7 Days To Die: Better Than Giant Bees Mod

[FlowerChild]

[**** NEW RELEASE ****]

Version 1.13 of Better Than Giant Bees is ready for download!

Download Link

This release contains the following changes:

-Added a new "Intro To Carpentry" skill book which serves to break up the ability to build structures from scratch into two separate books since it's such a powerful skill to acquire. The carpentry book gives the ability to create wood planks and stuff like storage chests, while Home Maintenance provides the ability to create wood frames (which is valuable on its own due to me upping the number of wood plank drops you have access to in a change below). This is similar to how Metalworking and Pottery books work hand in hand.

-Changed (increased) the chance of finding skill books slightly once again, given there is another one to learn in total.

-Changed the way skill book loot works so that regular skill books can be found in book shelves, but rare books/blueprints can only be found in safes (which won't contain common ones either). This creates more of a skill progression since safes are extremely difficult to "crack" at the start of the game and get progressively easier as you get better tools (largely dependent on the accumulation of common skills). It will also make finding rare books more consistent and less random in the late game as I've given them a greater chance of being in safes than before.

-Changed the storage crate recipes (the ones for specific items with icons on the side) to be unlocked with home maintenance 2 to help spread out the progression a little more.

-Changed (reduced) the overall number of pain killers you find in loot, as they were rather overabundant.

-Changed the first aid kit recipe to use painkillers instead of blood bags, since the latter are effectively no longer in the mod (see change below).

-Changed the first aid kit recipe to be unlocked with the "Intro To Chemistry" skill book, since you can't make it without knowing how to make grain alcohol anyways. This helps to reduce recipe menu clutter at the start of the game.

-Changed small safes (desk and wall) so that they won't contain large weapons or weapon parts. I did this both for consistency, and to up the relative value of the loot you can find in gun safes (which can contain the larger weapons).

-Changed the probability of the different animals spawning so that rabbits are much more common than pigs which are more common than deer, basically following their value in terms of resources. This provides more of an "Oh! A deer!" response, rather than "Oh...a deer", and makes stuff like ammunition conservation a more interesting aspect of the game since whether to expend rounds on rabbits, or wait for higher value game is now more of a thing.

-Changed the glass pane loot in garbage to broken glass as the panes were potentially prone to exploits, and I suspect just represented a typo in the first place.

-Changed the Wood Log Spike recipe to be unlocked through the "Urban Guerrilla" book rather than being available at start, given it's a very powerful defensive tool. This also ups the value and satisfaction of finding that book given mines are largely useless :)

-Changed the Wood Log Spike recipe to be in the "Tool/Traps" recipe category instead of the Miscellaneous one, given it's a trap.

-Changed one of the broken windows (the ones found in prefab houses) to break like glass instead of wood, as it was behaving in an inconsistent manner relative to other windows and was making the most severely damaged windows harder to break than the less damaged ones.

-Changed several wood blocks (namely wood frames and boarded up barricades) to drop planks on destruction. This fits in with the change to the carpentry skill book so that you can scavenge planks from existing structures to build with and repair existing structures before you can create them yourself. This also ups the reward of breaking down blocks slightly as you're going around scavenging and such to make it a little more gratifying. Let me know if you run into any blocks that really feel like they should be dropping planks that I might have missed as there are a ton of them to go through.

-Removed the pistol and ammo drops from bloated walkers in my ongoing effort to reduce the overabundance of firearms in the game.

-Removed the flashlight drops from bloated walkers as well, as there are just too damn many flashlights in the game, despite how much I enjoy tormenting Icy with them :)

-Removed blood bags and blood draw kits from the loot you can find, as while slurping down random people's unrefrigerated blood for its health benefits was amusing, they were just rather unnecessary and exploity in practice with the whole "I'm going to draw my blood now so I can have a blood slurpy if I get hungry later" thing. I had been throwing them away when I found them due to being "too lame to use", so that's always a pretty good sign I should remove something ;)

-Removed the chance of animals spawning dead. Turns out this was accessible through the config files after all, and was just making things way too easy as you'd tend to find animal carcasses all over the place for free food and leather.

