More emphazis on crafting

[Zaidah]

I know it's been discussed a lot before (especially when magazines were implemented), but after playing Sunkenland, I realized how satisfying it is to craft your own gear. I wish we had more of that in 7D2D.

The main issue currently is that, in order to improve your crafting skills, you have no real other choice but to loot... and in the process of looting, you're likely to find better gear before being able to craft it yourself.

The trader also sells too many high-tier completed items for such a low price sometimes (especially true for high-tier melee weapons). I like to play around trader, but wish it was more of a last-resort helper (to buy critically needed resources at a high price - compared to how many dukes you get from quests and selling) than how strong it currently is. At least, if we get sandbox settings to tweak some stuff about it, that would be neat.

[dopugsnotdrugs]

in alfa 10 we had the ability to craft items for every slot on the body, and then it progressed into 13 or 16 or something, but now we just have four basic slots as far as i can tell.. some sort of chest/body main piece that holds perks and mods almost like world of warcraft jems or whatever, and then the head hands feet.. but we used to have things like shirts, coats, jackets, head to toe armor, it was way more items lol.. halfway to morrowind :)

[Zaidah]

It's not even about how many different pieces we have to craft, but rather when we really need to craft new gears (which is not very often in practice). I don't mind having a bit fewer armor/clothes to wear, but it sucks that we rarely need to craft anything.

I kinda wish they reimplement the degradation system (= max durability of an item lower every time it gets repaired) : it would make crafting more relevant again (since currently, once you have a good item, you keep it forever unless you find something even better), and also bring more uses to some armor bonuses (like the nerd's set that lower item degradation's rate).

[SiliconPenguin]

Originally posted by Zaidah:

I know it's been discussed a lot before (especially when magazines were implemented), but after playing Sunkenland, I realized how satisfying it is to craft your own gear. I wish we had more of that in 7D2D.

The main issue currently is that, in order to improve your crafting skills, you have no real other choice but to loot... and in the process of looting, you're likely to find better gear before being able to craft it yourself.

The trader also sells too many high-tier completed items for such a low price sometimes (especially true for high-tier melee weapons). I like to play around trader, but wish it was more of a last-resort helper (to buy critically needed resources at a high price - compared to how many dukes you get from quests and selling) than how strong it currently is. At least, if we get sandbox settings to tweak some stuff about it, that would be neat.

I think if you turn loot down to 50%, or less, that might fix the issue for you. And, to be honest, you could just craft your own items. In other words, just don't buy those items from the trader. Obviously that's just a solution for single player, but you didn't say whether you were referring to single player or multiplayer.

[Roland]

I felt the same way you did in Alpha 21 but since 1.0 I feel like I do craft most of my own gear and I rarely find better gear than I can craft. Usually when I find something better than I can craft it is something I'm not perked into.

I do think if you quickly leave the forest and start looting in tougher biomes in high tier POIs then you probably do find a lot of gear that is better than you can craft since those places have a lootstage buff. I don't know if that is what you are doing or not.

[optOut]

Yeah. Trader inventories are still too lush and loot can let you skip tiers. The end game comes too fast in part due to hustling to prepare for each blood moon.

[Zaidah]

I'm playing with 25% loot most of the time, but still find full items of higher tier than my crafting capabilities in the final loot of tier 3 and higher points of interest, even in pine forest sometimes. Not that often do such items appear, but when they do, the item I get will make any progress in the related book category irrelevant for a long while.

You're right that the trader is the main culprit though. I hope the planned overvhaul will adjust the prices and lower the higher-tier items available compared to your level.

I think bringing back the degradation after repair (not level, only max durability) would fit with the state of the game. Lucky loot would then only be a temporary gear boost as their durability will eventually become too low from using them too much/long.

It's just my opinion at the end of the day, I guess I wish the game revolved a bit more about crafting than looting (i.e not looting full items as often. Crafting is still their ofc but mostly for ammo and base building, and less needed for weapons and gears).

[Pain Weasel]

Originally posted by Roland:

I felt the same way you did in Alpha 21 but since 1.0 I feel like I do craft most of my own gear and I rarely find better gear than I can craft. Usually when I find something better than I can craft it is something I'm not perked into.

I do think if you quickly leave the forest and start looting in tougher biomes in high tier POIs then you probably do find a lot of gear that is better than you can craft since those places have a lootstage buff. I don't know if that is what you are doing or not.

My experience since 1.0 has been much the same.

I craft almost 100% of my gear once I get past the initial early game stages. The first day or so I use whatever I loot, but after that I can usually craft much better gear than I find. In a typical game I can max out a couple crafting skills by around day 14, then it is just a matter of finding enough parts to build the gear.

Originally posted by Zaidah:

The main issue currently is that, in order to improve your crafting skills, you have no real other choice but to loot... and in the process of looting, you're likely to find better gear before being able to craft it yourself.

It depends entirely on what you are looting. For example, early game I focus on finding and looting book stores or specific POIs that have a higher chance for the loot I want instead of running quests and because of that I can very rapidly increase my crafting skills but at the same time I don't really find other loot, just books and magazines. Since I am getting more specifically targeted loot rather than general loot my crafting ability quickly outpaces my game stage.

[Shockwave]

I'm closing in on Day 100 and never found a lvl 6 item. Did they change those to craft only now? I also could always craft items better than I could find in 1.0.

Which actually leads to the other problem of why do a trader quest or raid a high level POI since you don't really get much out of it. There is nothing special about T5 and T6 POIs compared to what you can get in much lower ones for far less ammo.

Should only be able to find the T6 crafting supplies in High level POIs chests. That would at least force you to raid them upgrade your equipment.

[Mithrandir]

Since 1.0 they kind of keep crafting a bit more relevant by removing any Q6 drop or sold. That's quite better than A21 where traders and loot were always 2 steps ahead of crafting.

