Thoughts On Crafting Magazines?

[Soulbreeze]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Strange. My crafting progression in my cp-op and in my single player game was always ahead of anything I did find (except for the toilet pistol). I often didn't have the materials to actually craft the weapon, but I could have.

 

You can get a lot of magazines from the magazine bundle rewards from quests, even on a MP server with everything already looted, but probably you know that.

 

I take that magazine book box quest reward every time it's offered; it's not enough and often books I don't need. That's part of why I'm saying perking into some things doesn't increase chances of certain books enough. OR we just need a way to offset the RNG. I'm sure a big part if it is single player vs. multiplayer server play. You don't get to loot mailboxes, traders, bookstores or any other high value POI very often on Multi, but it's all options in Single.

[Kosmic Kerman]

2 hours ago, Soulbreeze said:

I take that magazine book box quest reward every time it's offered; it's not enough and often books I don't need. That's part of why I'm saying perking into some things doesn't increase chances of certain books enough. OR we just need a way to offset the RNG. I'm sure a big part if it is single player vs. multiplayer server play. You don't get to loot mailboxes, traders, bookstores or any other high value POI very often on Multi, but it's all options in Single.

 

The game is balanced around solo and co-op multiplayer. If that's not how you are playing the game, whoever runs the server would need to make balance changes to account for that.

[Riamus]

I've seen people wanting more effect from perks to increase magazine drops and I've seen people wanting less.  With that kind of split in what people want, having things be anywhere in the middle is probably best, with mods being an option to shift it one way or the other based on preference.

[meganoth]

19 hours ago, Soulbreeze said:

I take that magazine book box quest reward every time it's offered; it's not enough and often books I don't need. That's part of why I'm saying perking into some things doesn't increase chances of certain books enough. OR we just need a way to offset the RNG. I'm sure a big part if it is single player vs. multiplayer server play. You don't get to loot mailboxes, traders, bookstores or any other high value POI very often on Multi, but it's all options in Single.

 

Correct, though that can't explain it completely. I didn't go for extra rounds to loot mailboxes so it is only the mailboxes on the way to quests and most of that was just a few routes. Maybe those were 10-20 mailboxes on top, nice to have on top but not a game changer.

Can't vouch for co-op, it is different there, one of my co-players could have made the rounds, and naturally I would profit from finds and quest bundles of my co-op players. 

In my starting town and the other forest town I visited I did not see a bookshop and I don't think the 1-2 from the trader make a difference. 

 

I eventually went to other biomes and (not sure) might have loot a bookstore there, I am only sure that I did that in co-op, not in the SP game. But even if I did, my crafting progression did not lag before going to that biome, it was always in front.

 

Kosmic Kerman has a valid point here, multiplayer servers with already looted worlds are a special case and server operators have to do additional work to recreate the balance of sp and co-op.  There are console commands to help them (for example to refresh whole areas) but also there have been mods (AFAIK) specifically created for servers.

 

Edited August 4 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Krougal]

So since my fresh start in last pages post; 

Things have gone more or less as I expected. I am just going into 2nd horde night and lvl 31.

I am more or less around where I would reasonably expect to be in A20 for my perks.

A magazine shy of cement mixer. 7-8 short for electrical and traps.

Considering I have advanced engineering 3, I would have had those things a few days ago.

Crafting QL3 pretty much across the board; so baseball bat, iron tools, wrench, hammer. QL2 armor.

Almost everything is crafted. Toilet pistol, QL1 as a sidearm. Mostly taking magazine bundles for rewards.

A little behind on shotgun, QL4 pipe, I invested into boomstick rather late.

I made a minibike, the day after I got my bicycle lol.

 

2nd horde night I usually don't bother with firearms still, although I would also expect to have some concrete and maybe electric fences by now also.

I am not really sure how I leveled this fast without trying really either. I think the XP from challenges is significant, and I was completing a lot of them since I was wrenching and mining and chopping everything in sight.

 

I have quested but it wasn't my priority. I'm maybe midway through T2, only even finished T1 2nd week.

Mostly scaving and building. I did do some running around looking for obvious mailboxes, but I didn't B-line for the crack a book or cherry pick any places, haven't even found 1 yet either. I did ransack a working stiff.

 

So I guess the magazines aren't so horrible, you just need to know how to tailor your build & playstyle to your expectations.

