7 Days To Die: Better Than Giant Bees Mod

[Sarudak]

So I can't advance beyond my crappy stone ax until I get metal working? I do love my spiked club but it takes so long to bust down doors...

[FlowerChild]

So I can't advance beyond my crappy stone ax until I get metal working? I do love my spiked club but it takes so long to bust down doors...

One thing to note there: keep your stamina up. The rate at which you destroy things is determined by your stamina, so drink water at appropriate moments to restore it, or drink beer or coffee to get a stamina regen boost if you need to destroy a whack of stuff in a row. Damage inflicted is also determined by the condition of your axe, so keep that well maintained as well.

Generally I wait for my stamina to deplete to about half, then occupy myself in the crafting grid repairing my axe or doing other stuff until it replenishes.

[Sarudak]

That helped a lot! So I've found the metal tool recipes and I've got a forge but I can't seem to craft clay! I dug up some clay but can't make it into a lump to make a mold. Just as an aside I'm really enjoying the game now and I like the progression. Finding books is exciting and I really feel the sense of struggle. It seems though that the difficulty drops off rapidly the game start was way harder than now. Not sure if there's really anything you can do about that given the limited modding capabilities though.

[FlowerChild]

That helped a lot! So I've found the metal tool recipes and I've got a forge but I can't seem to craft clay! I dug up some clay but can't make it into a lump to make a mold. Just as an aside I'm really enjoying the game now and I like the progression. Finding books is exciting and I really feel the sense of struggle. It seems though that the difficulty drops off rapidly the game start was way harder than now. Not sure if there's really anything you can do about that given the limited modding capabilities though.

Yeah, it's definitely front loaded, but I think you'll find that the next time you try the early game it will be a lot easier. It's been quite a long time since I've really struggled at the start of the game.

It's not so much the limited modding capabilities (although that doesn't help), as much as there just isn't a lot of tech progression to work with in the game right now. I've tried to spread things out as best I can so that there is some sense of progress (in stock, you can do pretty much everything within the first few days of play), but given the forge, crafting frames, and farming are about as far as you can progress (other than a few bells and whistles like military firearms that don't really change the game much), there's only so much I can do at present.

Hopefully in the future the devs will start adding more end game content, as that's what I feel is really missing. Unfortunately, they seem pretty preoccupied with adding more variety early game at present, whereas I think that what the game is really lacking is more long term goals to work towards.

[Sarudak]

Do I need to find another book to make clay? Because if so I feel like maybe the forge is too much of a bottleneck. Without metalworking the two home construction books were valuable and the one on first aid and wilderness survival but the books on guns and farming are gated behind metalworking. I've already found the books on gun maintenance and crafting ammunition and farming as well as two of the books for metal working but they're all five completely worthless to me until I get that one last book and then I'll suddenly be able to do everything. I feel like maybe all books should offer some unlock independent of the others and then certain books together are needed for the more advanced abilities. (I think even the home improvement book would have been useless if I hadn't found a repair tool in a house).

[FlowerChild]

Yup, there's a pottery book for the clay.

I hear what you're saying Sarudak, but as I said, the forge is pretty much the end of the tech progression. I have it effectively gated behind three different books because if you get it too quickly, the game is essentially over.

And you *can* find tools without being able to make them yourself. They're very rare, but it can happen, so you don't actually need the forge book to advance individual tools.

And yes, I agree that each book should offer an independent secondary unlock, which is something I've been trying to move towards with each new release. Right now, I have everything gated the way I'd like it to be for now, but I've been trying to work in secondary rewards with various skill books so that each one is more satisfying.

But again: there's just not a lot of depth to the game's progression, so I only have so much to work with.

[Sarudak]

Do the zomibe hordes get stronger as the game goes on or as you stay in one area longer? I feel like it was easy to hold off the zombies before but I was finally overwhelmed on day 13 in the house I had even though it was far more fortified than it was when I first started the game. There were so many zombies and they kept on coming even after daybreak.

