo in loot increases to keep up with the demands of horde night and m60/auto shotty-clearance. It bothers me because I focus on melee and ammunition-light approaches, so it feels like I'm getting more and more useless loot at the expense of things that would have been useful to me.

 

So you are saying the chances for melee weapon ammo should be increased 😁