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BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007
Anyone know if there are plans to improve the player model? I thought it was just a placeholder, because yikes...

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BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

lilbeefer posted:

I didnt realise there were TLD mods, I guess thats what I get for using steam workshop exclusively (it appears to only have language mods)

Can you recommend anything? I checked Nexus and they only have like 5 mods, and they look either game breaking or completely useless. Got a better source?

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007
You're in luck! They removed Fluffy from the power station.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007
This thread has given me some good recommendations, so here's one of mine. Green Hell is a good game, with a friend, and with hunger turned down. It is most like The Forest, and my buddy and I played them back-to-back, so I'm going to make a lot of comparisons between them.

Green Hell is an open world survival game set in a jungle in South America. You hunt, craft, and explore in order to complete objectives and advance the story to unlock more of the map. The map is hand crafted; it is well designed but has limited replayability. You'll probably play through the story once and then put it down, but it should keep you busy for 20-30 hours.

The first thing I want to mention is that this game is beautiful and immersive. The jungle is thickly overgrown with greenery and colorful flowers, suggesting a rich and safe environment. However, the lush plant life also hides predators and other things that will kill you quickly if you're not careful. The sound is also great, immersing you in a world with wind in the trees, animals moving in the underbrush, and birds singing. Audio also provides critical clues when hunting animals or avoiding danger. The atmosphere can get tense and you have to use your eyes and your ears to stay alive. I recommend headphones and a dark room.

The premise is that you, a botanist, and your wife, an anthropologist, have traveled to the jungle in order to make contact with an isolated tribe for... some reason. Also not immediately clear is what you, as a botanist, add to the expedition. Stuff happens, and you wake up alone in the jungle with only a radio and a sports watch to help you as you set off in search of your wife.

Green Hell has a learning curve. You have to manage thirst, hunger, energy, and sanity while learning what in the world can help you, what can hurt you, and what can kill you almost immediately. When you start losing health, it's not always apparent why or what you can do about it. You might find yourself running out of energy multiple times a day. Your sanity may drop and you may find yourself attacked by not-so-inner demons. Reading the journal can give you direction as well as critical survival information, but you will die a lot. Not just starting out, either. The jungle is a dangerous place, and a well equipped player can end up in just as much trouble as a naked one if they don't watch where they're stepping.

While The Forest has light survival elements (stab deer, drink dirty water, be fine) and focuses more on combat and stealth, Green Hell leans into the survival aspect and has less of the latter. This is a good thing, because the combat in Green Hell suuuuuuuuuuucks. Luckily, though, like in The Forest, a bow solves most problems. You have to hunt frequently and spread your calories out throughout the day. You spend a good deal of time cooking, and later, waiting on the water filter to fill up. Starting a fire is a calculated risk as it can draw attention. You need to stock up on perishable food and water before setting out, and thanks to the in game map that doesn't directly mark your position, you may not end up back where you started.

The real fun of the game is the tension. Every misstep has consequences. Get in a fight, apply a leaf bandage to the wounds and hope they don't get infected. Get infected, get some maggots to eat the dead skin, then bandage the wounds again and pray. Get bitten by a snake, apply a tobacco leaf bandage and hope it doesn't get infected. Sleep on the ground and... well, you'll see. You can use up your medical supplies quickly if you;re not being careful. Things will track you, and if they surprise you, it's usually an instant death. You have to be very careful about where you go and what you bring when exploring, and exploring is definitely rewarded enough to be worthwhile.

The only major problem I have with Green Hell is with the save system. In order to save, you need to be at a particular type of building or object. This can be a huge pain if you need to quit the game suddenly if real life demands it. If you go exploring, chances are you may not save for several in game days. This is a particular problem because you do not respawn on death. You revert back to your last save. Due to how quickly death can come, it can be very frustrating to travel for days, pick up cool poo poo, and make it back to camp only to be bitten by a snake on your front step. Neat, you have to do all of that again without dying on the way. For this reason, I highly recommend playing the game coop. In coop, on death you drop your equipment and respawn. You can still get into tense, high stakes situations if you and your partner get into the same bad situation, but it doesn't require as much repetition on death. My other recommendation is to turn hunger to low when setting options for a new game. It's pretty hard to stay on top of on low, it's not fun at all when it's set higher. If there are other aspects of the game you don't like, chances are you can toggle them here too.

