SOLO Difficulty

[rcummons]

I am unhappy with the solo player difficulty in A17, so I went into the progression config and set it to allow 2 skill points per level. while this made things easier as a solo player. I think it would be better if I could somehow just increase the amount of resources you get when mining/salvaging instead of altering character progression. does anyone know if this can be altered and if so what file its in? The converse is just to spawn in extra resources via the CM command which is just too easy and hard not to abuse. I want to play the game but it is just overly difficult solo. especially once you get up into the tougher hordes. its hard to collect enough resources just to repair your defenses much less build better ones.

[Shurenai]

Raise block damage done by the player (facilitates rapid gathering of materials) and exp gained to some multiplier over 1. So you level faster, and still only get 1 skill point per level, and you can tune your experience a bit more finely.

I personally play on exp 1.5x, and 300% block damage, because I despise gathering materials, and in A17, unless you're using an auger/chainsaw, you're not likely to run into zombies while mining/harvesting out in the wild.

Also lower the difficulty of the game itself, if the above isnt enough.. 1 or 2 difficulty really makes dealing with zombies early game much easier, and you can always raise it back up later if you findit being too easy.

[Damnion]

Meh, an open hallway lined on the side with barbed wire is all the base you need. They do very little damage (as long as you don't block the entrance) so not much repair time. Get fancy and throw it underground or in the air with a winding path, and 50 pillar flooring at the end to make them fall out and run back to the entrance, if you like. Most of your scavenging will be about acquiring ammo after that. I play solo. with a bow and only switch to guns for feral radiated cops and do fine well into the late game. Course i do a lot of stealthing, most of the radiated z's will go down with 1 or 2 shots from a maxed crossbow with steel bolts and high headshot/ambush bonuses. Just don't miss. Protip: Use wooden ramp frames to get in windows and over things without making noise.

[rcummons]

Thanks For The Tips, Both tactical and otherwise. I appreciate it.

[cellF11]

I haven't tried to tweak skills in progression file before so not 100% sure but

<perk name="perkMotherLode" parent="skillConstruction" name_key="perkMotherLodeName" desc_key="perkMotherLodeDesc" icon="ui_game_symbol_mother_load">
~
~
~
~
~
<passive_effect name="HarvestCount" operation="perc_add" value=".2,1" level="1,5" tags="oreWoodHarvest"/>

I changed this value=".4,2" and I think it doubled resource yield.

sidenote:
-I'm using miner build early game with less combat skill but bunch of support skill,ore vein gives a lot xp and feels not much problem with fighting.
-In higher difficulty it might be nice idea to make killzone in existing large POI to save your resource.

What I saw recent is you can lure zombies to weak spot of your wall,I stacked few hatches at main entrance and using it melee blockade, when I close steel one Zs rerouted to punch wall,in result they stepped onto metal spikes left untouched.and I had time to repair metal hatch at front.
i could use this because I'm playing 25% enemy block damage atm but new AI feels interesting if I can make bait in such way.hope dev will add meat block or something to attract them first.

[Niuq]

Motherlode fixes your resource gathering issues and since you get xp based on how much you harvest it pays for itself over time.

If your playing single player could also try something like giving yourself a Fireaxe a pickaxe a structral brace and ergonomic grip for each. This will make gathering far less painful.

Also the fireaxe is solid melee weapon so that should help with early game progression

Fun is more important that doing it right, but if you need nothing then there is nothing pushing gameplay.

[Vorshin]

i play solo, i have xp set to 300% so at the start its fast leveling, when it does slow down you should have maxed out skills that your using. Think i am about 45-50 levels away from capping that out and then xp will be a moot point for me.


There is 1 achievement that i just cannot seem to get. Looked online and it said to kill 1000 zombies in a single game, i have killed 5000 or so and died no more than 60 times and still not got this achievement. The other 4 are all kill other players (PvP) which as a solo player is not viable to obtain for me.

[rcummons]

Originally posted by Niuq:

Motherlode fixes your resource gathering issues and since you get xp based on how much you harvest it pays for itself over time.

If your playing single player could also try something like giving yourself a Fireaxe a pickaxe a structral brace and ergonomic grip for each. This will make gathering far less painful.

Also the fireaxe is solid melee weapon so that should help with early game progression

Fun is more important that doing it right, but if you need nothing then there is nothing pushing gameplay.

I Try not to open the CM Console at all. its too damn easy to just whip it out when you get in a tight spot.