-Removed the respawn on animals so that over-hunting an area will leave it depleted, which promotes exploration, puts additional pressure on the player's food supply mid-game, makes acquiring leather and leather armor a bigger deal, and incentivizes moving towards self-sufficiency through farming.

-Removed the animal spawns entirely from wasteland (only rabbits were spawning in wastelands previously) and burnt forest biomes to give them a more daunting vibe and to make surviving within them slightly more difficult.

-Removed the recipes for converting stones, cinder blocks and destroyed stone to gravel to limit gravel's effectiveness as an early-game method of creating barricades. If you want gravel for making cement or what have you, you'll have to specifically harvest it from the environment.

-Removed the bowl recipe as it's not being used by anything in the mod.

Enjoy! :)

[Ethinolicbob]

Crap look at you go :D
Can't wait to give this a proper go.

Had a play last weekend with a mate but the map that generated had an enormous burned forest in the middle and you were guaranteed to spawn in it. I hate dogs so much more now!
After getting nowhere but bottomed out wellness we gave up and started a new map and actually got progress in however playtime ran out.

Looking forward to having a good game of this!

[VegasGoat]

Cool another update :).

Is killing zombies during the day part of your intended gameplay? Seems like doing that makes more zombies spawn right on top of me, so I've been avoiding it and sticking to scavenging garbage piles.

[FlowerChild]

Is killing zombies during the day part of your intended gameplay? Seems like doing that makes more zombies spawn right on top of me, so I've been avoiding it and sticking to scavenging garbage piles.

The only place I know of that has insta-zombie-respawns is in the city. If you're spending most of your time there, you probably shouldn't be hanging out there all the time :)

Is zombie killing part of intended gameplay? Not even sure how to answer that. I guess I kinda view killing zombies as something you do as a means to an end rather than an activity onto itself. Like, if you want to clear an area around a house so you're safe while looting it. Do I ever go specifically out of my way to kill them? Not really. Maybe nurses for the meds they often carry, but that's about it.

[VegasGoat]

Sorry for not being clear enough, but you answered it. I was trying to determine if not going out of my way to kill and loot zombies would put me at a disadvantage for scavenging supplies. Like if you balanced the drops expecting people to do that or not. Sounds like the answer is no, so I shouldn't worry about only killing them when I have to.

I definitely learned the city lesson last night and will stay away from there. Out in the wilderness I still seem to have issues with surprise zombies, though. For example, one time I found a cabin that was by itself and I checked the perimeter and only saw 2 zombies. So I started killing those 2 so I could have some safe time trying to break in to the house, and then all of a sudden I had about 15 zombies coming at me.

[Renegrade]

-Changed one of the broken windows (the ones found in prefab houses) to break like glass instead of wood, as it was behaving in an inconsistent manner relative to other windows and was making the most severely damaged windows harder to break than the less damaged ones.

Thanks, man! This looks like a promising update (I'm starting a new save as I write this in fact); not only is it full of Better Than goodness, it's also fixing some obnoxious bugs/oversights/errors like the one quoted here (the quoted one is in fact one of my top pet peeves for inconsistencies).

[FlowerChild]

Sorry for not being clear enough, but you answered it. I was trying to determine if not going out of my way to kill and loot zombies would put me at a disadvantage for scavenging supplies. Like if you balanced the drops expecting people to do that or not. Sounds like the answer is no, so I shouldn't worry about only killing them when I have to.

No, not at all. There are a couple of handy bonuses you can get out of killing certain zombie types, namely meds off of nurses, and guns off of cops, but it's in no way expected that you'll do so. For the most part I've toned zombie loot WAY down from what it is in stock, and while I did that incrementally as individual small changes, yeah, I think the underlying sentiment behind it is to keep zombies more as a threat in the mind of the player than as something you try to hunt down for loot.

Hadn't really analyzed it before, but I think what I'm leaning towards is the player being the prey of the zombies, not the other way around.

Thanks, man! This looks like a promising update (I'm starting a new save as I write this in fact); not only is it full of Better Than goodness, it's also fixing some obnoxious bugs/oversights/errors like the one quoted here (the quoted one is in fact one of my top pet peeves for inconsistencies).

