7 Days to Die

Void · Tuesday at 5:54 PM

Just picked this game up for the first time ever because I was having a crafting survival itch. I've played it for the past week and there is a lot to love about it, but I didn't realize that they changed the skill system at some point. I want a mod or a game that uses the "learn by doing" method, not the "hope you find the right books" method. I'm still so fucking far away from making a cement mixer it isn't even funny.

I have watched various videos and read articles about the overhaul mods listed in this thread, and none of them totally grab me either. I'm not opposed to a class system like in Rebirth or Darkness Falls, but those are also designed for people that have truly mastered the game (or at least have played for more than a week) and I'm not looking to completely change how the game plays yet, as I've barely scratched the surface of vanilla. But I was really thinking it would have skill level ups like the original game did, where if I use a spear I get better with a spear, or if I cook I'll get better at cooking. Not hoping I find enough cooking books to unlock the next recipe (granted, cook books are super easy to find).

Are there any mods that just roll the skill system back?

As an aside, browsing through mods of course I saw tons of them that look pretty cool. Thinking of using a UI mod, maybe that one that lets you sort your shit into nearby crates, etc. Anyone have some suggestions for good mods to use that don't completely change the game?

If there is another similar survival crafting game that is as engaging as this one but has the skill system I want, please feel free to let me know about that too. I'm in the mood to grind skills, just not loot drops.

Thanks!

Harshaw · Tuesday at 6:11 PM

Void said:
Just picked this game up for the first time ever because I was having a crafting survival itch. I've played it for the past week and there is a lot to love about it, but I didn't realize that they changed the skill system at some point. I want a mod or a game that uses the "learn by doing" method, not the "hope you find the right books" method. I'm still so fucking far away from making a cement mixer it isn't even funny.

I have watched various videos and read articles about the overhaul mods listed in this thread, and none of them totally grab me either. I'm not opposed to a class system like in Rebirth or Darkness Falls, but those are also designed for people that have truly mastered the game (or at least have played for more than a week) and I'm not looking to completely change how the game plays yet, as I've barely scratched the surface of vanilla. But I was really thinking it would have skill level ups like the original game did, where if I use a spear I get better with a spear, or if I cook I'll get better at cooking. Not hoping I find enough cooking books to unlock the next recipe (granted, cook books are super easy to find).

Are there any mods that just roll the skill system back?

As an aside, browsing through mods of course I saw tons of them that look pretty cool. Thinking of using a UI mod, maybe that one that lets you sort your shit into nearby crates, etc. Anyone have some suggestions for good mods to use that don't completely change the game?

If there is another similar survival crafting game that is as engaging as this one but has the skill system I want, please feel free to let me know about that too. I'm in the mood to grind skills, just not loot drops.

Thanks!

There is one overhaul nod that sounds like what you want. I am pretty sure that it is Undead Legacy.

The books, while kind of annoying, can be solved a bit by focusing skills at the start. Just put points in stuff you want to get books for the most. If you like get 1 pt. in skills here and there it opens up your magazine pulls more. Also this game has a secret AI that knows what you want and will drag it out as long as possible. Then sometimes you will craft that thing you've waited so long for and then loot it on the next poi.

Void · Tuesday at 6:44 PM

Harshaw said:
There is one overhaul nod that sounds like what you want. I am pretty sure that it is Undead Legacy.

The books, while kind of annoying, can be solved a bit by focusing skills at the start. Just put points in stuff you want to get books for the most. If you like get 1 pt. in skills here and there it opens up your magazine pulls more. Also this game has a secret AI that knows what you want and will drag it out as long as possible. Then sometimes you will craft that thing you've waited so long for and then loot it on the next poi.

I'm aware of the tip about focusing skills, but even with that I'm struggling on some (and not with others). Also, I hate having to put points into something early on just to get books, when the points really aren't where I want to spend them.

I'm not seeing where it says that about the skills in UL, but I'm not saying you are wrong either. Most comments do mention it is a serious grind though, including the crafting being a huge slog. I might try all the different overhaul mods out to see if any fit, but honestly I'd just love a skill overhaul mod...although now that I say that, I understand it is a pretty serious undertaking that would require reworking more than just skills.

