Thoughts of Vanilla/default settings of A21 from a veteran player

[warmer]

I'll keep this short.

 

I made a custom 8k world and started a new game.

 

Got wrecked by a boar in a corn field in 5min after start.

 

Acknowledged the A21 @%$# slap and approached the game with a fair bit of caution there after.

 

I have been having more fun than I have in years.

 

The challenge is good, but not too hard. The progression is slower, but unlocking crafting is oh so satisfying. I think TFP gamified the dopamine hits in a really great way.

 

All in all, the pace of vanilla feels great. Previously I was bored in a few hours.

 

How does everyone feel about Vanilla settings compared to previous builds?

[theFlu]

I've only played until day 8 so far.. pretty easy-mode settings, just to check things out. Feels mostly like the same game to me.. looks prettier, gorgeous in comparison. Scope zoom chuggalugs a bit, but not really complaining, prolly some settings to tweak.

 

Played most of the week with a rising infection (had three honey, left them at my first shack to do a quest, found a city doing said quest, never went back), got to the red zone at around 60% before buying some antis. Even so, with a knackered sta, no real problems; one close call when a wandering horde followed me up a ladder into a closed attic. That place got crowded fast Saved by the hole of a random trap floor.

 

I might be broken somehow, but I can't find the magazine mechanic that exciting. It rather feels like a chore, especially after the couple first ones when the crafts at least progress per book trio. I know exactly what'll be next, not exactly when, but there's no surprises. Just do quests long enough and you'll get this thing next. And the next thing after that is going to take a couple extra quests.

[Survior]

Just recently I found a boar, wolf, snake in the first few minutes of an a20 play though that night a horded visited my motel room. All I'm saying here is that finding a boar at the beginning of the game isn't related to a21.  Kudos for having fun though nothing wrong that!

 

[Davey Bones]

I have to agree on almost all of your points. Only thing I'd argue is the magazine mechanic for crafting. I find it too RNG reliant and it takes something away from customizing your build, your way. Take for example, you have a group that plays together and each person usually fills their niche roll. The builder, the cook, the crafter, the mechanic, etc. In this game that all falls to RNG. Of course you can pass magazines around, but if no one gets lucky enough to snag books for cooking for example, then your cook is left more or less useless, and nobody eats. 

I feel it could be improved with a Skyrim sort of setup, where as you cook, you get points. Say you cook ten charred meat, then you finally are able to cook grilled meat. Took you a while but you finally figured out how not to burn the food. Just an opinion, I just don't like when things are entirely based on RNG. It's made the game less enjoyable for me. Unfortunately, to the point that I don't think I'll play 21. I'll keep giving it a shot for a while but I actually got to the point where I left and played something else. 

I was really excited about the skill system rework too. Last time they did it I felt it was a real improvement, this time I feel like they're going in the wrong direction.

[ElCabong]

I just started a new game. I turn hord night off. 

 

It was a struggle to survive for the first two days. Especially that first night. I don't have any problem with the gameplay.

 

I tried to create a world that had a large forest and decent sized wasteland, desert, and snow biome. I tried three times and could not get the snow biome to work right. It's postage stamped all over the place instead of one nice big area with towns and cities for me to explore.

[warmer]

1 hour ago, Davey Bones said:

Only thing I'd argue is the magazine mechanic for crafting. I find it too RNG reliant and it takes something away from customizing your build, your way. Take for example, you have a group that plays together and each person usually fills their niche roll. The builder, the cook, the crafter, the mechanic, etc. In this game that all falls to RNG. Of course you can pass magazines around, but if no one gets lucky enough to snag books for cooking for example, then your cook is left more or less useless, and nobody eats. 

POI have LOTS of theme magazines. Restaurants have lots of cooking, electronics stores have Lots of electronic/robotics. Ride around and search every newspaper box/mailbox.

 

magazines RNG is weighted toward your skill choices. I feel its pretty good IMO. If it was any easier, it wouldn't be fun for me.

 

what I like about this is you are rewarded for scavenging and moving to new locations (newspaper box/mailbox)

 

in the old system I never had to leave my chunk aside from questing and I'd top out my crafting by day 7

[ElCabong]

I think you would want mele characters to advance in their weapon for progression faster than people who used rainged weapons. Mele would want fast armor progression and weapon progression because they're taking more damage than people like me who are using bows and pistols. I typically clear out a POI without taking any damage.

[Vaeliorin]

I have to admit, I'm getting kind of sick of finding cooking magazines.  It seems like everything food-related I open has at least 1 (granted, I maxed out my cooking skill because the crafting times are insane otherwise.)  Only like 12 more to find  though, before they get booted out of the loot pool (much like the seed magazines have been.)

 

I'm not sure how happy I am with the early game being drug out.  I can't really go exploring to find a place to build a base (I always choose somewhere I find aesthetically pleasing, regardless of how near a city is) since I'm still on a bicycle.  I have the ability to make q5 steel tools, but am quite a ways from being able to make steel.  Not that the steel matters, since I've got 2 steel tool parts...though I've got like 30 steel spear parts (because I'm obviously going to make half a dozen q5 steel spears..)

 

Water is a non-issue after a few days and 4-5 dew collectors, so that change seems a bit pointless, which makes me worry they're going to jack up the price of water filters (or remove them from trader inventories altogether.)

[BFT2020]

5 hours ago, theFlu said:

I might be broken somehow, but I can't find the magazine mechanic that exciting. It rather feels like a chore, especially after the couple first ones when the crafts at least progress per book trio. I know exactly what'll be next, not exactly when, but there's no surprises. Just do quests long enough and you'll get this thing next. And the next thing after that is going to take a couple extra quests.

