Fear Factor

The kinds of things you cited [edit: in the top post], like changes to obtaining water or collecting magazines… it’s not clear those made the game any less scary (which, like you allude, is a separate discussion from difficulty). They did make the game pretty dang bright even at night, so that’s less scary. But on the other hand,

• One of my more recent oh ♥♥♥♥ moments was when a dog damaged a metal door until the hole was big enough for it to squeeze through and run after me. They couldn’t do that before.
  
• Not only did dire wolves (and other animals) get a visual makeover to look much scarier, but I swear they seem to ‘play dead’ sometimes when hit before moving again, which makes it very unsettling when you can’t tell if they’re really down.
• There’s now a night-only quest type.
  
• The game can put the Blood Moon on random days and give you no warning until it occurs, if you set it that way.

None of these things were true just an alpha or two ago. And there’s potential for the game to get scarier.

• V2.0 will have improvements to zombies crawling/ducking/otherwise getting through smaller holes in your walls.
  
• The “charged blue” and “infernal orange” zombie types will reportedly have new behaviors, which could potentially be scary.
  
• Zombies will make individual footstep sounds, which could enable another means of quietly tracking their movement during tense, dark nights.
• This sub-biome foliage system may provide new concealed places for zombies to emerge out of.
  
• If they do something with weather… big storms can be scary in their own right, and be at least a distraction/cover for zombie movement even if they’re not directly dangerous.

Originally posted by Jonnson: snip

It sure sounds as though you’re staying in the deliberately less scary places, when you talk about not seeing animals & other enemies spawn at night. Last time I made a base in the wasteland city, there were always enemies at night. I’m talking multiple dire wolves or zombie bears, every single night. Not from screamers or Blood Moons, just prowling the city ready to notice you. Even during the day, it was cumbersome to do any significant building because there was always another zombie to interrupt you. I’d go through so much ammo just trying to get the local area secure for a few minutes.