16 hours ago, JRaskal said:There was always luck involved in the loot system. That's at the core of the game. But until now you could make up for bad luck by choosing the right talents.
Now you're completely at the mercy of the RNG. If you can't find the right books you might not even be able to build a forge or a workbench, let alone a vehicle of some kind. You can try and focus on looking for books, but if you don't find the right ones, you're stuck hitting demolisher zombies with level 2 wooden clubs and there's nothing you can do against that.
You are not actually at the mercy of RNG as much as you think. Whatever crafting books you find (in the case of clubs & bats, Heavy Hitters) are tied into the Pummel Pete perk combined with some help from Lucky Looter. If you are a perfect 0 in all the perks, Lucky Looter will boost your odds of everything via RNG (so you'll find a little bit of everything). But if you pump a point or two into Pummel Pete, it skews the books in favor of Heavy Hitters (you may still find others, but your odds are much improved). So you can still take the perks you did in Alpha 20 and earlier to still get the better quality clubs/bats, just not in the method.
Same is true for workstation books (the game even tells you Lockpicking + Engineering perks will skew books in favor of Forge Ahead books to speed up getting those workstations build). Same idea for all the other things in the game now.
While there is still RNG in everything, we do have a measure of control over it in Alpha 21 by choosing our perks to nudge the loot tables in the direction(s) we want.