It's an improvement for crafting but I agree with OP that they could go further than that to promote even more crafting, especially with traders (force lower Quality, higher prices, and such).

[william_es]

Not everyone wants to craft stuff. The devs have provided alternative methods that embrace other playstyles. I am really baffled that people don't understand this.

Some people completely ignore trader quests, so the fact the trader has all that sweet loot is completely pointless to them. They don't sell or buy from the trader.

Other people stripmine entire towns, breaking down every car, stove, fridge, etc for parts. Also another playstyle.

[Mithrandir]

Originally posted by william_es:

Not everyone wants to craft stuff. The devs have provided alternative methods that embrace other playstyles. I am really baffled that people don't understand this.

Some people completely ignore trader quests, so the fact the trader has all that sweet loot is completely pointless to them. They don't sell or buy from the trader.

Other people stripmine entire towns, breaking down every car, stove, fridge, etc for parts. Also another playstyle.

How I view it is OP doesn't want to remove any playstyle.

It's about not having one erasing another, specifically not having loot beating the need to craft. The challenge of the devs is to make loot and crafting progress (and traders) at about the same pace or there's no point crafting anything.

[Zaidah]

From previous answers, I would say crafting is on par/a bit higher than looting, but only for gears that are related to perks you have put the most skill points into. For the rest, looting will most of the time get you better stuff compared to what you can craft : I guess it's not a bad thing as you can't spec into everything at once, but it also makes many crafting books irrelevant, except for mixing more of them so you don't level your main ones too fast. Add to this that items can never break or become less efficient, and any good item will last your forever until you find a better one (which means no need to craft any gear that isn't better).

The trader is the main issue, because I love to play around trader (i.e gathering money and spend it wisely to get what I need for a bloodmoon, the quests in general...), but the prices and available items often make it broken compared to the rest of your progression (a lvl 4 sledge hammer for around 5k dukes as base price is so cheap compared to the crafting requirements in books and resources).

[Pain Weasel]

Part of the problem with traders is the Daring Adventurer perk.

Each level of the perk adds 10 to your trader stage which can quickly unbalance trader inventory selection vs loot at early stages of the game. For comparison the Lucky Looter perk is a percentage modifier rather than a flat increase so the effect is opposite, it doesn't do much early game but in the later stages of the game it can have an impact.

Here is the calculation for trader stage: (player_level * (1+quest_tier_mod)) + (DA * 10)

That can have a disproportionately large impact early on, particularly when you consider you can max out DA as early as level 17 if you dump all your points into INT and DA, or level 14 if you find an INT armor mod. You can have a trader stage of 60 while at the same time a loot stage of only 20. Even if you went into the wasteland at level 20 you'd only have a loot stage of 50, but with DA you can sit in the forest and buy better loot without the risk.

Then there is the issue with how gear unlocks in a trader's inventory.

Most items have a trader stage template that has a min and max value for trader stage that controls when it will be available to be selected for the inventory.

Here is the template for "baseTier1", which includes iron tools, straight from the XML:

<traderstage_template name="baseTier1"> <!-- Iron Tools|T1 Weapons|T1 Explosives -->
<entry min="1" max="999999" quality="0"/> <!-- Fallback for items without quality -->
<entry min="15" max="40" quality="1"/>
<entry min="30" max="50" quality="2"/>
<entry min="40" max="60" quality="3"/>
<entry min="50" max="70" quality="4"/>
<entry min="60" max="70" quality="5"/>
</traderstage_template>

This means a Q3 iron pickaxe won't show up in the trader's inventory until you have a 40 trader stage, and it will no longer be available once you hit 60.

The problem is that this steady progression where you unlock new quality levels as you increase your trader stage is only used for baseTier0 and baseTier1 items, basically stone and iron. Once you hit steel TFP decided ALL quality levels should unlock at once for some reason.

Here is the XML for baseTier2:
<traderstage_template name="baseTier2"> <!-- Steel Tools|T2 Weapons|T2 Explosives -->
<entry min="1" max="999999" quality="0"/> <!-- Fallback for items without quality -->
<entry min="50" max="999999" quality="1"/>
<entry min="50" max="999999" quality="2"/>
<entry min="50" max="999999" quality="3"/>
<entry min="50" max="999999" quality="4"/>
<entry min="50" max="999999" quality="5"/>
</traderstage_template>


At trader stage 50 they won't even sell Q5 iron tools yet (see the baseTier1 template above), but they have the potential to sell Q5 steel tools because steel uses the baseTier2 template. That seems busted to me.

It makes no sense that the template for "baseTier2" items is the same for all quality levels, particularly when you can get a +40 bonus to your trader stage from the DA skill which means you can hit that minimum trader stage point as early as level 17 (14 with mod) without ever having completed a single quest.

It makes no sense even without DA, but with DA it just seems broken.

Sorry for the rant, but this is just so frustratingly unbalanced.

[Zaidah]

Thanks for the breakdown of how trader's inventory works in conjunction with Daring Adventurer, it's actually very relevant as I'm playing INT build most of the time (and lvl DA right after I got my melee skill at lvl 5, for the double reward). It's indeed too powerful and also doesn't make much sense with the rest of the progression : skills don't affect your immediate crafting capabilities anymore (only better chance of looting related books, gears and resources), but DA let you potentially get every higher tier stuff so much sooner ? It should indeed be a % like lucky looter, or not affect the trader inventory anymore and instead give other bonuses.

[Deklend]

How dare you expect survival crafting in this survival crafting game you bought. Just go out and loot & shoot instead. Survival Crafting is for nerds, playing survival crafting games like a boomer shooter is for chads! Rock & Roll! Metal! AC/DC is the greatest band ever and no one has even come close to their talent!