Day 1 power-leveling...

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

Who else does this? On the first day (the first 24hrs) I only run around looking for targets to murder/release from undeath/whatever. My server is setup for three-hour days, two being daylight and one being night. I hunt all day and through the night. This generally puts me WAY ahead of other players on the server who might make level 7-10 while I tend to get 20-40 depending on number of zombies killed and other factors, such as how lucky I am with finding weapons. I max out looting first, then healing, then stealth. After that I go into sexual tyrannosaurus and other things.

 

Yesterday we started a dedicated 19.5 server. I got lucky and located a crossbow of blue quality and used it with stealth to take out the enemy at a range. Found a sledgehammer soon after. Before dusk I had a nice setup and 4/5 in lucky looter and salvage operations. By 0800hrs on day 2 I had 514 kills. Not my best, but now I have an arsenal and a lot of good skills and books. Anybody else go this route? How many have you guys killed in the first 24hrs?

[BFT2020]

Not me.  I do 90 minute days, but I typically only gain one additional level at the end of the first day.  My first day typically is a finishing tutorial quests to get the free 4 perks, find the trader, grab a buried supplies quest, find where I am going to setup for the first few nights, clear that location out, and then go do the first quest if I still have time.  I don't do anything outside of my base during the night - but I am also using a mod that spawns in radiated zombies on the first night.....

[eXSe]

Speed run is not quite for me in this game... I like to enjoy the journey.

[SylenThunder]

54 minutes ago, eXSe said:

Speed run is not quite for me in this game... I like to enjoy the journey.

Same here. My first day is spent collecting the basics. Stick, Stone, Fiber, Feather, Food, Water. I will kill zeds I come across if I feel I can take them on. Otherwise I will avoid.  

By the second day I've got a good stockpile of basic materials, and have usually found a good small ruined house POI to use as a temp base/storage.  Then it's nightly runs looting other nearby POI houses for food and resources.  Leveling is not a real concern. Having the materials to prepare a base and survive is.

 

It's not until after I've established an actual non-POI base, and have my horde base set up that I'll worry much about leveling and picking a solid perk tree to follow. As a result, I'm not leveling hugely fast, so the first couple of horde nights are relatively easy. Less resources wasted. Then later I can take on bigger hordes on my terms.

[Junuxx]

So yeah what XP multiplier are you playing with OP?

[Roland]

Not my style at all. I play 60 minute days as a max but often play 40 and 50 minute days-- and I focus on tasks and objectives that form a survival story narrative.  The reason 40 minute days are fun, in my opinion, is that they seem to fit better the length of time it takes to get hungry and the time it would actually take to naturally perform tasks.  The amount of ore I could bring up during a night set at 40 minute days is much more realistic than the amount I could pull up during a night of 180 minute days. This is true for any repetive harvesting or building task that I do. In the game we can build and harvest so much faster than in real life so speeding up the days to 40 minutes helps compensate for that. Slowing time down to anything above 60 minutes feels like...not easy mode exactly...but less interesting mode. I like the feeling of being interupted by night and needing to use night time hours to finish tasks I started during the day. I feel more under time pressure to get ready for 7 day hordes when it isn't seven 3-hour sessions of gameplay between them. Finally, 40 minute days make traveling more interesting as I often have to go somewhere and spend the night there and return in the morning.

 

As for power leveling....I don't focus at all on leveling but just acknowledge it when it happens if I even notice. Often I am surprised to see that I have 3 or 4 points to spend. I don't spend a moment worrying about whether I'm ahead or behind anyone else.

Edited June 23, 2021 by Roland (see edit history)

[Darklegend222]

4 hours ago, SylenThunder said:

Same here. My first day is spent collecting the basics. Stick, Stone, Fiber, Feather, Food, Water. I will kill zeds I come across if I feel I can take them on. Otherwise I will avoid.  

By the second day I've got a good stockpile of basic materials, and have usually found a good small ruined house POI to use as a temp base/storage.  Then it's nightly runs looting other nearby POI houses for food and resources.  Leveling is not a real concern. Having the materials to prepare a base and survive is.

 

It's not until after I've established an actual non-POI base, and have my horde base set up that I'll worry much about leveling and picking a solid perk tree to follow. As a result, I'm not leveling hugely fast, so the first couple of horde nights are relatively easy. Less resources wasted. Then later I can take on bigger hordes on my terms.

May i ask how you set up a horde base? Mine is usually a house on stilts with a bridge leading to the  door for zombies to path up as i either shoot them to death, or manage to get 2 electric fence traps and 1 blade trap.

[SylenThunder]

3 minutes ago, Darklegend222 said:

May i ask how you set up a horde base? Mine is usually a house on stilts with a bridge leading to the  door for zombies to path up as i either shoot them to death, or manage to get 2 electric fence traps and 1 blade trap.

It's different every time, but usually it's just a centralized structure I can shoot out of, with easy access to jump out and melee.  Up until a18, it was usually more like a pill bunker, but the new AI is kind of killing that idea.   I get out and in it a lot. I don't enjoy a "safe" base, and don't use much in the way of electronics or turrets for defense outside of the closest base protection to keep them off the supports.

 

[Skuriles]

I also pick it up more "slowly". Finish starter quest, so you have the trader. Find a POI or nice spot near the trader (and best with ore veins within reach) to spend the first nights or already start up building a base. Level ups will follow automatically by finishing quests or looting buildings.

 

For bases I prefer massive square buildings (between 9x9 and 16x16), double or triple walls, place 2 or 3 rows of spikes around it, later additionally add turrets and traps. 

