Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[SEDATIVE]

11 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

I found, not bought, my first acid in the third week, so drop chance seems greatly reduced

 

Well, hat is not a good news, becouse we need it for may things ingame 😐 even in A19 was hard to find enough, but now it is impossibru to gain enough for the vehicles, drinks, betteries, and all other stuff it is needed   Even for the chemical workstation we need 5 of it 😐 

Edited December 8, 2021 by SEDATIVE (see edit history)

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, HungryZombie said:

I'm not sure if I'm understanding the farming update. It takes 5 food to craft a seed that will give you 1 food plus a 50/50 chance of a seed. I'm not great at math but does those odds even make crafting seeds worth it? Those are worse odds than Vegas it seems.

 

1 food? I'm pretty sure it must be 2 food with unperked Living of the Land.

 

Generally, if you don't invest at least one point into the perk you will not get a self-sufficient production going. Making seeds from food is not advisable, so just plant seeds you find and use the plants you get for food.

 

 

 

6 minutes ago, SEDATIVE said:

Well, hat is not a good news, becouse we need it for may things ingame 😐 even in A19 was hard to find enough, but now it is impossibru to gain enough for the vehicles, drinks, betteries, and all other stuff it is needed  

 

Maybe. Drop chances change with gamestage, they may possibly increase later on. In my game I didn't miss it because I got my minibike from a trader reward and nothing else needed it in this early stage of the game.

 

Edited December 8, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Stroichik]

10 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

1 food? I'm pretty sure it must be 2 food with unperked Living of the Land.

 

Generally, if you don't invest at least one point into the perk you will not get a self-sufficient production going. Making seeds from food is not advisable, so just plant seeds you find and use the plants you get for food.

 

If you have at least 1 point in LotL, then farming is self-sufficient if you have at least 3 seeds and always replace empty spots with seed crafting.

 

 

6 food with 3 points in LotL minus 5 food to make seed for replanting = 1 food from 1 plot + bonus, if u did get a seed drop.

 

U need 2 corn, 2 shroom and 2 potato for 1 veggy stew. U need around 10-15 stews to last from harvest to harvest. it means u need around 60 plots of veggies per person in coop to have 100% guarantee of having enough food to last till next harvest. And u need to replant every single one of those 60 plots after each harvest. This ain't Farming Simulator 2022, ffs.

 

Or you can just die every night or so, to revive with 100% food parameter, since u only loose a bit of XP, because Devs scrapped Wellness system. That way u can forget about farming at all.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Stroichik (see edit history)

[meganoth]

18 minutes ago, Stroichik said:

 

6 food with 3 points in LotL minus 5 food to make seed for replanting = 1 food from 1 plot + bonus, if u did get a seed drop.

 

U need 2 corn, 2 shroom and 2 potato for 1 veggy stew. U need around 10-15 stews to last from harvest to harvest. it means u need around 60 plots of veggies per person in coop to have 100% guarantee of having enough food to last till next harvest. And u need to replant every single one of those 60 plots after each harvest. This ain't Farming Simulator 2022, ffs.

 

Or you can just die every night or so, to revive with 100% food parameter, since u only loose a bit of XP, because Devs scrapped Wellness system. That way u can forget about farming at all.

 

Just, for information, I made a calculation mistake, please ignore that last line you quoted with "self-sufficient" in it

 

Your calculation is the worst case calculation for farm result and it also assumes that you have no other food source. Well, yes, if you expect to have a thousand coin flips all land on the same side then you are screwed badly.

 

On average LotL3 seems to give you even more plants than in A19 though with more than double the workload.

 

 

Edited December 8, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[zztong]

8 hours ago, Roland said:

 

How about a ban on ALL dead horse beating....

 

Horses confirmed for A21? 🤪

[LewZephyr]

4 minutes ago, zztong said:

 

Horses confirmed for A21? 🤪

only dead ones!!

 

[Jost Amman]

15 hours ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

Even the latter I would be eternally grateful for, and would take replanting any day over having the chance to lose seeds...

How MUCH grateful would you be willing to be? 

What type of money contribution are we talking about here? 

[madmole]

10 hours ago, bdubyah said:

Now the biggest travesty is a 50% chance to lose a seed. Lol.

The glass is half empty or half full. I used my seed, got a crop from it, so I'm happy. Having a 50% chance to get a free seed again? I'm super happy with that!

6 hours ago, Aldranon said:

On another topic: The Archer class has become comparatively much stronger in A20!  As strong, if not stronger than strength class!

The Ammo savings for emergencies only is maybe the biggest deal.  Cheapo stone arrows will clear all the basic zombies and is OK for BM nights.

 

It's also a ambiance build for me, as that is probably how I would be like in a crazy apocalyptic situation that is 7D2D! 

I played an agility build and found the bow to be completely useless so I had them buff the damage. 

 

[madmole]

3 hours ago, meganoth said:

The principle TFP is probably after is "Everything in loot is valuable all the time". I don't think this will ever be 100% true (there is a end game recipe missing that needs 100 plant fiber for example 😉) , but for me the game is slowly going in that direction.

