7 days

[Vllad]

I like the changes as well. Much harder challenge.

You can't rodeo anymore. Everytime I touch a vehicle during a bloodmoon I get chased down by the new birds even if I am going full speed. They stun you on the vehicle and just kick your ass. You can't run away so you have to fight. I am not even on the brutal settings and I am struggling to do anything.

They severely increased the amount of Stamina you use for digging or using tools in general as well. The new progression speed makes it so basically you are using stone for quite a while. no more lucky drop to make it easy.

[Veraphim]

Yeah. Also, you get hungry/thirsty a lot faster if you are doing hard labor. So gardening/cooking seems more important because you just can't survive on eating the catfood you find in the houses you raid. I find myself using the vending machines to get food a lot too whereas I never even touched them in previous versions.

Are you using a high "Difficulty setting"? I've never liked that implementation because it doesn't make the zombies any smarter or improve their pathing, etc. It just jacks their HP up so it takes 100 bullets to kill them, and removes the usefulness of 90% of the weapons in the game. Nobody is going to use a knife with a 1/s bleed when every zombie has 800hp. And them killing you in one hit makes pretty much everything else except the sledgehammer worthless since you need to either one-shot them first or knock them down so they can't hit you.

I've been having more fun in my single player games setting the difficulty back down to normal, increasing zombie spawn population, zombies always run, and making bloodmoons every night but with lower bloodmoon zombie numbers.

[Crice]

I like the changes as well. Much harder challenge.

You can't rodeo anymore. Everytime I touch a vehicle during a bloodmoon I get chased down by the new birds even if I am going full speed. They stun you on the vehicle and just kick your ass. You can't run away so you have to fight. I am not even on the brutal settings and I am struggling to do anything.

They severely increased the amount of Stamina you use for digging or using tools in general as well. The new progression speed makes it so basically you are using stone for quite a while. no more lucky drop to make it easy.

The birds... I couldn't just ride around anymore until the bloodmoon is over. That was a surprise during my first bloodmoon! 
 
Correct me if I am wrong but it looks like lots of new buildings, missions and different areas that are harder than others.

I had to build two rag tag bases, each is in a different zone. I try to takeover a house that is close to a Trader but after awhile money becomes pointless again. 

The bears, mountain lions, dogs and wolves are much harder. It's enjoyable to see how badly a bear wants to kill you. The bears tears through a house trying to get to you. 

I seem to get concussion, broken legs and other injures more frequently. The concussion is a pain because it lasts a long time and randomly doesn't allow you to do anything. 

Great changes, who is going to setup a server?

[Crice]

Yeah.  Also, you get hungry/thirsty a lot faster if you are doing hard labor.  So gardening/cooking seems more important because you just can't survive on eating the catfood you find in the houses you raid.  I find myself using the vending machines to get food a lot too whereas I never even touched them in previous versions.

Are you using a high "Difficulty setting"?  I've never liked that implementation because it doesn't make the zombies any smarter or improve their pathing, etc.  It just jacks their HP up so it takes 100 bullets to kill them, and removes the usefulness of 90% of the weapons in the game.  Nobody is going to use a knife with a 1/s bleed when every zombie has 800hp.  And them killing you in one hit makes pretty much everything else except the sledgehammer worthless since you need to either one-shot them first or knock them down so they can't hit you.

I've been having more fun in my single player games setting the difficulty back down to normal, increasing zombie spawn population, zombies always run, and making bloodmoons every night but with lower bloodmoon zombie numbers.

I had to grow crops for the first time, as you mentioned living off cans of random stuff doesn't work. 

"Bloodmoons every night", I like your style!

[Veraphim]

Correct me if I am wrong but it looks like lots of new buildings, missions and different areas that are harder than others.

I seem to get concussion, broken legs and other injures more frequently. The concussion is a pain because it lasts a long time and randomly doesn't allow you to do anything. 

Yeah, I've seen a lot of buildings that I don't remember seeing before. I've also seen "Bosses" in some of them. Found a giant boar with glowing red eyes in the basement of that hi-tech farm that has the super corn.

I like the new injury system better than the old one too. Gives use to more of the meds such as casts, sewing kits, and aloe. The previous system that just grayed-out some of your max health wasn't near as interesting.