[Taleric]

There is a horde that goes regularly and you will get spider zombies that inspect an abundance of activity in an area. If the spider zombies spot you and are not killed quick enough a horde will also come :D

[FlowerChild]

Do the zomibe hordes get stronger as the game goes on or as you stay in one area longer? I feel like it was easy to hold off the zombies before but I was finally overwhelmed on day 13 in the house I had even though it was far more fortified than it was when I first started the game. There were so many zombies and they kept on coming even after daybreak.

Hehe...yeah, a rather crucial bit of information is that every 7 Days you get a super horde that comes after you. I usually spend most of any day that's a multiple of 7 fortifying my base :)

So, in that sense, yes, the game does get more difficult (to a degree) as you keep playing. The super hordes tend to get tougher as you keep playing. Not sure why you'd get one on day 13 though, as the night of Day 14 is when you'd normally expect to get one.

I'm not sure if this is actually a thing, but spider zombies only seemed to start showing up for me after day 7 in my previous game with version 10.3 of the game. That was a pretty cool ramp up in difficulty as well.

Problem being though that I don't really find the ramp-up keeps apace of the player's increasing ability to build, so the sum total at a certain point is that the game gets increasingly easier.

[Sarudak]

Ok so one thing. Death spirals. If you die you respawn somewhere far away but the time doesn't reset to morning. I think I died 5 more times last night after my first death because I couldn't find any shelter and then I died over and over again during the night. Next day I finally made it to suburbia and then I got killed by a random pack of ~6 dogs (never seen them in suburbia). Now I'm in for another night of repetitive dying really not fun and my wellness is down to 30 which appears to be the lowest it can go. Nonetheless really not fun. It almost seems easier to just start over on a new map although maybe I'll eventually spawn close enough to my base to get back to it?

[Renegrade]

So, in that sense, yes, the game does get more difficult (to a degree) as you keep playing. The super hordes tend to get tougher as you keep playing. Not sure why you'd get one on day 13 though, as the night of Day 14 is when you'd normally expect to get one.

There seems to be a vanilla bug that does that. I was playing a bit of 7DTD today (basically vanilla, lightly modded by yours truly), and I had a Day 21 horde occur at noon of Day 21 (instead of just after the change from 21 to 22 at midnight), and then later on a delayed horde at 1 or 2am of the 22nd.

Problem being though that I don't really find the ramp-up keeps apace of the player's increasing ability to build, so the sum total at a certain point is that the game gets increasingly easier.

Yeah, if you can survive the 14th/15th day horde (which has cop zombies and dogs, whereas the first horde is just regular zombies), you can survive any of the subsequent ones as they're just more of the same in greater numbers...and it resets after the 48th/49th day (with a cumulative off-by-one error just for fun)

[VegasGoat]

Ok so one thing. Death spirals.

Yeah it definitely sucks, and needs a mechanic like BTW where dying makes it the next morning. I just play hardcore because of it, and start a new world when I die.

[Sarudak]

Also there's random dog packs in the woods now. I don't see how this game is payable after you die once unless you get really lucky...

[FlowerChild]

Also there's random dog packs in the woods now.

No there aren't. You're likely in a burnt forest.

I don't see how this game is payable after you die once unless you get really lucky...

Getting whiny man...

Death spirals are a problem if you push the wellness system too far. I'd advise waiting a few minutes for morning before respawning if you die during the night, as it's the one downside of feral zombies at present in combination with random respawn in that the night isn't survivable if you spawn into it.

[Dralnalak]

Also there's random dog packs in the woods now.

They probably got bored waiting for tasty player meat and went walkies.

With the random world/biomes that I notice more zombies outside of their home areas than I did back when it was just the one map. Sometimes I can figure out how I managed to attract them, sometimes I look up in a nice green biome, see a zombie lumberjack, and wonder, "Where the heck did you come from?"


Overall, I am finding the game a lot more fun and challenging with the BTGB mod. I haven't played 7 Days to Die since there was only the one map. There is definitely some frustration, but I find a lot of it is because I picked up sloppy habits when playing before because the game was not challenging enough. Now I'm having to learn how to play all over again, which has been a lot of fun and included more deaths than I care to count.

I will say that when your Wellness hits 30, it's probably time to start a new game. Raising it takes a lot of effort right now. Think of it as the permadeath point if you like; that's what I do.

Then I go into the new game trying to apply the lessons learned by the last fiasco.