[theNobody14161]

I have several thoughts on this, I will preface them with that I've played 7 dtd sinc a14, with about 1,400 hrs in the game, and I haven't played A22 much, but I have played a fair amount in a21-

I do like the crafting mags for things like 6 quality tools and weapons, because it prevents wasting skill points just to craft a group of items.  It also prevents there being like one item that only one possible magazine can teach the player how to build being annoyingly elusive.  I'd rather need alot of a common lootable item to learn how to craft, say herbal antibiotics than rely on a chance of the quite rare schematic popping up.  For the case of herbal antibiotics it also kind of makes sense- read alot of magazines about what plants have what chemicals and what chemicals help fight infections and you can kind of figure out what plants can fight infections.  That being said, for certain things it is game breaking and forces a narrow scope of gameplay, particularly-

crafting seeds and cooking low tier food items- when players can't feed themselves and levelling up does NOTHING to change this, death is just completely irrelevant.  Oh, I lose experience? experience and levelling up is worth nothing if it doesn't get me closer to being able to survive sustainably.  Irrelevant deaths just means instead of players setting up bases strategically, building or learning to fight, gameplay is just running around with a bedroll, looting, dying (sometimes intentionally) to progress faster until food and water is produced sustainably.  This is a bit less the case in single player, where looting food can be sustainable with respawnable loot, but 4 or 8 players each eating a bear's worth of food every day will deplete lootable food sources fast enough that planned death expedites advancement, since all players must loot.  Forcing all players to be looters can also be incredibly monotonous; base builders or miners may not like looting any more than looters would mining or base building.  This is inferior to the old system, death started out being minorly relevant and became more and more relevant as players levelled up. 

workstations- bad luck should not bottleneck in a survival game; Running around with a tier 6 machine gun for ranged attack and a wooden club for melee because that is what you find (if you don't find an army of forge ahead's to build your own stuff) is fine for a bit, but the whole point of a crafting game is to have choice in what you build and do.   Feels more like being a clown than a survivalist.

 

Some things are also immersion-breaking; crafting potato seeds from potatoes is literally learning to put potatoes in the ground- teenagers who leave a potato in the fridge too long literally discover this before a 7 days to die character would.  Something humanity discovered thousands of years before written language shouldn't be on par with trucks or gyrocopters.

In a nutshell- Reading a bunch of mags to craft advanced level things like M60s or foods with special buffs is fine, but basic stuff that fundamentally shifts play (workstations, the general ability to produce drinkable water and foods that you only need one stack for 2 to 4 days of food like bacon and eggs or vegetable stew) is best not left to RNG.  I've played blood moons where my best weapon was a stone spear (on this particular run, RNG made it so I did not have a forge to make any metal bullets and looted bullets run out very quickly in blood moons.  never found metal weapons.  Found metal tools galore though) defending a cement POI that I had fortified with brick.  On day 80.  The first blood moon doing that on day 40 was a trip.  Doing that same exact thing for the next five blood moons because forges were left to RNG was absurd.

Quests do lessen the randomness of mags quite a bit, but that is only if you find a trader who sells the mags you want.  Doing quests can be a fun aspect of the game, but doing quest after quest just to buy mags can be a bit monotonous even if the trader does offer the mags you want.

And then there are things like cement mixers- we don't necessarily want players building cement castles on day 3, at least not without significant sacrifice in all other facets of gameplay.  Maybe best to make tying building the cement mixers themselves to levelling (that way high-level players who just haven't had the luck can still produce cement) but perhaps the ability to accrue lots of rock to advanced tools that require lots of magazines is probably the best route to go there.  Farming used to be kind of like this (before mags were needed for seeds); if a low-level player wants to build a farm off the bat, they can but it takes all their time to gather the resources so their progress in other areas is significantly delayed, wheras in later game when you can gun down zombie dogs for rotten flesh and mine soil and nitrite with power tools/ metal tools it is much faster to set the farm up then, and levelling lowers the resource cost.
  
I think others on this thread have mentioned that is does not pace with levelling- Not that it is really possible for RNG to line up with steady progress but that seems very much the case in my experience (my levelling is ALWAYS miles ahead of my crafting, chests full of things that are useless because nothing can be crafted from them, points to help weapons utterly pointless because the weapon itself has not been found and cannot be crafted yet), even on games where I intentionally die which delays levelling up.

