A17e small tips, tricks & hints [Spoilers]

[CamoesGamer]

What's the point in playing if you're just going to cheat your way through?

 

i have time to play 2 hours a day. I prefer to not loose 1 min per block of clay to dig the treasure.

The outcome is exactly the same.

[KiraTheCat]

With regards to vultures: In the desert, they don't seem to attack, even when their shadow passes over you regularly. When you do get a swarm attack, you can still back up with a club and just club them one right after the other, then backtrack down the line for feathers. I find a club to be far superior to the bow, which was preferable in A16.

 

Don't try this with zombies. They can't reach as far, but you have to club them immediately after they swing, while they're gearing up for another, and back off immediately, regardless of results. You WILL miss, unless your aim is perfect.

 

It's been mentioned before, but bears repeating: DO NOT back yourself into a corner. Example: The two walled off areas in the front corners of a Pills pharmacy. You can get ambushed and when stunned, you won't be able to jump effectively and will likely die. If you must go into a 'walled off' corner, break out the counter so you have an exit you can walk through rather than jump.

 

Check your corners upon entry through a door, and again, always make a secondary exit/ exit strategy. It's far better to "wake them up", and then back out and fight in the open where you can maneuver, and you're less likely to get ambushed.

 

Good perks to have have been mentioned, I'll add 'from the shadows'. At night is IS still possible to move carefully and avoid zombies, even on night 1. Their sounds seem to carry, so if you're listening, you can hear them a ways off. They'll sound much closer than they are, so you can just plan your way around them at night. Slow and steady movement.

 

My first purchase upon finding the trader is nails for a storage box, which I then place right outside the entrance to the trader. Better than chests, and easy to find for later sorting.

 

My starter go to perks, in order: rule 1, boom headshot, mother lode, pack mule, healing factor, from the shadows, the huntsman, master chef, miner, pain tolerance.

 

I have noticed that if you craft a new ax, or repair an old one, it will now apparently put the new or repaired ax in the old slot. You no longer have to drag that new/repaired item from your inventory, it will be put on your belt automatically.

 

Conversely, there are a number of times (I haven't been able to figure when, exactly) when you'll have to reload your bow for whatever reason.

 

If you hang out on roofs, check around and make sure there's no way up for zombies. I've had crowds join me on the roof at the most inopportune times. They will destroy nerd poles at night, so have a hay bale landing pad set up for quick escape.

 

If you do multiplayer, hang out in a gang together. You'll share XP if you're within a certain distance of each other, and you can take down some big targets with massed firepower that you'd have no hopes for on your own. Even a bear stands little chance against four bows/stone arrows and a shotgun.

 

Having said that, do spread out a little. If your buddy's getting attacked, you can easily flank whatever's attacking him, while still being close enough that when it dies, you'll share the XP. Strength in numbers, but smart numbers, not clumps.

[Zourin]

Here's a tip:

 

- Land Claim Blocks now supposedly block zombie spawns. Take your bedroll with you and drop it before you go into a POI. This is particularly handy when doing missions for the trader and "home" is several KM away.

 

My starter go to perks, in order: rule 1, boom headshot, mother lode, pack mule, healing factor, from the shadows, the huntsman, master chef, miner, pain tolerance.

 

Mine are: Pack Mule, Rule #1, Sex Rex, Healing Factor, Slow Metabolism for the first five points.

Stamina management is the biggest hangup, so usually I follow up with Agility 2&3 for Rule 2.

 

My one praise is that the skill trees do manage to push some pretty hard choices. Fortitude skills always look like a luxury you can't afford while you spend points on damage output and resourcing.

[TargetPractice]

Happy Turkey Day Everyone!

 

I offer the following tips that work well for my play style up through level 20. These are from playing on Nomad, loot respawn every 5 days. I'm not an uber-player, and get pwned regularly by other players and occasionally Z's.

