The no-trader challenge

[Max Headroom]

My friends and I believe that the quest reward system is OP and there is no particular reason to explore the world since you can just run quests from a few traders and get all you need. 

 

So we will be doing a play-through without trader given questing. I was going to make a map with no traders at all, but it was pointed out that traders were the only place to get water filters for dew collectors. We've also turned off loot respawning and supply drops. We must keep clearing POIs to survive.

 

To support this I have created a large 16k map featuring huge cities. Once we've cleared an area we must move on. Should be interesting.

[Gamida]

I was under impression you had a very small chance to find a filter in a broken dew collector but have never found one myself.

Maybe it is a very, very, very small chance

 

[SylenThunder]

17 minutes ago, Gamida said:

I was under impression you had a very small chance to find a filter in a broken dew collector but have never found one myself.

Maybe it is a very, very, very small chance

 

IIRC there are three POI's with a broken dew collector. Looting that has something like a 5% chance to have a filter in it when you loot it. Destroying it doesn't do you any good.

[8_Hussars]

I quite enjoy the no trader challenge and freedom to loot when where and how much.  I left traders in and just bought a water filter or two, as the compounds were good for looting.

I would just use a craftable water filter mod if I was to remove them totally.

[Catdaddy]

I love No-Trader runs. I just add recipes for all non-craftable items.

 

For me, the back and forth of the trader system is the most tedious and gamey aspect of vanilla. Just let me take all the missions and go about my business. I'll be back in a week or whatever. Or give me a time limit, or a zone to clear. Anything but this travelling the same road over and over, checking in between each job. I hate it a lot. 

 

In my perfect game, there would be no traders. All POIs would be Clear and Fetch missions, triggered when I step on the property, one-and-done. Buried Supplies missions would be migrated to the Treasure Map system. Kill the zombies, collect all the MacGuffin parts, save the world. In the final scene, I'll be flying my gyro out of the death zone, homeward bound, when I get clipped by the air drop plane and go down in flames. 

 

 

[Rotor]

1 hour ago, Catdaddy said:

 I'll be flying my gyro out of the death zone, homeward bound, when I get clipped by the air drop plane and go down in flames.

 No! No!

 

You bailed out right before the flames.  However you only had 2 water bottles in your belt, and now have lost all the supplies you had...in the smoldering flames of you choppah.  But you got far enough that you are in new unknown area.

 

No Duke, just survive!

 

:).

[Rotor]

/insert ....and because of all the commotion a HUGE! horde is nearby.

 

No Duke, just survive!

[zombiehunter]

15 hours ago, Max Headroom said:

My friends and I believe that the quest reward system is OP and there is no particular reason to explore the world since you can just run quests from a few traders and get all you need. 

 

So we will be doing a play-through without trader given questing. I was going to make a map with no traders at all, but it was pointed out that traders were the only place to get water filters for dew collectors. We've also turned off loot respawning and supply drops. We must keep clearing POIs to survive.

 

To support this I have created a large 16k map featuring huge cities. Once we've cleared an area we must move on. Should be interesting.

I've done a few no trader playthroughs and it does make the game feel a lot different, although I only play single player.  I think you'll enjoy it.

[BFT2020]

4 hours ago, Gamida said:

I was under impression you had a very small chance to find a filter in a broken dew collector but have never found one myself.

Maybe it is a very, very, very small chance

 

 

It is.

 

If you want to slightly bump the chances, you can simply add it to the utility cart as a very low chance.  Still the same possibility of drop, but more opportunities in the world to come across them

<insertAfter xpath="//lootgroup[@name='groupUtilityCart']/item[@name='resourceAcid']">

    <item name="resourceWaterFilter" count="1" loot_prob_template="veryLow" force_prob="true"/>

</insertAfter>

 

Edited February 8 by BFT2020 (see edit history)

[Callum123456789]

yeah, hopefully quest rewards get balanced in a future update, i had said before that quest rewards for higher tier quests make the crafting/looting part of the game completely obsolete, a way around this would be to have quest loot into separate divided loot groups based around player level i.e a level 20 player does a tier 5 quest if you based the quest rewards around lootstage it could give a 20% loot boost bonus in terms of what the reward could be as of rn getting a level 6 m60 when you can only craft/loot level 4 ak's is a problem

[Ramethzer0]

On 2/7/2024 at 7:33 PM, Max Headroom said:

there is no particular reason to explore the world since you can just run quests from a few traders and get all you need. 

 

 

I don't think people understand how much passive exploration happens in game.  Deep exploration tends to happen more once you max out a trader and want to move onto another one and you feel safer moving about the countryside.

Edited February 11 by Ramethzer0 (see edit history)

[Max Headroom]

Well, we are at day 13 03:42 and have stopped for the weekend. I've got a super bowl watch party to go to.

 

As expected we had a slow start with a period of food and potable water uncertainty. But we sold a lot of stuff to the trader and now have 9 functioning dew collectors. There are three of us and this last two game days we've split up to search for wheels, vehicle magazines and other things that usualy aren't a problem. We now have 2 minibikes and are 2 wheels away from the third. Day 7 horde we did in the clock-tower which was adequate if a little cramped. We may do that again for day 14 but there's also a buddies grain available.

