Struggling with A21? Here's some tips.

[Plagen]

A21 released, and I see some people complaining about things being difficult and such, so I thought maybe it would be helpful to give some tips for both new and returning players alike.

In A21, water is a bit harder to come by early on and you will get torn to bits quite easily if you aren't careful.

• First of all, when you first spawn in, you might be tempted to run for the nearest structure (POI) and loot its goodies inside. Before you go inside, check the upper left for the Skulls. Does it have a lot of them? Don't try it yet. Only one or two? Give it a go.
  
  
• Next, before entering that POI, make sure you have a weapon. A club and primitive bow are basically all you're gonna have. Some make some arrows and such. Just follow the tutorial if you're not sure how to do so.
  
  
• Now that you're equipped, you might be tempted to just charge in and take the zombies on directly. Don't. I recommend either sneaking around and killing them with a bow or crafting a wooden Hatch to place in doorways that you can open to block the zombies. But, keep in mind zombies can sometimes crawl over the hatch.
  
  
• Early game, don't take on large hordes zombies unless you have plenty of room to run away to and avoid getting hit. If you take on a group indoors, you're more than certain to die or get an injury like a sprained or broken limb.
  
  
• Always know your surroundings. This can't be stressed enough. Don't get focused on the zombie you're killing or that loot in front of you. If you have a moment, look around. Make sure you aren't going to be flanked and hit from behind.
  
  
• Don't always loot right away. You may want to clear an entire POI before looting to make sure things are safe. If not the entire POI, at least clear the room. Make sure corners are cleared, check behind furniture, and make sure to look up. Zombies can hide in the ceilings. Especially the white tiled ceilings like in stores/offices.
  
  
• Hear a dog? Run. Get away. You can't take it. You might be able to possibly jump on top of something the dog can't follow, but regardless, jump your way to safety.
  
  
• Never get surrounded and always keep your distance. The moment you get cocky is the moment you get a broken leg, start bleeding out, and then die soon after.
  
  
• As you get skill points, consider where to spend them wisely. You need to buy the main Attribute levels before you can buy stronger actual skills. It is best to focus on one attribute at the start. I recommend Agility and increasing Archery, Parkour, and Hidden Strike. With Archery & Hidden Strike, you can kill things silently in one arrow, usually. With Parkour, you can more easily flee if you get overwhelmed. Max Level Parkour is ESPECIALLY good at running away, since you can jump much higher up to safety, usually to a spot you're untouchable and can fire arrows down at your enemies.
  
  
• Now that you're taken your first POI, you'll be wanting to get food & water. For food, it is simple enough to hunt a deer, rabbit, chicken, or boar. Don't go for bears, you'll die. For water, always check toilets, water coolers, and other beverage containers. It will be Murky, so cook it in a fire to make it not hurt you when you drink it.
  
  
• With some loot, food & water, you should be looking for a place to live. Even temporarily. It can be the place you just looted, or you can build a little shack in the woods. Just get a place you can put down a chest and dump the loot your not using yet. Preferably you want it near a Trader, so you can just follow the quest tutorial until it leads you to one.
  
  
• With a place to live, you now want to focus on Quests. Talk to the trader and take the nearest quest. Complete that quest and acquire xp, dukes, and loot. Repeat. Early on, try to aim at doing at least one, if not two, quests a day. Don't do these quests at night or you risk getting killed by faster zombies.
  
  
• During the night, build up your base or fortify the place you took over. You'll need it for the Night 7. If you need ideas for bases, there are plenty out there online to look up. Just do what you can.
  
  
• Those Dukes you got? If you find yourself running low on food or water, buy some from the trader to get you by. Your Duke goal should be to buy at least one Water Filter from the trader. Once you have a Water Filter, build a Dew Collector and place it to get passive water income. The more the better. At 4-5, you'll basically never need water again unless you are using a huge amount of it.
  
  
• At this point, your basic needs of food and water should be met and the 7th day should be quickly approaching. Keep looting what you can to get better gear/supplies.
  
  
• Day 6 & 7, you may just want to focus on building up your base in preparation for the 7th night horde. If not Day 6 too, all of Day 7 should be making sure your base is ready. Remember one thing: Most of the time, zombies take the path of least resistance to reach the player. Never make a house with only one entrance/exit. Always have an escape hatch in case things go south. You can use wooden spikes to kill zombies passively, but you'll lose out on the XP of killing them.
  