 

Crossbow: If you find a couple of extra guns early on (the old western shotgun messiah has a couple of crates that are useful for this - seems to spawn this building more frequently in A17e), empty out the ammo, sell them at the trader, and buy the best crossbow you can afford. Stone xbow bolts take the same mats as stone arrows, but inflict more damage. You can drop a regular Z with Perception 1 in 2-3 headshots (less if you get the sneak attack bonus). It'll last you for a long time and can be an XP generating machine.

 

Bow: Not a lot of love on for the regular bow and stone arrows. But I find it useful. Once you knock the Z down, run up on him and power attack with the iron club. After the first knockdown with a bow, you'll finish a regular Z in 1-2 power attacks. If you buy up the flurry of blows and +damage perks, it goes even faster. In a POI dungeon, I try to sneak attack the Z with a bow, then back up a bit - kite the Z after me. If it's a regular Z, 1-2 power attacks will finish it. If it has friends, I try to use the bow to knock them all down once. Then it's PA (Power Attack), back up, PA, backup twice, check behind (hate it when I'm the meat in a Z sandwich), PA. Easy XP on Nomad. You can also be a smartass and hit that E button while PAing to snatch back arrows sticking out of Z's. (I love doing that!) Be careful - some Z's still take a swing when you knock them down. It's OK to PA it in the body. Just never let your Stamina drop below 30.

 

Stamina: A lot of people have offered good advice on Stamina - wish I'd read it yesterday . My own .02 is this - most of the early game is Stamina management. I bought Master Chef 1 early on, then hunted down a cooking pot. Bacon & eggs gives you ~+35 Stamina. Combined with slow metabolism = longer lasting Stamina. BTW, cooking pots are easy to find in the stoves in the quarter houses in burnt zones. They're a lot safer to search at low levels than intact shops/houses. With that pot, you can even get boiled eggs. They give decent stamina recovery. By level 10, I'm carrying 1-3 bacon & eggs/boiled eggs and 1-2 jars of water on my trips out the door. Note: If you got the supplies, max out your stamina and health each non-horde morning before you leave base. Extra bandages in a storage chest help with this - you can use them straight out of the box instead of inventory. A minimum 30 Stamina, unencumbered, will get your out of most sticky situations alive. A minimum 50 Stamina, unencumbered, means you can escape a dire wolf by running.

 

Bandages: As others have said, keep them on your belt, a full stack of 10. If you're bleeding, or when the fight is over, use them to get your potential health back up to max. If you take the healing factor perk, and keep your health potential maxed out so you don't have to micromanage it, your survivability goes up by leaps and bounds.

 

Dungeons: I love me some dungeons. With a few combat perks, they are XP- and loot-generating slot machines. Others have offered excellent advice on luring Z's out. I usually clear out the area around the POI before banging on the walls. It reduces the number of stragglers coming up behind me wanting to cuddle. Once the initial wave of Z's is dealt with, I follow a pattern: First, Zombies outside WILL hear you fighting/looting inside - and will put on their ninja shoes to sneak up behind you. I watched one do it through several windows. So put your head on a swivel and check your back trail frequently. That Z in the ninja shoes is trying to give you a permanent hickey. Second, I clear the POI floor by floor. Third, I cut an emergency exit on the second floor. You can usually jump from the second floor without taking damage, IME. WARNING: It's a very good idea to bring extra frames (square or ramp) with you. Unexpected trips through a basement make survivors cry. Fourth - don't push it. You can always come back the next day and continue on. Most of the POI's seem to have a max count of sleepers that you can deplete over multiple visits. I've seen some posts by people who seem to've hit a bug where they get an endless supply of sleepers. Personally, I think that'd be great - a constant stream of XP...

 

Spikes and barbed wire: Log spikes are history, more's the shame. Wood spikes do too little damage and break too easy. However, 5-10 spikes on your belt means you can drop a slowdown in front of the Z's, and can get you out of an unwanted cuddle situation in a POI. Barbed wire is better in all ways, IME. More durable, slows them down better, and is relatively cheap to make.

