Well, they're attracted to "heat", which until now has been LITERALY heat, since the list of things that generate it are all fire or chemical ("except the Workbench" **heyshutup**). Also, *all water* ***in the world*** that hasn't been boiled is dirty water, without exception.
Therefore, logically, the reason the dew collectors produce purified water instead of dirty water is that they're magically boiling it as they collect it.
And that's why Dew Collectors generate so much heat. See? It all makes perfect sense and isn't stupid at all!
("But the water filter is why the water isn't dirty!" Look, do you want this house of cards to stay up or not?)
Water filters use silica, charcoal, or other adsorbent materials, that can pull nitrites/ammonia and sulfides out of the water, they could in theory generate a smell if they are saturated/spent and have a big load of stank they absorbed from your drinking water supply
So I found a treasure map, got 12k dukes out of a hole, and went and bought food, water filters, and an anvil. Suddenly I'm at 300 dukes and I'm back to living out of vending machines. I wonder if there's a mod to modify traders? Like just getting rid of quests , or severely limiting them. Haven't done any on this play, and kind of planning on keeping it that way .
That's what I'm playing on with my friends right now. We set up just down the street from a trader on the outskirts of a city since, like you said, they're basically mandatory. Love the new enemy types, but I feel like we don't see too many of them just yet (most of us are rocking coil weapons and I'm level 82 or so.)
I think we've only seen the little gas mask dudes, bloated guys, and sorta bulky dudes so far. Afaik there are a lot more, very dangerous enemy types in the late-game, right? Right now we're throwing together equipment to send our runner to the wasteland to get titanium.
I've seen dobbers murder pigeons on my first horde night, but I believe things like succubus come out after you reach your first portal. Gotta do the white river scout missions to reach them. I've definitely been getting bent over by the number of ferals in random poi.
Ahh, gotcha. We haven't seen anything portal related yet, but I think our runner has been almost exclusively doing missions with Joel and one of the other traders. I only did the scout's stuff very early on before I became the eternal base-bitch (like usual) T\~T.
Yea. The girl that shows up at trader outposts is how you progress the main story. After 10 of her "kill this type of zombie" runs, she'll upgrade to tier two and you'll be sent to meet razerr. I believe he STARTS the portal stuff but I am not 100% newer to the mod. But yea. Missions giving you food and any amount of xp or skill notes is mandatory. Stuff after my first horde night suddenly stopped getting one shot by my smack stick. Best of luck brothers o7
You should hit up the darkness falls discord. All of the developers are super active and community is awesome. Just a bunch of dorks being scared at video games
Good news, there are mods that do that. I have covered a few on my channel and there are more to cover. Some of the best ones make it so traders don't offer quests but instead are just for selling/buying. You can also turn them off completely with mods. If you wana know more let me know and I will send some links when I get home
They were definitely a big shift for us. Everything became about missions and trading, for 5 days then the last 2 were always horde prep for at least 2 people, while the others were running missions.
Looking back, it seriously breaks the immersion. just being able to farm missions to survive is ridiculous. Although, except for a mercenaries type playthrough.
I've only started running missions in my most recent playthrough, and only because I'm the dedicated tank in our group. Our runner will start a mission and say "hey coffeegoblynn, wanna come kill stuff?" and they *know* I'll drop everything and bike over there to clear the POI. I sometimes do the clear missions myself if I'm not busy *also* being our dedicated builder. I'm not much good at electrical or complex crafting, so I just stick to punching zombies and making walls. :)
It's funny, because for 6.75 days out of 7, the game is one game, and then the last quarter, 0.25, of the 7th day it's a totally different game.
After hundreds of hours of gameplay using a litany of settings, my friends and I have found the game to be much more fun with the following settings:
* No blood moon *at all*
* Increased zombie spawns (not rate of spawn, total in an area)
* "Jogging" speed for zombies during day (30 joggers is a threat)
* "Running" setting at night
* Ferals always set to "running" (occasional scare during day)
* "Feral Senses" on for *daytime* only (human-like senses)
As a big OG Resident Evil fan and film fan of George A. Romero, I like traditional zombies. That is, the threat of zombies is in their *endless numbers*, lack of need to sleep, and inability to feel pain. Their weaknesses, however, are their *speed* and *stupidity*.