Well, that's what I do :)

And yeah, that window thing was bugging the shit out of me too. Glad you knew exactly which one I meant, as I was scratching my head wondering how to describe that in the change log ;)

[Gilberreke]

Question: a girl I know is looking into this game and we might play co-op. How stable is this right now? Should I wait for the mod to mature a bit?

I haven't played this game at all.

[FlowerChild]

Wow...after so much time it's a rather special occasion when someone comes up with a completely new objection to HC Spawn that I haven't heard of before:

http://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread ... post176456

Again: wow.

Question: a girl I know is looking into this game and we might play co-op. How stable is this right now? Should I wait for the mod to mature a bit?

<Consults magic 8-Ball>

"Signs are unclear".

[Taleric]

Holy crap lol, how do you have the energy for them all FC! Appears he is comming around but may be a farce :P

[DerAlex]

That's a nice looking changelog!

FC, I know your stance on cosmetic/vanity-stuff for BTW, how about BTGB?

I spent the last 6 hours learning the ropes of 7DTD-modding throu tracking your comments, common sense, reading 7DTD forums and Google-fu. I made craftable but expensive versions of some worldgen items, gated by 2 low-lvl skillbooks:

"Better Living issue June 1986"
Blinds, Curtains, Trash Can, Medicine Cabinet, Mailbox

"426 ways to reduce waste heat"
Brass Ceiling Lamp, Brass Porch Lamp

It's pretty much for the player who has everything but wants to keep playing. It's on our server now, and it'll propably keep on growing. If you want to implement vanity stuff in the future, I'd be happy to share!

[FlowerChild]

It's pretty much for the player who has everything but wants to keep playing. It's on our server now, and it'll propably keep on growing. If you want to implement vanity stuff in the future, I'd be happy to share!

I might start adding decorative (besides toilets) blocks back in at some point, but the approach I'm taking to this right now is to make sure I have the core gameplay solid before throwing in a lot of extraneous details into the mix.

7 Days has an ungodly number of blocks (over a thousand in stock right now), and is in a weird state of transition between the old building system and the new (frames vs. Minecraft style placeable blocks) which has left a lot of dangling loose ends and exceptions to the new system that I've been trying to systematically eliminate.

I also very much like the idea of a clear visual differentiation between the "old world" stuff the is spawned through world gen, and the crappy post-apocalyptic stuff that you build, so I don't much care for the player just building stuff like the same furniture you find in houses and such.

So yeah, it's something I plan on looking at eventually, but for the time being I am more concerned with trying to get the building system into a relatively exploit-free form given what a big part of the game base defense is and I'd rather keep the total number of player placeable blocks at a minimum for the time being while I work all that out.

[FlowerChild]

Question: a girl I know is looking into this game and we might play co-op. How stable is this right now? Should I wait for the mod to mature a bit?

<Consults magic 8-Ball>

"Signs are unclear".

BTW Gil, just to elaborate on my rather flippant response above, as I remember you asking something similar about BTSM back in the day.

IMO, asking a developer such a question kinda comes across as "Should I play your game now when I can potentially help find problems with it and contribute to its development, or should I wait until other people have taken the bullet there and you've done all the heavy lifting?"

I can understand the self-interest behind the question, and it's certainly something I've asked before in dealing with early-access commercial games or what have you, however, given the limited audiences that mods tend to have when first released, and that they revolve around people developing almost entirely based on good-will rather than financial gain, hopefully you can understand that it comes across as a tad rude when put directly to a developer like that.

No biggy mind you, just wanted to explain why I responded as I did above as I suspect it was probably not immediately evident :)

[Gilberreke]

Yeah, I understand. I was mainly wondering, because my friend is very picky and I wouldn't want to scare her away, but I do see how questions like that might be a bit frustrating for you.

It's just that I'm not very invested in either KSP or 7DTD and the only reason I buy them and play them is to test your mods :) (Well, I haven't tried 7DTD yet).

In any case, chances are big I'll play it next week (unless she wants to write some songs instead, we'll see).