 

Hunt animals whenever you find them when starting out. If you've got your LCB planted and are building a base, take the encumbrance hit and hunt every animal you find. Building up that supply of bacon & eggs early means more looting time later - and better Stamina management. I've found the bow better for hunting than the crossbow - faster rate of fire, and faster reload. Oh, didn't know that reloading a bow/xbow slows you down? Didn't know that you can't stop or interrupt the reload routine? Well, you're in for a rude surprise!

 

All in all, I'm finding it a fun, new game. I hope these notes are helpful to you.

[Zourin]

Here's some new things.

 

- If you want to be a walking tank, combine Heavy Armor, Fast Healing, Pain Tolerance, and Intrinsic Immunity. It's a long way to the top, but armor is surprisingly effective now when you combine it with stun resistance and infection immunity. The only thing you have to contend with is the guaranteed bleed (Nothing prevents bleed).

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

Love all the tips except the treasure one. I'd rather gouge out my eyes than dig for a treasure with a stone shovel on day 1. If that's what 7 dtd was to be I'd never play it. Although that was without the perk. Maybe the perk would change things for me.

 

I must disagree with this. The trick with the treasure missions is not to dig for the treasure, but to dig for clay. clay= cobblestone, cobblestone=life. the treasure missions just give you a suggestion on to where to dig for clay. I simply work my way to those spots, breaking every bolder i see along the way, collect a few trees, and dig until the shovel breaks. If i am satisfied with the amount of cobblestone i can make, i leave and don't come back until i need more clay.

 

I find reinforcing my base makes it able to withstand the nightly hordes, so i am constantly using cobblestone. I also use a lot of wood for the spikes, which need 4 wood each, but 10 to repair...

 

So the treasure missions are very useful excuse to go out and gather resources, as you are not only gathering resources but have the potential for 1000 xp and dukes too.

[tintagel]

-- Wood frames cost only 2 wood to make and burn for MUCH longer than 2 wood. Make lots for firewood.

-- Power Attack with club has a very good reach. Experiment a bit and you will find that you have a better reach than the zombies.

-- I've survived the first horde night with absolute ease. I set up on top of one of the mobile homes - the one with a porch and burning barrel outside. It's made of reinforced steel and I just encircled it with spikes. Then I built a ramp to jump onto the roof. The zombies would run up the ramp, along a small lane of 3 blocks (easy headshots), and would then attempt to jump on the roof. I would either shoot them in the head or power attack them in mid-air and that worked really well. One or two got on the roof so I then blocked the jump with a single frame and they would start beating on the walls again. Remove the block, keep switching and shooting/power attacking.

 

The ramp was like this:

 

                     []   << block I would place and remove
   / [][][][]      [][][] << trailer
  /  []    []      [][][] 
 /   []   X[]X   XX[][][]XX    << traps

[Zourin]

I must disagree with this. The trick with the treasure missions is not to dig for the treasure, but to dig for clay. clay= cobblestone, cobblestone=life. the treasure missions just give you a suggestion on to where to dig for clay. I simply work my way to those spots, breaking every bolder i see along the way, collect a few trees, and dig until the shovel breaks. If i am satisfied with the amount of cobblestone i can make, i leave and don't come back until i need more clay.

 

I find reinforcing my base makes it able to withstand the nightly hordes, so i am constantly using cobblestone. I also use a lot of wood for the spikes, which need 4 wood each, but 10 to repair...

 

So the treasure missions are very useful excuse to go out and gather resources, as you are not only gathering resources but have the potential for 1000 xp and dukes too.

 

1000xp is chump change. The clay is a big thing, plus the opportunity to find a cache of food and enough Dukes to buy a metal tool and some forged iron to speed up stone production (or a hoe for getting a farm started).

 

Doing a Fetch/Kill mission on day 1/2 is very risky. You can't fail a treasure hunt, but you can lose a whole day if you start a Fetch and get killed by some closet zombie, since it will fail the mission. if you didn't reposition a sleeping bag, you could be teleported several kilometers away from both the backpack and the trader.

[Sawth77]

Yucca juice is gone. There IS a Yucca smoothie but it takes snow, blueberries, Yucca, a Jar and something else

 

Yucca juice is still in the game. Takes 2 yucca plants, 1 bottle of water. I didn't see the smoothie in the recipe list (mainly because i never really looked lol), good to know about it.