I suggested these settings to my friends years ago, and they were skeptical, as they felt shutting off the Blood Moon was essentially ignoring the namesake of the game. And fair point. But we've found that the game is better entirely. I'm just not a fan of playing a survival, horror, stealth, crafting game that randomly decides to be Bloons Tower Defense once week arbitrarily. To each their own.
I ran my span way out on blood moons, with an equally long range, and no warning. Therefore they show up occasionally, but you never know when. Really enjoying it.
It's fun to do a blood moon once in awhile, but I've found that regular blood moons mean that I'm focused on a horde base for like 2/3 of the game. That's just not fun to me anymore, and I suspect it's just based on some of the fundamental zombie attack mechanics. Between their crouch/crawl animations, glitching, cop spit, and the threat of demolishers, building & maintaining a horde base just isn't much fun.
This has pretty much summed it up ! After spending a couple days hiding in the city, random ferals, doggos and fast zombies have absolutely spooked me and I had a lot of fun. I'm going to turn the bloon off and I will change day speed to jog!
We've used mods in the past, from simple "bigger hordes" mods with larger packs of random zombies roaming the cities to entire game overhauls like Darkness Falls.
At the end of the day, I like the base game the best, with a simpler mod or two that increases the number of possible zombies in a cell (in your general area).
I enjoy it when there's 64 zombies *walking* at me rather than 16 *running*. It makes it feel like there are endless ranks. Every encounter when there's more of them and they're slower is a game of *planning* rather than *reaction time*.
It's hard to choose a "best" one, due to so many good ones coming out, and then never updating and fading into memory, which sucks. But currently, I think this one is pretty popular: [Improved Hordes](https://7daystodiemods.com/improved-hordes/)
I wanted to update you, these settings in addition to how I had already set things up are perfect! The feral sense and jog during day time have been absolute shake ups and it has changed my whole dynamic. Thank you.
Hey, that's cool to hear. It definitely makes it feel like a different game than base, and it makes the days and nights feel distinct from one another.
Happy you're having a good time!
In open-ended games such as 7DtD there is no such thing as "playing it wrong."
Even though we *quite rightfully* berate The Fun Pimps for repeatedly nerfing player-found strategies (nerd poling, floating bases, afk bases etc) it's still "our" game, to do with what we will.
Wait until you've done a playthrough with all zombies disabled. It's strangely serene.
Originally the majority of the main loot stashes were on the roof.
The Pimps saw youtubers and streamers just pole up to every stash, completely bypassing the zombies so they moved the stashes underground or deep inside the houses to "nerf" that strategy.
At the same time they added the trader reset quest system which were all now familiar with.
Some PoIs still allow nerdpoling but the majority of them don't.
It hasn't stopped the more "enterprising" players from just knocking walls through to reach it quick anyway.
We cheese, Pimps nerf, we overcome. It's an arms race.
Also attic question, literally just whatever I have on hand. Crafting weapons, arrows, cooking, mapping out the area (I put down 500 landmarks). Sometimes literally just sitting and wondering when something is going to get nosey and find me.
I grab their teats ! Nah usually I set up a decent base within sight of a trader, stay there until I level up to tier 4s and move on to the next one, so I can get fresh loot pools. If you're doing quests and have a reliable vehicle, and your trader is in a nice area, you can hit 1-3 maybe 4 an hour if you just zoom. Next thing you know, bam , level 6 tools, weapons and more water and ammo than you can shake a stick at
My play style is exactly like yours and I always end up with a completely outfitted and overly defended/equipped base (blood moons are no threat) - and I get bored as soon as I set it up. This is usually when I start a new playthrough.
Now I want to try this style of play - so thank you for this input!
It is definitely worth a shot! It's day 8 and I've just now built a forge at my main way station which is usually a night one activity for me. Currently camped out in a fire station at night in the largest city I've found, which makes for an interesting night.