[devak]

Wow...after so much time it's a rather special occasion when someone comes up with a completely new objection to HC Spawn that I haven't heard of before:

How does he roleplay dying and appearing in his bed.. no, no, mustn't think about this, my head is already hurting. ignore, ignore, ignore.....

<Consults magic 8-Ball>

"Signs are unclear".

*goes to future room*
"the future is uncertain".


*hopes someone gets the reference*

[VegasGoat]

Wow, I'm addicted now. This is a nice challenge. Just some random thoughts on my experience:

- Scavenging for food definitely gives the survival feel. I never have enough food and am constantly at or near starving. Finding a group of houses usually occurs right as I'm reaching the starving state, and it gives me quite a rush of relief as I usually can get enough food to at least survive the night and head out the next day. So far it seems like I only get food from houses, haven't had much luck finding edible food out in the open between them. I am always on the lookout for nests to hopefully get eggs.

- Food poisoning is brutal. I guess I don't even need to pick up old sham sandwiches and moldy bread.

- BTW has conditioned me to never run, but does running actually use up hunger/thirst faster? I didn't see anything on the 7 days wiki.

- Most of my time was with 1.12, and skills were a huge problem for me. The first two skill books I found were for making ammunition, and making guns, which was quite the disappointment because I'd need be mining and metalworking to make use of it. Sounds like this will be better in 1.13, though.

- I'm finding a lot of repair tools. It seems like too many. Since I didn't unlock the recipe until I found a construction book, I'm guessing I'm probably not supposed to find them that easily. I don't know enough about the construction system yet to know what to do with them though, so I can't say it's actually helped me to have a bunch of them.

- Most nights are relatively peaceful as long as I clear the area around my shelter. One or two zombies at most banging on walls. Only had one crazy horde night, which was day 7, and I'm assuming that always happens since it's the title of the game. I actually survived it since I make a habit of dismantling the ladder after climbing to the roof. I had to exit by jumping off the roof onto an awning and sprained my leg, then got chased down by a dog that was part of the horde. That ended my 4 day survival streak, but it was quite a fun experience. I was scared as hell sitting on the roof wondering if I'd make it or not.

- I haven't tried to pick up any toilets yet.

Overall, though, I'm loving it. Sorry if any of the above is not really related to the mod. I haven't played the vanilla version at all.

[Renegrade]

- BTW has conditioned me to never run, but does running actually use up hunger/thirst faster? I didn't see anything on the 7 days wiki.

It does use both food and water faster per unit of time. It may be the same food/water per unit of distance as walking though.

- I'm finding a lot of repair tools. It seems like too many. Since I didn't unlock the recipe until I found a construction book, I'm guessing I'm probably not supposed to find them that easily. I don't know enough about the construction system yet to know what to do with them though, so I can't say it's actually helped me to have a bunch of them.

Repair tools (and claw hammers and nailguns, and also stone axes in stock) can be used for two purposes:
- Repairing blocks. Right clicking ANY damaged block will repair it.
- Upgrading blocks. Right clicking certain blocks allows you to upgrade them to another block as long as you have the necessary ingredients.

A good deal of construction is based around upgrading wood frames/ramps/etc with wood planks into proper construction.

Note that once you have a repair tool, you can learn it's recipe by repairing it with a metal strip...

- Most nights are relatively peaceful as long as I clear the area around my shelter. One or two zombies at most banging on walls. Only had one crazy horde night, which was day 7, and I'm assuming that always happens since it's the title of the game.

It's SUPPOSED to always happen (and will happen every week for seven weeks, and then reset with an off-by-one error). I've heard that it doesn't always though (bugs, most likely).

[Ethinolicbob]

Got some good play in :D

I am going to incite a "Haha Noob" but playing by myself I found it a bit too challenging. So challenging that an encounter while searching a house had my pulse racing so high I 'fear-quit' to let my adrenaline calm down. So basically I am now to scared to play it alone :P

So I invited a friend.

