Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Roland]

12 hours ago, FranticDan said:

Will filters for crafting the dew collector be in loot?

I play without traders (Because they give you everything on a silver platter), so if they are trader only, I'll be screwed!

 

I've never yet found one in loot but I've bought them from traders for 1500 Dukes a pop. You might be screwed but they may also be a rare loot drop that I haven't found yet. You could make them a loot drop or even make them craftable in order to support your anti-trader gamestyle. Zztong had some great recipe ideas up above for crafting a filter.

[PoloPoPo]

Basically everyone here in any topic agreed on hydration being too easy throughout the game.

TFP tries to address this issue and make hydration more of a challenge.

Everyone now: "I can't play this game without empty jars anymore".

 

Sorry?

[Neminsis]

As someone that regularly starts with iron gut I don't see how this change to water is going to make any difference to me early game since I'm already drinking the murk and eating the sandwiches anyway, but the space required on a roof to put up a farm for glue production is going to limit the number of usable pois for bases pretty severely. 6 dew collectors at 3x3 takes up 54 square meters of space.  There's not a lot of roofs that can handle that and the 30 needed for a self-supporting farm.

From my perspective this is a pointless change beyond saving me that one inventory slot for empty jars.



 

[FranticDan]

TFP, please reconsider heavily nerfing the snow melting recipe instead of completely removing altogether

(55 snowballs because that's equivalent to 5 snow blocks)

[schwanz9000]

9 hours ago, Blake_ said:

have you guys thought of reducing the 3 units of water per day (or making it fail to produce water sometimes) and  increasing/guaranteing them bia a workstation "mod"?

Thought about it, but no mods as of now.

 

7 hours ago, BasicallyACat said:

We have a question about the new looting system with the bonuses to find things in the looter's skill tree.  Does this apply across a party, or is it only character by character?

 

Also, yeah, we don't get the idea of having no empty bottles anymore.  It just doesn't fit the gameworld logic.

If you perk into shotguns, you find more shotgun related loot, not your party.
You'll be fine without jars. Not near as bad as everyone thinks. At 17K hours in game, I have no issues with them gone.
 

7 hours ago, Capp00 said:

And what about all the different smoothies, teas and COFFEE!! lol gotta have coffee.

Still found in rare loot and craftable. Traders and vending machines have them too!
 

7 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

So with the traders finally being properly balanced in A21 and the price of beverages in vending machines going up, can we expect a discount on trader items to combat the inflation that occurred as a result of the a20 trader balance?  Every day our dukes are worth less and less.  Or maybe you could give us 10% more dukes by default.

Yup! There are perks for that.
 

7 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

Also, what will we find in cabinets in A21 since 95% of them contain jarred beverages or empty jars in A20? @schwanz9000

Mostly junk for crafting, seeds, magazines, and a sprinkling of bad food or canned goods.
Think of it this way. You no longer have to throw the jars on the ground all the time. 
 

6 hours ago, Roland said:

 

I've never yet found one in loot but I've bought them from traders for 1500 Dukes a pop. You might be screwed but they may also be a rare loot drop that I haven't found yet. You could make them a loot drop or even make them craftable in order to support your anti-trader gamestyle. Zztong had some great recipe ideas up above for crafting a filter.

They are a rare loot drop, quest reward, or trader purchase. Not craftable.
 

6 hours ago, RipClaw said:

I assume the character eats the jar. 😁

  Reveal hidden contents

 

It does increase the survival factor in the game at the beginning, but people are already annoyed when it comes to having to harvest and replant their garden on a regular basis. Now they also have to set up a field of dew collectors and harvest them on a daily basis in order to have enough water to produce glue in larger quantities. Currently, in Horde Night, my primary weapon is a crossbow with exploding bolts. I use about 100 bolts per horde. That's 100 duct tape and therefore 100 glue every week.

 

TONS of glue in loot. Why is everyone so stuck on the glue production thing? I rarely craft glue I find so much.
 

4 hours ago, Neminsis said:

As someone that regularly starts with iron gut I don't see how this change to water is going to make any difference to me early game since I'm already drinking the murk and eating the sandwiches anyway, but the space required on a roof to put up a farm for glue production is going to limit the number of usable pois for bases pretty severely. 6 dew collectors at 3x3 takes up 54 square meters of space.  There's not a lot of roofs that can handle that and the 30 needed for a self-supporting farm.
 