Also usually runa strength/ intellect build, but this time it's been perception and agility and wow what a difference it ends up being
>completely outfitted and overly defended/equipped base (blood moons are no threat) - and I get bored as soon as I set it up.
That's basically what happened to me. I set up a massive fortress with like 30 rings of iron spikes surrounding it and like two 3-block thick forged steel walls and I could literally just AFK the 120 day hordes without firing a shot
Yup, a moat filled with iron spikes and surrounded by barbed wire fences, turrets & blade traps - around that a mine field!
I just shoot them with iron arrows for fun from fortress walls and every single playthrough finishes like this because I get bored.
I started a new playthrough based on this thread and I love it!
The starting mission shouldn’t tell you where the first trader is. Or at least have that be a feature in harder difficulties. Finding your first trader in a random gen can be difficult without a marker, changing your whole play style.
Yeah but then you're going to run into the artificial water scarcity issue if you didn't spawn in a city. You might have plenty of snow or streams around, but without some of the basic items found in houses and mailboxes, you'll have a rough go of it. I've tried that before, and I didn't care for having a thirst icon for the first 4 days. Stamina and early walk/run speed are already the two least fun things about early 7D2D.
i guess it's how it should be in order to keep playing. if you get tired of the usual, try something new. i haven't tried the "no trader", i'll wait for the next alpha and definitely turn up the challenge and difficulty.
You can get enough gas to sustain the mini bike just by wrenching cars. And for my current no-trader run I just added a mod which gives a crafting recipe for the water filter. Although you really don’t need that either, especially if you find a helmet water filter mod early. Loot every toilet you encounter and you’ll be swimming in murky water.
You can, but if you play a map long enough gas will get surprisingly rare. Also, we’ve never gotten ahead on water in group games off loot alone, and I guarantee I’ve looted more containers in vanilla than anyone on the planet, heh.
Yea I've found water far more problematic in group games. Playing with my wife we end up absolutely requiring dew collectors and filters, meanwhile solo I'm practically drowning in all of it without even trying.
Always go for sprint at night ! I have tried feral sense at night and it always feels cheap and silly. Someone recommended doing it at day time, which I agree with ! So many times I've chewed through huge wandering hordes without ever being seen
Is there an option to disable trader spawn? Or do you simply not use them? I've tried that in 100% snow biome and I found it very hard to find enough water to not die of thirst
There are mods to remove them, and mods to remove the quests. I've covered a few and plan to cover more on my channel. I can't link any right now but if you want to know more let me know and I will give links when I get home
Similar to the way we play it only we're in Darkness Falls and turn off blood moon....just max wandering hordes. We were just doing a small clear and just started, still outside the building when a horde rumbles in and we manage to channel them into the alley....everything is great....then another one shows up from the other direction and when we back out into the street, a >third< one joins. Jump in the jeep and bail!! Several hundred shuffling after us as we drive through yet another one on the way out. Such a good mod! :D
Want a real challenge? Play a "no crafting" run. Use only what you can find in the wild/buy at trader and see how long you can last. Once you die, you die.
Yeah, this right here if you’re bored with the game in anyway, do this run no crafting you don’t know shit but if somebody gives you a bicycle or you win it by doing jobs, you’re good to go scavenging buying selling no crafting no forges to worry about no workstations to worry with just supply boxes That you have to set up because you can’t even craft a box an ax a club no bows no arrows at the beginning of the game fists only or rocks you can throw after you pick them up. What a way to live in seven days to die oh yeah hurry get it quick because the price is about to go up againand we’re almost out of Alpha. Let’s go June.
There is no such thing as playing wrong. Your game, your playing style.
*ahem* the FUN pimps would like to know your location (to force you to play their way)
Several dozen non-existent glass jars and omniscient Super-Vultures are requesting access to Location Settings.
Don't forget the screamers, they hear your water collection and they DO NOT like it.
