Is Hydrocraft still pretty much mandatory to play PZ?

[Leaf]

HC had sooo many nice additions and fixes to PZ, but I haven't played PZ in a year. HC still mandatory or have the devs added a lot of new stuff in/fixes?

[Dire]

Originally posted by Leaf:

HC had sooo many nice additions and fixes to PZ, but I haven't played PZ in a year. HC still mandatory or have the devs added a lot of new stuff in/fixes?

I've only used the Hydrocraft mod for 2 games and I just personally disliked it.

It's not mandatory, in fact no mods are mandatory to enjoy PZ. I've enjoyed project zomboid without mods for at least 200 hours or so and i'm still enjoying PZ without mods.

[WillieSea]

HC makes the game so incredibly easy, like a baby's stroll in the park.
The base game has plenty of stuff to do and build. But you will actually have to work for it rather than be given everything.

[Quikel]

Compared to hydrocraft the base game is as stale as ever. While I do agree that the base game gets somewhat easier if being played by someone who knows what do to in hydrocraft, the alternative is even less appealing to me. So to answer your question: since you seem to have played with hydrocraft before and enjoyed it, keep on using it because the vanilla version of pz hasn't changed much within the past 12 months.

[Nachoman]

Originally posted by EnigmaGrey:

Originally posted by Whiplash:

LOL, HC gives you everything. I guess you feel it's realistic for there to be only 2-3 types of backpacks that are illogically rare as hell in suburban communities, where there should be tons. Or other equivalent items that the mod provies.. Most of which is just variety on existing items, and small bonuses.

The base game makes it more difficult by artifical means of making things insanely rare. For things you should realistically find all over the place. That is artificial difficulty enhancement.

Having more variety of items and craftables doesn't increase the rate of leveling skills, or gathering resources to build things, or how fast you read a book, or how much more or less likely you are to get overwhelmed or bitten, etc. It still takes lots of work to actually make the things that the mod adds. It still takes skill to fight and survive.

The base game is boring, tedious and unrealistic by comparison. HC does not actually have any meaningful affect on difficulty at all.

Uh, no. Hydrocraft provides a bunch of ways to advance ludicrously fast on leveling, has containers with way too much capacity, and even lets you forage by reading a book. It makes it much easier, assuming you know what you're doing.

Feel free to increase lootspawn in sandbox though. I'll happily keep the artificial difficulty of a game compared to real-life glut.

Sorry EnigmaGrey but Hydrocraft is a much needed addon to PZ to make it interesting. When I first played PZ I played vanilla (build 31 or 32) just to get the hang of it. After the intial trial and error games I started living longer and getting better. After a few games of getting maxed carpentry/cooking/foraging/trapping and building a base with a large farm I started to wonder what do you do after that? Kill more zombies? You said HC makes leveling much skills easier? Yes, I would say that is somewhat true but current vanilla games already allows that but with 2 exceptions. HC makes foraging and electricity skills level up faster that vanilla does. Lets look at the other skills.

Carpentry. Vanillla disassembling furniture is fastest way to level up. HC you just have more carpentry recipes.
Food. Vanilla make cabbage stir fries all day long. Fastest way to level up assuming you have a farm, which you'll eventually need.
Farm. Vanilla plant huge cabbage farms. Fastest way to level up. In HC you can gain skill in farming if you compost but vanilla farming is fastest.
Foraging. HC needs 3 books for you to forage and is the fastest way to level up but you still need to find those books.
Trapping. Vanilla fastest way to level up provided you have lots of wood (and cabbage from your farms), which is readily available.
Metalworking. Vanilla disassembling is fastest way to level up.
Electricity. HC making radios and looting broken electronics is the fastest way to level up. But in order to do those you need to find a magazine and make the electronics workbench which requires items that are hard to find.
Fishing. HC has a pond where you can fish anytime. Although I haven't tried it I think that's probably the fastest way to level up.
First Aid. In older (bugged) vanilla versions the bleeding bug was the fastest way to level up. But since that is fixed HC is now the new champion. You can burn yourself melting items into ingots and such. Your character can constantly bandage those wounds.

As for items with big capacities. I think they are much need container in the game. PZ is all about collecting resources, the more options we have as containers the better. Plus those containers that exist in HC also exist in the real world. For examples, dollies, pallet trucks, hand dollies, toy wagons, pack dogs, pack donkies, etc. Actually I don't remember if dollies and toy wagons are part of vanilla. Don't you think it's unrealistic to have only a few container types?

As I was saying before HC makes things more interesting by adding a ton of new recipes. So in vanilla after you build your base and have a sustainable food source, what's left but to kill more zombies? Kill 1000 more zombies? How about another 5000 after that? HC adds tons new recipes that allow a variety of things to do. Want to have a farm? Breed cows/pigs/horses/rabbits, etc. Want to craft weapons? Make great swords, halbards, swords, etc. Some recipes require you to travel to different cities to find the items required. For example, good luck finding 8 car batteries in 1 city to make that steam hammer which is required to eventually make a solar generator (another 8 car batteries for one component). HC also allows you to make vanilla items such as sugar, vinegar, paper, etc. In a MP world, you'll eventually run out of places to loot (assuming looting respawn is off) and you'll be stuck with no way of crafting certain things. HC in a way has an endgame/goal...make all their items, some of which requires insane amount of resources. In addition HC has incorporated Metalworking and Electricity skill requirements to make certain items. Yes eventually you'll make all HC items and be stuck in vanilla scenario but the gameplay up to this point is much much longer than vanilla gameplay.

I hate to say this but vanilla PZ needs to add more content for it to be more exciting.

[Chad1776]

I personally like the hydrocraft mod, is it a must have to enjoy PZ though, not really. I guess i just like having to find all the items to build the machines and big stuff in the mod gives the game a scavenger hunt feel and a reason to leave base to search for items. Though i do feel parts of it will become obsolete as the game progresses and probably will eventually need a
revamp.

[Leaf]

Thank you all for your replies.

[Grek]

dont like HC. he looks so alien to game

[Aethelthryth]

I've played Vanilla PZ for a little over 1400 hours (accumulated over the course of 3.5 years as the game developed over time). I prefer the Vanilla game over HC, having tried the mod out of curiosity and found there to be too much clutter and objects I felt were not necessary, although I agree it does add much more realism as the real world IS a cluttered mess of stuff all over xD.

Perhaps a little more additions to the Vanilla game would makes things a bit more interesting but not to the extent of HC expansion wise.