I have set Player xp to 150% and player block damage to 300% as suggested and that seems to make it more solo friendly without making it too easy. I set the skill points back to one and the AI Block damage to 25% and horde spawn to twenty something. it all works well except for the AI Block damage. it makes it so that zombies take forever to break a simple wooden door in a POI but if its not set that low the zombies mow through concrete and steel blocks too easily on horde nights. that's the one thing that makes me frustrated with this patch. the Devs were annoyed with some of the cheese tactics being employed by some players so they whipped out their own cheese tactic and arbitrarily set zombie block damage through the roof. Its immersion breaking and ridiculous. if they wanted zombies to smash through whatever you can build, why have building in the game at all? OK Rant off. is there something that can be edited to lower horde night block damage without lowering it across the board?
Testing with these conditions makes the game playable solo. I was progressing well and it wasn't too easy. I got caught out and killed a couple times and never had quite as many resources as I would wish. (mainly food) The only issue I had was the fact that on horde night the zombies would obliterate anything I built to slow them down. Barbed wire works well but they ignored my entire base setup and plowed through a bunch of spikes and two 2500 hp steel doors well before I could possibly kill them. even with BOOM Headshot and archery 2. I literally couldn't shoot fast enough to kill more than 2 or three zombies before they smashed through both doors, which is just ridiculous. Luckily I place my bed about 500 yards from my base with a few little supplies so I spent the night running until the bloodmoon stopped.

[Shurenai]

I'm not 100% certain, but, I'm pretty sure there is actually two different settings for AI block damage, one for normally, and one explicitly for horde nights. you could put the normal damage back to 100%, and then lower the horde night damage to 50 or 25%?

[rcummons]

As an aside I had my nephew play a game of 7d2d on my comp. he had never played before but he plays RUST and minecraft so he is used to survival type games. his first horde night he was obliterated in about 90 seconds of the spawn. he managed to kill two whole zombies and spent the rest of the night being killed over and over. Just a hint at what noobs experience in this game. I find it hard to believe this was the Dev's intention.

[rcummons]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

I'm not 100% certain, but, I'm pretty sure there is actually two different settings for AI block damage, one for normally, and one explicitly for horde nights. you could put the normal damage back to 100%, and then lower the horde night damage to 50 or 25%?

Really? I can't believe I missed something that simple... Ill have to look when I get back to the game that would solve everything.

[PurdyDot]

Personally I would recommend turning down game difficulty above all else.
The game scales it's enemy difficulty based on *your performance*.
So the quicker you level and better you do, the quicker your enemy difficulty goes up as well.
I don't know the exact formula. but as a bit of an example, on one of the games I played previously, I had really bad luck with drops and such by the time it was getting near day 7. So i basically "turned back the clock" by a day... then another... and another, till I'd essentially progressed to the point where my character was at about the level i'd have been by day 14 (or a bit higher) before i finally tackled day 7. Aaaand my day 7 horde ended up being pretty much like a day 14 horde (or a bit higher).
Playing again, at the same difficulty, leveling up and doing things normally, resulted in the usual relatively weak 7th day horde.
turning up xp can have the same sort of effect. you level up faster, which increases your "game stage" faster, which make the zombies get tougher faster, *but* you've only had the same number of days to gather resources as the default, so you arrive at bloodmoons less prepared for the types of zombies you will be facing, than you would have if you'd just leveled up normally.
The overall game difficulty level is factored in to the equation used to calculate how tough the zombies are that you will be facing in pois and on bloodmoons.
So if you turn down the game difficulty, it essentially decreases the multiplier used when adjusting foe difficulty.
Which makes it easier to keep up with the zombies as your level (AND their level) increases.
Normal/default difficulty, is supposed to be difficult. In other words, it is *balanced* to be a challenge that will force you to work hard to overcome your foes and situations without dying.
But there are 2 lower difficulty settings that *re-balance* the game for people who do not want to face a zombie force that is balanced that high against them.
So the difficulty setting is designed specifically to do that. To make things easier for players who would like the game to be easier.
Whereas if you do something like *just* turn up exp, then the game essentially gets harder, without turning up the game difficulty, and will probably continue to get harder exponentially, because you have NOT just turned up how quickly your own exp increases; you have *also* turned up the rate at which zombie difficulty increases.
The difficulty increases/scales with progress.
Increasing speed of progress, increases the speed/scale that the game's difficulty increases.
Reducing overall game difficulty, *decreases the speed/scale that the game's difficulty increases*.
So if you want the game easier, decrease the base/default game difficulty.
That will give you more resources by the time you really need them, because the zombies won't get as tough as fast.
If you want to harvest more resources in the same amount of time, *without affecting game balance*, use weapon/tool mods found/bought/rewarded in game, use magazines found in the game, *use resource related harvesting perks* found in game.
All of *those* things are intended to *allow you to gain advantages* in the game *without upsetting the overall game balance*.
In other words, they are designed to work *with, and within* the limitations of the base game balance/difficulty.
The other settings can help you "tweak" some things. But many of those variables will change *more* about how the game plays out, than just a single setting.
So one little "tweak" that might give you a nice advantage in the first week, could potentially render the game too difficult (or even too boring) for you to be able to play a few weeks down the road.
My only other advice, is to remember what game you are playing.
It's called "7 days to die". The whole concept is that every 7 days you have to face death and attempt to overcome an overwhelming foe. Surviving that onslaught, is the primary *goal*, and pretty much the whole "plot" of this game.
So the more you "defeat" the goal of this game, the more you defeat any point in playing it.
There are lots of other games, that contain many, if not most, of the same elements, that don't contain the 7-day element at all, that you could play.
But if you want to play *this* game specifically, without the limitations and difficulties balanced against you...
You could just turn on creative/cheat mode, in order to give yourself all the materials you wanted, whenever you wanted them, to do whatever you desired.
Or, you could just turn off enemy spawning, and progress through the game as last person on earth, battling the elements, surviving, *without zombies*. then you wouldn't have the "prepare for zombie attacks!" rush when it comes to gathering resources. you wouldn't need to gather defense resources at all.
anyway, that's just my thoughts for your consideration.
whatever you decide to do is, of course, up to you. So take care and have fun :)