Edited August 4 by theNobody14161 (see edit history)

[Adam the Waster]

I think some books are way too hard to find like Forge ahead I got both perks and I've only found them in a handful of areas

[stample]

53 minutes ago, Adam the Waster said:

I think some books are way too hard to find like Forge ahead I got both perks and I've only found them in a handful of areas

 

Agree.  Run a loop of all the traders you can find.  Since every trader has every workstation, and each one can drop it.  And unlike all the transitioning containers like mailboxes, these actually respawn loot, if that's a thing in your world.

[Riamus]

6 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

I think some books are way too hard to find like Forge ahead I got both perks and I've only found them in a handful of areas

Even without the perks, I find these pretty regularly, though obviously more slowly than with the perk.  But it is pretty much in line with most other magazines.  But it does mean thinking about where to look rather than relying and just randomly coming across them.  Watch for construction anywhere and you'll likely find a cement mixer that will have a good chance of having a magazine.  And there are a lot of construction POI around, even if just a small piece of construction (not just the major construction POI).  Also, pay attention to garages (residential and commercial) as they will very often have workbenches that will often have a magazine.  Every trader has at least 4 good chances to get magazines as they all have 4 workstations, which each have a good chance of a magazine (you should get at least 1-2, though bad RNG can mean 0).  With these in mind, it's pretty easy to find the magazines.

 

If you really want to push for them, just looting every garage in every residence around a town will probably net you at least 15-20 for just one decent sized town and that can be done with little risk and not requiring much time if you're just breaking into the garage and not doing the entire POI.  Personally, I think that's not a very fun way to play the game, but for those who really just want these magazines quickly, it is an option.

[Krougal]

Yeah, like Riamus said, it is doable. Getting cement mixer was a bit slow, so was basic traps and basic electrical.

Granted if I'd gone out of my way to find an electronics store, working stiffs and maybe a crackabook they would have been right on schedule (for my experiment).

Shotgun catching up fast since I dumped points into it, can make t1 pump now. Although I can also make AK (because of course I found one anyway, but I have no points into perk)

 

Now the higher level stuff is a real slog, I mean 50 more electronics and traps...ugh...it's a good thing I am not in any kind of hurry for those items past the first tier.

Although here in week 4 I am thinking my construction project will be an underground garage with automatic doors, I'll probably have to buy a few things.

 

The forge ahead hasn't been bad, I am not really sure when I got chem workstation, since I kinda forgot about it. I just looked up and realized I could build a motorcycle too, not sure when that happened either. Probably during D21 horde. T1 nailgun, which is really all you need anyway. T2....oooh, ratchet...jumping from t5 wrench. We're getting there.

 

I've also been getting a lot of mags on horde night, I mean A LOT. Like I don't remember getting this many in A21. I am loving it.

So while the magazines really sucked when they first introduced them, I am feeling the love on balancing for 1.0, that or I have just been really lucky this run.

 

[meganoth]

On 8/5/2024 at 12:05 AM, theNobody14161 said:

I have several thoughts on this, I will preface them with that I've played 7 dtd sinc a14, with about 1,400 hrs in the game, and I haven't played A22 much, but I have played a fair amount in a21-

I do like the crafting mags for things like 6 quality tools and weapons, because it prevents wasting skill points just to craft a group of items.  It also prevents there being like one item that only one possible magazine can teach the player how to build being annoyingly elusive.  I'd rather need alot of a common lootable item to learn how to craft, say herbal antibiotics than rely on a chance of the quite rare schematic popping up.  For the case of herbal antibiotics it also kind of makes sense- read alot of magazines about what plants have what chemicals and what chemicals help fight infections and you can kind of figure out what plants can fight infections.  That being said, for certain things it is game breaking and forces a narrow scope of gameplay, particularly-

crafting seeds and cooking low tier food items- when players can't feed themselves and levelling up does NOTHING to change this, death is just completely irrelevant.  Oh, I lose experience? experience and levelling up is worth nothing if it doesn't get me closer to being able to survive sustainably.  Irrelevant deaths just means instead of players setting up bases strategically, building or learning to fight, gameplay is just running around with a bedroll, looting, dying (sometimes intentionally) to progress faster until food and water is produced sustainably.  This is a bit less the case in single player, where looting food can be sustainable with respawnable loot, but 4 or 8 players each eating a bear's worth of food every day will deplete lootable food sources fast enough that planned death expedites advancement, since all players must loot.  Forcing all players to be looters can also be incredibly monotonous; base builders or miners may not like looting any more than looters would mining or base building.  This is inferior to the old system, death started out being minorly relevant and became more and more relevant as players levelled up. 

workstations- bad luck should not bottleneck in a survival game; Running around with a tier 6 machine gun for ranged attack and a wooden club for melee because that is what you find (if you don't find an army of forge ahead's to build your own stuff) is fine for a bit, but the whole point of a crafting game is to have choice in what you build and do.   Feels more like being a clown than a survivalist.