As I mentioned, I played The Forest and Green Hell back to back. Despite the similarities, Green Hell was different enough that I didn't get tired of the formula at all. On the balance, I'd say I like The Forest a little more, but if you're a fan of that game, you should definitely give Green Hell a try.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Vib Rib posted:

Honestly my biggest issue is that there's not a ton of areas on the map suitable to larger building projects. Multi-object building was only added later in development and I don't think the map was designed with it in mind.

Yeah, I was kind of disappointed when I tried to make a two story structure but could not find any way to make flooring for the second level. I think there's even a ladder in the blueprints but no real use case for it. Since you played (or had knowledge) of the game in EA can you tell me if the mining element is vestigial? I kept expecting it to be relevant to the story, but never found tools or blueprints related to it, save for the forge.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Vib Rib posted:

I think recipes unlock as you work on metal stuff. Use a rude pick to mine some ore from seams in a cave wall, they're not terribly uncommon. You can use the ore + molds to cast metal in a mud brick forge to create metal tool/arrowheads, and put those on tools as you would with stone. They outclass stone by a huge margin in both effectiveness and durability but while they're not vestigial I would say you can get through your whole game without 'em. Equivalent of like, Minecraft diamond tools, except nothing explicitly needs them.

Cool, thanks! I found the caves with iron, never got any indication that a pick was an available recipe, and kept waiting to stumble on one. Yeah, I think between bone and what you pick up, you can get through the game just fine.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Bug Squash posted:

[...] half the mechanics only exists to kill first time players, but overall it's a fun time.

This is true and can be a big source of frustration when you're just starting out. There are lots of things that can put you in a death spiral, if not kill you immediately, if you don't watch where you're walking and listen to what's around you. It's slower paced than the Forest (you'd have a hard time crossing the map in one day, and would probably end up bitten by something if you tried to sprint it). If you can find a friend to play with you, I would recommend that as the way to go. You can respawn in coop, but if you die in single player you revert to your last save (or the last time you slept, can't remember).

You do get very granular controls over the game's difficulty, though, so you can turn some things down or off if they're making it not fun. Overall, my buddy and I got about 30 hours out of it, so I'd recommend it.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

beats for junkies posted:

In my continuing SCUM adventures, I found a pickup truck and have been a roaming nomad, making small camps when I need to unload the truck or want a nearby spawn point for exploring. It's been fun, even though I had to start over completely with the new update.

short version: Good update, but could use a hotfix soon.

longer version: It's mostly pretty good, but a lot of the numbers could definitely use tuning. Most notably, items decaying in storage is some bullshit right now. I'm fine with food decaying over time (not canned stuff), but it's a little too fast at the moment. Tools and weapons and clothes, however, shouldn't get noticeably worn out over a single day while being stored away in a box inside of a cabin. The patch notes do say that a lot of the new stuff is a first iteration, and I'm sure it will probably get rebalanced soon, but it's still frustrating to see a carefully hoarded stash of 2 dozen bullets for guns I haven't seen yet literally rot away in storage. Carrying items in your personal inventory will prevent decay, but it seems like once you pick something up, it will begin falling apart as soon as you store it anywhere.

The new metabolism screen fixed almost all of my previous complaints about the lack of information about your nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. Now when you hover over one of them, you can get information about what foods you can get it from and how it's being affected by your current situation (if you're digesting a banana, your mineral K - which is different than vitamin K - is going to be rising). The only thing that seems to be missing is actual names for minerals instead of just the elemental symbol, ie: K doesn't have "Potassium" anywhere in its infobox. It does seem like hunger and thirst drop a bit too fast, but I'm sure being at almost maximum load most of the time and occasionally slightly overheating because of how many layers I have on is a big contributor to that. I'll have to try going with an actual minimal load and not just wear whatever has the most inventory space and see how much of a difference that makes.