[Vllad]

I used the following settings:

Everything deleted on death
bumped the zombies up one level (any higher and I agree with Vera, it makes many things useless)
Reduced loot to 75%
Everything on max run speed

This run piece I went with once I discovered that no matter how fast you have them set if you are a vehicle you get caught anyway during a bloodmoon. The stun slows the vehicle down and makes you incapable of driving it.

The new multiple injury system is a lot better. Vera is correct, you now have multiple kinds of inflictions that can be on you for long periods of time. You can't ignore them.

Another change on the Bloodmoons, as soon as you are out of reach of the Zombies the Bird and Animal spam kicks in faster. I tried sitting on the side of a water tower and when the zombies couldn't reach me since I had no way to fight them the Birds showed up and killed me. Bloodmoons have zero mecrcy. Zombies also now walk back and forth up slopes so while walls slow them down they now have multiple ways to get over the slopped walls exploit. Now it is kill quickly or die.

I agree with Vera, you want lots of zombies more so then more difficult zombies to kill. You can really only do that in single player since the max remains the same regardless of the number of players.

The key to the long term play of your game is making it so you use just about all the resources you have time to gather. i.e., if you have a shit ton of brass, ammo and food in your inventory then your settings are too easy.

[Slamz]

Oh that's interesting, that they closed the "wall slope" gap. Now I'm tempted to fire it back up because entirely new defenses will be needed. I was wondering about finding a lake to build in so it comes with a free moat. Never tried building in a lake but I imagine it's feasible.

I think I would agree on max run speed. I found that I can still run around and survive a blood moon (in our old game) on foot though I wonder how well that works now. In the old game I got dumped out of my water tower and had to run but between scraping them off on buildings and running up and down steep hills outside of town I was able to keep a lid on it, though there were 1 or 2 who I never lost and made it to where I could stop and rest now and then but not for very long.

[Sithh]

I like small bases with more vital portions underground. Spend time and resources building/repairing defenses rather than repairing buildings

[Vllad]

Oh that's interesting, that they closed the "wall slope" gap. Now I'm tempted to fire it back up because entirely new defenses will be needed. I was wondering about finding a lake to build in so it comes with a free moat. Never tried building in a lake but I imagine it's feasible.

I think I would agree on max run speed. I found that I can still run around and survive a blood moon (in our old game) on foot though I wonder how well that works now. In the old game I got dumped out of my water tower and had to run but between scraping them off on buildings and running up and down steep hills outside of town I was able to keep a lid on it, though there were 1 or 2 who I never lost and made it to where I could stop and rest now and then but not for very long.

Zombies swim now. I am not sure how well the mote will work. I may have to test that out. I know I got caught trying to swim away from them as I used to in Alpha 18.

[Slamz]

Played a little last night. I do like all the new status effects. I actually think it's a good incentive to drop the difficulty down too. Now rather than playing on normal and just wasting zombies and eat a ration and you're fine, the status effects are basically a way of slowly picking you apart if you don't treat the zombies with at least some respect. But by playing it on normal you can do normal combat instead of having to play the entire game like it's a game of Thief.

[Sithh]

If it is your team vrs the AI it seems best to have people hyper focused on certain jobs + One offensive specialty Ideally stacking with your main Attribute.
If you can Prioritize Recipes to team Members with certain specs that helps a ton also.
What are your favorite weapon/"Class" combos? Currently playing with Brawler/AK In Heavy Armour
2 or 3 Blunderbuss with Bandolier seems to be a very good starting setup.
Viable Rolls:
Food guy(Hunts)/Farms
Scavengers(Clear houses dismantle cars)
Medic With new Injuries
Miner
Scientist 2 Turrets Maxed out are very powerful(Speaking of Which haven't seen Junk turrets in A19 at level 36)
Crafting/Builder

[Vllad]

But by playing it on normal you can do normal combat instead of having to play the entire game like it's a game of Thief.

There is something to be said about the all Thief game however I am not sure it is realistic in a solo game. The game does catch up with you eventually and you just fall behind doing the Theif thing.

