Feedback after first blood moon

[Auger]

Okay I just finished my first BM.

 

I played solo with 120 min days on Nomad.

Blood moon count was 8

I killed 214 zombies

Died 4 times. 2 times to a bear and once to a wolf and once to a wandering horde that trapped me in a POI

Stamina 120

Health 120

 

It's day 8 and I managed to reach level 18. I wasn't really grinding out levels. i'm pretty sure i could have made 20th easy if I just was grinding levels.

 

Stamina

Stamina is fine once you unlock a few levels of agility and grab a few perks. There is so much food in the game that it really is a easy to keep it up. Although it can be a bit annoy to be eating constantly. If I could change anything I would have small 25% overflow buffer to stamina so you don't always have to be topping it off. Plus as it stands now higher stamina foods really aren't very useful since you have to gimp your stamina so much to even use them. For reference I have 176 meat and 36 eggs , plus lots of canned food and various other edibles in storage.

 

Combat

Versus regular zombies melee is king. Once you get timing down you can club everything down. Dogs, Wolves, Vultures club them too. The only thing that gave me a challenge was that damn bear. Bow feels nice and I like that you can now recover arrows. I also like the fact that nests seem to be a lot easier to spot in A!7. I made 600 arrows for BM and ended up using about 300 to kill everything.

 

I had a shotgun, handgun, and hunting rifle from looting. I really never had much ammo but when i did use them they seemed to work well. At one point I got attacked by 7 vultures at once. I backed up and killed 5 of them with the shotgun. the last 2 were flying around so i used the bow on them.

 

Stealth

The new stealth mechanics are an interesting addition. I used to not care how much noise I made at night usually tunneling like a mole all over the place ect. In A17 I've been trying to keep as quiet as possible. i'll usually only craft items I need for the next day or cook a little food.

 

Zombie loot drops

 

I don't mind the way this is implemented now. To be honest looting zombies in previous versions was a chore and only the non regular zombies were even worth it. I think I've managed to get around 7 drops from 214 kills. I don't miss going around and cleaning up all the gore blocks either, although the bones were nice for crafting.

 

 

Forges

 

Been reading a lot about how everyone needs forges? Thing is there are lots of them around. I've found 4 working ones and was able to make about 16 iron bars for my base and 100 forged iron in 7 days. Now that you can repair items without books it's nice. I found a iron pickaxe on day 3 and been using that ever since. I'm finding I can power attack with this and knock out boulders faster then I was able to in A16 at same level.

 

Base building

 

This is probably one the biggest changes in the new version. In A16 I'd have concrete by day 4 max and I'd build a small concrete base with iron bars all around by the time day 7 rolled around. I'd tunnel down at 45 degrees to bedrock and make a mass forge station and workbenches. No fear that zombies could ever get me.

 

This time I grabbed a concrete trailer POI and put a row of spikes around the base and iron bars on top near the door. On BM the zombies came in and started beating on my base but I managed to kill them all with a bow and about 300 arrows.

 

Before BM

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/942838032994953370/4148D8CCCC6AE33E2825B181F67DF5108D23C250/

 

After BM

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/942838032994952943/2EB1C7775EFA7098CC151AB0AF26CD1ACE5C2B9B/

 

They destroyed most of the front wall but the base held up.

I've found a working cement mixer so I'm thinking of upgrading the trailer with more concrete for the next blood moon.

 

I think xp for collecting resources should be upped a bit, since it feels like the only way to level now is by killing zombies.

[marinermatt]

Here's my report:

 

Solo, 120 minute days on Adventurer (noob to the forums, but alpha 15 and 16 vet, I read a few threads and was terrified, so dropped to lower difficulty to get my bearings).

 

blood moon count: 8

Navezgane

Deaths: 3 early, all to wolves and vultures day 1/2

Approx 310 zombie kills at night 7

stamina 130

health 110

level: 26 at night 7. Level 20 before day 7 is easily achievable (on ezmode, granted) with Diersville POI clearing (I think i've cleared the farm and about 5 houses) and killing wandering hordes instead of running. XP gain from glasses seems useful. XP gained from non zombie killing is de minimis.

0 quests completed to date (have been waiting for a bicycle)

 

Stamina

I wouldn't say stamina is "fine". It's a pain. But it has often been a pain early game, and I'm not finding it significantly more painful than usual provided that focus is paid to (a) finding canned food, (b) finding a cooking pot, © raiding every single nest you see, always, forever, (d) having a source of water/bottles. 90 percent of my food so far has been boiled eggs. I have tons of meat. Don't use it...I don't like waiting for stamina to get down far enough to justify bacon and eggs. I have LOADS of eggs, but have been diligent in hitting EVERY. SINGLE. NEST. Perks also help with stamina. Love your idea RE overflow buffer for stamina.

