After Lots of Hours, B42 Thoughts

[CoreyDL]

(note I have not played the newest update)

B42 has added a lot of content, but has also made things more painful and ultimately tedious. In playing a single player game, I'm on my third month in-game and I still wouldn't call myself "food secure." Crops are harder to grow, loot is harder to find, and crafting is more restricted.

Visually it's much improved, and the lighting work they've done is great. Sound effects are more immersive, particularly atmospheric sounds. The farm animals are a nice touch. Movement is better for your character.

Though there are many more things you can craft, they all have very specific requirements to make them. And often times the juice isn't worth the squeeze: I can't spend two days looking for a rare item when food is still a concern.

There are various issues with loot disappearing, crashes, etc. Water is more difficult now, and you can't wash up in the water collectors anymore. Having farm animals is nice, but you pretty much need to live against a lake/pond to make that tenable. The larger animals drink a ton of water, and when summer comes there's not enough rain to keep up.

But at its base, I can't explore most of the new things they've added because the requirements to gain access to them are too high. I need a particular trowel for this or that, and there may not be one in an entire city. Or I have to go off into the woods to find a piece of a flint or a rock, or whatever. Which is both tedious and boring.

You also need to find about 70 books now instead of 25, with all the new skills added, and more books for each skill type (5 total for each skill). Books are more difficult to find, and even looting a whole town did not net me a full set. Leading to more grinding, and less incentive for me to explore the new skill trees.

Cutting logs is more painful now, as instead of creating a pile of planks at your feet, you have to saw each log individually and the planks go into your inventory. Becomes repetitive cut log x3, drop planks, repeat. Sapping your character's energy quickly with the weight. If you plan a cut logs day, don't think you can leave the base afterwards.

The calorie system needs a complete rework; it's too difficult to keep your weight up even with huge amounts of food. Eating three chicken roasts per day (55-80 food points), still need a stick of butter every couple days to keep things balanced. And I only feel full for 20 minutes after eating a full 2-pound chicken and veggies roast.

Just needs a lot of balance at the moment. I've had my fill until they get it sorted out and get the multiplayer back online.

[Narrowmind]

Do you think it's good enough to give up on B41 until B42 is done?

[Armagenesis]

I agree with you about crafting. It's definitely not in a good spot at the moment.
I also kinda agree that the lack of plumbing makes getting clean water a hassle, but it's honestly not that bad since the other options are still available.

I really have to question your other complaints, though.
Are you playing challenge modes like CDDA/Winter is Coming, or similarly difficult setup?

1. "Food secure". I'm not sure why the change in regards to farming suddenly makes you "food insecure". Trapping and foraging are still very much viable food source options. Fishing is a little bit more tedious now, but it's also still a very vialble option. And while the loot for non-perishable is still pretty crap as of now, I don't think it's really so bad that you'll starve to death in the default rarity setting.

2. Just how many livestocks do you keep that you can't keep a steady supply of water through catching rainwater using multiple feeding troughs?

3. Why are you sawing logs manually? You could've just used the crafting menu and the logs will drop on the floor once your inventory is full.

[J128MM]

If you have chicken meat and butter, combine them into one dish like a stew. I've been getting fat eating salad from vegetables I raided from a garden I found, adding fish and mayo to each bowl. Egg and butter stirfry. There's so much food around, I'll be 400lbs by winter. Several freezers full of vegetables and I haven't even got a chance to grow any yet. Dead chickens everywhere. Meat running across the road in herds. What I need is more freezers. No clue why so many are having food issues. Even zombies provide food in the form of maggots, which I convert into fish.

[CoreyDL]

Originally posted by Narrowmind:

Do you think it's good enough to give up on B41 until B42 is done?

IMO no, if you're invested in B41 then keep at it. If you are just bored of B41 and want a preview of what's to come, go for it.

[Artaniz]

Ya crafting is in a horrible spot right now , I already stop playing around 30 days in in most runs because it just gets boring , so thats around the time id like to be able to do crafting but you can still be missing loads of books and materials to just do the progression after that much time and looting an entire town and in my case a second town and the military surplus store.