The medical stuff is still early too, but it feels like a good addition. Malnutrition can give conditions that affect your energy and stamina (making it cost more stamina to do stuff, and regenerate it more slowly). As far as taking damage goes, puppet attacks are automatically stabilized, so you don't have to treat your injuries after every fight. If you take an actual bleeding wound (animal attacks, explosions from puppets with bomb-vests, probably gunfire), they come in 4 classes. C1 will automatically stabilize on its own (though you can treat it to stabilize it early), and the other 3 require increasing amounts of treatment (more clean rags). While suffering from a bleeding wound, you take constant damage (as well as whatever damage the initial attack dealt) until the wound is stabilized. After the stabilization bar fills, for any injury, it goes into recovery, which is when you actually regain your lost hp. It's slower to get to the part where you actually heal, but you can take a few hits from puppets and not have to bandage up after every one now. I've had a few occasions where after a fight, I've found the nearest loft or closed room and just laid down for a few minutes to recover, because it does speed up the healing rate (and also helps minimize calorie and energy usage). Also, hits to the head seem to do significantly more damage. I've had normal wounds ranging from 2 to 20 damage, but headshots can get up to 40, 50, and in one case NINETY-TWO damage, out of 100 hit points.

There's probably a few more things I'm missing to either praise or complain about, but now I want to go strip nearly-naked and run around in the woods and burn calories to see how long it takes to get hungry and thirsty again.

I'm going to play the video game that does that instead, and minimize my chances of having to interact with another human being (or a cop).

edit: ha, they just put out a hotfix today, and it seems to address a few of my complaints. neat!

Sorry if you mentioned this already, but are you playing solo or on a server somewhere? The game looks and sounds cool, but, for the reasons discussed by others already, I much prefer solo or coop games to PvP.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007
Project Zomboid was discussed upthread and it got me thinking. How does a developer like Indie Stone generate enough revenue to sustain development for so long? I haven't checked the date of the release of the first alpha, but it has to have been like 10 years ago. I'm not aware of any other projects that have launched since they started work on Zomboid and I think most people who are going to buy it before full release did so years ago. I imagine the glacial pace of development would turn people off of picking it up in EA, so how do they keep the lights on?

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

a7m2 posted:

One of the first things you learn as a developer working anywhere is to use git or svn or some other versioning software and have it hosted online, you never just keep local backups. Even if they had no budget, you could get free private git repos even back then.

Yeah, I don't get that bit. It was before my time, but GitHub existed then (albeit in its infancy) and there had to have been other remote code backup and versioning solutions. If they weren't using remote or even dedicated local storage, how were they collaborating? Google docs? How did they roll back or merge branches?

They did get a lot of poo poo from the community about it, though, and I think one of the devs had a mini meltdown on social media in response. Glad it didn't kill the project.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Harminoff posted:

Just came across a game called Blight which is in open playtest

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1564600/Blight/

Kind of reminds me of a project zomboid type game except for forest survival instead of zombies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQNtueKObfQ

Looks cool, and the request to join is more or less a formality, you get access instantly. Gonna check it out when I get back home.

edit: this bit is pinging my "tedious bullshit" early warning system, but I'll have to see how it's implemented.

quote:

Actions like chopping trees and cooking food take a lot of precious time. You can only carry a few things at a time. You need to boil water to make sure it's safe to drink. Water and other liquids need to be carried in bowls and other containers, and will spill out if not transported securely. You will need to scavenge numerous raw materials, many of which will need to be processed, combined, treated or hardened to make tools, items and structures.

BrianRx fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Sep 4, 2021

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

30.5 Days posted:

It's fine. If you see other people stay away, they'll kill you.

Except for the dudes out strolling around and singing. They're cool.

Honestly, stay away from anything you might have to fight. Not only is it dangerous and expensive to recover from, it just isn't fun at all.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Trivia posted:

It was so bad I stopped playing the game entirely (by that point I was burned out on the sandbox).

Why are they still putting money into the game? People loved sandbox mode and hated the story, so aside from maybe making some new areas, what's the point?

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

redreader posted:



edit 2: green hell is $6. Worth it?

If you liked The Forest, very much yes. If you didn't play it, $6 isn't much to risk, and if you didn't like it, you probably won't like Green Hell either. It's a particular type of survival game that can be pretty punishing but is worth pushing through the steep learning curve, imo. The systems are detailed enough to be interesting, but not so much to be annoying. There wasn't a ton of discussion about it in the survival thread, but what was there was generally pretty positive.

