Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow

[Roland]

3 minutes ago, zapf said:

I was willing to take the additional damage to vehicles in stride as testing went about, but is the intention for Player vehicles durability reaching 0 to shortly after explode so quickly?

 

I've had two explode so fast I was left jaw dropped..

 

I've played this game quite a bit and maybe it's the multiple changes at once, but I've NEVER had a vehicle explode - let alone 2 in 24 hours!

The chance of exploding increases as damage is taken after your vehicle reaches zero. So it could happen immediately after or shortly after. 
 

But….you have to be ignoring the health quite a bit to not repair BEFORE it reaches zero in the first place. I always repair mine as soon as it reaches 50%. 

[zapf]

1 minute ago, Roland said:

The chance of exploding increases as damage is taken after your vehicle reaches zero. So it could happen immediately after or shortly after. 
 

But….you have to be ignoring the health quite a bit to not repair BEFORE it reaches zero in the first place. I always repair mine as soon as it reaches 50%. 

That's what got me! I was burning through repair kits from all the damage being done (esp on the 4x4), I gave myself a point to add more to their repair ability for this reason, and I had JUST repaired it with my last one as I was afraid of it exploding again. Meanwhile, a zombie came up and slapped me, I tried to drive away, vehicle hit 0 durability again, and boom.

 

I think the biggest issue for me is the inventory is just gone after. I have no idea what was even in it so adjusting to it has been difficult

 

Appreciate the reply and explanation! Hopefully, it gets a small change, but I am not known for my luck so there is that!

[Roland]

1 hour ago, zapf said:

That's what got me! I was burning through repair kits from all the damage being done (esp on the 4x4), I gave myself a point to add more to their repair ability for this reason, and I had JUST repaired it with my last one as I was afraid of it exploding again. Meanwhile, a zombie came up and slapped me, I tried to drive away, vehicle hit 0 durability again, and boom.

 

I think the biggest issue for me is the inventory is just gone after. I have no idea what was even in it so adjusting to it has been difficult

 

Appreciate the reply and explanation! Hopefully, it gets a small change, but I am not known for my luck so there is that!

Hopefully TFP can hear more feedback related to this so they can decide how to adjust. 
 

I mourn for your losses. 

[iamnuff]

7 hours ago, meganoth said:

Because nobody has lots of points in their own weapon perk in early game it really doesn't matter much which pipe weapon you use. Most players will probably craft a pipe machine gun or at max a pipe shotgun, or whatever ammo they have found. Sadly the pipe machine gun is so much better than any other pipe weapon there is no question what to take

 

 

Pipe Machinegun has the benefit of being full-auto, but 7.62 is a LOT rarer than 9mm early on.

A pipe revolver seems more useful in general because it's still a gun, it still kills at range and has multiple shots before it's very slow pipe-tier reload (unlike the pipe shotgun and rifle) but you can actually acquire bullets for it.

 

Personally, (and I've suggested this before) i'd like for the pipe-tier robot-turret weapon to be a projectile-weapon, (every other stat gets a melee and a ranged weapon. Robot-turrets being both means that Int is gimped early on here) 

Something like a nailgun, perhaps? or a handheld dart-launcher? (using dart-trap ammo?)

Nerf it's function compared to the actual robotic turret. Maybe it can only shoot forwards and doesn't track enemies? (It detects enemies and shoots, but cannot swivel and aim at them?)

When held, make it like the robot-turret. Hard to aim, with no real sights, but make the ammo fairly cheap to make (cheaper than real bullets, but not trivial, changing junk-ammo to require lead instead of iron was a clever move. It makes it non-infinate, but still cheaper than real ammo.)

 

On a semi-related note, is anybody else holding off on making higher-grade low-tier gear? 

 

To be clear on what that means, If I can make a tier 5 pipe rifle but only a tier 1 hunting rifle, i'd probably stick with the pipe weapon even though it's technically inferior. 

It's supposed to be a straight upgrade, but the 'real' gun isn't actually noticeably better, it uses a fairly significant amount of resources (duct-tape mostly) and it doesn't have any mod-slots so I might not even be able to keep my stuff on it. 

