7 days

[Arsilon]

There are settings for most of what you suggest. The everything in your inventory is deleted setting alone would be a game changer.

[Vllad]

Let me list the items so you can compare.

Right now we are on Adventurer, (we do 125% damage, zombies do 75%).

Here are the settings I would suggest:

*Play on Survivalist (we do 50% of damage, Zombies 200%) that equates to instead of getting hit for 10 we would get hit for 20)

*Make Zombies Feral (At night all zombies seak out players) right now zombies during non purges only attack players if they are disturbed. This means it is unlikely you can be out at night and will probably have to defend your base regularly.

*Zombies always run.

*Enemy memory ramped up to 90 secs

*Players lose everything upon death.

We could also lower block hit points and loot abundance. Right now it is 100% but can be adjusted as low as 25%.

Plus we can up how many zombies are in a purge. i.e., right now it is 8, we can go as high as 64.

Melee would be required for the above settings.

I have no problem starting over. In Single player the game is brutal, I am pretty sure we can recreate that for multi player. I have no problem with the block and drop rate as is as long as we lost our gear upon death. .

We could just start another server.

[Arsilon]

For item drop on death you can set it to:

1) Drop Everything <- current setting
2) Drop Toolbelt only
3) Drop Backpack only
4) Delete All <-- hardcore

[Slamz]

Ohhh, yeah, I didn't see that "delete all" option but I might have been looking at older server settings. I was just hoping that could be made to happen (bag decay time to instant or something).

Making all night time zombies be berserk would probably be the "mini purge" I was looking for, too. We'd surely have to tone down the real purge in this case, because it would be too much to fight feral zombies every night followed by a day 7 that's worse than today.

Maybe Vllad's settings + delete all on death + purges are 5 per person? With Survivalist settings, 5 would still be meaner than our current 8.

I would probably keep block health as is. Not like zombies have a hard time blowing up our stuff as it is. Try loot as-is with the idea that we'll be losing so much of it that we'll be lucky to find a new machine gun. It will really change the crafting game to lose gear.

[Vllad]

Don't forget we are at 200% exp as well. We can turn that down to 100%.

Start a new map as well.

Dophuz Jr will be on TS at 7 PM, I will have him set up the new server.

While we could go from 8 to 4 on a Purge night I would not be inclined to do that since if we ever got geared that may tone down the Purges. I would do no less than 8 and would have you guys consider more. I think we have to wipe sometimes and small purges will never do that.

With Purges and Feral zombies makes spawning and being at home at night on Purge night impossible.

I love the delete all option. That makes crafting now viable. I was a heavy armorer and never made a single piece of armor. Upon thinking about it turning loot down to 75% wouldn't hurt. No more commonly bringing home tier 6 gear.

[Slamz]

We'll probably want to turn XP down anyway, so that we don't get too far ahead of our own ability to produce materials. We probably don't want higher level zombies if we're fighting them with sticks.

I can also potentially host a server as I have a gaming laptop I rarely use but I'll let Dophuz keep doing it if they're still okay with it. My gaming laptop is pretty pimp but I imagine a desktop is still better. (plus I would have to figure all that shit out, ports and whatnot)

Look for sites where we can do kinda what we're doing now: claim (or build, I guess) a structure that serves as our "home" with space nearby for various forts where we can hole up. I wonder if zombie spawn rates can be tweaked up, or if maybe harder game modes do that automatically. Part of our current too-easy problem is that we clear all the zombies out and other than the odd screamer or mini-horde spawn, you can pretty well go build or mine all night and not be bothered. Although maybe that's also because we build in the country. Maybe we should build smack in the middle of a city...

[Vllad]

If you want to host that probably would give us more control.

I just re-read the loot abundance and it impacts quantity not quality. i.e., at 75% instead of finding 10 bullets you only find 7. That goes for all blocks, rock, wood etc. The quality of things will still improve as our ratings go up.

We do have loot respawn set at 14 days, we can stretch that out so you have to go further to get loot.

The Feral settings make them seek you and makes it difficult to hide without stealth, it isn't a sure thing however.