I enjoyed it more in coop because you respawn on death rather than reloading your last save, but you have a lot of control over the difficulty and can just turn off things that you aren't finding fun.

edit: I forgot where I was and didn't realize this IS the survival thread. You may get better opinions or more detailed impressions than in the Steam thread, where I thought I was.

BrianRx fucked around with this message at 09:31 on Nov 21, 2021

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

HelloSailorSign posted:

They advise playing only with people you know/white listed servers due to likelihood of exploits and hacks.

Uhhhh, to what extent? Like cheating/griefing or something more malicious and consequential?

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Warrior Princess posted:

The game explains it when the canister detonates at 10,000 kpa, leading you to fill it to 9500 kpa, but then it detonates when you carry it into a hot room, so you set it to 6000 kpa, because you're real God drat tired of exploding!

Please tell me that death is permanent and your save is wiped.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

MarcusSA posted:

gently caress it for $10 I’ll bite.

Won’t be able to play it till later this week but it looks pretty good tbh.

I'm interested, but the fact that nearly 100% of the art comes from RimWorld sits weird with me. RimWorld has a functional style that isn't particularly interesting to look at, so I guess I'm not sure why it in particular. I do recall that Tynan borrowed assets from Prison Architect at the very beginning of development and maybe this is similar, but I'm a little baffled about the choice unless it is to ride RimWorld's coattails.

I also put hundreds of hours into RimWorld in EA and haven't been able to force myself to play more than 10 hours of the full release, so maybe I'm just sick of the sight of it. Ah well, I think I just finished all the content that will ever be produced for Scrap Mechanic, so I'll probably give it a shot anyway.

BrianRx fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Jan 3, 2022

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007
I haven't played Zomboid in years but I probably should see how much it's changed since the early 2010s. Do they still make you do... the thing... with the pillow in the tutorial?

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007
Is the premise still "This Is How You Died"? I think they had a plan that was similar to Rimworld's originally in which the difficulty curve eventually made failure inevitable so games wouldn't really reach the late stage often. In RimWorld, it was a clock to beat in order to win. In Zomboid, I'm not sure there ever was an end goal.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

CuddleCryptid posted:

At the same time the largest challenge at the start of that game was the insurmountable mountain of "make a roof that doesn't have any holes in it but also doesn't have loose pieces jutting out"

There is an art to placing your mouse cursor juuuuust right and holding your body completely still while you try to snap the next piece to the edge of a two dimensional plane.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Jawnycat posted:

I'd recommend Card Survival: Tropical Island, I've brought it up in thread before as a promising upstart, albeit with weird and very abstracted presentation and gameplay. I don't know why it's marketed as a card game cuz it's not, at all, it's just a weird aesthetic for your inventory/location.

It's had allot of content added to it with bi-weekly updates and is a pretty solid little survival game now, even if they are still finding the balance. Your stranded on a tropical island and have to survive to either establish a self-sufficient long term home and accept your fate, or escape on a raft and get rescued. Has farming, animal husbandry (still early functionality on that), extensive crafting and inventory management and getting hurt is a big deal.

More unique features of it I feel are: it doesn't end when you escape the island, you gotta survive on your raft till rescue which is a whole ordeal and learning how to raft good before finally setting off, as well as stocking and planning for the trip is really cool. And it goes pretty heavy into managing your mental health as a thing, which is rare in survival games, balance on that is still being worked tho. Making monkey friends is cool.

Metaprogression is unlocking traits to play with that can drastically increase/decrease difficulty, add weird gimmicks, fast track your start, effectively harden/soften features your (not) a fan of, or change your spawn location, all of which are optional and have almost no limitations to how you can mix and match them, make things as miserable or as easy as you want. Don't like grinding a specific skill up, just take a trait to make you start with it at a high level. Unlock points are simply gained for how many days/months you survive, banked on death/victory.