With 2 people 25% loot still works well. We put the zombies up to 125% spawn to compensate for 2 of us.
Food is a little tight. I had not needed to test the food poisoning system before now, and I had it wrong.
I found the book for goldenrod tea so I figured I could eat some old sham sandwiches and tea myself better... hahaha! Doh!
Used up our only antibiotics and it only cut 600 seconds off the 1200 second debuff. Kept myself alive on painkillers for the next 600 seconds.

125% spawn may still be a bit light as we easily cleared a small town with our clubs, although I'm sure day 7 will have something to say about that.

I haven't found anything noteworthy wrong with the balance so far. Although I am still getting used to the new balance. I am yet to get my mind around the new limitations and find new strategies. Things like using couches as a step up to get to an easily breakable window instead of working at the door (I didn't even think of it until I saw the post about using couches on your 7DTD forum thread)

[FlowerChild]

- I'm finding a lot of repair tools. It seems like too many. Since I didn't unlock the recipe until I found a construction book, I'm guessing I'm probably not supposed to find them that easily. I don't know enough about the construction system yet to know what to do with them though, so I can't say it's actually helped me to have a bunch of them.

Yeah, I think the spawn on them might be a little high, as I tend to find too many of them as well. I'll tighten that up some.

HOWEVER, as Renegrade pointed out, they're still very valuable even if you don't know how to build stuff yourself yet as you can use them to repair and upgrade (if blocks have been stripped down to the frame and you have planks) existing structures, which makes keeping a base going in an existing building easier.

So, they are indeed useful, and it's cool players have access to them early on, but I think just a bit too common as I've been scrapping them due to having a constant surplus, and I certainly don't feel lucky when I have found one.

I am going to incite a "Haha Noob" but playing by myself I found it a bit too challenging. So challenging that an encounter while searching a house had my pulse racing so high I 'fear-quit' to let my adrenaline calm down. So basically I am now to scared to play it alone :P

Nah man, that's awesome. I've had those kind of "fear quit" responses a couple of times with games over the years (the ones I remember off hand are Silent Hill 2 and Amnesia), so I take it as quite the complement if your nerves hit that level :)

[Ethinolicbob]

Actual feedback:
Couches have a long burn time, are easily harvested and stack too much.
I found that I stopped chopping wood to burn because I could easily stockpile couches from houses we were looting.

When using the spiked club I was surprised that I couldn't use nails to repair it.

First time seeing spider zombies in their new role. I hate them now. Night of day 6 a couple of them somehow got inside the house we fortified. Shortly after zombies from everywhere came and tore it down. Then lag killed my buddy. Not sure how the night of day 7 is going to go now :S

[DerAlex]

Feedback time for 1.13!

I will never be able to play 7DTD without BTGB. That is about the highest praise I can give for this mod. 7DTD is propably my favorite indie game of the last 2 years, and my most played game (AAA included) this year by a huge margin. BTGB is shaping up to be the experience I wished 7DTD to be, and I thank you for making it, as stupid as that propably sounds.

A buddy (the "better" / more skilled player out of the 2 guys I played with before) and me started a new game with 1.13 today specifically to give you some early game MP feedback. Since we stick together and play as a team, as opposed to splitting up and looting twice as much, I suppose SP is at least somewhat easier, but I very much enjoy the challenge. I will focus on the stuff that, in my opinion, should be changed. We play with 25% loot, no respawn, everything as suggested or left at default.

-My biggest pet peeve with the built right now is that loot is boring. I will elaborate on a case by case basis:

• Bloated don't drop anything of value. I always assumed them to be a "Special" Zombie, harder to kill, hits harder, better loot. At the moment it feels like 9 out of 10 bloated are loot-less. A pistol with the beaker-level-dropchance for that occasional whoohoo-feeling would be greatly appreciated. Like finding a low-lvl unique in Diablo. Something to "help you level". Without the knowledge to make ammo and the tools to mine the ingredients for ammo, it is hardly gamechanging.