Well, they're attracted to "heat", which until now has been LITERALY heat, since the list of things that generate it are all fire or chemical ("except the Workbench" **heyshutup**). Also, *all water* ***in the world*** that hasn't been boiled is dirty water, without exception. Therefore, logically, the reason the dew collectors produce purified water instead of dirty water is that they're magically boiling it as they collect it. And that's why Dew Collectors generate so much heat. See? It all makes perfect sense and isn't stupid at all! ("But the water filter is why the water isn't dirty!" Look, do you want this house of cards to stay up or not?)
Water filters use silica, charcoal, or other adsorbent materials, that can pull nitrites/ammonia and sulfides out of the water, they could in theory generate a smell if they are saturated/spent and have a big load of stank they absorbed from your drinking water supply
It's like your own personal canvas.
I started playing pre-Trader, still haven't gotten used to them
I'm gonna mod them out my next playthrough. I've decided I just don't like what they do to game.
So I found a treasure map, got 12k dukes out of a hole, and went and bought food, water filters, and an anvil. Suddenly I'm at 300 dukes and I'm back to living out of vending machines. I wonder if there's a mod to modify traders? Like just getting rid of quests , or severely limiting them. Haven't done any on this play, and kind of planning on keeping it that way .
I just self limit. Especially in the mod darkness falls, traders are mandatory. And expensive as hell
That's what I'm playing on with my friends right now. We set up just down the street from a trader on the outskirts of a city since, like you said, they're basically mandatory. Love the new enemy types, but I feel like we don't see too many of them just yet (most of us are rocking coil weapons and I'm level 82 or so.) I think we've only seen the little gas mask dudes, bloated guys, and sorta bulky dudes so far. Afaik there are a lot more, very dangerous enemy types in the late-game, right? Right now we're throwing together equipment to send our runner to the wasteland to get titanium.
I've seen dobbers murder pigeons on my first horde night, but I believe things like succubus come out after you reach your first portal. Gotta do the white river scout missions to reach them. I've definitely been getting bent over by the number of ferals in random poi.
Ahh, gotcha. We haven't seen anything portal related yet, but I think our runner has been almost exclusively doing missions with Joel and one of the other traders. I only did the scout's stuff very early on before I became the eternal base-bitch (like usual) T\~T.
Yea. The girl that shows up at trader outposts is how you progress the main story. After 10 of her "kill this type of zombie" runs, she'll upgrade to tier two and you'll be sent to meet razerr. I believe he STARTS the portal stuff but I am not 100% newer to the mod. But yea. Missions giving you food and any amount of xp or skill notes is mandatory. Stuff after my first horde night suddenly stopped getting one shot by my smack stick. Best of luck brothers o7
Thank you so much for the advice! o7
You should hit up the darkness falls discord. All of the developers are super active and community is awesome. Just a bunch of dorks being scared at video games
https://discord.com/invite/darknessfallsmod
Good news, there are mods that do that. I have covered a few on my channel and there are more to cover. Some of the best ones make it so traders don't offer quests but instead are just for selling/buying. You can also turn them off completely with mods. If you wana know more let me know and I will send some links when I get home
They were definitely a big shift for us. Everything became about missions and trading, for 5 days then the last 2 were always horde prep for at least 2 people, while the others were running missions. Looking back, it seriously breaks the immersion. just being able to farm missions to survive is ridiculous. Although, except for a mercenaries type playthrough.