[Taddious]

Tired of the slow speed in which the stone axe swings?

Craft two, place them on your hot bar (slot 1 and slot 2)

Swing once with stone axe in slot 1, immediately push "2" to equip stone axe 2, hold down the left mouse button as swap occurs

Swing twice with stone axe 2 (you will note it hits twice very quickly)

As soon as second animation hits, immediately push "1" to equip stone axe 1 while holding down left mouse button again (hit will hit twice again very quickly)

 

TLDR: switch between two of the same tools while holding down LMB in order to get rapid hits

[LuckyStar]

Tired of the slow speed in which the stone axe swings?

Craft two, place them on your hot bar (slot 1 and slot 2)

Swing once with stone axe in slot 1, immediately push "2" to equip stone axe 2, hold down the left mouse button as swap occurs

Swing twice with stone axe 2 (you will note it hits twice very quickly)

As soon as second animation hits, immediately push "1" to equip stone axe 1 while holding down left mouse button again (hit will hit twice again very quickly)

 

TLDR: switch between two of the same tools while holding down LMB in order to get rapid hits

 

Get out!

 

Hahahaha ... I better make use of this before they patch it!

 

Nice catch Taddious.

[Taddious]

Get out!

 

Hahahaha ... I better make use of this before they patch it!

 

Nice catch Taddious.

 

After counting swings per minute, it's actually almost exactly the same, but it feels faster because of the quick double-swing after the swap

Haven't tried with other tools yet

[Kage848]

I must disagree with this. The trick with the treasure missions is not to dig for the treasure, but to dig for clay. clay= cobblestone, cobblestone=life. the treasure missions just give you a suggestion on to where to dig for clay. I simply work my way to those spots, breaking every bolder i see along the way, collect a few trees, and dig until the shovel breaks. If i am satisfied with the amount of cobblestone i can make, i leave and don't come back until i need more clay.

 

I find reinforcing my base makes it able to withstand the nightly hordes, so i am constantly using cobblestone. I also use a lot of wood for the spikes, which need 4 wood each, but 10 to repair...

 

So the treasure missions are very useful excuse to go out and gather resources, as you are not only gathering resources but have the potential for 1000 xp and dukes too.

 

You can disagree all you want. Digging with a stone shovels, as slow as it is, constantly stopping for stamina is not fun, like at all.

 

I will concede getting clay is a wonderful bonus and does help. I just wish I didnt have to travel 1km and use an awful stone shovel, one I cant even make better by crafting higher quality, to do so.

 

I guess it's a small gripe but with how awesome everything else in alpha 17 is it's kinda glaring when I have to do something so boring as dig all day lol.

[JCrook1028]

Spikes and barbed wire: Log spikes are history, more's the shame.

 

Someone is Discord ch just showed me that the iron versions of the log spikes is still in the game, made with scrap iron pipes.

[SickPuppy]

Dead corn doesn't give seeds anymore but don't dismiss them, they give a lot of xp early game, get some before fix.

 

Stealth is broken, if u try to sneak a poi u will trigger a jump attack no matter what, u'll be crouched, panic, stunned, wake up in a bedroll.

 

Instead clear outside area,

+ break the front door,

+ go round break the back door,

+ drink coffee/beer for stun immune,

+ run inside and make as much noise as u possibly can whilst screaming at the top of yr voice irl,

+ Make sure u are sprinting so u will sprint past any falling floorboards,

+ Now gtfo and fight much safer outdoors,

+ Loot / Win

[canadianbluebeer]

- gathering crops, alternate regular and power attacks. (LMB/RMB) the delay on one attack, does not affect the other one. (just use bare fists to punch too, no need to waste a weapon on crops)

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

You can disagree all you want. Digging with a stone shovels, as slow as it is, constantly stopping for stamina is not fun, like at all.

 

I will concede getting clay is a wonderful bonus and does help. I just wish I didnt have to travel 1km and use an awful stone shovel, one I cant even make better by crafting higher quality, to do so.

