opinion wanted.

[TerranceFarrel]

Long ago I played a fantasy game where the hard difficulties were ultimately easier than the easy difficulties.

Easy difficulty meant weak monsters.
Which meant rotten loot.
No magic items.
and the monsters got tougher and tougher, albeit slowly.

A hard difficulty meant there was a decent chance the next fight would kill you, but if you lived you tended to get much better loot, since the good loot went to the tougher monster.

Over ten encounters it would become clear that hard was the way to go.

I'm curious if veteran players of 7dtd feel that 7d does or does not echo this. Is it better to have nastier zombies?

[TerranceFarrel]

weird stream of thought popped into my head.

"Yes. I want blood moon AND blood noon..."

No particular relevance but yeah, I kinda wish there was a "blood noon" setting for maniacs who just can't get enough...

[JimmyIowa]

Not in this game. Both loot and enemy tier are governed by gamestage. Gamestage is a unitless number that starts at 0 on day 1. And increases everytime you go up a character level. So it basically depends on how fast you get XP, but in a non-continuous way.

As gamestage increases you get better loot and tougher groups of zombies. So both the easy game and the hard game will get the same loot and same zombies when they hit, say, gamestage 100.

So your next question is does the hard game get to gamestage 100 faster.

There IS a difficulty multiplier to help gamestage increase faster at higher difficulties. So, in theory, with two identical players doing identical things, the player in the hard game will move up faster. However it is also quite possible for someone in an easy game to be killing easy enemies so fast that he outpaces the timid guy in a hard game. So there's no hard rule about whether easy or hard will move up in gamestage faster. it all actually depends on the player's actions.

[Niuq]

Most of the veterans will play on harder difficulties, due to the number of successful strategies for obtaining gear they have learned.

Harder difficulty does not = better loot
Harder difficulty can increase game stage faster ( gamestage controls what loot can spawn)
So some will say yes higher difficulty = better loot but it is a factor of gamestage.
Play on the difficulty you find challenging is my recommendation.
If can walk around one hitting everything the game will feel far more hollow.
Three zombies rushing for you inside a building should make you think a bit.

[Kattla]

I only play warrior difficulty if i play.
Not a fan(atic) girl of the bulletsponges on higher difficulties.

Higher difficulty in 7 days to die means:
Higher zombie health.
Bullets do less damage.
Supposedly, zombies will rage (hitting random blocks) more easily with higher difficulty.
I think, but not tested, zombies do more damage at least to players.
Gamestage increases faster, and loot-tables are somewhat tied to gamestage.

[Jumboman]

while the above answers are correct, they only deal with the difficulty setting. many solo players will also alter the difficulty by increasing the xp-multiplier.
I think you would be right that, while the game for a 300% xp player would start off easier, the gamestage would rise 3 times faster than for a 100% xp player, which means you have less time to loot, mine and farm resources for a bloodmoon with the same gamestage. Putting the multiplier at 300% probably makes the game more difficult in later stages.

[The Giving One]

You don't even get loot from zombies anymore in this game, exception being the very rare yellow loot bag drop when one goes down.

You get loot from doing quests, POI's and just random searching around the map.

So actually, how difficult the enemies are as compared to what loot you get is not really relevant. It's one of the things I like about this game......

It does not quite play the same as most other kill things - get stuff survival games.

[Crater Creator]

Originally posted by Kattla:

Supposedly, zombies will rage (hitting random blocks) more easily with higher difficulty.

It hadn’t really occurred to me before, but ‘rage mode’ refers to two unrelated zombie behaviors. It refers to when a zombie gives up on pathing to you and just attacks nearby blocks, but it also refers to when a zombie is ‘enraged’ from being hit and briefly acclerates above their normal speed.

I could be mistaken, but I think only the latter effect is affected by game difficulty. More zombies attacking blocks at random may or may not make the game harder, depending on one’s base design. So it doesn’t sound like a good idea for difficulty to affect that.

[Sally]

day + xp determines gamestage
gamestage determines loot and enemies.

So harder enemies and better loot later in the playthrough.
Difficulty level on 7D2D only changes how much of a bullet sponge you and the zombies are.
loot is all about gamestage, turn your xp up to 300% for faster endgame loots.

[Raithon]

Originally posted by Crater Creator:

Originally posted by Kattla:

Supposedly, zombies will rage (hitting random blocks) more easily with higher difficulty.

It hadn’t really occurred to me before, but ‘rage mode’ refers to two unrelated zombie behaviors. It refers to when a zombie gives up on pathing to you and just attacks nearby blocks, but it also refers to when a zombie is ‘enraged’ from being hit and briefly acclerates above their normal speed.

I could be mistaken, but I think only the latter effect is affected by game difficulty. More zombies attacking blocks at random may or may not make the game harder, depending on one’s base design. So it doesn’t sound like a good idea for difficulty to affect that.

I have noticed that when I turn up the difficulty that the rage seems to happen with more frequency