Their are a couple things you can do to make it a abosolute nightmare. You can make it so you can't outrun a zombie and bloodmoons can be daily. However neither would I recommend.

One really nice change is to randomize the bloodmoons. They don't have to be every 7 days. We can make them 1 to 8 days for example. So you could get back to back ones or every few days.

[Slamz]

I think we have our feet under us with the new (harder mode) server. You still need to raid as a group but the blunderbuss is accessible and a whole lot better than a spear. You can still end up getting swarmed and killed but 3 people with blunderbusses can fight pretty well if they're careful.

I like the lose-everything-on-death setting. Really makes gear and loot a lot more meaningful. Might have to make boxes mid-raid to store up what you have so far, and mining is more concerning when death means you lose everything you just mined up.

I found a book that lets me make letter jackets. They're just fabric and paint (which comes from scrapping dye, which a lot of clothes come with). 10% run speed when you wear it so they're a pretty good choice. I made a few extra and put them in the clothes box (far right). Get some fabric and I'll keep us stocked up on jackets.

[Vllad]

Once we started using hour heads it got much easier.

1. Go dig up Coal and Nitrates.
2. Make a Blunderbuss.
3. Go looting as a group
4. Do just run around like you own the place. Start sneaking in and get the sneak bonuses to your shots.

A Blunderbuss is pipe, glue and wood. Ammo is Gunpowder, Rock and Paper. There is no reason not to have one over a spear. The Pipe and Glue is the hard part but you can get pipe from any sink. For glue we need bones. Dig up the stuff to make gunpowder (even unproductively without an Alchemy station). It only cost 1 pipe to repair.

They aren't as limitless as stone spears but if you are with someone else with one they are very effective. If you solo they are a waste of your time and you will just lose them (they don't shoot fast enough for you to survive solo). You are better off with stone weapons.

You have to sneak now or you will get overwhelmed. Even in a big group. Slamz, Vera and I were crouched going into every room. That helped a lot in speeding up the clearing process.

Last night felt like a real survival game finally.

[Vllad]

Last night I was making fun of Slamz always kicking cans when sneaking around. I was just reading that apparently that is a real thing. Those noises are there to wake Zombies.

I assume it must be those red things you see on the floor that can be wacked for cloth. That is something we need to test.

[Slamz]

Yeah I was worried that zombie run speed was still too slow because you can pretty easily just outrun them even on flat ground (extra true if you wear one of my +10% speed jackets!) but while it's not that dangerous out in the open, it's very much Serious Business doing any structure clearing because our damage is so much less and because the zombies hit like a truck.

I was getting kinda bored clearing structures before because even when zombies pop out or drop on your head or run up in groups, it was quick work to lay them all out and even if you died you just picked all your stuff back up. You could solo POIs, which I guess is by design for singleplayer but it trivialized the game for us.

Now you have to get serious. Reminds me more of old Everquest, like doing Lower Guk or something, because while you can get through a lot of fights pretty easily, sometimes there are still surprises and it's a big deal if you die.

[Dophuz]

In order to keep from having to reboot/rework the server we need to go to the library in steam select properties,  go all the way to the right (betas drop-down ) and then select 18.3

the game will update and then show 18.3 then you are good to go.  Otherwise we have to start over from scratch with 18.4

[Vllad]

We are only one day in. Did they update something useful?

[Crice]

Some good bug fixes and exploit fixes. We could start in a new place. Doesn't matter to me, although I would like to bump to loot up since we die often :-)

[Slamz]

https://7daystodie.com/news/

Stability patch, looks like. If we want to update the server, now's the time. As you say, we only just now started.

I don't see where it requires a brand new server, though. Typically you can just update server and client and go. If we have to manually switch versions maybe it's worth starting over just to not have to do that.

Says they fixed some crashes and performance issues but nothing I think we've seen.

[Dophuz]

Joe, updated inplace so we can use 18.4

[Slamz]

Upload the serverconfig file we're using when you have a chance.

[Crice]

Darn now I can't intimidate the vending machine for better prices.