  
• Night 7: Pray your preparations are enough. Fight the horde as best as you can, but you might die. That happens to the best of us. The first horde night is the roughest. Just try to survive. If you have to abandon your base and run somewhere else to live, do it.
  
  
• Day 8: Assess the damage from the horde. Repair your base. Note where the zombies focused their attacks. Those are the places you want to fortify before Night 14. But for now, just make your base not swiss cheese and return to looting & questing.
  
  
• Loot, kill zombies, do quests, level up, spend skill points, and read magazines. Craft or buy better gear. Try and get your first gun before Day 14, but don't use it. Save it and its ammo for Night 14.
  
  
• At some point in questing, you'll get a Bicycle for free. use that to get around faster. It also has a bit of storage to make looting more efficient. I suggest keeping at least 1 Honey/Antibiotics in it along with medical supplies in case you get caught off guard somewhere. That way, if you get infected you don't have to go all the way home to cure it.
  
  
• At this point, you'll be pretty set. You'll be familiar with the game and able to survive. Just keep looting and improving your base. Night 14 might be rough as well, but it should go better than Night 7. At Night 21 you shouldn't have to worry about the hordes too much and should feel safe.

That's about it for a simple list of tips. Honestly, the main take-away is to just be cautious and secure your water income early. After you get a decent gun, plenty of ammo, and good armor, you can throw caution to the wind more often and just run in to a POI and shoot the place up.

Edit:
I want to add an update here. I started a new Insane difficulty run with a random seed today and all other settings left to default. I followed these tips and have ran into no issues at all. 12 Murky Water on Day 1. Dew Collector on Day 3. No deaths or close-calls while sticking to 1-2 Skull POIs. Day 5, I've got a fortified Cobblestone bunker just from working in the night and I'm up to like 50+ water mainly gathered from looting. Dew Collector has only created about 4 or 5 at this point. Things are going smoothly.

[Die Zahl]

tl;dr

[Seftak]

A tip i might add about dogs : if you see a dog house in the POI's yard, or a plastic dog cage, it is very well possible there is one or multiple dogs in the area. Be aware of it or skip it if you do not have a firearm at hand.

[minisith]

This is what people are missing. I have not died once in my 14 in game days of playing. Now I have to reinstall and end back to day one. Late game is currently boring to me anyways till bandits are in.
Tip; your first horde night you can find a rooftop with a hatching leading up you can create a block over that hatch leaving a one block gap and upgrade it to cobble for a quick horde base. Restaurants and stores will have these.

[Dreadstone]

RDCV: Spam Trader quests. Profit

[Brevan]

If you are struggling to find non-murky water to drink, then go ahead and drink murky water. Use food to overcome the HP loss, or go ahead and toss a point into the faster-healing perk (I didn't notice this using extra food, it must be very subtle), or Iron Gut (reduces Dysentery chance and general food/water loss). With an open slot on the tool belt, you can drink from lakes and gutters by pressing 'E' after you leave the cross hair still for a couple seconds (a little prompt will pop up).

Dysentery does nearly nothing (uses food/water slightly faster for a few game-hours).
You can't go over 100% Dysentery (100% doesn't kill you).
Having zero food does nearly nothing (-1HP occasionally, lower max-stamina).
Having zero water does something (-1HP occasionally, no stamina regen at all (but you can still walk, jump up, sneak, use ranged weapons, and open containers)).

[Yooka]

Originally posted by Die Zahl:

tl;dr

BOO THIS MAN!!

I liked the article. I wouldn't agree with every part of it, but the gist is good/useful for newcomers, or people returning to A21.

What gets my goat (nothing to do with anyone in this thread) is that people pretend like an average player, following these rules will get stacks and stacks of water and tea. False and Disinformation. It may be harder for some, still super easy for others, but there are definitely tricks I haven't grasped yet to make sure clean water is an afterthought before day 10 or 11, it's usually right up there with beefing up the base and having a decent weapon. I'd prefer it if consistent food was that high a priority, not water. Breaks my suspension of disbelief, but that's just me.

