Looking for mods, overwhelmed.

[keenkrozzy]

Hi, I'm pretty new to 7dtd, and I'm not very familiar with what mods are out there. I've been spending some time browsing 7daystodiemods, nexusmods, and here, but there is a lot to go through!

 

My group rented a server 3 weeks ago and have been playing vanilla and having fun. But we are at a point now where we seem too strong and we are a bit disappointed that there is nothing much do to past tier-6 quests. I know it's a sandbox game, and the devs are working on more quest and story stuff for the future. I also know that we can turn up the difficulty, but we don't want "bullet sponges". We also tried turning up the bloodmoon zombie amount per player, but it made the FPS unplayable for most of us even on lowest settings.

 

If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear it! Otherwise I will continue to poke around and look at mods when I have time. And if your only feedback is "if you don't like X then just don't do that" then just stop reading and move along. You and I have a fundamental disagreement about game theory and how player options and choices affect enjoyment. No hard feelings and I hope you have a nice day.

 

I looked at the Afterlife Overhaul and it looks very interesting, but the "unavoidable infection without a cure" mechanic is a major turn-off.

 

Some things I am looking for and hoping there is an existing mod:

Harder end game missions.
Progress: I have looked at some custom POI's thinking that they might show up as trader quests, but it I'm not sure how to tell if they are going to be more of a challenge or not.

 

Game ending mission. Something to work towards for closure so we can restart or move to another game feeling accomplished.

Progress: None yet. Currently I am just saying that the "survive 10 bloodmoons" achievement is my goal. We currently have bloodmoons disabled and manually trigger it on Sunday nights, but may start doing it more often as our current playthrough is becoming too easy and starting to get stale already.

 

Bloodmoon changes. Our first bloodmoon was really fun, we made walls, spikes, and vantage points. Our second bloodmoon was a complete failure, but it was still a lot of fun. However, now we have learned that defending a realistic or immersive base is almost impossible, and the game seems to revolve around making these bases that take advantage of zombie pathing AI and block types. It changed from "how can we defend against that" to "OK, now it's too easy". It just feels super cheesy. It's not a deal-breaker, but I am interested to see if other people have addressed this.

Progress: None yet, but it's not high-priority.

 

Perk system changes. I'm not certain, but I think the perks are the main reason the game has become too easy.

Progress: Looked at a couple overhauls, but not sure yet.

 

Progression system changes. We all find it strange that we get bottled into finding certain types of magazines. For example: Myself and the others that cook find cooking magazines everywhere. We were hoping there was more emphasis on player-trading or saving rare magazines/books that other players need. But currently, the fastest way is to just go looting for yourself and buy from NPC-traders.

Progress: I seen some settings related to this poking around in the XML files, might look into this more.

 

Darkness. I've only been in like 2 places that were actually dark. Lights seem useless outside of aesthetics.

Progress: I found a mod that fixes this but it looks like it hasn't been updated for 1.0.

 

More enemies (both zombies and hostile NPCs).

Progress: Need to search around more.

 

Other additions. I would love to see more stuff to add to the game like vehicles, tools, crafting stations, etc. But it takes a lot of research because in my experience from other games, most of these mods just make the game way too easy, silly, or break immersion. A classic example would be like a mod that adds a bunch of new weapons, but they are all available to craft right away for cheap and the mod also includes something unrelated like "ammo now stacks up to 9999".

 

Edited September 5 by keenkrozzy (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

9 minutes ago, keenkrozzy said:

Hi, I'm pretty new to 7dtd, and I'm not very familiar with what mods are out there. I've been spending some time browsing 7daystodiemods, nexusmods, and here, but there is a lot to go through!

 

My group rented a server 3 weeks ago and have been playing vanilla and having fun. But we are at a point now where we seem too strong and we are a bit disappointed that there is nothing much do to past tier-6 quests. I know it's a sandbox game, and the devs are working on more quest and story stuff for the future. I also know that we can turn up the difficulty, but we don't want "bullet sponges". We also tried turning up the bloodmoon zombie amount per player, but it made the FPS unplayable for most of us even on lowest settings.