 

Some things are also immersion-breaking; crafting potato seeds from potatoes is literally learning to put potatoes in the ground- teenagers who leave a potato in the fridge too long literally discover this before a 7 days to die character would.  Something humanity discovered thousands of years before written language shouldn't be on par with trucks or gyrocopters.

In a nutshell- Reading a bunch of mags to craft advanced level things like M60s or foods with special buffs is fine, but basic stuff that fundamentally shifts play (workstations, the general ability to produce drinkable water and foods that you only need one stack for 2 to 4 days of food like bacon and eggs or vegetable stew) is best not left to RNG.  I've played blood moons where my best weapon was a stone spear (on this particular run, RNG made it so I did not have a forge to make any metal bullets and looted bullets run out very quickly in blood moons.  never found metal weapons.  Found metal tools galore though) defending a cement POI that I had fortified with brick.  On day 80.  The first blood moon doing that on day 40 was a trip.  Doing that same exact thing for the next five blood moons because forges were left to RNG was absurd.

Quests do lessen the randomness of mags quite a bit, but that is only if you find a trader who sells the mags you want.  Doing quests can be a fun aspect of the game, but doing quest after quest just to buy mags can be a bit monotonous even if the trader does offer the mags you want.

And then there are things like cement mixers- we don't necessarily want players building cement castles on day 3, at least not without significant sacrifice in all other facets of gameplay.  Maybe best to make tying building the cement mixers themselves to levelling (that way high-level players who just haven't had the luck can still produce cement) but perhaps the ability to accrue lots of rock to advanced tools that require lots of magazines is probably the best route to go there.  Farming used to be kind of like this (before mags were needed for seeds); if a low-level player wants to build a farm off the bat, they can but it takes all their time to gather the resources so their progress in other areas is significantly delayed, wheras in later game when you can gun down zombie dogs for rotten flesh and mine soil and nitrite with power tools/ metal tools it is much faster to set the farm up then, and levelling lowers the resource cost.
  
I think others on this thread have mentioned that is does not pace with levelling- Not that it is really possible for RNG to line up with steady progress but that seems very much the case in my experience (my levelling is ALWAYS miles ahead of my crafting, chests full of things that are useless because nothing can be crafted from them, points to help weapons utterly pointless because the weapon itself has not been found and cannot be crafted yet), even on games where I intentionally die which delays levelling up.

 

Very interesting comment, and shows how different the experiences can be. I agree with some of it, especially that crafting progress aligning with level progression is hard to reach as they are independent. So it often depends on the play style whether you are behind or ahead. In our case crafting is far ahead though, especially in multiplayer as we find lots of magazines through questing.

 

You mention food problems in the early game (especially in MP). I play a 4 player MP as well and sure, the first 3 days we have to eat everything we can get our hands on, hunt every animals we can detect and even buy food for the few dukes we get from quests. But we always have ways to get food and we never starve.

Usually players who get into serious problems feeding themselves run all the time, sometimes already decked out in heavy armor, start mining immediately in the first night, use a lot of power attacks, never use an initial bow attack, ... In addition they might also forget to miss chances for food and food conservation, like a point into the perk that saves food use and drinking red tea before heavy activities, starting with farming immediately, getting the perk where you can track chickens and rabbits, raiding farms for corn and potatoes, .... In other words they play with a high stamina drain and low stamina income. I am not sure if anything of that is similar to how you play, but my group of 4 keeps itself from starving in the first days by managing our stamina. Sure it wastes time to walk instead of run, but when you are low on food you either walk or you die because your stamina runs out in a zombie fight.

 

You also seem to find much less magazines than we do or too many of the wrong ones, i.e. even early stuff like a workbench or the bacon&eggs recipe. Yes the game changed to be less sandboxy and for example a single player can't be exclusively a miner/builder and still get everything done in vanilla.

