Difficulty levels

[Ente]

Hey there.

Who can explainto me the exact differences of the difficulty levels in the game? What exactly change?

Thanks guys and girls

[SiEgE]

Difficulty alone changes zombie's health and their damage to player.
First half of difficulties I'd call "testing" or "newbie" difficulties. Too easy to kill em in tons.
Difficulties past the middle are better for a survival experience.
The last two difficulties make zombies a damage sponges.

[Khissi]

The lowest difficulty, Scavenger, means that zombies have the least amount of hit points. Also, they do not respond with the 'Rage' mechanism, meaning that they won't start running at you if you make them mad enough. Nothing else is different other than the fact that they will become greater and greater bullet sponges as your game difficulty gets higher.

The most important thing about difficulty is the way it's used to multiply what TFP calls 'Gamestage'. This is the ACTUAL important number that triggers different types of zombies appearing in POIs and in wandering hoards, etc.

Copied directly from the xml file:

There is a metric which maps a player or group of players to a game stage number.


daysSurvived:
This is a running total, kept for every individual player.

Every 24 hours GAME time 1 (day) is added.
On every death "daysAliveChangeWhenKilled" is subtracted from the total.

After this the daysAlive is capped.
It is low-capped at 0, high-capped at "your player level".
At player level 41 you can have a daysSurvived value anywhere from 0 to 41.

gameStage = ( playerLevel + daysSurvived ) * gameDifficultyMultiplier

So if a player was level 10 and survived 4 days playing on the Nomad Difficulty when the game stage points are calculated the game stage points would be
gameStage = (Player Level 10 + Days Survived 4 ) X Nomad Difficulty Multiplier 1.2
The total would be 16.8 or 16 game stage points.

If the same player was level 10 and had survived 25 days and died 2x:
25 days - 2 x 2 (daysAliveChangeWhenKilled) = 21
Then daysAlive of 21 gets capped to player level so 10.


This is how the gamestage of a party is calculated:
The gamestage of all (up to) 6 players is calculated.
The players are sorted by gamestage and only the 5 highest numbers go into the calculation.

The highest GS number is multiplied by "startingWeight".
This then loops down the list and "startingWeight" is reduced by "diminishingReturns" every time.

Example:
Players with GS 120, 30, 60, 91, 5, 80.
startingWeight= 1.7, diminishingReturns=0.22

So we get
120 * 1.70 = 204
91 * 1.48 = 134
80 * 1.26 = 100
60 * 1.04 = 62
30 * 0.82 = 24
5 (is ignored)

... or a total party GS of 524

An interesting fact is that the max GS of a part or player is now KNOWN because the player level (which caps daysAlive) and diff modifier are known
and the party weight factors are known.

With default values you get up to 600 for a single lvl 150 (max) player on max difficulty and for a full party of max level players up to 1800.

<gamestages>
<config
daysAliveChangeWhenKilled="2"

scavengerGameDifficultyBonus="1.0"
adventurerGameDifficultyBonus="1.2"
nomadGameDifficultyBonus="1.5"
warriorGameDifficultyBonus="1.7"
survivalistGameDifficultyBonus="2.0"
insaneGameDifficultyBonus="2.5"9

So, that game difficulty level makes a HUGE difference in how rapidly your hoard night may ramp up, what sort of zombies will be in a POI that you're looting, and how much ammo you'll have to use to put one of them down.

All the other parameters you're able to set, such as run speed and day length, change the way the game is actually played, BUT, the difficulty level simply refers to how tough the zombies are and how fast your gamestage goes up.

[Ente]

Ok, thank you guys. Sad, i hoped there is a way to spawn more zombies. Im on the second last difficulty level and there are to less zombies in the wolrd. I had checked the option to put extra spawn in the world but its very less.
Thanks anyway guys. You helped me :)

[SiEgE]

引用自 Ente：

Ok, thank you guys. Sad, i hoped there is a way to spawn more zombies. Im on the second last difficulty level and there are to less zombies in the wolrd. I had checked the option to put extra spawn in the world but its very less.
Thanks anyway guys. You helped me :)

The game is slightly laggy, since it is a fully dynamic world. You can have tons of zombies during Horde Nights, so no worries(not simultaneously, though).

[Khissi]

If you constantly kill the zombies in an area, as in near your crafting base, it does seem that there are far fewer in the world. However, if you will go to a totally new area and spend some time there, as in, looting a location or whatever, you'll note that area is populated. If you just drive through an area fairly quickly, they don't seem to spawn. It may take a bit to see them since only a certain number of zombies can be alive in the world at any time, but that's apparently a limit the game engine requires or things go sideways.

Also, you can always create a screamer/scout lure and have them bring you some zombie goodness. Lots of torches all over some structure, light up a bunch of burning barrels, go nuts with your auger or forges or whatever, and wait for the xp delivery system to kick into gear.

[Ente]

Yes, i have a place with a bunch of camp fires to trigger a screamer party if i get bored :)

[Aesir]

引用自 Ente：

Ok, thank you guys. Sad, i hoped there is a way to spawn more zombies. Im on the second last difficulty level and there are to less zombies in the wolrd. I had checked the option to put extra spawn in the world but its very less.
Thanks anyway guys. You helped me :)

There is a way to have more zombies spawn in your world. I've changed mine to twice as many zombies spawning in my games. You can increase it more than that... but, even twice as many makes a noticeable difference. Especially very early game.

You do it by editing the spawning xml. Here's a link to a thread on the official forums where Roland gives a detailed explanation on how to do it.

https://forums.7daystodie.com/forum/-7-days-to-die-pc/general-discussion/1720611-how-to-win-getting-more-zombies-in-your-game

[Ente]

Thanks. I read it later and try it.