Then you realize the absolute slog it will be to actually skill up those skills and for what your already at a point in the game where you can kill anything and take any structure , i dont need to play out 6 more months of the game grinding skills so i can sit in my base and farm with worse mechanics than a phone farming game.

The early loop day 1-30 days is still pretty enjoyable the way it was in b41 just instead of skipping almost all crafting like in b41 i just skip all of it now.

B42 is fine but its a lot of dev time and work for a mediocre end result considering the animals and crafting were the big selling points of this last two years of dev time.

[Buwaro Elexion]

Originally posted by CoreyDL:

~snip~
The calorie system needs a complete rework; it's too difficult to keep your weight up even with huge amounts of food. Eating three chicken roasts per day (55-80 food points), still need a stick of butter every couple days to keep things balanced. And I only feel full for 20 minutes after eating a full 2-pound chicken and veggies roast.
~snip~

hunger points mean nothing when it comes to calories/carbs, chickens, irl don;t have a lot of calories(it's why its' called a "lean meat"). what you need is things with loads of carbs. adding butter(or eating it directly) should solve your weight issue other options include rabbit(also very calorie dense or fish(best option but much harder to get everywhere). however, there is a bug regarding calories, in that it always drops to maximum negative, irrespective of the amount of physical labor you've done. So chow down on those buttered rabbit roasts!

[LZXio]

I noticed a lot of what you mentioned in your post, but I haven't been that far in the game yet. What the heck even happened with cigarettes? Its the 90's and you can't find a single cigarette pack even on gas station. I know we had way too many on 41 but it just feels so weird. I'm somewhat ok with the books because it gives you a bit more reason to explore beyond your town if needed, and I just disabled the nutrition system because I was also having the same troubles as you were. I really love the remastered Muldraugh though, and theres a lot of new stuff that I'm finding fun to learn about, at least for now.

[ophelfromhell]

Maybe i was lucky but i hit the jackpot a few times.Found a survivalist home.Full with recipes and other useful stuff.Found like 4 generators in normal home garages.And then i found the how to use a generator mag in a store i think.Then I hooked one of those generators to the gas station pumps and now i got free gasoline for my car.Then when i thought i will never find it.I found the how to make traps mag in the floor of a looted store.It seems that after a while of in game time some locations get looted.I was like 3 months in or more after i lost my last survivor.So when i started another run in the same city i decided to loot more often since this guy was not as trained as my last survivor and when i checked the stores and some houses i noticed they were looted and some things were in the floor.That's were i found some recipe mags.So try that too.Oh i forgot i also found a fishing rod too and some kind of artificial bait gear that when i used it.I caught a huge fish.

[Pherdnut]

Food: Cows for butter to put the weight on as-needed, chickens, fishing, and of course looting which could keep you fed for years by itself.

[Pendah]

Originally posted by Artaniz:

Ya crafting is in a horrible spot right now , I already stop playing around 30 days in in most runs because it just gets boring , so thats around the time id like to be able to do crafting but you can still be missing loads of books and materials to just do the progression after that much time and looting an entire town and in my case a second town and the military surplus store.

Then you realize the absolute slog it will be to actually skill up those skills and for what your already at a point in the game where you can kill anything and take any structure , i dont need to play out 6 more months of the game grinding skills so i can sit in my base and farm with worse mechanics than a phone farming game.

The early loop day 1-30 days is still pretty enjoyable the way it was in b41 just instead of skipping almost all crafting like in b41 i just skip all of it now.

B42 is fine but its a lot of dev time and work for a mediocre end result considering the animals and crafting were the big selling points of this last two years of dev time.

Yes and as much as I like this game, PZ must be the slowest early access game to update in my whole library...

[CoreyDL]

Originally posted by Lzxio:

I noticed a lot of what you mentioned in your post, but I haven't been that far in the game yet. What the heck even happened with cigarettes? Its the 90's and you can't find a single cigarette pack even on gas station. I know we had way too many on 41 but it just feels so weird. I'm somewhat ok with the books because it gives you a bit more reason to explore beyond your town if needed, and I just disabled the nutrition system because I was also having the same troubles as you were. I really love the remastered Muldraugh though, and theres a lot of new stuff that I'm finding fun to learn about, at least for now.

In Kentucky in 1993, I can tell you that cigs would be absolutely everywhere. And each gas station would have several cartons.