• Trash piles right now drop tin cans and ammo cases, at least it feels like it. How about Nails? Planks? Femurs? Animal Fat? Cinder Blocks? Sham Sandwich? Moldy bread? Scrap of all varieties? Sand? Sticks, Stones, Grass? Everything with percentage values according to how important an item is, of course. ATM searching throu trash loot is largely... boring. Same as above, some "uncommon loot" to spice things up woul be greatly appreciated. 95% of it can be trash. Like Flashlights :D

• Same for looting normal zombies, althou to a lesser degree. I agree with making them largely value-less, so you have to ether ignore them or kill them because you have to, not because you want to, but maybe a change for them to wear some piece of clothing, just to spice things up. Seems like a disproportionate amount of Zombies carry door knobs, and somehow I always assume it's for buttstuff...

• The best loot seems to come from purses and, surprisingly, hollow tree stums. Especcially the tree stumps seem to drop extremely good, compared to other containers

- You changed hunting in the last release, in 2 different ways (no respawn + new spawn chance). I fear that you may have overshot the goal a little. The new 80 / 10 / 10 distribution is awesome. Deers and to a lesser extend pigs are high value targets, and thats amazing. No respawn, on the other hand, seems a but much to be honest. I think that will give us some problems later on, foodwise, but we will see. I needs my meats. I haven't tested this enough to give a valuable report, propably.

- A suggestion: Both Goldenrod Tea and Antibiotics are behind a skillbook. Antibiotics cure your infection, give an immunity buff, give 5-10 Wellness, and are made from a relatively common ingredient. Goldenrod Tea on the other hand is at a strange place in progression, where you unlock it way after it is needed. Dysentery is not a problem after a few days, even at minimal player skill. I suggest taking the 5-10 wellness bonus away from antibiotics, and giving Goldenrod Tea a wellness plus of 1-3 Points (ATM it's at +0,2)

- Another suggestion: Giant Bees could drop meat, preferrably edible. Given that they are mostly passive at the moment, this would just be another form of hunting, one which would be dependent on firearms, since you can't just chase them into water and bash their heads repediately.

- Damage against enemys from stone axe could be nerfed, since enemys need the same amount of hits by the stone axe and the wooden club, even thou the damage values are different, most of the time they don't "feel" different because of this.

- Everything works smooth until it doesn't. We were caught outside after sundown. Did not work so well. We built a 2x4x3 wall to stand on and fight down if necessary. Given that the only building material at our stage of progression (day 4, spectaculary unlucky with skillbooks this time) are wood trunks, our platform did not stand a chance and we died. We would have died too if we would have stayed at the last of our save houses, since we were empty on food, and legging it hoping for another village was our only chance. Problem is, we both died 2 more times trying to get to our stuff. Spawning with half food and water meter is HARD if you have to run 3000 blocks throu already looted terrain. On the third try we found a cooking pot on the way, but a way to boil water without a pot would be amazing. The wellness system is too much of a mess right now, and I didn't dare to drink riverwater again after what happened last time (-70 Wellness through dysentery). The wellness thing is not really related to the mod, more of a general thought. But it's a new system and will be further tweaked by the pimps, I assume.

You are propably aware of the problems I wrote about, this is mostly stuff we talked about while playing. I hope there is something of value somewhere between those lines :D

[FlowerChild]

I will never be able to play 7DTD without BTGB. That is about the highest praise I can give for this mod. 7DTD is propably my favorite indie game of the last 2 years, and my most played game (AAA included) this year by a huge margin. BTGB is shaping up to be the experience I wished 7DTD to be, and I thank you for making it, as stupid as that propably sounds.

Glad you're enjoying it so much man :)

- You changed hunting in the last release, in 2 different ways (no respawn + new spawn chance). I fear that you may have overshot the goal a little. The new 80 / 10 / 10 distribution is awesome. Deers and to a lesser extend pigs are high value targets, and thats amazing. No respawn, on the other hand, seems a but much to be honest. I think that will give us some problems later on, foodwise, but we will see. I needs my meats. I haven't tested this enough to give a valuable report, propably.

Nah, you're in an infinite world man, where new hunting grounds are always available if need be, and shooting towards farming provides a potentially infinite food supply. If it forces you to move to new locations, that's great, and it's impossible to exhaust all game in the world.

The no respawn is basically there to encourage further exploration in the mid game and further incentive towards self-sufficiency. I've yet to do any kind of balance pass on farming, but will certainly be doing so in the future.