 

This is an interesting principal. I just pitched yesterday how to make looting your 45th cooking pot more interesting, and all workstation mods to be more specific. Lets give them quality so they reduce cooking time by x%, or do whatever %better as the quality goes up, then cooking pots beyond the first one are interesting to check the stats on and useful for more than scrap iron.

Because that first cooking pot is a hell yes, and the 2nd and everyone after that you feel meh about and wish it wasn't even in loot any more and you had found something else. This solves that and makes late game cooking / forging even better because all the mods would be rescaled.

[bachgaman]

11 minutes ago, madmole said:

I played an agility build and found the bow to be completely useless so I had them buff the damage. 

 

Oops

[madmole]

3 hours ago, Doomofman said:

Are there no more working workstations in the wild? Yet to find one myself or see anyone else get one on streams

Nope, they completely bypass the natural progression that gives the player a feeling of accomplishment. WIthout needs and desires, the game is boring so I had them make them ALL broken. Now when you finally craft one or buy one you feel extremely rewarded instead of meh I'm already at late game tech because I found a trader with all the workstations intact on day 1. @%$# that.

[Stroichik]

14 minutes ago, madmole said:

The glass is half empty or half full. I used my seed, got a crop from it, so I'm happy. Having a 50% chance to get a free seed again? I'm super happy with that!

 

 

U used 5 crops to make a seed, and got 4 crops and 0 seed. U wasted 1 crop for nothing. how happy u are now?

[madmole]

2 hours ago, Stroichik said:

Farming is useless now. Its easier to go hunt for grilled meat, than replanting 60 corn plots to get more or less usable supply of food. No point of wasting 3 skill points for LotL level 3 only to get 1 food from plant.

 

But hey, u can craft machinegun from pipe and glue on day 1. So its kinda obvious that u should go exterminate whatever is left of life in Navezgane to keep u from being hungry.

You aren't a farmer until you unlock rank 3 then you can sustain a large farm. Until then the intended use case is to plant free seeds you found, grow a crop and get free food, then if you are lucky you get a seed back on harvest and can replant it. I had one corn go like 5x in a row before the seed quit once, I was quite happy. So no don't craft seeds, go looting. Craft seeds when you hit rank 3 then it might pay off.

[Stroichik]

Just now, madmole said:

You aren't a farmer until you unlock rank 3 then you can sustain a large farm. Until then the intended use case is to plant free seeds you found, grow a crop and get free food, then if you are lucky you get a seed back on harvest and can replant it. I had one corn go like 5x in a row before the seed quit once, I was quite happy. So no don't craft seeds, go looting. Craft seeds when you hit rank 3 then it might pay off.

If i want to manually replant 60+ farming plots, i`ll go play Farming Sim, thank you. 

But since u scrapped Wellness system, i can just go jump from Radio Tower every night, to wake up in the morning feeling no hunger for entire day.

[madmole]

1 hour ago, SEDATIVE said:

I have a question. We run A20 from the begining, and there is no Acid drop, you can only buy from trader till now  

Looted many houses, cars, poi-s, we are at  day 17 now, in A19 we looted acid first day. Is this a bug, or something changed?  

Acid is more rare, but most of it's recipes are pretty high end. Try the chemical piles.

[saltychipmunk]

Honestly the big thing with slow firing weapons like bows or shotguns for me is : can it kill a zombie in one hit?  If yes they feel amazing, if no they feel terrible.

 

Its kind of why i hate resident evil 8 village because the darn werewolves take like 10 bullets to the face.  So awful.

 

I also like the idea of tiered items other than just weapons and armor.  especially if you really space them out in the game stages 

 

Over all i am very happy that the many easy skips are being clamped down on.  7d2d in my opinion is at its best when you are struggling against the clock. Once you get to a sort of safe spot in progression things get stale fast. 

 

That is sort of true for most of the good pve focused survival games  and the great ones really do put in a bunch of effort to keep players on their toes. 

 

 

[Roland]

2 hours ago, bachgaman said:

A bicycle at the end of the first day is fine, but why is there a mechanic skill then?

 

Are you talking about making enough money to purchase one that was available on the first day or are you talking about the Tier 1 Quest completion package? If the former, the bike isn't always available to be purchased and if the latter, I can only assume that you must be playing with a modified day length and not playing the default 60 minute daylength. The Tier 1 completion reward comes at the end of 10 Tier 1 quests completed and most people aren't going to speed run the game to the degree that they get all ten quests completed on day one,

 

Trader balancing is ongoing and there was definitely some adjustments for A20 and there will be more in the future--but probably not enough to counteract someone choosing to cram 10 quests in a day.  Maybe the solution is simply to have the trader state that there are no more jobs available after 2-3 have been done in a single day.

 

I do agree that too valuable loot is too commonly obtained too soon. It should still be possible but it should be very very rare-- at least in the Forest biome. If someone wants to venture into a tougher biome for a better chance at better loot that should be possible.

[Stroichik]

2 minutes ago, madmole said:

Acid is more rare, but most of it's recipes are pretty high end. Try the chemical piles.