You make it sound so good but the screenshots make it look so bad. The presentation just looks so cheap and boring.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007
How do mods work with Zomboid multiplayer? I see the host can load mods they have already downloaded when they generate a new map. Do connecting players have to have the same mods installed locally? Asking because I couldn't get a mod that shows all player locations on the map to work, and some UI-related mods I was using in single player also didn't seem to have loaded in MP. I was host.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

QuarkJets posted:

If you're using Steam Workshop mods, then you need to enable those mods in the Mods tab and in the Workshop tab when you're creating the server. Players will auto-download any mods designated in this way, and I think this is also necessary for Steam Workshop mods to work at all. If you're using mods that you installed offline (not through Steam) then players will need to download and install those mods themselves.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure I did that. You're saying that I need to have downloaded/enabled the mod in the workshop and also have added it to the mod list in the mods tab of the world set up options? Does the person joining need to do anything?

Big Scary Owl posted:

One thing I hate about PZ is that since the game is in isometric view if you are trying to see if there are zombies behind houses or other large objects and you can't actually see them unless you get close enough for the building to become transparent. Is there a way around this?

I would really love a skill that outlines zombies at a certain distance. Far off zombies aren't a problem but I have been bitten by ones that my character sees and reacts to but I can't locate quickly enough to evade. This is especially a pain in the woods. I get that part of the danger of certain areas is reduced visibility, but you should be able to identify whatever your character sees when they see it.

BrianRx fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jul 17, 2022

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

QuarkJets posted:

1. You as the host need to have the mod enabled in steam workshop

And then while you are creating the multiplayer server:

2. The mod needs to be enabled in the mods list in the mods tab
3. The mod needs to be enabled in the mods list in the workshop tab

Thanks, I think it's number 3. For some reason, I thought it would take me to the workshop, though I hadn't thought about for what purpose.

duffmensch posted:

If you have a firearm (even if empty) you can aim and it’ll show you the outlines for any zombies in range, if you have that option enabled.

Oh cool, that's good to know. I've used melee weapons for that purpose in the woods, but enemies are a little too close at that point.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007
Does leaving ovens on cause a fire like it did in the old (maybe current as well) tutorial? And are zombies attracted to fire? I've just started trying to do it as a really dumb way to mark houses I've cleaned out but I haven't seen anything happen yet. It would be nice if it drew zombies away from my safehouse too.

edit: in Project Zomboid

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007
I found my first working car with a key. Got on the highway and wanted to see how fast I could go. Didn't see the T intersection and wrecked. Decided to walk miles back to town through the woods at night. Didn't make it.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007


Boy, the machete really changes things, doesn't it.

edit: doesn't protect your bare feet from broken glass and deep wounds though. drat it.

BrianRx fucked around with this message at 23:07 on Jul 22, 2022

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Danaru posted:

Jason Voorhees didn't care about glass in his feet, you fuckin wuss, you have to EARN the Machete

But like also Jason wore boots, and so should you

Yeah, and I had to specifically remove them for it to happen. It was a series of events that involved tainted water, the helicopter, and hubris.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Major Isoor posted:

Hmm, so I was just reading the wiki and the below excerpt got me wondering... if you have a sheet rope dangling out a window with the window closed, are you able to open it up and climb in, while on the rope? Or are you simply...unable to climb up as there's no opening?

The former. I discovered it by accident today and had a brief moment of panic when I realized what was happening.

Not that I'm anywhere near exhausting the supply of things to try during a normal run, but I've been thinking about a middle of nowhere survivalist run. I think you can make everything you need in some way, but the main problem is that many things require tools you can't craft and/or nails. What would you need to stock up on before heading out to get to self sufficiency (or at least only occasional trips to town)?

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

piano chimp posted:

It's worth taking as many tools as you can since the crafted versions are kinda lovely until you get good maintenance. I'd stock up on the following:
  • Axes for chopping trees
  • Hammers, nails, screwdrivers and screws for building
  • Saw and knives for carpentry
  • Wrench, lug wrench, jack and tyre pump for vehicle maintenance
  • Trowels, shovels, watering cans and buckets for farming
  • Cooking pots, saucepans, roasting pans and bowls for cooking and gathering water
  • Trapping materials (twine, wire)
  • Tent kit for sleepin'
  • Duct tape, glue and other repair materials to keep your tools in good condition
Strictly speaking, you only really need a saw and some nails to thrive in the woods but the above will make things easier. I'd suggest taking a four seater car or a pickup to haul all this crap to your campsite. You can also sleep on the back seats of a 4 seater car with no comfort penalty (so no neck pain in the morning!).