Really, the only difference that particular change makes is that you still have infinite animals, but you need to move around to hunt them.

- A suggestion: Both Goldenrod Tea and Antibiotics are behind a skillbook. Antibiotics cure your infection, give an immunity buff, give 5-10 Wellness, and are made from a relatively common ingredient. Goldenrod Tea on the other hand is at a strange place in progression, where you unlock it way after it is needed. Dysentery is not a problem after a few days, even at minimal player skill. I suggest taking the 5-10 wellness bonus away from antibiotics, and giving Goldenrod Tea a wellness plus of 1-3 Points (ATM it's at +0,2)

Knowing the golden rod recipe is basically valuable if you ever need to respawn, and ups your survivability under those circumstances. Antibiotics can be found in the environment, and create a desperate scavenging game if you get infected before knowing the recipe. The skill book for them is also an exceedingly rare drop, likely to only be found in safes while the golden rod one is more readily available.

As is my general policy though, if golden rod tea turns out to be relatively useless, I'd be more inclined to remove it than give it additional powers, as the plant is just way too common within the game to make it particularly valuable.

On the third try we found a cooking pot on the way, but a way to boil water without a pot would be amazing.

The Pimps added a system for boiling water in tin cans in 10.2, so you already have that. Not sure how I feel about it yet, but for now it's in the game.

Plus, pots are so exceedingly common that I had someone report that they were building bridges out of them in the early game over on the 7 Days forums, and I fixed up the rules so you couldn't do that for the next release.

You are propably aware of the problems I wrote about, this is mostly stuff we talked about while playing. I hope there is something of value somewhere between those lines :D

Well, you just made me realize that logs are early game building blocks that I need to remove, so yes, definite value here :)

On a few miscellaneous points: I believe the logic in vanilla is that tree stumps are basically loot stashes left behind by other survivors, which is the convention I've continued to follow. They're of higher value in stock too, it's just less noticeable given the overall abundance of loot.

Purses I view as valuable as they were likely dropped by people early in the plague and thus might contain stuff typically found in a purse before all hell broke loose.

Duffle bags, backpacks, etc. scattered all over the land scape, I consider to have likely been dropped by people fleeing after all hell broke loose, so they still have a decent chance of containing valuable stuff, but it's mostly "leftovers" of someone that was already struggling to survive.

Loot on zombies I'm quite happy with at present, and I definitely don't want random guns on them. I'm quite happy with the gun balance at present as they really feel like relics rather than a common thing that you're just finding all over the place. I've just started a new game, but my previous one I found a single rifle in 14 days and it was my prized possession, which is exactly the kind of vibe I'm going for with firearms. I always was careful to maintain it, kept track of every round, considered it carefully before firing each shot, and I named it "Betsy" ;)

If you *really* want a gun, you can still risk a trip into the wasteland as cop zombies still carry them quite frequently. Good luck looting them without blowing up though if you don't already have a gun in the first place ;)

Bloated walkers are still slightly special in that they tend to have water bottles on them which can make killing them if you're running low worthwhile. Most of the junk items you mentioned wanting on zombie corpses (nails etc.) are actually already there.

I don't like the idea of planks dropping as random loot on either zombies (in which case they're too big to be something in their pockets), or in trash (why are people throwing away perfectly good planks when everything is being barricaded?), mainly because I've set them up now as a specific reward for busting through barricades to make that activity feel more immediately worthwhile and to make choosing your entry route into buildings a little more interesting since different routes will be of different value.

[VegasGoat]

Regarding the goldenrod tea, I've never needed it. Boiling water in tin cans is way too easy, and tin cans are everywhere. One option might be to make it so that cans of murky water don't stack, like how it is after you boil them. I don't really think a second method of boiling water is necessary though, pots are pretty easy to come by, so if you did remove it I wouldn't miss it. I don't think I've ever found a group of houses that didn't have at least one pot, and they usually have more than that. I always make sure to leave some basic supplies like a few jars and a pot in each group of houses when I move on, in case I respawn nearby again.

[FlowerChild]

Boiling water in tin cans is way too easy, and tin cans are everywhere.