Overall, making the 'best' gun/armour/melee weapon/tool that you can make often feels like a poor move?

 

Maybe if the mod-slots were changed so that the tiers (junk, iron, steel) had diffrent amounts instead of it being determined by quality-tier (level 1, level 2, level 3)

Or perhaps the number of mods you could assign to a gun scaled with your skill level (weapon skill or magazines read?) That way the tier (colour) of your weapon would denote it's durability and damage-stats, but not how many scopes and flashlights you can clamp onto it? 

 

(... we need better nomenclature than using 'tier' for both material (pipe, iron, steel) and colour. (grey, brown, orange, green, blue, purple)

 

Anyway, with some weapons the function changes enough that it's semi-worth it. (the lever action rifle is such a big upgrade over the hunting rifle just for it's magazine size that even a low-tier one is worth getting right away) but most of the time it doesn't. 

 

A high-tier pipe machinegun is probably more useful than a trash-tier AK.

A blue/purple pipe revolver is almost as good as a grey handgun (especially if you have limited ammo)

T5 leather armour or T1 military? 

T5 iron or T1 steel?

The military/steel has better stats than the previous tier of armour, but by the time you can make steel armour you probably have a lot of mods to put in it, which you can't now. 

 

Basically, upgrading feels like a trade-off, and it doesn't feel like it should.

 

Edit: Idea. Create a system to allow players to directly upgrade a low-quality item into a higher-quality one by adding more material once you have the appropriate skill level. 

So you don't have to hold off on building that Magnum just because you can only build a crappy one. You make your crappy one right away and as you gain more handgun skill, you can take the magnum that you have and pour more steel and handgun parts into it to improve it.

Have this be done through the modification menu, I guess. 

 

This way you never need to hold off on making the best stuff you can, just because "I'll be able to make an even better version soon." 

... I guess you could just make crafted items scrap for 100% of their initial material investment too, but that's a little boring. 

 

... on second thought, this doesn't actually solve the mod-slot problem. It does prevent you from wasting materials tho. 

Edited June 21, 2023 by iamnuff (see edit history)

[iamnuff]

On 6/18/2023 at 3:03 AM, Zerginfestor said:

 

I personally prefer the turrets sort of remain the same, but the upgraded variants become tracked/hover, making them as sort of psuedo pets that always stay in range of your radius unless they get stuck, increasing their HP as you go up their tech path as well as their damage. 

 

 

That would be cool, but given how the current robot-drone flies, I don't know if it's realistic to expect pets to be able to path around after us. 

I'd love a Wall-E style robot with treads and a gun, but I don't really see it happening. 

[Zerginfestor]

5 minutes ago, iamnuff said:

 

That would be cool, but given how the current robot-drone flies, I don't know if it's realistic to expect pets to be able to path around after us. 

I'd love a Wall-E style robot with treads and a gun, but I don't really see it happening. 

 

That's why I'm not gonna hold my breath on it. Robotics for now (unless someone mods it) is pretty much done, except for maybe new stationary robots we can have? Like a Flame Robotic Turret that is basically a flamethrower with a shield around the nozzle to do Molotov damage, or a Stun turret that's basically a turret with a tesla coil on the front that arcs out lightning to chain lock hordes? 

[Riamus]

7 hours ago, zapf said:

That's what got me! I was burning through repair kits from all the damage being done (esp on the 4x4), I gave myself a point to add more to their repair ability for this reason, and I had JUST repaired it with my last one as I was afraid of it exploding again. Meanwhile, a zombie came up and slapped me, I tried to drive away, vehicle hit 0 durability again, and boom.

 

I think the biggest issue for me is the inventory is just gone after. I have no idea what was even in it so adjusting to it has been difficult

 

Appreciate the reply and explanation! Hopefully, it gets a small change, but I am not known for my luck so there is that!