[Vllad]

I know we are all starving, I have a farm going but we are short on meat. If you guys can bring in some steady supply of meat I probably have enough materials to keep us regularly fed now.

I will have to make a bigger farm than the last server so that Putrid meat will also be critical.

I haven't found mushrooms yet!

We may have to be more nomadic in this version of the game but at least we got lucky that our current place is pretty central to many locations.

[Slamz]

Keep an eye out for beakers. We need them to make chemical stations. I got a schematic for one so I can make one once we get a beaker.

If you want quick XP, build yourself a hut, perhaps while doing some mining:
Dig incidental clay and rock.
Convert it to cobblestone while you work (it's just clay + rock).
Build a cap or fishing hut type structure over your mine. Eliminates zombie surprises!
Upgrade it to cobblestone.

Construction -- upgrading in particular -- is worth a lot of XP.

[Vllad]

You level much faster mining and gathering raw materials than you do scavenging for finished materials. It actually isn't even close.

[Vllad]

On the previous server I found a trader location that was never open to the public but I also couldn't bash the door down to get in since it seemed to be protected.

Come to find out, Traders can die. I guess if for whatever reason the doors are left open or (for reasons unknown to me) any part of the wall gets opened the zombies will track and kill the trader just like a player. If that happens the trader is gone and will not respawn. Plus with the trader gone, there is no one there to re-open the trader doors come morning.

I have no idea if we can kill Traders? Well beyond by accident anyway.

[Slamz]

You level much faster mining and gathering raw materials than you do scavenging for finished materials. It actually isn't even close.

Yeah, it's just a nice steady stream. And unlike kill XP, construction/mining XP isn't shared. Maybe we should actually greatly reduce the range of shared XP so that miners/builders aren't getting shared zombie hunting XP from across the map on top of their normal leveling. I think XP sharing is expressed as 0-100 as a percentage of map size(?) and we have it at 100. Maybe it should be more like.... 2. Assuming that's what the 100 means, anyway. Basically if I'm out digging holes, I shouldn't be getting your zombie XP from the next town over.

Tell Dophuz to get the server config file uploaded so we can scrutinize it more!

I'm also tempted to say we should turn up zombie blood moon speed. I had no trouble simply outrunning mine on foot. I even had time to kill one with a blunderbus by just shooting it, switching weapons to abort the reload, then run away a bit, reload and shoot him again. I climbed up on top of a trailer, destroyed my ladder and waited out the rest of the night without seeing my zombies again.

I think our zombie speed is 2 ("run") and we might try 3 ("sprint") at least for blood moons. There's also 4 ("nightmare") which I think outruns cars and is probably not what we want. I hope we're not already on sprint. I think it should be really hard to outsprint bloodmoon zombies. Basically I think blood moons should be "stand and fight" or "hide on top of a building and hope they can't undermine the whole thing". I was more casually jogging around looting things...


The main thing making it harder right now is just that you can't melee them and that death is serious business. Maybe with perks and armor you could melee but they will eat your face off with no perks or armor. You do still have to be a lot more careful when clearing buildings but zombies in the open are not much of a threat if you have any halfway decent ranged.

[Veraphim]

According to the server settings that you see when you select our server in-game:
Zombie Day Speed: Walk
Zombie Night Speed: Sprint
Zombie Feral Speed: Sprint
Zombie Blood Moon Speed: Sprint

I think we had set all zombies to "Feral" in another spot, so they should be sprinting even during the day despite that first setting.

[Slamz]

Yeah we should probably hard set day speed to sprint. There may be some bug where even though we set all zombies to be feral, that's not happening so a lot of day zombies end up being regular slow moving zombies.

Maybe try this:
Turn off the setting where all zombies are feral. I think that's supposed to make all zombies into the higher tier types but I don't think that's working anyway.

Then:
Day: Sprint
Night: Nightmare
Feral: Sprint
Blood Moon: Nightmare

I don't think we should be able to outrun all zombies on flat ground at night or during BM. Scrape em off on terrain if you can, or pick a place to fight them or otherwise don't be wandering around at night without being loaded for bear.