 

This is fun. And a nice change from trader-driven questing. 

[Maharin]

The easiest way I've found to remove traders from maps is by editing rwgmixer.xml.

 

Find this line at the end:

<prefab_spawn_adjust tags="trader" bias="20" min_count="10"/>

 

And change it to this:

<prefab_spawn_adjust tags="trader" bias="0" min_count="0"/>

 

Maps will now generate without traders and you don't have to edit prefabs.xml for each map (like I used to do).

[Max Headroom]

Can do something similar with Teragon. But the traders serve another purpose ... they are an indication of where town is when you spawn out in the woods somewhere.

Edited February 13 by Max Headroom (see edit history)

[Maharin]

7 minutes ago, Max Headroom said:

Can do something similar with Teragon. But the traders serve another purpose ... they are an indication of where town is when you spawn out in the woods somewhere.

 

Or you could just follow the lag. 

[Max Headroom]

Haha!

 

In addition to my MP game I am now also playing a solo no-trader game. Odd things tend to be a problem with this play style. In this game it was mechanical parts. I raided three different Pass-N-Gas pois and still didn't have enough to make a workbench. Then a wrench dropped in a zombie loot bag. Now I'm cruisin! 🙂

[Rotor]

20 minutes ago, Max Headroom said:

Haha!

 

In addition to my MP game I am now also playing a solo no-trader game. Odd things tend to be a problem with this play style. In this game it was mechanical parts. I raided three different Pass-N-Gas pois and still didn't have enough to make a workbench. Then a wrench dropped in a zombie loot bag. Now I'm cruisin! 🙂

 

Yes, you are far more susceptible to the will of RnGeezus <insert angelic tones of heavenly bliss here>!

[Syphon583]

There are a couple mods on Nexus Mods that remove trader quests (no option in the trader dialog). Meaning you can still trade with them, but gone are the OP rewards you sometimes get from quest grinding.

[MechanicalLens]

On 2/13/2024 at 8:59 AM, Syphon583 said:

There are a couple mods on Nexus Mods that remove trader quests (no option in the trader dialog). Meaning you can still trade with them, but gone are the OP rewards you sometimes get from quest grinding.

 

There's yet another mod still on Nexus called "Extra Game Options" which, among other things, allows you to customize your trader experience fairly extensively, including the amount of quests you need to complete each tier, the ability to remove gear (guns, melee weapons, tools, armor, etc.) from trader inventories or quests, or from looting. The second latter option does make higher tier quests pretty obsolete, however, as I don't see anyone clearing a T5 or T6 (Infested) POI for 25 steel.

[Azrهel]

My friends and I are currently doing a no-trader challenge, totally vanilla game, on Survivalist setting, but without death penalty. We got no airdrops and no loot respawn.

Leveling is way less slower and getting ressources obviously way harder.
It was mainly their idea and not mine, to be honest, since imho the game is not anymore meant to be played like this, because at some point you will run out of PoI's to loot and either you move and build everything totally anew or, in the end, every single PoI is looted. So it can never be a true endless game, since at some point every means of acquiring items, that are not craftable, will be exhausted without utilizing the trader.

I'm honest, I don't get their fascination about this, they're stating, they just want to try it out, since it is a different experience.

Although i agree, Traders give you an immediate respawn of already looted PoI's to loot them again, so basically an endless resupply of everything you want and on top too strong quest rewards, I don't think abolishing traders is the go to here.

I think traders should be nerfed, like quests can't target an already cleared PoI until the next blood moon has passed.

I can't imagine us surviving even the first blood moon horde, we're currently on day 4, unless we spend a whole day grinding stone and clay, building a meta starter horde base and killing them with spears.

But instead of that they also want to use a PoI as horde base... I fear the worst lol

[Rotor]

53 minutes ago, Azrهel said:

But instead of that they also want to use a PoI as horde base... I fear the worst lol

 

Fear not:

 

[Max Headroom]

X2. And that diagonal block can be used in many situations.

 

 

[Max Headroom]

We are up to day 26 and have survived each horde night pretty well. We expected the slow start.

 

When playing in a team it really helps to divide up the skill areas and corresponding literature. Specialize. 

 

Beyond that we created a very large map with huge cities so we wouldn't run out for a good while. We haven't  made much of a dent in it yet.

[8_Hussars]

On 2/13/2024 at 8:44 AM, Max Headroom said:

Haha!

 

In addition to my MP game I am now also playing a solo no-trader game. Odd things tend to be a problem with this play style. In this game it was mechanical parts. I raided three different Pass-N-Gas pois and still didn't have enough to make a workbench. Then a wrench dropped in a zombie loot bag. Now I'm cruisin! 🙂

FWIW, I have never used the trader for mech parts.  Attributing their scarcity due to a "no trader" run seems like an interesting observation.

[Max Headroom]

1 hour ago, 8_Hussars said:

FWIW, I have never used the trader for mech parts.  Attributing their scarcity due to a "no trader" run seems like an interesting observation.

In standard trader-driven play-through I feel like I would have had a wrench sooner is all I'm saying.