I also think this isn't a good change.  I supported an increase to damage when they first mentioned it because you never had to repair your vehicle before unless you were purposefully running into others or zombies or whatever.  And even then, it was a rare thing to repair.  But 20% from a single hit is crazy.  I've lost 8% from driving over a curb and I wasn't even at high speed.  Scraped a rock, not even enough to really alter my path or slow me down and lost around 10% (that was at high speed).  These just feel to extreme for me.  I never let things get down so far in durability that they'll explode but it just doesn't feel as much fun driving around now.  After stable hits, I'm sure I'll have to mod the game to 1/2 or even 1/4 of the current damage values.

[Euzio]

On the subject of melee, is it just me or are zombies stumbling forward way too much after getting hit? 

I find it an issue because when they stumble forward, its almost pretty much they'd get a guarantee hit on you that you can't avoid since they seem to be able to melee hit you mid-animation as well. Couple that with a melee reach that seems way too long (its like they have spears for arms) and its quite crazy. 

[Lokeus]

5 hours ago, Euzio said:

On the subject of melee, is it just me or are zombies stumbling forward way too much after getting hit? 

I find it an issue because when they stumble forward, its almost pretty much they'd get a guarantee hit on you that you can't avoid since they seem to be able to melee hit you mid-animation as well. Couple that with a melee reach that seems way too long (its like they have spears for arms) and its quite crazy. 

 

Yes this is new behaviour i also noticed and they also hit you earlier than their animation. I am not completely happy with it but in this way they avoid to beating the game on high difficulty with only melee weapons, what was no big deal in A20. But it is funny that they OPd the spear while giving zombies that boost, it seems the only legal way to fight zombies in melee now without getting too much damage. Suggest to you: Give pipe guns a try in early game, they are quite useful now.

[meganoth]

12 hours ago, iamnuff said:

 

Pipe Machinegun has the benefit of being full-auto, but 7.62 is a LOT rarer than 9mm early on.

A pipe revolver seems more useful in general because it's still a gun, it still kills at range and has multiple shots before it's very slow pipe-tier reload (unlike the pipe shotgun and rifle) but you can actually acquire bullets for it.

 

If you want to use the gun for normal POI clearance, then yes, you might even have to make multiple guns to use all types of ammo.

But early ammo is scarce and pipe weapons use ammo very inefficiently, so many players mainly use them as "oh-@%$#" weapons. And then damage and magazine size are the only important characteristics.

 

Now, I could be wrong about the typical use of pipe weapons, I have no statistics available.

 

12 hours ago, iamnuff said:

 

Personally, (and I've suggested this before) i'd like for the pipe-tier robot-turret weapon to be a projectile-weapon, (every other stat gets a melee and a ranged weapon. Robot-turrets being both means that Int is gimped early on here) 

Something like a nailgun, perhaps? or a handheld dart-launcher? (using dart-trap ammo?)

Nerf it's function compared to the actual robotic turret. Maybe it can only shoot forwards and doesn't track enemies? (It detects enemies and shoots, but cannot swivel and aim at them?)

When held, make it like the robot-turret. Hard to aim, with no real sights, but make the ammo fairly cheap to make (cheaper than real bullets, but not trivial, changing junk-ammo to require lead instead of iron was a clever move. It makes it non-infinate, but still cheaper than real ammo.)

 

On a semi-related note, is anybody else holding off on making higher-grade low-tier gear? 

 

Yes. I think this overlap between tiers is something that TFP will eventually fix. They have to, as it practically mirrors a fault of the old crafting system that was one of the reasons to redesing it.

 

12 hours ago, iamnuff said:

 

To be clear on what that means, If I can make a tier 5 pipe rifle but only a tier 1 hunting rifle, i'd probably stick with the pipe weapon even though it's technically inferior. 

It's supposed to be a straight upgrade, but the 'real' gun isn't actually noticeably better, it uses a fairly significant amount of resources (duct-tape mostly) and it doesn't have any mod-slots so I might not even be able to keep my stuff on it. 

Overall, making the 'best' gun/armour/melee weapon/tool that you can make often feels like a poor move?