[Plagen]

Originally posted by minisith:

This is what people are missing. I have not died once in my 14 in game days of playing. Now I have to reinstall and end back to day one. Late game is currently boring to me anyways till bandits are in.
Tip; your first horde night you can find a rooftop with a hatching leading up you can create a block over that hatch leaving a one block gap and upgrade it to cobble for a quick horde base. Restaurants and stores will have these.

If you're getting bored late-game, you could always try different strategies for Horde Nights. Like, not using a base, fighting in a random POI, etc.

[Ragequit Inc.]

One thing I'd add is; always have blocks on your hot bar. They can get you out of a lot of trouble. I prefer even having a ladder selected. You can basically climb a wall near instantly, provided it happens to be oriented correctly. Or hope you have time to rotate it. :)

[Maddawg]

Another good thing is the have 6 or so spike traps built and on your hotbar...if you do get into it with a Zdog and have a few seconds to deploy them..you can then angle and run the dog into them. This will slow it and also if you put 3 or more down should kill the dog...make sure to axe the dog for materials!

[Kara]

Originally posted by Brevan:

If you are struggling to find non-murky water to drink, then go ahead and drink murky water. Use food to overcome the HP loss, or go ahead and toss a point into the faster-healing perk (I didn't notice this using extra food, it must be very subtle), or Iron Gut (reduces Dysentery chance and general food/water loss). With an open slot on the tool belt, you can drink from lakes and gutters by pressing 'E' after you leave the cross hair still for a couple seconds (a little prompt will pop up).

Dysentery does nearly nothing (uses food/water slightly faster for a few game-hours).
You can't go over 100% Dysentery (100% doesn't kill you).
Having zero food does nearly nothing (-1HP occasionally, lower max-stamina).
Having zero water does something (-1HP occasionally, no stamina regen at all (but you can still walk, jump up, sneak, use ranged weapons, and open containers)).

I find this to be all wrong. Dysentery will cause you to have low hp and NO ENERGY which is already taxed like hell in this update. You won't be able to mine, chop trees, forget attempting to fight something...It's a death sentence.

All the tips from the OP could be condensed into "be careful"

[Skelatorrr]

New Player here. I am on day 14 and cant fine the trader? Ive just been looting POI's Is there a standard location?

[Flare |UKCS|]

Originally posted by Skelatorrr:

New Player here. I am on day 14 and cant fine the trader? Ive just been looting POI's Is there a standard location?

The first trader should be a quest after you complete the tutorial quests... ie build the bedroll, axe, pants, club, bow, arrow, block, upgrade block, campfire... then it will tell you where the closest trader is located.
note: you dont need to leave the bedroll there, place it and then pick it up and scrap it... dont bother breaking down the block and campfire, it takes more time than its worth, just take your skills and then hit some rocks and trees to get some wood and rock, then loot nest to get feathers and eggs as you follow the marker to the trader.
Try find a POI near the traders doors, and make that a temp base to store stuff and your campfire until you do 7 trader missions, then when you get the Bicycle you will get a mission to open up new trading routes, this will take you to a new trader and make T2 missions available.
You can elect to make the new trader your new area to base in, or go back to the first trader and carry on there, up to you.

[Tuvalu]

I would add. Get a part of armour in every slot as soon as possible. Do something against encumbrance. You can craft a clothing pocket mod at day1 for 3 of your clothes

[vera32_2000]

The best about these "tips" - almost all are completely or partially wrong.
If you "hear" a dog, my friend, its too late to run - it has already seen you and attacks. Back off not to get hit and kill it, and say "Thank you doggy for meat for my garden and leather for my armor". Craft self-made weapons ASAP and take ammo as trader quest reward.
Never get cornered and dont fight a group of zombies - LOL How? Never enter a POI? Because its how the new POIs work - Zs spawning all around you out of nowhere.
And if day 7 horde is a problem for you - you definitely do something basically wrong. It takes 10 minutes and not much res to build absolutely safe base which needs almost no repairs, at least untill cops, vultures and demolisher appear in mass.

[Flare |UKCS|]

one odd tip I would add, zombies act odd on uneven surfaces, either break down rubble on the floor (pile of wood or stone that shows part of the building fell down) or dont fight zombies on those piles, same with places that could make a zombie crouch... even closets and cupboards will make 'em crouch and lunge.
In short, try fight them on flat surfaces... even stairs will make them do something odd.