You know you can build your own building, right?
 

4 hours ago, FranticDan said:

TFP, please reconsider heavily nerfing the snow melting recipe instead of completely removing altogether

(55 snowballs because that's equivalent to 5 snow blocks)
 

Snow water is gone.

[spud42]

what about the helmet filter that somehow magically cleans the murky water you drink from jars? Will this still remove the chance of dysentry when drinking from a body of water?

 

there is so much glue in the world , i dont think there are many times in the last 4 or 5 playthroughs that i have ever needed to craft glue! I think i have nearly 200 rolls of duct tape in my storage right now .

 

so we are to believe we have several "VIRTUAL "canteens that carry out portions of goldenrod tea and our red tea etc... 

are we to loose the empty can as well now? i mean it has no purpose at all except it can be scrapped.

 

cant scrap jars to get the broken glass to make scopes. 

[schwanz9000]

3 minutes ago, spud42 said:

what about the helmet filter that somehow magically cleans the murky water you drink from jars? Will this still remove the chance of dysentry when drinking from a body of water?

This mod is still available and works the same as it currently does. Safely drink from bodies of water or jars of murky you find.
 

6 minutes ago, spud42 said:

there is so much glue in the world , i dont think there are many times in the last 4 or 5 playthroughs that i have ever needed to craft glue! I think i have nearly 200 rolls of duct tape in my storage right now .

Exactly

 

6 minutes ago, spud42 said:

so we are to believe we have several "VIRTUAL "canteens that carry out portions of goldenrod tea and our red tea etc... 

are we to loose the empty can as well now? i mean it has no purpose at all except it can be scrapped.

Cans are gone too.
No canteen, just carry the stack of tea like you do now. Murky to Water to Tea is still the crafting path. You just don't get the empty jars back.

 

8 minutes ago, spud42 said:

cant scrap jars to get the broken glass to make scopes. 

Go punch a window or smelt some sand.

[spud42]

 

Thanks.

a lot of confusion will be that the tea and murky water "look "like they are in a jar. so not getting it is weird. maybe the icons for the drinks need to change?

 

[schwanz9000]

Nah. It'll be fine. You never get a bowl from eating a stew or a gas can after filling up the 4x4.

 

[Callum123456789]

is snow only gonna be used for yucca juice smoothies now im guessing?

[schwanz9000]

Yup! Can also be thrown to annoy your friends.

[RipClaw]

1 minute ago, schwanz9000 said:

TONS of glue in loot. Why is everyone so stuck on the glue production thing? I rarely craft glue I find so much.

Tons is apparently a term we define differently. Currently, I consume about 100 duct tape per week just for exploding bolts. That's more than I get from looting.

 

Therefore, it is important for me to have a reliable source for glue. Not in the early game, but by day 21 it wouldn't be bad to have at least a limited self-sufficiency. As I understand it, this should not be a problem if you can build enough dew collectors.

 

[Fanatical_Meat]

3 minutes ago, Callum123456789 said:

is snow only gonna be used for yucca juice smoothies now im guessing?

And throwing at players

[schwanz9000]

2 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

I consume about 100 duct tape per week just for exploding bolts.

You could try a different horde night strategy. Lots of options available. I've been having a TON of fun with my melee only horde bases. Saves a TON of ammo.

[schwanz9000]

Our mid/late game food recipes give all sorts of benefits. With the new progression system, you'll be able to unlock them all without the need of perks. Perks help finding those magazines more often, but it is no longer a requirement.

 

[lord_ahriman]

37 minutes ago, schwanz9000 said:

Thought about it, but no mods as of now.

 

 

 

I like the new water mechanics a lot. I just hope you guys reconsider a mod option to increase production: 3 >> 4 is good enough.

  

7 hours ago, Roland said:

 

That's 6 dew collectors dedicated to glue production in order to have enough within 6 days so you have an extra day to finish up the crafting. That's not exactly a herculean task. Maybe if you had to have 20 collectors that you had to harvest every day you might have a point about how tough it will be to mass produce 100 glue a week. But six?

 

My main weapon since A16 is crossbow/exploding bolts (exploring world, horde night electric fences + pipe bombs) so I'm gonna need a dedicated space in my base for 20 ~ 25 dew collectors. Am I @%$#ed? Absolutely not, I like big bases and I'm really excited to try all new changes.