 

Maybe if the mod-slots were changed so that the tiers (junk, iron, steel) had diffrent amounts instead of it being determined by quality-tier (level 1, level 2, level 3)

Or perhaps the number of mods you could assign to a gun scaled with your skill level (weapon skill or magazines read?) That way the tier (colour) of your weapon would denote it's durability and damage-stats, but not how many scopes and flashlights you can clamp onto it? 

 

(... we need better nomenclature than using 'tier' for both material (pipe, iron, steel) and colour. (grey, brown, orange, green, blue, purple)

 

I have been using "quality" for the colors all the time. 

 

12 hours ago, iamnuff said:

 

Anyway, with some weapons the function changes enough that it's semi-worth it. (the lever action rifle is such a big upgrade over the hunting rifle just for it's magazine size that even a low-tier one is worth getting right away) but most of the time it doesn't. 

 

A high-tier pipe machinegun is probably more useful than a trash-tier AK.

 

The magazinen size increase makes this half-ways worth it (at least I think there is one)

 

12 hours ago, iamnuff said:

A blue/purple pipe revolver is almost as good as a grey handgun (especially if you have limited ammo)

 

IF I find a magazine extender then there is no question I would take the tier 1 pistol, as the extender can't be installed in the pipe pistol (AFAIK)

 

12 hours ago, iamnuff said:

T5 leather armour or T1 military? 

T5 iron or T1 steel?

The military/steel has better stats than the previous tier of armour, but by the time you can make steel armour you probably have a lot of mods to put in it, which you can't now. 

 

Basically, upgrading feels like a trade-off, and it doesn't feel like it should.

 

Edit: Idea. Create a system to allow players to directly upgrade a low-quality item into a higher-quality one by adding more material once you have the appropriate skill level. 

So you don't have to hold off on building that Magnum just because you can only build a crappy one. You make your crappy one right away and as you gain more handgun skill, you can take the magnum that you have and pour more steel and handgun parts into it to improve it.

Have this be done through the modification menu, I guess. 

 

This way you never need to hold off on making the best stuff you can, just because "I'll be able to make an even better version soon." 

... I guess you could just make crafted items scrap for 100% of their initial material investment too, but that's a little boring. 

 

... on second thought, this doesn't actually solve the mod-slot problem. It does prevent you from wasting materials tho. 

 

[iamnuff]

5 hours ago, meganoth said:

But early ammo is scarce and pipe weapons use ammo very inefficiently, so many players mainly use them as "oh-@%$#" weapons. And then damage and magazine size are the only important characteristics.

 

I also use it like that. 

You don't have enough ammo to clear a whole POI in the first week or so (usually) but if you keep a pipe-revolver on your hotbar with 5 shots loaded and you get cornered or a bunch of zombies all leap out at you at once, you can magdump them and run away. Buy yourself time to pick them off one-by-one or just reload and magdump again. 

5 bullets will at least kill a couple of zombies, or knock a bunch of them over. 

 

Actually, recently I ended up locked in a bathroom while zombies were banging on the door in my first Infestation mission. T3/4, I think. I dropped through the roof into a diner-room full of zombies and had to mag-dump to thin the herd, then run to get a door between me and them. 

Fortunately it was a metal door, and even more fortunately as soon as it started taking damage, a convenient hole opened up at head height. 

Plenty of time for me to reload and continue shooting before they battered the door all the way down.

 

Magazine size is important, but actually having bullets is much more vital. 

Although I guess if I was speced into automatics, i'd probably have found more 7.62

Edited June 22, 2023 by iamnuff (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

9 hours ago, meganoth said:

If you want to use the gun for normal POI clearance, then yes, you might even have to make multiple guns to use all types of ammo.

But early ammo is scarce and pipe weapons use ammo very inefficiently, so many players mainly use them as "oh-@%$#" weapons. And then damage and magazine size are the only important characteristics.

 

I typically have 3 on my tool belt at the beginning until I get T1 firearms.  Pistol, shotgun, and the machine gun.  And exactly for the reason you stated above.  Not to clear out any POIs, but in moments I know my bone or hunting knife won't get me out of trouble.