I think the downside is that there's still a small chance it gives you dysentery, even after boiling.

Not sure if that's enough mind you, but it's something to keep in mind.

I always make sure to leave some basic supplies like a few jars and a pot in each group of houses when I move on, in case I respawn nearby again.

Yup, same here. I basically setup a small base marked by torches at each POI I visit, and in addition to the stuff you leave, I'll often leave at least a can of food or cooked meat and a grill behind too.

[DerAlex]

Knowing the golden rod recipe is basically valuable if you ever need to respawn, and ups your survivability under those circumstances. Antibiotics can be found in the environment, and create a desperate scavenging game if you get infected before knowing the recipe. The skill book for them is also an exceedingly rare drop, likely to only be found in safes while the golden rod one is more readily available.

As is my general policy though, if golden rod tea turns out to be relatively useless, I'd be more inclined to remove it than give it additional powers, as the plant is just way too common within the game to make it particularly valuable.

I just had a new idea. Both of them serve a somewhat related purpose. Maybe add an already made Goldenrod Tea to the foodstuffs loot table, so that there is at least a small chance that you get it while you need it, e.g. at the beginning of the game, or when you respawn.

I still think the wellness bonus of antibiotics is way too high. It leads to the somewhat strange phenomenon, at least in co-op MP, that the Player who plays more recklessly, and thus gets infected more often, and gobbles up the available supply of antibiotics, gets rewarded with the best wellness. Taking antibiotics IRL leaves quite a strain on the body, so maybe even turning that +5 into -5 would make sense.

The Pimps added a system for boiling water in tin cans in 10.2, so you already have that. Not sure how I feel about it yet, but for now it's in the game.

Plus, pots are so exceedingly common that I had someone report that they were building bridges out of them in the early game over on the 7 Days forums, and I fixed up the rules so you couldn't do that for the next release.

I was sure you ripped that out, somehow... ah well :D

The pots are overabundand, we have found I believe 7 or 8 of them in 3 days of play. Somehow it didn't occur to us to leave a few behind at POIs...

Well, you just made me realize that logs are early game building blocks that I need to remove, so yes, definite value here :)

Whoa... I was sure this was intended :D

How would that be possible thou? Turning the Item into a Block?

For what it's worth, the wood trunks suck as a barricade, as we learned the hard way. A few hits and they are gone.

Loot on zombies I'm quite happy with at present, and I definitely don't want random guns on them. I'm quite happy with the gun balance at present as they really feel like relics rather than a common thing that you're just finding all over the place.
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I don't like the idea of planks dropping as random loot on either zombies (in which case they're too big to be something in their pockets), or in trash (why are people throwing away perfectly good planks when everything is being barricaded?), mainly because I've set them up now as a specific reward for busting through barricades to make that activity feel more immediately worthwhile and to make choosing your entry route into buildings a little more interesting since different routes will be of different value.

Loot on normal Zombies is perfect at the moment. The only thing missing IMHO is an occasional piece of clothing. Zombie loot is boring, but it should be boring. They are enemies, not loot chests. Sorry, I structured my last post a bit strange. It was 3am ;). I was talking about the Bloated, and *wanted* to complement the loot tables for normal Zombies. I totally see how this could be read differently. But you're right, the Bloat does have *some* items on it's loot table that are unique to them.

The trash piles on the other hand, I don't know, maybe not so much. You can find one of those surface lvl coal ore fields in the burnt forest, where there are about 10 trash piles in a small area, and literally only find tin cans or ammo cases or both in each one. There are so many items in this game that could be concidered trash in normal circumstances, you know? i don't want to find valuable stuff there, just... stuff. I hope that makes sense. I don't want to make the game easier in any way.

I've just started a new game, but my previous one I found a single rifle in 14 days and it was my prized possession, which is exactly the kind of vibe I'm going for with firearms. I always was careful to maintain it, kept track of every round, considered it carefully before firing each shot, and I named it "Betsy" ;)

I our last playthrou, the pistol I got from the Bloated was called Bertha :)

BTW, do you plan new Videos with Icy? I'd love to watch you play the current (or future) version of the mod.