They nerfed the effect of the cigs to make it not worth now. Your character has a panic attack every couple hours if they haven't had a cig, and there aren't enough around to keep up with that. Especially since you can't make cigs easily, and you can't wean yourself off them. You're going to run out at some point and it'll ruin your character.

[Artaniz]

Originally posted by CoreyDL:

Originally posted by Lzxio:

I noticed a lot of what you mentioned in your post, but I haven't been that far in the game yet. What the heck even happened with cigarettes? Its the 90's and you can't find a single cigarette pack even on gas station. I know we had way too many on 41 but it just feels so weird. I'm somewhat ok with the books because it gives you a bit more reason to explore beyond your town if needed, and I just disabled the nutrition system because I was also having the same troubles as you were. I really love the remastered Muldraugh though, and theres a lot of new stuff that I'm finding fun to learn about, at least for now.

In Kentucky in 1993, I can tell you that cigs would be absolutely everywhere. And each gas station would have several cartons.

They nerfed the effect of the cigs to make it not worth now. Your character has a panic attack every couple hours if they haven't had a cig, and there aren't enough around to keep up with that. Especially since you can't make cigs easily, and you can't wean yourself off them. You're going to run out at some point and it'll ruin your character.

Not just several cartons , boxes and boxes of cartons and probably 3 cases of cartons behind the counter.

We have to suffer "realism" anytime it can screw over the player but they drop all the realism for "balance" when it fits what they want .

I just want a fun game , fix the dumb crafting .

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Armagenesis:

I agree with you about crafting. It's definitely not in a good spot at the moment.
I also kinda agree that the lack of plumbing makes getting clean water a hassle, but it's honestly not that bad since the other options are still available.

I really have to question your other complaints, though.
Are you playing challenge modes like CDDA/Winter is Coming, or similarly difficult setup?

1. "Food secure". I'm not sure why the change in regards to farming suddenly makes you "food insecure". Trapping and foraging are still very much viable food source options. Fishing is a little bit more tedious now, but it's also still a very vialble option. And while the loot for non-perishable is still pretty crap as of now, I don't think it's really so bad that you'll starve to death in the default rarity setting.

2. Just how many livestocks do you keep that you can't keep a steady supply of water through catching rainwater using multiple feeding troughs?

3. Why are you sawing logs manually? You could've just used the crafting menu and the logs will drop on the floor once your inventory is full.

I think that the issue is actually of all the systems combined.

An example about food:
Secure food is not that hard...if you have points in fishing, foraging or hunting/trapping.
If not it can become tedious. As in to level up, or find the books to level up.
Meanwhile you need to get that food form houses and trash bings and buildings. -> but the new exhau system and or muscle strain can slow this progress also down.
- So it takes longer to aquire even lootable food, and quite often the amount is less than it used to be in B41.

But even so i would say it is not hard. It is just more tedious and/or time consuming.
And this is the issue.
Every single system in the game now is focusing on time consumption. To increase it.
Aka to make the game into Project Grindor, where you constantly and always need to grind. But your rewards are down to 20% of what they used to be in B41.
It is just not rewarding enough or engaging. I basicly cannot even bother to play for more than max 15 in game days. If i even start up the game.
I did not even bother to engage with crafting system in detail, did not even meet a single farm animal. Because by the time i could have i just lost interest in the game as it is so tedious.

[expletiveshift1]

IF they lean heavily into MP and the players buy into it, it could make builds REALLY matter.

You'd have to have specialized characters filling specialized roles. You'd need melee bruisers for general zed clean up and control, and firearms experts for hordes, base defense, etc.

It COULD be amazing with the right people playing at the right time. it WON'T. But it COULD.

[CoreyDL]

Originally posted by expletiveshift1:

IF they lean heavily into MP and the players buy into it, it could make builds REALLY matter.

You'd have to have specialized characters filling specialized roles. You'd need melee bruisers for general zed clean up and control, and firearms experts for hordes, base defense, etc.

It COULD be amazing with the right people playing at the right time. it WON'T. But it COULD.

In my experience it's been difficult/impossible to find and build a server like that. The people who are interested in such and committed enough to be online regularly are few in number. They join, get bored, leave for a newer server, etc.