 

I guess it's a small gripe but with how awesome everything else in alpha 17 is it's kinda glaring when I have to do something so boring as dig all day lol.

 

We all hate the stone shovel. No one here uses the stone shovel unless they have to. I will never get yelled at by stone shovel fanboys, because those don't exist.

 

but you NEED clay. Kickz was able to survive a 7 day horde no issues by fortifying a forge house with cobblestone. Cobblestone is super important now. I am working on horde cages that i can melee through, i think the 1/4 sctr's are the key. if we can melee through a cobble stone cage on horde night, BOOM, troubles are solved. Just one beer, a few clubs and tons of xp and very few worries.

 

if we can't melee through them, still now worries, because its strong enough to withstand a lot of abuse, and you can still shoot through it. But clay and stone are now extremely important, they are our primary building materials until level 30.

[Luk4ne]

Vehicles all inherently have storage space, you no longer need to find a basket to place on your vehicle, I overlooked this initially by just assuming I'd have to find one

 

Dungeons and POIs are great exp, you dont have to enter through a door, build some ladders or frames and go in through the roof

 

Yucca juice doesnt cool you off anymore and it uses up a water, not worth it IMO

 

Sexual trex is an absolute must if you plan on doing any sort of mining, even 1 or 2 points into it is night and day

 

Fire axe is a viable weapon now and it counts as a bladed weapon for 'skinning' and dismantling couches for leather, no need to carry a hunting knife specifically for those actions

 

You dont need the gas can schematic to craft gas from the big gas barrels

[Zourin]

Tips:

 

- Early on, don't worry about clearing whole POI's. Go for the kitchens and bathrooms for jars, pots, meds, and if you're REALLY lucky, maybe a grill. Focus on residences, rather than warehouses/factories.

 

- There's water in water towers. Keep a campfire with a pot nearby so you can immediately start purifying it. Come back later for the water.

 

- Use map markers to note farms and operable workstations. There's no point digging up a pile of vegetation if you can't cook/plant them, you won't get much from eating them raw except food poisoning.

 

- Make and use cloth or scrap armor. Seriously. It helps. Bones + fat + cooking pot for glue, Glue + fabric for duct tape, and Duct Tape + Scrap metal or cloth for armor.

 

- Dismantle couches for cloth (bandages) or leather (poncho/bellows). Another good reason to go after those residences. If you see a tent camp, break down the tents for more fabric (mind buzzards and landmines!)

[chinothepony]

1) Look for stumps to break open for a high chance of honey

2) Craft and drop a land claim block before clearing a POI. That will help keep the respawn from happening.

3) Knee shots to zombies are now very viable, since head shots especially in the beginning aren't usually a 1 shot, 1 kill anymore. Hit them in the knee, smash them in the head as they hunch over, and finish them off on the ground. There are a lot of cool combos you can do.

4) Cloth is now a must to keep your bandages up for clearing the Health black bar (loss of max hp). Regular bandages work too.

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

Don't throw anything away, and don't scrap things. Everything has a use and you will miss it later if you scrap it.

always kill animals: even wolves, and even bears. Wolves are food for days, bears are food for a week.

get your base horde ready asap. assume you will be attacked nightly, and prepare for it.

Think over how you play, and what you need for perks.

really look over the pois, there are a lot of hidden things in hidden places now.

airdrops are not something to ignore.

always look behind you.

watch kage and kickz to learn what to do, watch you always win to learn what NOT to do.

[Starkn]

Water still slows zombies down, though less so dogs.

[SerotoninCraver]

Scrapping guns unloads their ammo into your inventory as soon as you start scrapping. If you want to save the gun for the trader or whatever, just cancel the scrapping job from your crafting queue.

 

Scrapping guns also yields mechanical parts now instead of iron.

[ubai]

Chopping up potted plants gives clay (good for desert play)

 

Use advanced rotation truss blocks so the "Z" shaped side is facing up. Otherwise you might fall through.

[Laz Man]

As soon as u can find a wrench get to dismantling any cars for oil and gas.

 

Molotovs are great early game horde counter measures.