[Voilodion]

Another way to make horde nights more manageable is to lower the "Blood Moon Count" (under Advanced settings), which determines how large each wave of zombies is. You can make it as low as four, so you don't have as many swarming you at one time, though you'll still have to kill off the same total cumulative number as determined by your gamestage.

[Taddy Mason]

Originally posted by rcummons:

I am unhappy with the solo player difficulty in A17, so I went into the progression config and set it to allow 2 skill points per level. while this made things easier as a solo player. I think it would be better if I could somehow just increase the amount of resources you get when mining/salvaging instead of altering character progression. does anyone know if this can be altered and if so what file its in? The converse is just to spawn in extra resources via the CM command which is just too easy and hard not to abuse. I want to play the game but it is just overly difficult solo. especially once you get up into the tougher hordes. its hard to collect enough resources just to repair your defenses much less build better ones.

It’s in the progression.xml file I believe. Look for the code relating to the mother lode perk that controls how many resources are harvested per block. Raise it to whatever you want

[cellF11]

As Taddy said what I quoted is setting of mother lode perk in that file. I've been wasting time on mining last night,I think it is working.

value=".2,1" means 0.2 ,comma, 1 (= adds 20% to 100% bonus between level 1~5 of the perk) so I just rewrote there to be 40% to 200%.

7DTD went more like realistic ARPG/survival sim balance at A17, if you want play it like MC or Rust trying A16 or older might be easier to learn basics.you can change to older version via right click game on library>property>beta and join old stable version.
I think dying in your first horde as newbie is intended die&retry since older version but yeah A17 has steep balance.which also can be more fun as you get experienced around things.so good luck to your nephew.

My advice for A17:
Dev nerfed early construction but buffed loot.so use stealth attack(crouching) to avoid risk and keep scavenging cars and small POIs for equipment.and hijack mid large POI for early base/walling for construction.
When you go underground mining, it seems to be high chance finding ore nearby surface rock or cluster of resource plants.
Also some furniture like workbench gives refined metal for early repairing,check everything with wrench.

ps: You might want to reduce debuff duration of that annoying "Death Trauma".check buff.xml too.

[rcummons]

OK after much messing around the best solo balance for me is Default difficulty 1.5x XP, Mod the Progression xml and double the values for the motherload perk. and drop bloodmoon AI block damage to 50%. and set Horde spawn to 16. This gives you enough building resources to keep your stuff repaired, and upgrade without spending 75% of your time farming. it prevents the zombies from wiping you out before you can kill them as long as you build a decent base and keep some combat skills. yet you cannot ignore a Horde or they WILL still kill you easily. It leaves you enough time to run the occasional quest or find a buried treasure without crippling your survival chances. and gives enough time to clear at least one large POI per week of gametime.
Alpha 17 on standard difficulty, as a solo player you had to spend 100% of your time gathering feathers, mining iron and stone and building complex AI Pathing traps to survive horde night and then do it all over to repair and upgrade your contraption for the NEXT horde night. as a solo player you couldn't spend a day clearing a large POI or running a quest at the merchant or even just exploring for a new place to farm loot. it basically stopped you from experiencing a lot of the game.
The only problem I have run across is that after you get motherload 2 you get so much xp from mining you don't have to do much else to level. but if I nerf the xp values for it it makes early progression too hard.
Hopefully Alpha 18 will fix these issues.