[Vllad]

If it is your team vrs the AI it seems best to have people hyper focused on certain jobs + One offensive specialty Ideally stacking with your main Attribute.
If you can Prioritize Recipes to team Members with certain specs that helps a ton also.
What are your favorite weapon/"Class" combos? Currently playing with Brawler/AK In Heavy Armour
2 or 3 Blunderbuss with Bandolier seems to be a very good starting setup.
Viable Rolls:
Food guy(Hunts)/Farms
Scavengers(Clear houses dismantle cars)
Medic With new Injuries
Miner
Scientist 2 Turrets Maxed out are very powerful(Speaking of Which haven't seen Junk turrets in A19 at level 36)
Crafting/Builder

The problem with a multiplayer game is the game settings have to set so high as it really becomes almost impossible to Scavenge.

Throw scavenging out then you end up mostly mining. First, it is the second best exp behind building. Second, you level up with tons of resources then use the trader to buy the rare items by leveling up barter skill right away. Sure you have a guy who farms, you need a hunter in order to keep people fed then everyone else just mines.

As long as you figure out the Bloodmoons then you are good.

The key to a multiplayer game is making sure you can produce enough Brass. This brings us back to the item I listed above. You need enough Barter that you are turning cash into brass. There isn't enough brass in the game until you get the books that allow you to get more from drops and doors. If people go out scavenging before they have those skills you run out of brass to support say 5 or 6 people.

In a multi player game you reach a point where the game becomes trivial no matter how hard you make it. Basically it starts really, really hard and you are using stone for a long time. Then around day 50 to 70 the players ramp up very quickly and finally turn a corner and it instantly becomes low risk without putting in place personal restrictions.

In Single Player the game stays hard for pretty much the entire time.

Hence why in our last play through as a group, we all played on the same server but played it solo in different spots. We had to compete for resources and deal with the difficulty.

That worked out very well. The problem was a server can't support 5 people playing solo on it. Everyone runs out of Brass for example.

[Veraphim]

[quote]In a multi player game you reach a point where the game becomes trivial no matter how hard you make it. Basically it starts really, really hard and you are using stone for a long time. Then around day 50 to 70 the players ramp up very quickly and finally turn a corner and it instantly becomes low risk without putting in place personal restrictions.[/i]

What do you think are the reasons that the game gets too easy? Is it something that we could make a "Purge Mod" to deal with, kinda like we messed with some stuff in EU3?

[Vllad]

What do you think are the reasons that the game gets too easy?  Is it something that we could make a "Purge Mod" to deal with, kinda like we messed with some stuff in EU3?

Primarily people typically skill out the top end of single skills faster than single player. i.e., one person does armor, one does barter and another does something else. So by the time we are level 30 we are in top level armor, getting the rarest items and churning out maximum resources. In single player you are level 90 before you reach that point.

The other issue was (it may not be an issue anymore) the server calculation for what mobs should be spawning and drop rates.

Finally, with 6 people it was easier to exploit game bugs. i.e., slop/ramp challenges for Zombies. That may have already been addressed but the point is, it is easier to find solutions to AI issues with 6 or 7 people than it is one person.

To fix the above the only thing I can think of is your skill requirements to take skills needs to be not only based on your max attribute but also your level. i.e., you can't learn level 3 armor until you are 7 in the attribute plus be level 60.

You need friendly fire. (this sucked when everything was deleted on death but it is necessary)

Finally you shouldn't be able to lay any kind of block down (including stations, farms and storage) without placing a land claim block and you shouldn't be able to put a block down outside of the land claim area. This does multiple things: First, it forces you to do Bloodmoons at your home location, this is mandatory to keep the game challenging. Second, it eliminates exploits like nerd poling, laying spikes in front of doors or building large 3rd party structures. Finally laying land claim blocks needs a timer so you can't just lay one down every 5 minutes after you built your structure (more like every 7 days is more appropriate). Most importantly when you pull your land claim block up or it is destroyed everything man made blows up with it and becomes rubble, you then can't replace that block for 7 days.

[Sithh]

Game is fun to play with pals and whoop some zombies also, build shit, create farms. Not sure if you got to fight the Special Forces and Radio Active Zombies they bring plenty of pain. Admittedly I don't play on your extreme settings, not that I wouldn't or couldn't but that is a different experience.

[Vllad]

Game is fun to play with pals and whoop some zombies also, build shit, create farms. Not sure if you got to fight the Special Forces and Radio Active Zombies they bring plenty of pain. Admittedly I don't play on your extreme settings, not that I wouldn't or couldn't but that is a different experience.