Optionally:
  • Garbage bags for creating water barrels (unless you live by a river or lake)
  • Pipe wrench for plumbing scavenged sinks
  • Antique oven for heating your shack - despite its 40 weight you can actually put this on a regular 20 capacity car seat (works with generators and bags with >20 weight of items too). You can also use a regular BBQ but the heat radius is quite small.
  • Generator, fuel cans and a small fridge/freezer for food preservation
  • Fishing rods - spearfishing using a wooden spear works great until the winter where you effectively get -2 to your fishing skill level. A fishing rod can help offset this malus

Unless you have an even distribution of zombies, living out in the sticks is really quiet with little danger. The biggest threat is boredom!

Thanks, this is really useful! Sounds like it's less Les Stroud and more "escaped prisoner hiding out" but that's still cool. I set up in the 3 house gated community mentioned above and, if I can get sustainable after the power and water shuts off, I'll take my truck out on a lake or river in the middle of nowhere and live out my days in a tiny cabin with occasional trips to burglarize homes in any nearby communities. Which is also my real-life plan for retirement, except I'll be fighting hordes of other climate refugees instead of zombies.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007
What the hell, I just had a 50+ day run end for no apparent reason. I got to the military base and spent about 12 hours clearing out the parking lot (if you go, take about 3x as much ammo as you think you need). My character was exhausted, overheated, and nauseous (which I figured was due to be overheated for a long time) but didn't take a scratch. I found an unlocked 4-seater, laid down in the back to sleep, and died within about 4 hours. I went from nauseous to sick pretty much immediately and my health went from "something doesn't feel right" to "imminent death" in about three seconds, then I died. Are there health conditions that are invisible for a time and then suddenly cause death, zombification aside? I didn't have any of the other symptoms of a bite and the health screen was clear when I went to sleep.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Tarezax posted:

How many corpses were around? I'm guessing a shitton. Corpses cause sickness around them when in large numbers, and if you stick around too long it will drain your health.

Interesting, I didn't know that. Yeah, there were dozens and dozens of corpses and the car I was sleeping in was near the middle of the pile, so that makes sense. I also hadn't eaten in a day so I was probably more susceptible to illness. Wish there was some indication of all that, but oh well, you're supposed to die.

QuarkJets posted:

Had any scratches or lacerations in the last week? Each time you get scratched or lacerated by a zombie there's a chance that you are going to become a zombie, even if the scratch heals. It takes about 3 days to become a zombie but is effected by traits and slowed by being well fed. Feeling overheated and nauseous/sick with steadily dropping health are the telltale symptoms of zombie infection

I'm a big baby and had zombification turned off, though I did get very sick and have high levels of fear a day or so after getting bitten or suffering a laceration, which I'm guessing would have been fatal otherwise.

Is there any point in continuing a run once you've been bitten, or is there a chance you just get sick and avoid infection?

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Flesh Forge posted:

I mean, once you have a basic sustainable loop of avoiding death from day to day there's little motivation to go anywhere or do anything specific, you go there just to Go There :shrug:

Yeah, that's how I got to the military base. I'm going to check out the prison on my next run and then put this on the shelf for a bit. So far, the most rewarding location has been the outskirts of Louisville. I came in with a leather jacket and some duffel bags and walked out with huge backpacks, better clothes, and like three more levels in aiming.

QuarkJets posted:

You probably died from being around the corpses then, that sucks. Even while mid-fighting you can start feeling sick if there are enough corpses on the ground

If you get bitten then it's game over, you will definitely die in just a handful of days. You can just start a new character in the same world (even singleplayer), you can even kill your previous character and loot your corpse. If you have a big elaborate base setup this may be more worthwhile than starting over completely, it depends on what your goals are. There's also a mod that lets you record your stats to a journal, and then on your future characters you can read the journal to get those points (the default is getting 100% of those skill points back, but you can reduce this in the settings).

Ahhhh, I wish I had paid more attention to the 'reroll character" dialog. I had a bunch of well stocked safehouses that I was bummed to lose. That square of three houses surrounded by gates in Louisville is very very cool for basebuilding, but that's the point at which I realized I didn't have a reason to do anything else.

BrianRx fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Aug 1, 2022

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

dogstile posted:

Oh I know, but neck bleed outs happen incredibly quickly and something IRL distracted me for a moment.