 

If anyone has any suggestions I would love to hear it! Otherwise I will continue to poke around and look at mods when I have time. And if your only feedback is "if you don't like X then just don't do that" then just stop reading and move along. You and I have a fundamental disagreement about game theory and how player options and choices affect enjoyment. No hard feelings and I hope you have a nice day.

 

I will make a few recommendations:

 

Quote

Harder end game missions.
Progress: I have looked at some custom POI's thinking that they might show up as trader quests, but it I'm not sure how to tell if they are going to be more of a challenge or not.

 

Khaine has a headshot only mod, which will make clearing out zombies overall more of a challenge.  Not specific to missions, but will definitely affect them

 

 

 

Quote

 

Game ending mission. Something to work towards for closure so we can restart or move to another game feeling accomplished.

Progress: None yet. Currently I am just saying that the "survive 10 bloodmoons" achievement is my goal. We currently have bloodmoons disabled and manually trigger it on Sunday nights, but may start doing it more often as our current playthrough is becoming too easy and starting to get stale already.

 

 

Not a mod, but you can change the frequency of when the bloodmoon occurs and make it variable (so it doesn't start every 5 days).

 

Quote

 

Perk system changes. I'm not certain, but I think the perks are the main reason the game has become too easy.

Progress: Looked at a couple overhauls, but not sure yet.

 

 

Not sure if this was one you looked at, but Black Wolf has done some tweaking to the Perk system.  Also describes in details the changes that were made so you know what you are getting into with this mod

 

 

Quote

 

Progression system changes. We all find it strange that we get bottled into finding certain types of magazines. For example: Myself and the others that cook find cooking magazines everywhere. We were hoping there was more emphasis on player-trading or saving rare magazines/books that other players need. But currently, the fastest way is to just go looting for yourself and buy from NPC-traders.

Progress: I seen some settings related to this poking around in the XML files, might look into this more.

 

 

Not exactly sure what you are looking for here?  Are you wanting to remove the bonus chance of finding specific magazines?  If so, I have a modlet that I can release that does this (been testing it recently)

 

Quote

 

More enemies (both zombies and hostile NPCs).

Progress: Need to search around more.

 

 

Khaine has a nice wandering horde mod that changes the frequency and size of them.  I found that it makes clearing POIs or working in your base during non-BM times a lot more chaotic / interesting

 

 

Quote

Other additions. I would love to see more stuff to add to the game like vehicles, tools, crafting stations, etc. But it takes a lot of research because in my experience from other games, most of these mods just make the game way too easy, silly, or break immersion. A classic example would be like a mod that adds a bunch of new weapons, but they are all available to craft right away for cheap and the mod also includes something unrelated like "ammo now stacks up to 9999".

 

Izayo has a nice weapons mod that adds new weapons to all the classes (and constantly updating the mod).  The new weapons are craftable, but they follow the same progression / loot / trader system as vanilla weapons so you won't be able to craft a T3/T4 weapon on Day 1.

 

 

[meganoth]

I would think playing some of the overhaul mods might help. There are a few that have matured through years of development alongside the vanilla game. Most of them are more difficult. They also often increase hardware requirements a bit, so you'll have to find out if they work with your server and clients. Maybe use smaller maps, that should help the server.

 

 

 

[keenkrozzy]

4 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

 

I will make a few recommendations:

 

 

Khaine has a headshot only mod, which will make clearing out zombies overall more of a challenge.  Not specific to missions, but will definitely affect them

 

 

 

 

Not a mod, but you can change the frequency of when the bloodmoon occurs and make it variable (so it doesn't start every 5 days).

 

 

Not sure if this was one you looked at, but Black Wolf has done some tweaking to the Perk system.  Also describes in details the changes that were made so you know what you are getting into with this mod

 

 

 

Not exactly sure what you are looking for here?  Are you wanting to remove the bonus chance of finding specific magazines?  If so, I have a modlet that I can release that does this (been testing it recently)

 

 

Khaine has a nice wandering horde mod that changes the frequency and size of them.  I found that it makes clearing POIs or working in your base during non-BM times a lot more chaotic / interesting

 

 

 

Izayo has a nice weapons mod that adds new weapons to all the classes (and constantly updating the mod).  The new weapons are craftable, but they follow the same progression / loot / trader system as vanilla weapons so you won't be able to craft a T3/T4 weapon on Day 1.