[hiloboys]

Just an FYI if you get a Tier1 Quest at "Smoke House" take it. There is a total of 1 zombie there. If its an extermination just kill that one and your done. Anything else you can still just kill that 1 and the rest of the area is open season.

[DiscoHeavy]

I can not find anything to this "problem" so i try it here.

It is intended, that you max get 4 crops and need 5 to make 1 new seed, so this makes farming just pointless?

or do i something wrong ?

[BFT2020]

59 minutes ago, DiscoHeavy said:

I can not find anything to this "problem" so i try it here.

It is intended, that you max get 4 crops and need 5 to make 1 new seed, so this makes farming just pointless?

or do i something wrong ?

 

It is not wrong.  At only LoTL perk 1, you get 4 crops per harvest.  At LoTL 2, you get 4 guaranteed with a 50% chance of a fifth crop.  At LoTL3, you can 6 guaranteed with a 50% chance of a 7th crop.

 

Each harvest, you have a 50% chance of getting the seed back.  Crafting new seeds costs 5 crops.

 

At LoTL 1, it is recommended just to plant seeds you find and don't convert into seeds.  You can sustain a farm with some extra crops leftover if you start out with a 10 plot farm and not experienced any bad RNG when harvesting your first few harvests.  However, LoTL 1 is not setup for guaranteed sustainable farmer.

 

I am farming at LoTL1, but I am only planting seeds I find while looting right now.  Been doing it for several cycles now.

Edited June 24, 2023 by BFT2020 (see edit history)

[DiscoHeavy]

its about the alpha 21 experimental and i have LoTL perk 3 and still get only 3 crops, and a chance to get a 4 crop. its also the perk say at lvl 3 i get 3 additional crops.... so idk its not working

[BFT2020]

2 hours ago, DiscoHeavy said:

its about the alpha 21 experimental and i have LoTL perk 3 and still get only 3 crops, and a chance to get a 4 crop. its also the perk say at lvl 3 i get 3 additional crops.... so idk its not working

 

Sounds like you are harvesting wild crops and not player planted crops.  LoTL3 will only give you 3 crops (plus chance for a 4th) for anything you come across while exploring.

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

 

It is not wrong.  At only LoTL perk 1, you get 4 crops per harvest.  At LoTL 2, you get 4 guaranteed with a 50% chance of a fifth crop.  At LoTL3, you can 6 guaranteed with a 50% chance of a 7th crop.

 

Each harvest, you have a 50% chance of getting the seed back.  Crafting new seeds costs 5 crops.

 

At LoTL 1, it is recommended just to plant seeds you find and don't convert into seeds.  You can sustain a farm with some extra crops leftover if you start out with a 10 plot farm and not experienced any bad RNG when harvesting your first few harvests.  However, LoTL 1 is not setup for guaranteed sustainable farmer.

 

I am farming at LoTL1, but I am only planting seeds I find while looting right now.  Been doing it for several cycles now.

 

NOT AGAIN!  This is wrong and I had hoped these false rumors were gone after more than a year

 

Lotl1 is perfectly enough to have a self-sustaining farm and making seeds out of plants will generally grow your farm. The only drawback is that with a string of VERY bad harvests you could be left without seeds eventually. But for that you have to also be so unlucky to never find any seeds in loot.

 

Only without a single point in Lotl it makes no sense to convert plants to seeds. Just put any seeds you find into your plots and grow them.

 

But if you have Lotl1 or more, you can just convert any plants you have into seeds and on average expect to get more out of the seed later. And mathematically it makes sense to start planting as soon as you have plants, there is nothing gained by waiting except if you plan to put more points into the perk later.

 

Edited June 24, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

NOT AGAIN!  This is wrong and I had hoped these false rumors were gone after more than a year

 

Lotl1 is perfectly enough to have a self-sustaining farm and making seeds out of plants will generally grow your farm. The only drawback is that with a string of VERY bad harvests you could be left without seeds eventually. But for that you have to also be so unlucky to never find any seeds in loot.

 

Only without a single point in Lotl it makes no sense to convert plants to seeds. Just put any seeds you find into your plots and grow them.