Stuff is located in a separated base with the same structure, ideally connected with a tunnel OR deep underground the base. So no big loss if base is overrun. 

At the top outside border I place Iron bars horizontally, so no spider zombies can enter the top of the base and I have the roof clean (beside some birds, which normall are done by turrets). So you can kill everything from top. 
To enter the base simply place some wooden frames with a gap of 1 or 2 blocks (or a tunnel far away to not attract Zeds to find it).

Will see if better AI will kill this concept, but until now it was simple, and successfully.

[Vampirenostra]

Same for me, just do the intro quest find a trader and a place for my base and start digging the basement. So by the end of day 2 I usually get the basic 2 story box as a base  and a mine shaft prepared. The box is made of flagstone so far and is upgraded to cobblestone in next few nights. I do quests all day long before first BM and mine n upgrade my base during nights.

[Star69]

I don’t power level either, actually I have never even checked what level I am since it makes no difference to me. I do beginning tutorial quests, finishing around 1030. Wander around town, grabbing feathers, getting rock/cobble/cement/wood and looting outside while killing any zombies I might come across. I might raid a kitchen if I’m having trouble finding a cooking pot. I play with 1-3 others and I’m the Intelligence guy so I’ll have a forge and, if I’m lucky, a workbench by the end of day 1. If I hit any buildings, they typically have lots of bathrooms like condos or motels. That way I get wrenches, acid, murky water and canned food. We have a 13x13 cobblestone base up by the night of day 1 or day 2 and we only use one base for normal storage and horde night. I used to put up spikes but now I don’t do that because I prefer the xp for kills. We put our base over a mineral node and mine at night. If we do quests, they are almost always buried supplies over the first few days.

[The_Great_Sephiroth]

On 6/22/2021 at 6:40 PM, eXSe said:

Speed run is not quite for me in this game... I like to enjoy the journey.

I don't speed-run it, but I like to be able to enjoy the bloodmoon nights up close and personal, and that requires a bit of health and some skills and weapons. At least I like to until there are so many you should have a base of some kind, but the first two or three are fun to melee in.

 

On 6/22/2021 at 8:31 PM, Junuxx said:

So yeah what XP multiplier are you playing with OP?

100, default. My only changes to the configuration are to disable Telnet, set difficulty to 4, and make in-game days three real hours long. I am not even running any block mods (changes to blocks.xml) right now.

 

It is almost night on day 4, I have about a thousand kills, no deaths, and am something like level 51. I scavenge at night and during the day. The challenge offered at night, especially by ferals, is good training. I have found all kinds of blueprints, though not everything. I have found the blueprints for a minibike, motorbike, and part of the jeep, but only the chassis of a bile. Sadly I have only found melee weapon blueprints but I did find an MP5 blueprint last night in the Shotgun Messiah factory.

 

I'll tell you something else. I was in said factory and heard noise outside. It was a bear. Did you know that bears can run through doors made for humans, because I did NOT know that. Apparently their bodies clip through 90% of the objects in-game and while I did beat the bear, it was a fight which included a lot of "WTF" moments. I was down to something like 43hp in the end. Don't mess with bears unless you have a rocket-launcher, I suppose!

 

Anyway, nice to see the responses. I don't speed-run the game, but I don't start a base until around day 14 and up to that point I try to level and scavenge as much as possible so when I do begin building I can build all kinds of stuff I couldn't on day 1. I enjoy being a nomad for around two in-game weeks because it offers challenges. Only take what you need. You have limited carrying capacity. You need time to cook and prepare water. It's a challenge in and of itself.

[eXSe]

To each his own, I guess. That's the beauty of this game, everyone can play it as he likes.

[doughphunghus]

On 6/22/2021 at 7:45 PM, Roland said:

Not my style at all. I play 60 minute days as a max but often play 40 and 50 minute days-- and I focus on tasks and objectives that form a survival story narrative.  The reason 40 minute days are fun, in my opinion, is that they seem to fit better the length of time it takes to get hungry and the time it would actually take to naturally perform tasks.  The amount of ore I could bring up during a night set at 40 minute days is much more realistic than the amount I could pull up during a night of 180 minute days. This is true for any repetive harvesting or building task that I do. In the game we can build and harvest so much faster than in real life so speeding up the days to 40 minutes helps compensate for that. Slowing time down to anything above 60 minutes feels like...not easy mode exactly...but less interesting mode. I like the feeling of being interupted by night and needing to use night time hours to finish tasks I started during the day. I feel more under time pressure to get ready for 7 day hordes when it isn't seven 3-hour sessions of gameplay between them. Finally, 40 minute days make traveling more interesting as I often have to go somewhere and spend the night there and return in the morning.

 

As for power leveling....I don't focus at all on leveling but just acknowledge it when it happens if I even notice. Often I am surprised to see that I have 3 or 4 points to spend. I don't spend a moment worrying about whether I'm ahead or behind anyone else.

Ha! I’ve settled on 40 min days as well, but mainly because playing “1 full day” is about as much time as I spend playing in a “normal” game session (unless it’s a weekend and I have more time).  I originally did it to make time pass faster so I’d be under more pressure and less prepared for horde nights. I die a lot, but I like the “ambiance” of not having enough time to do everything and having to fight horde night unprepared. It also seems to make me have to dedicate a “day” to do 1 activity like “loot” or “mine” or “work on base” as if I try to do more in a day and just lollygagging around I tend to have a really hard time, resource wise.  And I usually do this because “I feel

ive mined enough…. Err, let’s go loot that house before nightfall!” And it turns out I didn’t mine enough