Choices are either to use creative menu, or take some time away from mining/building to look for magazines, or try to be independant from crafting. If you don't want to do quests for the magazine bundles you can loot mailboxes and other places previous posters mentioned. One important point is to perk into as few magazine-boosting perks as possible if your magazine progression is usually behind.

You can get independant from crafting if you also invest some of your points into the INT perks better barter and adventurer and try to buy most of your stuff. Though I think you need the knowledge how to get dukes efficiently and have no qualms selling even stuff you might think you need later. You speak of "chests full of things" you can't do anything with, have you thought of selling a lot of that and then buying stuff you can't craft? 

 

I do not agree that starting a farm for a single player takes a lot of his time in early game. Without going out of your way you encounter so many corpses on the ground and find rotting flesh in cupboards that you should be able to add 1-2 farm plots every day and that is enough to plant all the seeds you find. Nitrite and soil for 1 or 2 farm plots do not take up a lot of time to get, even with primitive tools. Nitrite can be a bit hard to find, but if you add any nitrite block you see to your map you normally will have a source. And there are often nitrite stacks in POIs to shovel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Krougal]

Oh, last update, I got the crucible on day....23? So that concludes the forge ahead, again, I expect this around this point, especially with the perk expenditure required to get to advanced engineering 3. I'm also almost level 50. I also only recently discovered the power of the nerd outfit, which I have mixed feelings about since it has been nice to not be constantly switching between nerd goggles and lucky looter like I used to do (although now the cigar doesn't stack  with other headgear anymore), but getting extra skill points is pretty powerful.

 

@meganoth

Some interesting ideas but those are really not sensible perk choices for SP. There is too much to do too soon and everything that comes at the cost of your combat abilities should be carefully considered. Anything that is only really useful early game is of questionable worth. Iron stomach, tracking and the like fall pretty firmly into that category. Early farming is also pretty pointless before you can at least make steak and potatoes. I still don't even think more than 1 pt of farming is worthwhile if you aren't otherwise investing into fort. Especially with some QL6 farmers outfit and boots.

 

MP I appreciate everyone picking a different role but SP there is too much to do and sure playing on easy you can really make do with whatever but cranking up the difficulty becomes less forgiving of poor choices.

 

The stamina management wisdom is pure gold though, especially at higher levels.

Edited August 6 by Krougal (see edit history)

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, Krougal said:

Oh, last update, I got the crucible on day....23? So that concludes the forge ahead, again, I expect this around this point, especially with the perk expenditure required to get to advanced engineering 3. I'm also almost level 50. I also only recently discovered the power of the nerd outfit, which I have mixed feelings about since it has been nice to not be constantly switching between nerd goggles and lucky looter like I used to do (although now the cigar doesn't stack  with other headgear anymore), but getting extra skill points is pretty powerful.

 

@meganoth

Some interesting ideas but those are really not sensible perk choices for SP. There is too much to do too soon and everything that comes at the cost of your combat abilities should be carefully considered. Anything that is only really useful early game is of questionable worth. Iron stomach, tracking and the like fall pretty firmly into that category. Early farming is also pretty pointless before you can at least make steak and potatoes. I still don't even think more than 1 pt of farming is worthwhile if you aren't otherwise investing into fort. Especially with some QL6 farmers outfit and boots.

 

MP I appreciate everyone picking a different role but SP there is too much to do and sure playing on easy you can really make do with whatever but cranking up the difficulty becomes less forgiving of poor choices.

 

The stamina management wisdom is pure gold though, especially at higher levels.

 

It depends on the player. If you are starving and get killed because your food level is at 20% and your stamina runs out your perk points in the melee weapon are wasted as well. Food problems also mean you waste time walking instead of running. So, if you can feed yourself without iron stomach, naturally you would save that point for something else. But if you get into problems feeding yourself but have no problems with combat, this perk will help you more than increasing your melee to 2 which already costs you 3 points (if you include the attribute costs).

 

Incidentally iron stomach and tracking fall pretty firmly under those perks you either take in early game or never. Without tracking I simply miss 90% of all chickens and rabbits and early game they are a great source for meat, leather and feathers. In my SP games I almost always take tracking (and always when playing AGI), and even a point in farming, but none in iron stomach because tracking is enough for me to have no food problems.