 

But if you have Lotl1 or more, you can just convert any plants you have into seeds and on average expect to get more out of the seed later. And mathematically it makes sense to start planting as soon as you have plants, there is nothing gained by waiting except if you plan to put more points into the perk later.

 

 

Sure for the most part, you are going to be fine.  But not always, and players idea of success will be different.  I did have a playthrough (back in A20) where I started with a 10 plot potato farm.  RNG was not my friend, as it took about 5-6 cycles before I got enough seeds and produce that after replanting 10 seeds, I had extra potatoes.  Now this is not normal as I had other times when I got 5+ seeds when I harvested or found a lot of seeds in loot to supplement my crop production.  And I know the game was mocking me because my 10 plot Chrysanthemum farm was doing successful (I was drowning in red tea).

 

So technically I eventually got a self sustaining farm in that case by always converting crops into seeds, but I didn't feel it was worth the effort as I went about 15+ days with no potatoes from my crops to turn into food.

 

So now, what I do is plant the seeds I find and harvest them.  At LoTL 1 and 2, I just use the crops to expand on my food.  At LoTL 3 (if I decide to go that far), I will always maintain max plots by utilizing the seeds I get back, the seeds I find, and convert crops into seeds to get my target.

 

I wait to plant until I get LoTL 1, but that is really for the farm plot cost reduction.

[BFT2020]

Was A21 Dev diary thread and the A21 Overflow thread getting so hot that they had to unpin the overflow one to allow some heat to escape?  😏

[pottervogel]

On 4/22/2023 at 8:22 PM, Guppycur said:

 This entire woke conversation is stupid.

No. It is not, but necessary. It seems everywhere this topic is ignored scandals about abuse show up. Remember Blizzard. See Ramstein. Imho everyone should take it seriously to make a change. No offense, though. 

[theFlu]

11 minutes ago, pottervogel said:

No. It is not, but necessary.

Pulling out a single line from two months ago, where people were discussing different zeds, possibly different races (possibly, I didn't see any mentions thou) and mixing that with random cases of sexual abuse isn't going to improve the world. Not one iota. Not to mention it's essentially a political topic, which is banned on this forum.. for a good reason. (feel free to ban me for taking the bait .. )

[pottervogel]

2 minutes ago, theFlu said:

Pulling out a single line from two months ago, where people were discussing different zeds, possibly different races (possibly, I didn't see any mentions thou) and mixing that with random cases of sexual abuse isn't going to improve the world. Not one iota. Not to mention it's essentially a political topic, which is banned on this forum.. for a good reason. (feel free to ban me for taking the bait .. )

Woke ain*t political? Whatever - I didn't read this two month ago but now, so i tried to explain that not everything is stupid when someone might have missed a point. I think there was an argument to improve the game quality ("help them to do better") and I agree.

[iamnuff]

On 6/24/2023 at 5:34 PM, meganoth said:

 

NOT AGAIN!  This is wrong and I had hoped these false rumors were gone after more than a year

 

Lotl1 is perfectly enough to have a self-sustaining farm and making seeds out of plants will generally grow your farm. The only drawback is that with a string of VERY bad harvests you could be left without seeds eventually. But for that you have to also be so unlucky to never find any seeds in loot.

 

Only without a single point in Lotl it makes no sense to convert plants to seeds. Just put any seeds you find into your plots and grow them.

 

But if you have Lotl1 or more, you can just convert any plants you have into seeds and on average expect to get more out of the seed later. And mathematically it makes sense to start planting as soon as you have plants, there is nothing gained by waiting except if you plan to put more points into the perk later.

 

 

If people keep bringing this up, then maybe you need to re-examine it. 

 

I set up a farm in my recent game in the experimental (about 10 farm-plots) and I had plenty of seeds to plant... but few useful ones. 

 

Pumpkin seeds and goldenrod seeds are common loot in trash, but there's little point planting them. Corn-seeds can be gathered on-mass from bags in farm POIs, but then actual corn can also be gathered on-mass from farm POIs, so there's little need to plant them. 

Potato seeds seem fairly rare, which is a problem because that's the most important crop in the game. 