Whoop'n it up last a couple of days before it becomes too easy and dull.

We have played it as a group with everything on its hardest settings but eventually the players exceed the game difficulty. Without some modding I don't think the difficulty is right for 3 to 6 players. Maybe 2.

For Single player the settings can still overwhelm the player without going to extremes.

[Slamz]

I always thought a fundamental flaw was that zombies always try to attack YOU and not your stuff. If they would occasionally target your containers and stations (instead of just incidentally killing them trying to get at you) then that would make blood moons a lot more interesting and difficult to defend against.

Death penalty should probably be a whole lot harsher too. If you leave it to default "drop all on death" then there almost is no death penalty. I think it should be more like EQ -- slap your XP off, even knock you down in level and make you lose skills if you die. ("Permadeath" would be too harsh for this game but EQ style XP loss would be appropriate.)

There should also really be one zombie type that cannot be stunned. Like maybe ferals are just the badass of the zombie world and you should wet your pants when you see one. But they really weren't that much worse.

The exploding green army guys are probably the worst but the only thing that really sets them apart is that they can blow up and ruin your defenses. The radioactive zombies were only bad if you didn't have the rad remover and especially if you didn't have good DPS as it would just make them hard to kill them through their regen.

[Sithh]

Exp penalty is already in. I like the idea of Hardcore Permadeath only thing with that is peps wouldn't play once they died at 40 and got left behind I think.

[Vllad]

Exp penalty is already in. I like the idea of Hardcore Permadeath only thing with that is peps wouldn't play once they died at 40 and got left behind I think.

There is no such thing as left behind in 7 days. You can be 30 while others are at 60 and still contribute to a specialized skill.

[Slamz]

Unless they changed it for A19, the A18 xp penalty was pretty light. And it's really "xp debt". You don't lose xp, per se, you just have to work off the debt to start gaining again and it's not really that much debt (especially at default xp income rates).

That might be moddable though. I would wonder about greatly increasing the debt and maybe applying some kind of "post-death debuff".

[Sithh]

Yeah Xp debt is pretty light.
Maybe the PVP dynamic would fill in the gap that you guys seem to be missing, maybe we should descend in mass like a pack of locusts on a server.

[Arsilon]

Well if you recall I tested permadeath when we had that packet loss issue and I had to start over at level 1.

Given the group was still around it really wasn't too bad. The fact that the storage and structures and everything else at the base was still there really didn't make it that big a deal. It likely would have been a much bigger sting in a single player game where you are unlikely to have 3 or 4 backups for everything.

[Veraphim]

Did you try the Darkness Falls mod at all? He just released v3 that works with a19. I'd really like to know what you thought about it in regards to difficulty/fun. The "end-game" bunker raids where you have to close demon gates would be actual raid-content with the difficulty settings we would be using. We likely would all die bloody fiery deaths before making it to the gates but would certainly be fun. This stuff is insanely hard even with the more advanced items that the mod adds.

Character level does limit your max skills. For example, you can put a perk point into Armor Crafting at level 1. The 2nd requires level 10, then 20, 40, 80 to max it out. Some other skills don't have this restriction, but I think all of the "crafting" skills do.

Death Penalty - Your character has a "wellness" stat. It starts at 100 which sets your max health. If you die, it goes down by 10. So when you respawn, now your max health is 90. Die a few times more, and soon you have 50 max health no matter how many painkillers or first aid kits you use. Eating good food can slowly recover it over time, but it effectively limits bind-rushing. Your health doesn't go up every level like it does in vanilla. You can eventually recover, but it takes time. Don't know if that's harsh enough or not. Also, you don't respawn with a full stomach so suicide isn't an answer to starving anymore.

Lack of Brass - You can make ammo with steel casings now as well as brass. Cheaper alternative but they wear your guns out much faster, which can have an impact due to item decay.

General difficulty increases - Zombie Behemoths will tear up your base with their bonus block damage, The demons hurl fireballs that will set you on fire, Night Stalkers are like Wights on crack. Also, many more zombies spawn than in vanilla. Just walking across a field is like encountering constant "mini-hordes" sometimes. POIs also have more spawns in them.

[Sithh]

Sounds yummy