 

Early farming perk is maybe not efficient, I am on the fence about it. I still take it because I want to start the farm early so I have a running start when the recipes get active. And in dire need I would cook a potato or make corn bread. Remember, it also doubles the harvest even when you just raid a farm POI or collect chrysanthemium in the forest for red tea. For one measly perk point. But I usually take only 1 point, even the last time I played fortitude in MP I took only 1.

 

Finally what is only useful in early game can always be removed later with one potion. I actually never used the potion but it is there if you want to optimize.

 

 

Edited August 6 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Riamus]

I haven't ever used the animal tracking perk.  I find plenty of meat without it.  Even when my RNG is being argumentative, I still find enough to get by, even if I'm just barely staying fed.  I just don't see any reason to use that perk.  I don't think I've ever used iron stomach either except perhaps when I first started playing. 

 

I don't make tea and rarely drink it even though it is obviously better than plain water.  I run everywhere, though I don't put on heavy armor until my stamina is improved.  I rarely ever craft farm plots.  I'll start farming (without a perk) when I end up with a farm bundle from an air drop, which is hit or miss.  It is rare to go without a farm too long even though I limit it to air drops.  In most games, I get a farm bundle within the first three drops.  And I'm fine starting with only the three plots in the beginning and often don't bother with more than 6 for two player.  I only put my first point into farming around level 25+ or so (that's an estimate as I don't really pay attention).  I rarely go out of my way grab vegetables from farms, especially not corn, but if I'm doing a POI, I'll loot it as I go.

 

I push up my weapon quickly as stamina there is more valuable to me than stamina loss prevention from running or eating/drinking.  If I absolutely need stamina running, there are steroids but I've rarely used those. 

 

And I would rather get parkour maxed out early because a break or sprain slows you down way too much, even if you treat it.  If I get a broken leg, I'll often just sit around and let time pass rather than do anything because it is just such a pain. 

 

But I do have over 1000 hours (I don't remember the exact number) and so I can manage stuff like food and stamina even when I play this way.  A new player wouldn't probably want to play like this.

 

Also, I do not put any points into the auto heal perk because that wastes so much food and water whenever you are hurt.

[Krougal]

48 minutes ago, Riamus said:

I haven't ever used the animal tracking perk.  I find plenty of meat without it.  Even when my RNG is being argumentative, I still find enough to get by, even if I'm just barely staying fed.  I just don't see any reason to use that perk.  I don't think I've ever used iron stomach either except perhaps when I first started playing. 

 

I don't make tea and rarely drink it even though it is obviously better than plain water.  I run everywhere, though I don't put on heavy armor until my stamina is improved.  I rarely ever craft farm plots.  I'll start farming (without a perk) when I end up with a farm bundle from an air drop, which is hit or miss.  It is rare to go without a farm too long even though I limit it to air drops.  In most games, I get a farm bundle within the first three drops.  And I'm fine starting with only the three plots in the beginning and often don't bother with more than 6 for two player.  I only put my first point into farming around level 25+ or so (that's an estimate as I don't really pay attention).  I rarely go out of my way grab vegetables from farms, especially not corn, but if I'm doing a POI, I'll loot it as I go.

 

I push up my weapon quickly as stamina there is more valuable to me than stamina loss prevention from running or eating/drinking.  If I absolutely need stamina running, there are steroids but I've rarely used those. 

 

And I would rather get parkour maxed out early because a break or sprain slows you down way too much, even if you treat it.  If I get a broken leg, I'll often just sit around and let time pass rather than do anything because it is just such a pain. 

 

But I do have over 1000 hours (I don't remember the exact number) and so I can manage stuff like food and stamina even when I play this way.  A new player wouldn't probably want to play like this.

 

Also, I do not put any points into the auto heal perk because that wastes so much food and water whenever you are hurt.

Now I am finding myself using steroids a lot this game (or rather I was first week and a half before minibike).

I am generally horrible in most games about remembering to use consumables or saving them for an emergency and then by the time said emergency occurs I forget anyway. Although A21 I was abusing the candy bars like crazy. Damn genius of them to put those vending machines in T5 POIs. That guy must be rich.

 

Of course here I forget the stuff at home most of the time.

I love my tea, even with the filter so I can drink dirty water, I still rather red tea/mineral water for that digestion bonus.