 

 

 

Awesome! Thank you for the suggestions! I will check these out tonight!

[doughphunghus]

5 hours ago, keenkrozzy said:

I looked at the Afterlife Overhaul and it looks very interesting, but the "unavoidable infection without a cure" mechanic is a major turn-off.

Been playing afterlife. Afterlife's infection so far  has worked like this:

- you are not infected until you get hit and (a chance to catch?) catch infection.

- infection increases slowly (days).

- once it hits 100% you "turn into a zombie" but not really, you get a 10% permanent debuff to all? Stats (im pretty aure).

 

notes:

- i dont know if every time you die of infection if its another 10% debuff or permadeath or something.

- you can drop (and pause) infection with antibiotics, honey just pauses. There is a honey based syrup you can craft thats like 50% as good as antibiotcis

- there are ways of farming honey

- you may be "forced" to go put at night and hunt glowing mushrooms as ingredients to craft the syrup.

 

anyway: i played and died to infection 1 time, and that was enough To understand how i was going to have to adjust gameplay to keep infection at bay once infected (im never not going to het hit as i play sloppy). Now keeping infection down is just another mini quest to do unless i accidentally loot some antibiotics. Once you get used to it its just another mechanic to manage. You may have to travel a bit in the forest if you use up all the mushrooms in your area and cannot craft herbal antibiotics yet. 

 

also:

afterlife can be grindy, especially with higher tier guns and vehicles. The forge mechanic is different. Its got a lot of different. Building is grindier so choosing a poi to live in is prob best early game, but building a small place is not impossible early game. It has a mix of "learn by doing" and "read magazines to increase crafting skills" and even a perk you can put points into so doing makes you learn a tiny bit faster.

 

and it has a lot if ores, and apparently? No traders, just bending machines for guns and food/candy. So far thats all i have found.

 

i did find that i had some issues adding mods to it as it changes quite a bit (like a new rain effect which is cool so weather mods i tried were a no go as it changes the weather.

 

horde night blood moon is "lit up" so all fog lofts, etc, which i kinda am not a fan of.

 

personally i like it as its grindy early game, and it does fire off "large hordes you run from"from time to time.

[zztong]

5 hours ago, keenkrozzy said:

Progress: I have looked at some custom POI's thinking that they might show up as trader quests, but it I'm not sure how to tell if they are going to be more of a challenge or not.

 

It really depends on the POI designer and their goals. There are some designers who desire to make extreme challenges. I would make contact with @stallionsden as I believe he's a living catalog of POI designers and their goals, plus he maintains the CompoPack which is also source of those POIs.

 

As a POI designer, I can tell you I don't really have a way to scale a POI to challenge a varied number of players. The more friends you bring the easier it will be.

 

Perhaps look to things that will slow your progress through the game. Have you tried playing with no Traders? In A21 I found that to be a neat experience. No mission rewards and the only Dukes are what you find in loot. You'll have to find or craft everything since you cannot buy it.

[Riamus]

Regarding bloodmoons, you could consider doing what I usually do and make a different type of base every game.  I don't change it between bloodmoons in the same game, so I'll get the same results for that entire game unless I feel I need to adjust it some.  But I'll make a different style base almost every game.  Some work, some don't.  Because I'm not trying to do the "best" or "most efficient" base design and am just trying a variety of different things, it makes it more interesting.

[meganoth]

9 hours ago, Riamus said:

Regarding bloodmoons, you could consider doing what I usually do and make a different type of base every game.  I don't change it between bloodmoons in the same game, so I'll get the same results for that entire game unless I feel I need to adjust it some.  But I'll make a different style base almost every game.  Some work, some don't.  Because I'm not trying to do the "best" or "most efficient" base design and am just trying a variety of different things, it makes it more interesting.

 

Ah, that is what I do as well. Either I take over a POI to influence my design or I try to implement around some idea how the zombies are getting the damage, i.e. by using specific traps to the best effect, by using a special path, by making melee possible at least for some time, optimizing for a specific weapon, trying to use fall damage,...