 

Lets say you have a 10-block farm. You somehow manage to plant every farm-plot with potatos. 

With the first perk in LoTL, you get 40 potatoes and probably 5 seeds back.

This lets you spend 25 potatos (assuming you even have the seed-crafting level to make potato seeds) to craft the other 5 and replant your full row of crops. 

This leaves you with 15 potatos to cook with. 

That's, what, three stews? (Edit: apparantly stew is 2 potatos, not 5? According to the wiki anyway. I'm not my group's cook, so I dunno what it is in A21.)

 

Once you have a large farm and your income-per-harvest is much higher so you can afford to turn 25 crops back into seeds to replant, it's not such a bad deal. But when you only have ten farm plots, it's kinda ass.

 

I think part of the issue is recipe bottleneck though.

All of the good food recipies cost either cans of food (which are basically random) or potatos. 

It genuinely feels like not enough cooking options use raw meat? Like... I hunted a couple of deer and rabbits and a bear or two and I have a chest full of meat that we're basically not using. 

 

Because grilled/boiled meat gives like 10 fullness. 

The only things worth making with it are Beacon and Eggs (Eggs are rare) Meat Stew (requires basically every vegetable in the game, potatoes are semi-rare) or Steak and Potatoes Meal (Potatoes)

 

Every good recipe that doesn't require canned goods that can only be found from looting also requires potatoes.

So all the other seeds you find in loot (and there sure are a lot of them) basically don't matter.

 

This issue has only been exascerbated by the change to how water works. 

Now with water being much much rarer than before, you have to prioritize high-value meals if they require water to cook. 

Meat Stew is worth making, even though it costs a jar of water. 

Cornbread is not, because it also costs a jar of water, but provides like 12 fullness in return.

 

I suggest adding something like a Steak Sandwich recipe. Make it use cornbread and raw meat. Make it give 30+ fullness and some other miscellaneous bonuses.

Alternatively, Steak-and-corn-on-the-cob-Meal. 

 

Basically, take corn-based products that suck and aren't worth making and make them part of another, higher-level recipe. So that we have recipes that we can cook good food with that don't all rely on the same vegatable. 

 

That way "Just plant whatever seeds you've got and you'll be fine" will actually be useful advice.

 

As an aside, I've maxed out LoTL and i'm not convinced that it gives 7 crops per harvest. I've had this skill-rank for a couple of days now and that doesn't sound right. 

I assumed it was 4 crops harvested per plant at maximum, not at level one. 

 

I'll need to wait for my buddy to come online and bring the private game up before I can test it, but...

I've been getting about 40 potatos per harvest, but then i've never had enough potato seeds to actually full the farm with them to begin with. I've always been padding out the extra slots with aloe or something. 

Edited June 26, 2023 by iamnuff (see edit history)

[meganoth]

6 hours ago, iamnuff said:

If people keep bringing this up, then maybe you need to re-examine it. 

 

I definitely don't need to re-examine it, as a simple player.

 

6 hours ago, iamnuff said:

I set up a farm in my recent game in the experimental (about 10 farm-plots) and I had plenty of seeds to plant... but few useful ones. 

 

Pumpkin seeds and goldenrod seeds are common loot in trash, but there's little point planting them. Corn-seeds can be gathered on-mass from bags in farm POIs, but then actual corn can also be gathered on-mass from farm POIs, so there's little need to plant them. 

 

Horray. If I ever need to be the farmer of our group again then 1/4 of the farm plots can be scraped. Corn is in even more recipes than potato so be thankful for work you don't have to do anymore

 

6 hours ago, iamnuff said:

Potato seeds seem fairly rare, which is a problem because that's the most important crop in the game. 

 

Still you can get enough to start a farm, and then it is your decision at what size to stop

 

 

6 hours ago, iamnuff said:

Lets say you have a 10-block farm. You somehow manage to plant every farm-plot with potatos. 

With the first perk in LoTL, you get 40 potatoes and probably 5 seeds back.