 

I go for an early point of parkour, but then I seem to also find the impact bracing mod regularly and early, and I think 1 of the books gives you some bonus too. OTOH it is always amusing to jump off tall buildings and live when you've all that maxed.

 

Yeah, I don't like the healing perk anymore either. 

[Reth]

On 7/31/2024 at 7:44 AM, SoBasically said:

Hey there fellow survivors! I was recently thinking about the discourse that erupted in this community when crafting skill magazines were first introduced to the game. Personally, I've always thought it was a great idea and super healthy for the game.

If you were someone who hated the magazines on release, how do you feel about it now? Do you still dislike the mechanic or have you come to like it?

I disliked the magazines when they were introduced. I'm used to them now, but I still can't say I like the mechanic. 

[Krougal]

57 minutes ago, Reth said:

I disliked the magazines when they were introduced. I'm used to them now, but I still can't say I like the mechanic. 

I concur. I've adapted and moved on, but I wouldn't be sad if they replaced them with some other mechanic. They just feel so gamey.

[theFlu]

Finally got into reading on the morning of D14, started looking like I would be able to make a proper nerd outfit with some care. Here's the full stash (I had read 4 forge books for the forge). With the looted gear to compare to:

 

 

Got myself a Q4 Machete out of the deal; got the books for a 5er, but not 6, so I saved some steel. Other than that, one book short of an SMG, one book short of a crossbow (with some explosive bolts in a box waiting). And not nearly enough steel for a magnum (got a crucible for a few days now, haven't bothered farming for iron or clay), nor enough sewing kits / armor parts for any more armors.

 

Seems the D14 horde will be an electric fence and a purple pistol.

 

I think "send help" still applies.

[TWORDY]

On 8/4/2024 at 11:05 PM, theNobody14161 said:

I have several thoughts on this, I will preface them with that I've played 7 dtd sinc a14, with about 1,400 hrs in the game, and I haven't played A22 much, but I have played a fair amount in a21-

I do like the crafting mags for things like 6 quality tools and weapons, because it prevents wasting skill points just to craft a group of items.  It also prevents there being like one item that only one possible magazine can teach the player how to build being annoyingly elusive.  I'd rather need alot of a common lootable item to learn how to craft, say herbal antibiotics than rely on a chance of the quite rare schematic popping up.  For the case of herbal antibiotics it also kind of makes sense- read alot of magazines about what plants have what chemicals and what chemicals help fight infections and you can kind of figure out what plants can fight infections.  That being said, for certain things it is game breaking and forces a narrow scope of gameplay, particularly-

crafting seeds and cooking low tier food items- when players can't feed themselves and levelling up does NOTHING to change this, death is just completely irrelevant.  Oh, I lose experience? experience and levelling up is worth nothing if it doesn't get me closer to being able to survive sustainably.  Irrelevant deaths just means instead of players setting up bases strategically, building or learning to fight, gameplay is just running around with a bedroll, looting, dying (sometimes intentionally) to progress faster until food and water is produced sustainably.  This is a bit less the case in single player, where looting food can be sustainable with respawnable loot, but 4 or 8 players each eating a bear's worth of food every day will deplete lootable food sources fast enough that planned death expedites advancement, since all players must loot.  Forcing all players to be looters can also be incredibly monotonous; base builders or miners may not like looting any more than looters would mining or base building.  This is inferior to the old system, death started out being minorly relevant and became more and more relevant as players levelled up. 

workstations- bad luck should not bottleneck in a survival game; Running around with a tier 6 machine gun for ranged attack and a wooden club for melee because that is what you find (if you don't find an army of forge ahead's to build your own stuff) is fine for a bit, but the whole point of a crafting game is to have choice in what you build and do.   Feels more like being a clown than a survivalist.

 

Some things are also immersion-breaking; crafting potato seeds from potatoes is literally learning to put potatoes in the ground- teenagers who leave a potato in the fridge too long literally discover this before a 7 days to die character would.  Something humanity discovered thousands of years before written language shouldn't be on par with trucks or gyrocopters.

In a nutshell- Reading a bunch of mags to craft advanced level things like M60s or foods with special buffs is fine, but basic stuff that fundamentally shifts play (workstations, the general ability to produce drinkable water and foods that you only need one stack for 2 to 4 days of food like bacon and eggs or vegetable stew) is best not left to RNG.  I've played blood moons where my best weapon was a stone spear (on this particular run, RNG made it so I did not have a forge to make any metal bullets and looted bullets run out very quickly in blood moons.  never found metal weapons.  Found metal tools galore though) defending a cement POI that I had fortified with brick.  On day 80.  The first blood moon doing that on day 40 was a trip.  Doing that same exact thing for the next five blood moons because forges were left to RNG was absurd.