 

I don't focus on the magazines and where I am in regards to the various levels, I just continue going on and see them increase over time.  However, I always play "Deal with what I have, not what I wish I have" so I learn to make due if I don't have the workbench unlocked yet or T3 weapons to craft.

[theFlu]

1 hour ago, BFT2020 said:

However, I always play "Deal with what I have, not what I wish I have"

Ye, I'm pretty much the same.. there isn't many challenges the game can throw at me I can't deal with, so I don't Need anything that doesn't come for certain.

 

But .. while playing with a Q5 stone spear, Day 11, I noticed I unlocked Steel Spear Q1... the only thing that went thru my head was "oh, right, I might want to make an iron spear at some point". No jump in tech level, no elation, just .. eh. I'll make the Q5 Iron and assume I see a Steel drop before I can craft one that would be an improvement ...

[Davey Bones]

On 6/15/2023 at 12:30 PM, warmer said:

POI have LOTS of theme magazines. Restaurants have lots of cooking, electronics stores have Lots of electronic/robotics. Ride around and search every newspaper box/mailbox.

 

magazines RNG is weighted toward your skill choices. I feel its pretty good IMO. If it was any easier, it wouldn't be fun for me.

 

what I like about this is you are rewarded for scavenging and moving to new locations (newspaper box/mailbox)

 

in the old system I never had to leave my chunk aside from questing and I'd top out my crafting by day 7

That's all valid. When I get the time I intend to play around with it more. The issue for me isn't that the magazines are hard to find. I was just making an example of a potential problem. I just have a general dislike of RNG dependent skill progression. After I give it some more time it may grow on me. Never know.

[Vaeliorin]

On 6/15/2023 at 5:11 PM, theFlu said:

Ye, I'm pretty much the same.. there isn't many challenges the game can throw at me I can't deal with, so I don't Need anything that doesn't come for certain.

 

But .. while playing with a Q5 stone spear, Day 11, I noticed I unlocked Steel Spear Q1... the only thing that went thru my head was "oh, right, I might want to make an iron spear at some point". No jump in tech level, no elation, just .. eh. I'll make the Q5 Iron and assume I see a Steel drop before I can craft one that would be an improvement ...

Count me in the jumping from q5 T1 to q5 T2 camp.  I assume I'll jump to a q5 T3 as well.  Low quality stuff just isn't worth using, and a q5 T1/T2 is more than adequate until all you're seeing is rads and demolishers.

[Laim]

On 6/15/2023 at 2:24 PM, warmer said:

I'll keep this short.

 

I made a custom 8k world and started a new game.

 

Got wrecked by a boar in a corn field in 5min after start.

 

Acknowledged the A21 @%$# slap and approached the game with a fair bit of caution there after.

 

I have been having more fun than I have in years.

 

The challenge is good, but not too hard. The progression is slower, but unlocking crafting is oh so satisfying. I think TFP gamified the dopamine hits in a really great way.

 

All in all, the pace of vanilla feels great. Previously I was bored in a few hours.

 

How does everyone feel about Vanilla settings compared to previous builds?

 

I (was) loving it.  It's been great, my only gripe with A21 at all is the lighting.  Otherwise it feels really polished in comparison to previous alphas, which I guess is the point but I have no real complaints which is nice.  Feels closer to beta by the day, ha.

[CastleBuilder83]

The lighting has stopped me a couple times from exploring a POI early game.   Before I had a mining helmet or flashlight mod, it would start raining as I’m exploring.  It would get so dark inside I would have to stop exploring.  Not gonna fight zombies in the dark - that’s death.

 

Mailboxes.  A cheap source of magazines that doesn’t require any fighting or clearing out zombies early on.  Raid every mailbox you can find.

[fragtzack]

Agree with OP, I am liking a21. 3100+ hours played(since a15).

 

So far my biggest gripe is with lighting. The change from outdoors to indoors is way to sudden, same with lighting change from the weather.

[Scyris]

I play on warrior difficulty myself, zombies hurt, but also aren't super bullet spongy like on higher difficulties. Feels about right to me. Just gotta know whats safe to mess with, like don't mess with boars on day 1/2 with only a primitive bow, you WILL get wrecked unless you like hide on the side of a poi or something, you wanna wait till you get a cross bow (pretty much will 1 shot them on a sneak headshot) or some gun with more than 1 round per magazine (so no hunting rifle/pipe rifle), Also don't try to melee one early game, it won't go well. Hell even on day 10 or 11 like my current game, where i use a ql 5 baseball bat i'd still not risk meleeing boars.

On 6/17/2023 at 9:34 PM, Vaeliorin said:

Count me in the jumping from q5 T1 to q5 T2 camp.  I assume I'll jump to a q5 T3 as well.  Low quality stuff just isn't worth using, and a q5 T1/T2 is more than adequate until all you're seeing is rads and demolishers.

 

Yeah I often do this just to save resources like ql 5 wooden club is better than the baseball bat till the bat is ql 3 or 4, at which point you might as well wait a bit longer and just wait till you can make a ql 5. As even on day 12/13 on warrior difficulty a ql 5 wooden club still kicks zombies butts, mostly due to the super slow scaling of vanilla. Even on day 13 most pois still only have the basic starter tier zombies, and I am questing in tier 4's. Literally 2 normal attacks to the head kills most of them with a modded ql 5 club and like 2 or 3 in pummel pete, if 2 doesn't kill 3 will, except the fatties, big momma/tourist/biker and those Thugs have fairly high hp. Soldiers suck in general with their massive armor they have no matter the weapon you use.