It sounds like if I could just roll the game back to an earlier point before skill books, but keep all the QoL and graphical improvements, it would be what I'm looking for.

Harshaw · Tuesday at 6:51 PM

Void said:
I'm aware of the tip about focusing skills, but even with that I'm struggling on some (and not with others). Also, I hate having to put points into something early on just to get books, when the points really aren't where I want to spend them.

I'm not seeing where it says that about the skills in UL, but I'm not saying you are wrong either. Most comments do mention it is a serious grind though, including the crafting being a huge slog. I might try all the different overhaul mods out to see if any fit, but honestly I'd just love a skill overhaul mod...although now that I say that, I understand it is a pretty serious undertaking that would require reworking more than just skills.

It sounds like if I could just roll the game back to an earlier point before skill books, but keep all the QoL and graphical improvements, it would be what I'm looking for.

You will be losing quite a bit if you do. It's been this way since launch of 1.0. I think you have to go back to Alpha 19 for the skill system you want. I could be wrong though, I haven't played much lately.

Gavinmad · Tuesday at 7:23 PM

Void said:
I'm still so fucking far away from making a cement mixer it isn't even funny.

Unless you're spending your days just dicking around you should easily have lvl 30 workstations by the time you genuinely need to move on from cobblestone. I was not the biggest fan of the change to skill magazines but after finally having played again I have to admit that the pacing of unlocks matches the rising zombie threat level pretty well.

Gravel · Tuesday at 7:25 PM

I wouldn't recommend Undead Legacy until you've played the base game...a lot.

That shit is brutal.

Incredibly fun, but brutal.

BrotherWu · Thursday at 6:07 PM

Darkness Falls mod still same some learn by doing aspects but also has some books. It is also very punishing. Would not recommend it unless you have "beaten" the base game and are comfortable with it. I'd recommend at least 4 or 5 players willing to play on a regular schedule so that you can fill more roles. No way I would play it solo.

Void · Friday at 11:12 AM

Realizing that I never played the game in its previous states, so my comments are coming from a strictly new player's perspective, I kinda got burnt out already after I realized that half of my "enjoyment" of the game was counter to everything the devs decided in the game. I went spears early on and put a bunch of talent points into those, but apparently melee sucks dick after a certain point because when one of those scripted "bust out of the walls" events happens and a bunch of cops and radioactive zombies and whatever else all burst out at once, a couple of power shots from a spear and then I'm out of stamina and royally fucked. To the point where I actually looked into how bad it is, and yep, there are even mods that make melee better. Or you can just go use guns like apparently the devs prefer.

Not to mention the bullshit horde mechanics. After getting raped repeatedly despite thinking I have some pretty good fucking defenses, I go and read more of this thread, and look shit up, and I guess that's intended too. Super duper awesome killbox with a wide-open entrance through a corridor so you can pick them off? Sorry, we've decided zombies will literally prefer to dig straight through solid rock to get to you instead. And this isn't some real-life zombie shit where it would take them years to dig that far, nope, they cut through it like a hot knife through butter.

It is sad too, because it has just about everything I want from one of these games if you just tweaked some shit. Abiotic Factor is the vastly better game, but I like the "real world" aspect of 7 Days over the Abiotic environment. I want to chop fucking trees down and break rocks and build a base. You can do variations of that in Abiotic, but not exactly because of the setting. But in terms of literally everything else, AF is exactly what I want; now if they could just make that game in an overworld setting it might be perfect. I've purposely shied away from playing AF since my first EA binge because I want to wait until they complete the game and I can do a fresh run, but dammit if this 7 Days disappointment isn't pushing me to just do it now.

Gravel · Friday at 11:24 AM

Yeah, at a certain point, the game had skill up on use, and zombies were basically dumb and base building was at its peak because you could experiment with all sorts of fun shit.

The devs didn't like that and had some kind of gameplay experience in mind which was the complete opposite of 90% of the player base.

