[2020] PINNED: A19 Early Game, Food, Guns, & survival

Originally posted by RasaNova: Also, I enjoy looting, which some people don't. I agree it would be harder without looting, so that may be a challenge I set for myself in another game...

The game self balances to account for this; If someone never loots and only crafts, they'll get difficulty tailored to their choices. This self-balancing is why it can actually detrimental to double the day length or double/triple exp gain.

For double day length, if hordes are enabled, then you will have spent twice as much time accruing exp and such as you would have normally- You'll end up gaining around twice as much gamestage as you would have normally, so you'll end up with a horde tailored to that raised game stage. Yes, it gives more time to prepare- But where most screw up is in not realizing they need to leverage that time properly and prepare for something much more difficult than they realized.

Similarly, people take 150-300% exp thinking it'll make everything easier because extra perks- and they're right. But, it's double edged; You end up with more perks, but, not enough time to accrue equipment or material for building a base capable of contending with a horde that is 1.5-3x harder than it would be on default settings..

Combine both and it's multiplicative- With double length and triple exp you end up with a horde 6 times harder than vanilla- But, objectively speaking, if you managed yourself well, you SHOULD be up to the task (You have the skills, you had the time to prepare, etc)... But that is only if you knew what you were walking into. Most don't realize by doing 2x and 3x that they're effectively getting the equivalent of a day 35 or 42 horde on their first horde night.


All in all, different playstyles encounter different levels of difficulty; and having played each skill tree exclusively(IE a strength playthrough where I Never bought anything from another tree, or an agility one, or a fort one, etc), i never felt like i was fundamentally unprepared for what I encountered, it always felt pretty well balanced against my actions.

EG: In my strength playthrough I was able to make a monster base in a very short time (Miner 69er and motherlode go a long way here, and i had a working forge in the trader by chance)- And i got a comparatively monster horde... But, i had the base and tools to handle it. The only tree that really loses out here is Agility, but even then, agility is the king of hit and run- power-stab a zombie and run away, it will bleed to death. No need to stand and fight, just a very simple parkour course of places to run up and climb and jump around is golden; and so on for other trees.

TL;DR: The game self balances against your progress, for good or ill.

Originally posted by darknessanubis: You may disagree all you like but there are a couple of things you are not taking in to account. Your own experience with the game prior to this can never be completely set aside and RNG.

On your experience. You know how to use the spear and the club. You are not in that stage where trying to kill one zombie will likely get you killed as you learn. You know how to use the bow. You are not taking 10 shots to even hit the deer and then having to chase it for miles after it runs from you often into a zombie or worse direwolf or bear which will kill you before you are able to kill it. If you spend too much time trying to stay alive to get to the trader or trying to get that deer you will not have time to clear something before night fall and may not have had success getting food. Heck you might not make it to the trader for the first time if you were unlucky with how far the trader is from your spawn. You know what to harvest to get pipes and that you can do that without a wrench so making a blunderbuss becomes more realistic. For that matter you know what kind of building to clear to cower in/on for the night and that you need to do that.

RNG also plays a big role. at the end of day 4 (Game stage 11 or so) my trader had a hunting rifle. It was the first gun I had seen him have ever in this game. I did not have enough dukes for it having spent a fair bit on food from him and vending machiines. Why? because I had almost no luck looting food or finding non hostile animals. Day 5 for me I was one quest from being able to buy the rifle AND yesterdays update hit resetting everything. Trader no longer had any guns in his listing even though he was not supposed to reset for another 2 days.

So gamestage 12ish I am still using the primative bow, the club and the spear. Boarderline starving and now I am dealing with direwolves and bears on top of the zombies. I am still learning to kill zombies without getting killed myself though I am getting better at it). I am now dealing with serious predators all day long that I just can't take down. Trader has nothing to help me with that.

I was fine with the difficulty of 19 prior to yesterday. As it is now though I just can't do it. Being this terrified all the time is not fun. It is exhausting and infuriating. I will turn off hostiles until this gets some attention. I can still test other things until then.

Just one new player's opinion.

Just so you know, The update wasn't the cause of the traders inventory resets- Trader resets on day 4 and 7; So when you went back on day 5, it had already reset even before the update.