Quests do lessen the randomness of mags quite a bit, but that is only if you find a trader who sells the mags you want.  Doing quests can be a fun aspect of the game, but doing quest after quest just to buy mags can be a bit monotonous even if the trader does offer the mags you want.

And then there are things like cement mixers- we don't necessarily want players building cement castles on day 3, at least not without significant sacrifice in all other facets of gameplay.  Maybe best to make tying building the cement mixers themselves to levelling (that way high-level players who just haven't had the luck can still produce cement) but perhaps the ability to accrue lots of rock to advanced tools that require lots of magazines is probably the best route to go there.  Farming used to be kind of like this (before mags were needed for seeds); if a low-level player wants to build a farm off the bat, they can but it takes all their time to gather the resources so their progress in other areas is significantly delayed, wheras in later game when you can gun down zombie dogs for rotten flesh and mine soil and nitrite with power tools/ metal tools it is much faster to set the farm up then, and levelling lowers the resource cost.
  
I think others on this thread have mentioned that is does not pace with levelling- Not that it is really possible for RNG to line up with steady progress but that seems very much the case in my experience (my levelling is ALWAYS miles ahead of my crafting, chests full of things that are useless because nothing can be crafted from them, points to help weapons utterly pointless because the weapon itself has not been found and cannot be crafted yet), even on games where I intentionally die which delays levelling up.

 

Well written my friend. I wouldn`t be able to put this better myself. I only hope that You might find some time to comment on the forum more often.

[hamstar]

I was contemplating making a mod to address that, but I've given up on it on account of lacking good ideas on how to make it work.

[YourMirror]

1 hour ago, hamstar said:

I was contemplating making a mod to address that, but I've given up on it on account of lacking good ideas on how to make it work.

F1 -> CM -> enter -> U

 

Easypeasy.

[pahbi]

On 7/31/2024 at 8:44 AM, SoBasically said:

Hey there fellow survivors! I was recently thinking about the discourse that erupted in this community when crafting skill magazines were first introduced to the game. Personally, I've always thought it was a great idea and super healthy for the game.

If you were someone who hated the magazines on release, how do you feel about it now? Do you still dislike the mechanic or have you come to like it?

 

If you don't mind using mods, I have a modlet that lets you craft all the books and magazines.

 

https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/26048-a21-modlets-craft-water-from-snow-or-buckets-fast-plant-growth-less-wasteland-rubble-and-more-updated-for-10/

 

 

 

[hamstar]

On 8/18/2024 at 11:11 AM, YourMirror said:

F1 -> CM -> enter -> U

 

Easypeasy.

Cheats? What relevance is that?

[MissingEuphoria]

When 7 days to die first reworked magazines into skills, it was cool. Now, I feel like anytime I want to make any progress at all, I have to search 100 buildings to find the magazines I need to upgrade my crafting skills. I'm currently playing in a session with 4 of my friends and we have divided tasks amongst ourselves. Questing/Looting, Workstations/Electronics, Building/Cooking, and one guy who just likes to shoot stuff. Those of us who aren't out looting 24/7 are doomed to wait until someone finds the magazines we need to upgrade our tools. I don't see why the game has been reduced to force the player to interact with the questing system for the best rewards. I like to work around the base but I have to use terrible stone tools that aren't even leveled up because of the magazines needed to increase your crafting skills. It would feel much better if I could actually make decent tools for the job I'm trying to do by gaining the skills from performing the task.

[RipClaw]

That would be learning by doing but it doesn't come back. It used to be part of the game and was replaced by the skill tree and later in parts by the magazines.

 

I was never a fan of the magazines. I've gotten used to them and know how to collect the magazines I need in a reasonable amount of time. I could min/max the whole thing but I don't want to go that far.

 

Back before A21 when the system was announced, there were concerns about multiplayer and balancing. In 1.0 the balancing was changed so that you can find more magazines even without having invested points in the skills, but that brings along other problems. You can speed things up a bit by shelving magazines and wait until you have a Q6 nerd outfit.

 

Edited August 27 by RipClaw (see edit history)