 

[keenkrozzy]

On 9/5/2024 at 5:20 PM, doughphunghus said:

Been playing afterlife. Afterlife's infection so far  has worked like this:

- you are not infected until you get hit and (a chance to catch?) catch infection.

- infection increases slowly (days).

- once it hits 100% you "turn into a zombie" but not really, you get a 10% permanent debuff to all? Stats (im pretty aure).

 

notes:

- i dont know if every time you die of infection if its another 10% debuff or permadeath or something.

- you can drop (and pause) infection with antibiotics, honey just pauses. There is a honey based syrup you can craft thats like 50% as good as antibiotcis

- there are ways of farming honey

- you may be "forced" to go put at night and hunt glowing mushrooms as ingredients to craft the syrup.

 

anyway: i played and died to infection 1 time, and that was enough To understand how i was going to have to adjust gameplay to keep infection at bay once infected (im never not going to het hit as i play sloppy). Now keeping infection down is just another mini quest to do unless i accidentally loot some antibiotics. Once you get used to it its just another mechanic to manage. You may have to travel a bit in the forest if you use up all the mushrooms in your area and cannot craft herbal antibiotics yet. 

 

also:

afterlife can be grindy, especially with higher tier guns and vehicles. The forge mechanic is different. Its got a lot of different. Building is grindier so choosing a poi to live in is prob best early game, but building a small place is not impossible early game. It has a mix of "learn by doing" and "read magazines to increase crafting skills" and even a perk you can put points into so doing makes you learn a tiny bit faster.

 

and it has a lot if ores, and apparently? No traders, just bending machines for guns and food/candy. So far thats all i have found.

 

i did find that i had some issues adding mods to it as it changes quite a bit (like a new rain effect which is cool so weather mods i tried were a no go as it changes the weather.

 

horde night blood moon is "lit up" so all fog lofts, etc, which i kinda am not a fan of.

 

personally i like it as its grindy early game, and it does fire off "large hordes you run from"from time to time.

 

I'm interested for sure, might pitch it to the group.

 

On a side note, is it possible to use some of your mods in v1? Specifically the darker nights and interiors. Your mod page says a21, but I know sometimes mods still work just fine, it might just require changing 1 line in a xml file.

[doughphunghus]

1 hour ago, keenkrozzy said:

 

I'm interested for sure, might pitch it to the group.

 

On a side note, is it possible to use some of your mods in v1? Specifically the darker nights and interiors. Your mod page says a21, but I know sometimes mods still work just fine, it might just require changing 1 line in a xml file.

For those 2 mods: they dont work well with afterlife, im not sure why (i usually load all my mods in any game i play, and pull those with issues. Ive logged the ones on ky mod page that seem to/to not with with afterlife on a21). Given that: It does get pretty dark though at some nights and in some interiors, just "horde night" its very bright. So i think afterlife has messed with the darkness settings a little. Its not "total dark" but I've died looking for mushrooms at night in the pine forest because i couldn't see zeds coming.

[keenkrozzy]

1 hour ago, doughphunghus said:

For those 2 mods: they dont work well with afterlife, im not sure why (i usually load all my mods in any game i play, and pull those with issues. Ive logged the ones on ky mod page that seem to/to not with with afterlife on a21). Given that: It does get pretty dark though at some nights and in some interiors, just "horde night" its very bright. So i think afterlife has messed with the darkness settings a little. Its not "total dark" but I've died looking for mushrooms at night in the pine forest because i couldn't see zeds coming.

Oh sorry, I meant just for 1.0 in general, I was going to make it our first mods if it works in 1.0.

Edited September 7 by keenkrozzy (see edit history)

[doughphunghus]

47 minutes ago, keenkrozzy said:

Oh sorry, I meant just for 1.0 in general, I was going to make it our first mods if it works in 1.0.

Ah, my bad

I can run some tests this weekend probably, and they are "simple" mods so testing/tweaking for 1.0 should not be hard. I think some other modders have already released 1.0 compatible "make it darker" mods already for 1.0 so it should be doable.

[doughphunghus]

Update: yeah, i just tried making it "as dark as i used to be able to do" and i cannot. It also appears other modders are making it "darker" but the light levels are still super high (to me) even during 2AM on day 5 which was in previous versions  "the darkest because of the least moonlight".