The game is still fun, but they had a vision and what you're describing ain't it. You can also still build some really cool bases, but they all essentially amount to a funnel

Cybsled · Friday at 2:09 PM

The devs wanted tower defense not helms deep

In a really early version of the game my base was surrounded by 100 foot deep pit with spikes and was pretty much immune to hordes

BrotherWu · Friday at 5:35 PM

Hard to compare AF to 7DTD. They're vastly different games. I've had long playthroughs of both recently and they're both good, IMO. There are things I like and dislike about both.

Void , as far as your 7DTD complaints go, couple things:

- Melee weapons are very viable into mid-late game. I use melee almost exclusively early game so that I can build up ammo for "oh shit" moments and for blood moons. Most people pick some sort of ranged weapon to specialize in. If you have a group of people, vary the weapons so that you can spread around the ammo. Bows are viable too.

- There are some hoard base concepts you can implement that are fairly safe and you should be able to hold out no problem. If you give them a path whereby they think they can reach you but can't (e.g. a horizontal pole over a pit that almost reaches you in a shark cage), then they will just keep cycling at you without attacking your structure for the most part. Do some YT searches.

- I agree with you that wandering hordes are annoying and it even more annoying that a zombie can eventually beat through concrete with bare knuckles. I think you can adjust how much protection you get from a claim block, if you want. I think you can also tweak wandering hordes.

The game has suffered from really shitty project management, has been slow to update, and has had a lot of changes in direction and questionable decisions. On the plus side, they seem to have been doing better since release.

Gavinmad · Friday at 6:01 PM

It's funny how despite being a new player Void is making all the same complaints I made back during the big Alpha 16 change where the game abruptly changed from being a big sandbox where you could build absurd trap defenses for your base to being a dungeon crawler where the only viable horde bases rely on exploiting physics bugs and AI limitations. I still enjoyed the hell out of it once I finally picked it back up post 1.0 but it was definitely a completely different game back in the day.

Also melee weapons never stop being viable, git gud. It's possible to do tier 6 missions with melee if you have the patience and reflexes for it.

Harshaw · Friday at 6:13 PM

Gavinmad said:
It's funny how despite being a new player Void is making all the same complaints I made back during the big Alpha 16 change where the game abruptly changed from being a big sandbox where you could build absurd trap defenses for your base to being a dungeon crawler where the only viable horde bases rely on exploiting physics bugs and AI limitations. I still enjoyed the hell out of it once I finally picked it back up post 1.0 but it was definitely a completely different game back in the day.

Also melee weapons never stop being viable, git gud. It's possible to do tier 6 missions with melee if you have the patience and reflexes for it.

Nah, he did grab spears though. All the other melee weapons are better. I am a club guy myself.

Gavinmad · Friday at 6:34 PM

Harshaw said:
Nah, he did grab spears though. All the other melee weapons are better. I am a club guy myself.

Just have to adjust your playstyle. Spears and blades are the only melee weapons that can mod bleed and fire simultaneously.

Clubs are simpler, not necessarily better.

Harshaw · Friday at 6:37 PM

Gavinmad said:
Just have to adjust your playstyle. Spears and blades are the only melee weapons that can mod bleed and fire simultaneously.

Clubs are simpler, not necessarily better.

Yeah, but if you are gonna play the bleed game knives are superior to spears.

Gavinmad · Friday at 6:39 PM

Harshaw said:
Yeah, but if you are gonna play the bleed game knives are superior to spears.

Sure but I'd still point a new player towards spears before I'd direct them to sledgehammers.

Harshaw · Friday at 6:42 PM

Gavinmad said:
Sure but I'd still point a new player towards spears before I'd direct them to sledgehammers.

Sledgehammers are awesome though. They are easily the best weapon imo. However, if you don't manage stamina, it will get you killed.

Gavinmad · Friday at 7:32 PM

Harshaw said:
They are easily the best weapon imo.

you misspelled stun baton

Void · Friday at 8:37 PM

Gavinmad said:
It's funny how despite being a new player Void is making all the same complaints I made back during the big Alpha 16 change where the game abruptly changed from being a big sandbox where you could build absurd trap defenses for your base to being a dungeon crawler where the only viable horde bases rely on exploiting physics bugs and AI limitations. I still enjoyed the hell out of it once I finally picked it back up post 1.0 but it was definitely a completely different game back in the day.