[RipClaw]

5 minutes ago, schwanz9000 said:

You could try a different horde night strategy. Lots of options available. I've been having a TON of fun with my melee only horde bases. Saves a TON of ammo.

This is just my current strategy because I'm doing a run with agility instead of strength for a change. I also do a lot of melee but my favorite is building bases with electric traps.

 

But I also generally have a higher consumption of duct tape than most because I also spend a lot of time in the mine and have to repair my tools accordingly more often. And I repair everything I sell to the trader. So a reliable source of glue is always important to me.

 

[Fanatical_Meat]

16 minutes ago, schwanz9000 said:

Our mid/late game food recipes give all sorts of benefits. With the new progression system, you'll be able to unlock them all without the need of perks. Perks help finding those magazines more often, but it is no longer a requirement.

 

Good enough, currently I find putting perks into farming or food kind of worthless even though I always do. They are great to have for a few days but ultimately you have more food stuff than you can store.

From reading these forums I totally understand the challenge these things are when you want hardcore survival but half the audience doesn’t want to bother with cooking/farming. The question becomes is it worth a substantial amount of work to make systems for something half the audience wants and the other half is totally against it or just doesn’t care.

Edited July 25, 2022 by Fanatical_Meat (see edit history)

[RipClaw]

17 minutes ago, schwanz9000 said:

Our mid/late game food recipes give all sorts of benefits. With the new progression system, you'll be able to unlock them all without the need of perks. Perks help finding those magazines more often, but it is no longer a requirement.

There is one thing that I would be very interested in. Where in the progression path is the Crucible located?

 

Currently it is on level 5 of Advanced Engineering. Most of the time you can find the recipe before you unlock level 5 and you can also buy it from the trader when you are at level 3 of Better Barter.

Edited July 25, 2022 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[Ricowan]

I think a quick art change and maybe a rename if "jar" is still part of item names would help with this change.  If you get a "water unit" or "water bag" or "caprisun water" instead of a jar of water, and the icon was just a square of water or something else that doesn't look like a jar, then nobody would wonder what happened to the jar after you drink it.

 

Edited July 25, 2022 by Ricowan
typo (see edit history)

[schwanz9000]

 

Edited July 25, 2022 by schwanz9000 (see edit history)

[Ricowan]

Good, now change the icon so it doesn't look like a jar and we're golden. 

[schwanz9000]

1 hour ago, schwanz9000 said:

Nah. It'll be fine. You never get a bowl from eating a stew or a gas can after filling up the 4x4.

 

 This. No reason to update the jar icons.
 

37 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

There is one thing that I would be very interested in. Where in the progression path is the Crucible located?

 

Currently it is on level 5 of Advanced Engineering. Most of the time you can find the recipe before you unlock level 5 and you can also buy it from the trader when you are at level 3 of Better Barter.

They are at the end of the workstation crafting magazine tree which only requires 75 Forge Ahead Magazines to be read. Advanced Engineering will boost the probabilities of finding those magazines. You can also purchase the magazines from the trader or get them as quest rewards.

Crucibles are very rare items that can be found in very specific loot containers that starts around level 100 .
They are also for sell at the traders. Trader Bob has a higher chance of having one since he will be the tools and vehicles guy.

Edited July 25, 2022 by schwanz9000 (see edit history)

[Roland]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

And what are the reasons behind removing the water bottles then ? 

I misspoke. I was thinking empty jars but typed “water bottles”. They decided to remove empty jars because they were infinitely reusable. By removing empty jars they made murky water uncraftable and all drinks one time use “potions”. 
 

Empty cans have also been removed. Anything in the game that is in a container no longer returns an empty version of that container when used. The game is actually more consistent than it ever has been. 

[Gideon]

It is interesting to me that over the span of this game's development it has drifted farther and farther from "realistic" toward "arcade". I'm referring to things like no magically appearing and disappearing drink containers, etc.

If that's good or bad, I'm not sure. It definitely has changed how the game feels for me. However, I'm one of those odd balls that uses mods in Fallout games to make them a bit more "realistic" along the lines of survival and combat.

Perhaps we can do away with food and water requirements? This isn't a bad thing, per se, though it heavily changes the feel of the game. They aren't required in some games with survival aspects, like Valheim. They are certainly useful in those games, but not required.

It would certainly help the evolution towards a more "arcade" game play design.