 

so: my darkness mods are useless now, and appear unfixable. I even turned the vanilla "game video options" brightness setting down to 0%.

 

my only suggestions at this point are:

- load someone elses "darkness" mods (there are some on nexusmods) to get a bit darker.

- maybe load a "dense fog" mod as well.  I loaded my a21 one (not the foggiest, but generally very dense fog) and it was foggy but useless to block anything far away.

 

my only hope for darkness is now the overhaul mods others have written (or any mod not using xml) only may be able to pull off the darkness with custom code/hooks i to the game. it just depends on who will do it, when they release, and how dark they are able to make it.

 

but my opinion at this point is: its waaaaaaaaaaaay too bright (visibility at night too far, etc), with  no easy ability to make it dark. Im not sure with this new change if darkness is added (with mods) if zombie sight detection suffers (like "its so dark, zeds cannot even detect me!"). Brightness/visibility is so high i dont even care to test it as I'm bit playing it with this level of brightness seemingly built in. Theres no point in using lights/torches/anything light based, which i enjoy doing when its super dark.

 

anyway: yeah im not updating my darkness mods for v1.0 because i cannot, and  ones already exist in nexusmods that do the best they can so use those, but i al very unhappy with light levels/modding ability if them as they currently are

 

[keenkrozzy]

11 hours ago, doughphunghus said:

Update: yeah, i just tried making it "as dark as i used to be able to do" and i cannot. It also appears other modders are making it "darker" but the light levels are still super high (to me) even during 2AM on day 5 which was in previous versions  "the darkest because of the least moonlight".

 

so: my darkness mods are useless now, and appear unfixable. I even turned the vanilla "game video options" brightness setting down to 0%.

 

my only suggestions at this point are:

- load someone elses "darkness" mods (there are some on nexusmods) to get a bit darker.

- maybe load a "dense fog" mod as well.  I loaded my a21 one (not the foggiest, but generally very dense fog) and it was foggy but useless to block anything far away.

 

my only hope for darkness is now the overhaul mods others have written (or any mod not using xml) only may be able to pull off the darkness with custom code/hooks i to the game. it just depends on who will do it, when they release, and how dark they are able to make it.

 

but my opinion at this point is: its waaaaaaaaaaaay too bright (visibility at night too far, etc), with  no easy ability to make it dark. Im not sure with this new change if darkness is added (with mods) if zombie sight detection suffers (like "its so dark, zeds cannot even detect me!"). Brightness/visibility is so high i dont even care to test it as I'm bit playing it with this level of brightness seemingly built in. Theres no point in using lights/torches/anything light based, which i enjoy doing when its super dark.

 

anyway: yeah im not updating my darkness mods for v1.0 because i cannot, and  ones already exist in nexusmods that do the best they can so use those, but i al very unhappy with light levels/modding ability if them as they currently are

 

 

Ah OK, I wonder if they will address this or if it was an intentional change in 1.0. It does seem silly that they have all these light modifications for helmets, weapons, and vehicles... but it's like; What are these for?

[meganoth]

7 hours ago, keenkrozzy said:

 

Ah OK, I wonder if they will address this or if it was an intentional change in 1.0. It does seem silly that they have all these light modifications for helmets, weapons, and vehicles... but it's like; What are these for?

 

There is a lot of difference between light levels on actual screens. I am using a TV screen and I still need lights or NV-goggles, in POIs even at daytime, but I am in the burned forest. it may be different in forest or snow

 

 

[keenkrozzy]

On 9/8/2024 at 6:57 AM, meganoth said:

 

There is a lot of difference between light levels on actual screens. I am using a TV screen and I still need lights or NV-goggles, in POIs even at daytime, but I am in the burned forest. it may be different in forest or snow

 

 

This is about as dark as it gets. https://www.twitch.tv/keenkrozzy/clip/AnimatedTemperedStarlingNerfRedBlaster-er7XroebFkXRnu2J

Not sure what that looks like on your TV.

 

There has been exactly 2 exceptions though where it was actually pretty dark, and both times was when we were in a POI that went DEEP underground AND it was night time.