This lets you spend 25 potatos (assuming you even have the seed-crafting level to make potato seeds) to craft the other 5 and replant your full row of crops. 

This leaves you with 15 potatos to cook with. 

That's, what, three stews? (Edit: apparantly stew is 2 potatos, not 5? According to the wiki anyway. I'm not my group's cook, so I dunno what it is in A21.)

 

After finding out its only 2 potatos you could have edited your conclusion as well: "That's great, 7.5 stews!" 😉

 

 

6 hours ago, iamnuff said:

Once you have a large farm and your income-per-harvest is much higher so you can afford to turn 25 crops back into seeds to replant, it's not such a bad deal. But when you only have ten farm plots, it's kinda ass.

 

You should always afford to turn enough seeds into crops, otherwise your farm shrinks. And then the next harvest will be even smaller. Would that make long-term sense?

 

You harvest what you sow, so to speak. Farm with LotL 1 and you are a rather bad farmer. But still a farmer. Someone with LotL0 is a bank manager trying to farm.

 

6 hours ago, iamnuff said:

 

I think part of the issue is recipe bottleneck though.

All of the good food recipies cost either cans of food (which are basically random) or potatos. 

It genuinely feels like not enough cooking options use raw meat? Like... I hunted a couple of deer and rabbits and a bear or two and I have a chest full of meat that we're basically not using. 

 

You are correct that meat is rather difficult to use. But meat is very easy to get. So it is balanced in a way, very easy to get but you have to eat lots and lots of grilled meat to fill yourself up.

 

Bacon and Eggs is one of the most inefficient foods in the game IMHO, because it uses 2 very expensive eggs for a rather low-level food. I may cook that in the first few days because of necessity, but each egg is much better used in blueberry pies. And blueberry pie is, if you can save up the eggs for it, a very good food without potatoes.

 

6 hours ago, iamnuff said:

 

Because grilled/boiled meat gives like 10 fullness. 

The only things worth making with it are Beacon and Eggs (Eggs are rare) Meat Stew (requires basically every vegetable in the game, potatoes are semi-rare) or Steak and Potatoes Meal (Potatoes)

 

Every good recipe that doesn't require canned goods that can only be found from looting also requires potatoes.

So all the other seeds you find in loot (and there sure are a lot of them) basically don't matter.

 

This issue has only been exascerbated by the change to how water works. 

Now with water being much much rarer than before, you have to prioritizethe  high-value meals if they require water to cook. 

Meat Stew is worth making, even though it costs a jar of water. 

Cornbread is not, because it also costs a jar of water, but provides like 12 fullness in return.

 

I suggest adding something like a Steak Sandwich recipe. Make it use cornbread and raw meat. Make it give 30+ fullness and some other miscellaneous bonuses.

Alternatively, Steak-and-corn-on-the-cob-Meal. 

 

Basically, take corn-based products that suck and aren't worth making and make them part of another, higher-level recipe. So that we have recipes that we can cook good food with that don't all rely on the same vegatable. 

 

That way "Just plant whatever seeds you've got and you'll be fine" will actually be useful advice.

 

Seeds are totally useless except for planting and plants have the chance to be used in a recipe. So even thrown out of context that sentence is objectively true.

 

6 hours ago, iamnuff said:

 

As an aside, I've maxed out LoTL and i'm not convinced that it gives 7 crops per harvest. I've had this skill-rank for a couple of days now and that doesn't sound right. 

I assumed it was 4 crops harvested per plant at maximum, not at level one. 

 

Mmh, I am not convinced either, I thought it was 6.

I don't understand that last sentence above.

 

6 hours ago, iamnuff said:

 

I'll need to wait for my buddy to come online and bring the private game up before I can test it, but...

I've been getting about 40 potatos per harvest, but then i've never had enough potato seeds to actually full the farm with them to begin with. I've always been padding out the extra slots with aloe or something. 

 

Not sure what you are saying. If I have a handful of plots with some specific plant and want to enlarge that I convert everything I have to seeds. in the meantime hungry guys at my door have to eat grilled meat or pumpkin bread or dine at the trader.

 

Edited June 26, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)