I'd get it if I got bitten, but a random neck injury from a twig? Gah, nah, gently caress off.

Yeah, I get clothing or equipment degradation or maybe very rarely taking damage if you're sprinting through the woods, but I think most people would be able to navigate around trees without needing to go to the ER.

On a different note, the fast shambling zombies are very unnerving to me. Both because they can close distance much faster than the shufflers so you have less time to act if you're spotted, but also something about their weird arm flailing animation makes me very uncomfortable.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007
For PZ, I would not recommend setting Zombies to Insane at all. I did as was discussed earlier and gave them no memory, poor sight, and poor hearing, and there are just too many of them to be fun. Every house has a group of 5-10 zombies outside, which means you'll also pull a couple of other groups if you try to fight them. If you try to do the "walk away and break line of sight" thing, you'll just keep encountering more groups. I walked from one end of Muldragh to the other without getting clear, again with very dumb zombies. If you do clear an area, other groups will wander in overnight so you're either always running or in combat. It does introduce a sort of smash and grab strategy where you try to get enough space to hit a kitchen and maybe a closet on the ground floor of a building, but it ultimately makes everything a chore.

I set them to High and it was too easy, so the sweet spot might be Very High. Or maybe the vanilla settings are the best. I just wanted to throw burning and exploding things at huge groups but I can't scrounge enough to even get molotovs.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

HopperUK posted:

I was considering it and watched some gameplay. I'm not a huge fan of 'you're a white dude in the amazon who has to rescue your girlfriend and also the natives are evil monsters' thing but perhaps it's more nuanced than that in gameplay. The survival aspects look really solid.

There are hostile locals, but I don't recall them being depicted as anything other than not thrilled to see you. I didn't like the DLC and didn't play it, so maybe there's something distasteful in there. It does get weird and abstract in some places, but it's always after you've taken hallucinogens and is more Max Paine-y. There is little or no nuance.

edit: you are white and a savior. More in a global context, but you do save local villagers from sticky situations.

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007
It's not a straight survival game (it does have hunger and thirst meters) but can anyone give context for the development of Scrap Mechanic? I picked it up a year ago and really liked it, but put it down after running through the available content. I just checked in on it, and aside from some minor tweaks and additions to the challenge mode, it's almost unchanged. I see there have been some dev blogs teasing content, but I'm a bit surprised by the slow pace of development. Did I buy something that is known to be pretty much DOA?

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Travic posted:

I've finished most everything I wanted to do in Riverside so I think it's time to go exploring. I was thinking about revisiting West Point, but holy poo poo that's a lot of zombies. There are far too many to fight and too many to sneak around. What's the best strategy for dealing with them?

Burn them with fire. Molotovs are fine but fire bombs are better if you know the recipe. Fire will spread between zombies that are touching, so if you get them to clump up you only need one fire thing. Be aware that they can ignite buildings (RIP Muldragh police station) so try to lead them to an open field or something. Bring a snack and start in the early morning because it takes them like 12 hours to die from fire so you'll be there a while. It's safer than fighting but much more time consuming.

More trivia, but fire seems to freeze when you leave an area and then resume when you return. So I guess you could run away and do it in shifts?

BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Flesh Forge posted:

I mean it's only time consuming in the sense that it takes you a number of hours, but at the end of it you have killed hundreds of zombies you couldn't reasonably kill one at a time in the same span, even with guns.

That's true, but it's also true that walking in circles for 20 real life minutes is boring.

Under what circumstances do you wake up before a full night's sleep? I had a long-lived character that probably had insomnia, if that's a thing, but no night terrors who woke up at 2:40 am no matter what time I went to sleep. He died and my next character went to the same house immediately and did the same thing. It was the group of three houses in the far north of West Point where I don't think I've ever seen a zombie. What can cause a character to wake up?

Also, if I sleep in a not-totally-safe place, will I wake up if something tries to come in the door? I vaguely remember waking up surrounded by zombies in an early version of the game, but haven't had it happen since then. Can you even be attacked in your sleep?

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BrianRx
Jul 21, 2007

Arven posted:

Probably an alarm clock in a dresser drawer

That makes sense, I usually don't do more than glance at dressers and wardrobes and the bedroom is large so I probably just can't hear it.

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