 

Combat

Love it so far. Day 1/2 I was playing (and watching Kage and Glock) and thought melee was dead. Not at all, melee is king. Get some armor and your timing down and melee is a blast. I just got a sledgehammer (my melee of choice) and it is appropriately satisfying. You take some hits, and have to be quick with the bandages, but it's fun. I got lucky with an early compound bow as well and it has been very solid when I run out of stamina. Aim is accurate. i aimed with a CB at vulture moving sideways in midair, guessed (lucky guess) the lead and knocked it out of the sky at a pretty fair distance. Kage got one like that too in one of his vids. Super fun.

 

Vs. ferals/night: YMMV with melee. Everything is heightened and its easy to miss that you are at 0 stamina. I've been lucky so far, but mostly try to snipe from a distance for sneak bonus whenever i can.

 

Stealth

Still getting used to it. I'll admit I miss being able to crouch and know immediately what's up, even if it is a bit ridiculous.

 

Zombie loot drops

Couldn't care less. Less garbage to carry. And I love not having to clear bodies from around my base. When a drop does come, it's special. And that's fine by me.

 

Encumbrance

if there's a dumb complaint about this alpha, it's encumbrance. People in here talk and talk about freedom of choice with the skill trees (and I'm with you there) but encumbrance is nothing more than giving the player a more viable choice than we had before. Before we had less slots, and had to toss valuable items (or drop chest them and run back and forth). Early game this was incredibly painful and/or tedious. Now we can carry significantly more items...at a cost. I've run back from raiding more than once at 1mph...and it sucks. But it sucks less than running back and forth, or dropping/scrapping things that would have been useful. With later game skills and vehicle slots, this will be a nonissue. People should focus more on other issues...like:

 

Weapon/Tool progression

I like A17 overall, but right now i hate this. I desperately miss trying to find the recipes to mix and match my gun parts to make the optimal weapon for what i have on hand. I desperately miss upgrading tools with real results. Now, the item quality (so far) seems to only impact hit points. I understand that late game highest level tools/weapons will have additional mod slots or something? Is that right? I haven't had a chance to mod items yet, don't have the necessary recipes/items, so, like certain other aspects of A17, I may appreciate this more over time. But early game it's really disappointing.

 

Skill tree

I don't hate this in concept, even the level gating. I wish that the methods by which XP can be gained were re-expanded. In Alpha 16 mining was OP for leveling. Now it's essentially solely zombie farming. There has to be a happy medium somewhere. If that happy medium can be found, I don't have a problem with level gating to slow things down.

 

Forge/bicycle/etc availability early game

Big complaint in the forums. I don't have a huge issue with the forge and most other gates. I got to the point in A16 where I would paint by the numbers and have a fully concrete base with multiple forges blazing, cement mixer, etc by day 7. And then just stand on my wall and watch the blood moon horde die. It was really fun the first couple of times. Then it got boring. I don't mind slowing things down and forcing some terror into early game horde nights. My single proviso would be the bicycle. Please make it available at level 10. I can deal with the stamina stuff in every aspect of the game but travel. Where the nearest trader quest is 2 KM away it just isn't worth the trouble. If you want to cut bike storage completely out, or increase damage to bikes for travel to balance, fine. But please don't make me run everywhere. It's boring.

 

Base building

I'm a builder. i came from minecraft and my favorite part of Night of the Living Dead is the part when they are shoring up the house. I heard base building was dead, and at least in ezmode it's not, currently. I survived night 7 with a ring wall of flagstone, 3 high (partially upgraded) around the Navezgane farm, two rows of wood spikes and barb wire fence as an outside barrier. The fence was huge. Really slowed things down. I went through like a billion arrows or something and quite a few bullets (and most of my fence/spikes on one side) but the wall held. I have two jump points to my wall top, back and front, built in wooden frames so that I can remove them when things get heavy. I did so here but the zombies came in from the side and were still pathing to the one in the front nearly exclusively, causing them to run along the fence, slowing nearly the whole way. Many arrows and 9mm shots later and they were toast. Granted, again, this was all on adventurer. I didn't really intend to funnel, but it worked that way perfectly (sometimes better to be lucky than skilled).

 

so....not bad so far from my perspective. I have other beefs, like POIs feeling overly scripted. That is ok in reasonable doses, but it feels like every house in diersville (so far) is like this. If I want to play resident evil, I will. I also have seen evidence of what feels like the zombie AI "cheating" (knowing where I am when they really shouldn't)...which has been widely reported. But I'm not sure if it's really that, or if it just feels like that in the moment. Still working on understanding all of the mechanics.

 

If it were up to me, I'd ensure that there were a mix of gimmicky POIs, and regular POIs (stuff more like alpha 16). We don't need to get cute with all of them. I'd also bring back the old upgrade system for weapons/tools (again, my impression pre-modding of weapons/tools).

 

Again...all on relative ezmode. Take with a grain of salt.