Wheels. Personally, never used acid for anything but wheels. And even bicycle needs acid, to make wheels. And wheels by themselves are more rare than acid, at least they were in A19.

But somehow, we can now make machineguns out of pipe and glue, without even machine parts or springs. Surprisingly sophisticated pipes in Navezgane these days.

[Khalagar]

1 hour ago, SEDATIVE said:

I have a question. We run A20 from the begining, and there is no Acid drop, you can only buy from trader till now  

Looted many houses, cars, poi-s, we are at  day 17 now, in A19 we looted acid first day. Is this a bug, or something changed?  

 

Acid is super rare but I am getting tons now that I have the book that lets me wrench acid from cars

 

26 minutes ago, madmole said:

I played an agility build and found the bow to be completely useless so I had them buff the damage. 

 

Take that literally like 15 people who argued with me until they were blue in the face in A19 that the bow wasn't terribly under powered!

 

 

 

Now just make them make the Pipe Baton scale better with electrocute and have a t3 version of it and I can stop complaining about it!!

 

Fun fact for those curious, I checked and  the stun baton is indeed weaker than the pipe baton, so you literally downgrade to go the next item tier in the weapon line lol. Yes you gain a chance to stun the enemy and even surrounding enemies if you have all the mods and candy etc, but you also lose damage so you can't actually kill the enemy. Y'know what's better than spending 40 seconds ragdolling an enemy while they are elecrocuted? Just killing them with a pipe baton >_>

 

I need to record one of the videos of me playing a Benny Hill skit with a zombie while I chase it around whacking it with the 2 damage stun baton and keep it perma tazed but don't do enough damage to actually kill it. I legit fought a feral soldier for at least 50 seconds, with me just standing there whacking him while he ragdolled around on the floor like he was on ice

 

Edited December 8, 2021 by Khalagar (see edit history)

[madmole]

5 minutes ago, Stroichik said:

U used 5 crops to make a seed, and got 4 crops and 0 seed. U wasted 1 crop for nothing. how happy u are now?

I'm not dumb enough to do that lol, so I'm still happy. Don't start crafting seeds until you get living off the land rank 3.

Loot seeds, plant seeds, profit. I had 5 rows 5 long all full of stuff growing at one point with no perks.

[Stroichik]

Bow is nice silent killer. With perks it blasts heads almost always. Very good for stealth cleaning of POIs at night. Bow is awesome.

[Roland]

1 minute ago, Stroichik said:

Wheels. Personally, never used acid for anything but wheels. And even bicycle needs acid, to make wheels. And wheels by themselves are more rare than acid, at least they were in A19.

But somehow, we can now make machineguns out of pipe and glue, without even machine parts or springs. Surprisingly sophisticated pipes in Navezgane these days.

 

If you only ever used acid for wheels then you should be fine. Bicycle can be chosen as a reward package after finishing the Tier 1 quests. So just save the acid for wheels for the better vehicles later in the game.

[BFT2020]

1 minute ago, Roland said:

Are you talking about making enough money to purchase one that was available on the first day or are you talking about the Tier 1 Quest completion package? If the former, the bike isn't always available to be purchased and if the latter, I can only assume that you must be playing with a modified day length and not playing the default 60 minute daylength. The Tier 1 completion reward comes at the end of 10 Tier 1 quests completed and most people aren't going to speed run the game to the degree that they get all ten quests completed on day one,

Yep, I am playing a mostly agility build right now and I got my free bicycle I believe on Day 5.  If I go Int build, I will get it sooner as I can craft it myself sooner.

 

However, you can't balance the game when people speed-run it; especially when the game is not designed for that type of play in the first place.

[Khalagar]

They have a point though, the mechanic skill is useless. It seems the way to get my precious intellect tree buffed is to convince Madmole to do an intellect focused run. It feels bad man when you waste a bunch of perk points learning to craft a bike or forge etc then just find the recipe or one for sale or get one free from trader etc. Those skills need to offer way more than they do. Why would I waste so many points to spec into the vehicle perk line when the trader literally gave me 80% of a motorcyle as a quest reward day 9? Even if I rushed to try to craft it, I can't because you can't make steel without a crucible

 

And then even if you get the perk, they barely offer anything after you do your initial craft of the item compared to just finding a book /  buying the item.

 

Oh boy, 20% faster crafting time on the forge, whoo! You know what crafts 100% faster? Building a second forge / campfire / etc. Might as well just take the perk, craft 10 forges or your 1 motorcycle or w/e and  drink a respec potion and put points elsewhere

Edited December 8, 2021 by Khalagar (see edit history)

[madmole]

Just now, Khalagar said:

They have a point though, the mechanic skill is useless. It seems the way to get my precious intellect tree buffed is to convince Madmole to do an intellect focused run. It feels bad man when you waste a bunch of perk points learning to craft a bike or forge etc then just find the recipe or one for sale or get one free from trader etc. Those skills need to offer way more than they do.

 

Oh boy, 20% faster crafting time on the forge, whoo! You know what crafts 100% faster? Building a second forge / campfire / etc

I agree that intellect needs a bit more yet, but that is the nature of unlock perks.