Also melee weapons never stop being viable, git gud. It's possible to do tier 6 missions with melee if you have the patience and reflexes for it.

Well, currently I'm rocking a Tier 1 Iron Spear, so I haven't modded it or anything because I feel like that is something I should be waiting for a better version to do. But since I haven't actually modded anything, maybe I'm wrong and it is something I should always be doing. I also hoard things like weapon augments and such in games way too long because I hate wasting them on early weapons, particularly if I don't know how many I'll get in a playthrough.

I also use a bow to thin shit out from a distance, but that doesn't do much inside a house. Speaking of which, I die many times because I don't want to leave the area, per the quest instructions. I've been assuming that will invalidate the quest completely, but does it?

Even if I perfectly headshot stuff, it very rarely dies to just one power hit. I'm assuming there is some hidden crit chance that I occasionally get, but even a party girl zombie (which is probably the best part of the game, let's be honest) almost always takes me at least two power hits to kill. That isn't going to fly in a room suddenly full of beefier zombies. I know, I know, always know my exits, be aware of surprises, have a plan...yeah, that's tiring when it is wasted on 90% of rooms.

It is also possible I've let the difficulty outstrip my character capability, because during horde nights where I get fucked, I end up just running outside and dying there so they don't destroy my base and I get the max xp penalty quickly. So if the difficulty continues to increase over time, I'm probably way behind the power curve and should start over. Except that sounds way too painful to me.

Pre Alpha 16 sounds exactly like the game I would have wanted. Oh well, I should have jumped on it years ago when I considered it. Are there really no games out there that blend all these aspects into one? Abiotic Factor is the closest I can think of, but I haven't played many of them so maybe someone else knows of some.

Gavinmad · Friday at 9:43 PM

Void said:
Well, currently I'm rocking a Tier 1 Iron Spear, so I haven't modded it or anything because I feel like that is something I should be waiting for a better version to do. But since I haven't actually modded anything, maybe I'm wrong and it is something I should always be doing. I also hoard things like weapon augments and such in games way too long because I hate wasting them on early weapons, particularly if I don't know how many I'll get in a playthrough.

I also use a bow to thin shit out from a distance, but that doesn't do much inside a house. Speaking of which, I die many times because I don't want to leave the area, per the quest instructions. I've been assuming that will invalidate the quest completely, but does it?

Even if I perfectly headshot stuff, it very rarely dies to just one power hit. I'm assuming there is some hidden crit chance that I occasionally get, but even a party girl zombie (which is probably the best part of the game, let's be honest) almost always takes me at least two power hits to kill. That isn't going to fly in a room suddenly full of beefier zombies. I know, I know, always know my exits, be aware of surprises, have a plan...yeah, that's tiring when it is wasted on 90% of rooms.

It is also possible I've let the difficulty outstrip my character capability, because during horde nights where I get fucked, I end up just running outside and dying there so they don't destroy my base and I get the max xp penalty quickly. So if the difficulty continues to increase over time, I'm probably way behind the power curve and should start over. Except that sounds way too painful to me.

Pre Alpha 16 sounds exactly like the game I would have wanted. Oh well, I should have jumped on it years ago when I considered it. Are there really no games out there that blend all these aspects into one? Abiotic Factor is the closest I can think of, but I haven't played many of them so maybe someone else knows of some.

The core gameplay hasn't actually changed that much, progression is just heavily structured now instead of being a giant sandbox. And even before the change to zombie block damage you probably weren't going to figure out how to build a viable horde base without either looking it up on youtube or an absolutely exhausting amount of trial and error. Bases back then were engineering clusterfucks just like they are now, they just operated on different principles.

There are multiple ways to speed up your progression if you decide to start over. Higher xp gain, better loot, longer days, etc. It goes a lot faster than you expect after the first time. Focusing on 1 handed clubs as your starter melee weapon will probably make things a bit smoother as well as it's by far the simplest weapon type to use.

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