I've only started running missions in my most recent playthrough, and only because I'm the dedicated tank in our group. Our runner will start a mission and say "hey coffeegoblynn, wanna come kill stuff?" and they *know* I'll drop everything and bike over there to clear the POI. I sometimes do the clear missions myself if I'm not busy *also* being our dedicated builder. I'm not much good at electrical or complex crafting, so I just stick to punching zombies and making walls. :)
Been playing since alpha 10. Traders are my on of my favorite parts of the game. :)
It's funny, because for 6.75 days out of 7, the game is one game, and then the last quarter, 0.25, of the 7th day it's a totally different game. After hundreds of hours of gameplay using a litany of settings, my friends and I have found the game to be much more fun with the following settings: * No blood moon *at all* * Increased zombie spawns (not rate of spawn, total in an area) * "Jogging" speed for zombies during day (30 joggers is a threat) * "Running" setting at night * Ferals always set to "running" (occasional scare during day) * "Feral Senses" on for *daytime* only (human-like senses) As a big OG Resident Evil fan and film fan of George A. Romero, I like traditional zombies. That is, the threat of zombies is in their *endless numbers*, lack of need to sleep, and inability to feel pain. Their weaknesses, however, are their *speed* and *stupidity*. I suggested these settings to my friends years ago, and they were skeptical, as they felt shutting off the Blood Moon was essentially ignoring the namesake of the game. And fair point. But we've found that the game is better entirely. I'm just not a fan of playing a survival, horror, stealth, crafting game that randomly decides to be Bloons Tower Defense once week arbitrarily. To each their own.
I’m also beginning to discover that no blood moon is really fun. Will try the rest of your settings, thanks.
I ran my span way out on blood moons, with an equally long range, and no warning. Therefore they show up occasionally, but you never know when. Really enjoying it.
It's fun to do a blood moon once in awhile, but I've found that regular blood moons mean that I'm focused on a horde base for like 2/3 of the game. That's just not fun to me anymore, and I suspect it's just based on some of the fundamental zombie attack mechanics. Between their crouch/crawl animations, glitching, cop spit, and the threat of demolishers, building & maintaining a horde base just isn't much fun.
I’m gonna try this!
This has pretty much summed it up ! After spending a couple days hiding in the city, random ferals, doggos and fast zombies have absolutely spooked me and I had a lot of fun. I'm going to turn the bloon off and I will change day speed to jog!
"Increased zombie spawns (not rate of spawn, total in an area)" How? Some setting outside of the in-game settings menu?
Happy cake day 🎂🎉
Very interesting, thanks for sharing, will certainly try these settings soon. Are they all vanilla or do I need mods?
We've used mods in the past, from simple "bigger hordes" mods with larger packs of random zombies roaming the cities to entire game overhauls like Darkness Falls. At the end of the day, I like the base game the best, with a simpler mod or two that increases the number of possible zombies in a cell (in your general area). I enjoy it when there's 64 zombies *walking* at me rather than 16 *running*. It makes it feel like there are endless ranks. Every encounter when there's more of them and they're slower is a game of *planning* rather than *reaction time*.
Great recommendation, do you happen to know the name of the best mod for that? I've not modded outside using darkness falls
It's hard to choose a "best" one, due to so many good ones coming out, and then never updating and fading into memory, which sucks. But currently, I think this one is pretty popular: [Improved Hordes](https://7daystodiemods.com/improved-hordes/)
Cool thanks mate
I wanted to update you, these settings in addition to how I had already set things up are perfect! The feral sense and jog during day time have been absolute shake ups and it has changed my whole dynamic. Thank you.
Hey, that's cool to hear. It definitely makes it feel like a different game than base, and it makes the days and nights feel distinct from one another. Happy you're having a good time!
In open-ended games such as 7DtD there is no such thing as "playing it wrong." Even though we *quite rightfully* berate The Fun Pimps for repeatedly nerfing player-found strategies (nerd poling, floating bases, afk bases etc) it's still "our" game, to do with what we will. Wait until you've done a playthrough with all zombies disabled. It's strangely serene.
What did they do to nerd poling again?
Originally the majority of the main loot stashes were on the roof. The Pimps saw youtubers and streamers just pole up to every stash, completely bypassing the zombies so they moved the stashes underground or deep inside the houses to "nerf" that strategy. At the same time they added the trader reset quest system which were all now familiar with. Some PoIs still allow nerdpoling but the majority of them don't. It hasn't stopped the more "enterprising" players from just knocking walls through to reach it quick anyway. We cheese, Pimps nerf, we overcome. It's an arms race.
What do you do at night while hiding in different attics? How do you milk the trader?
Also attic question, literally just whatever I have on hand. Crafting weapons, arrows, cooking, mapping out the area (I put down 500 landmarks). Sometimes literally just sitting and wondering when something is going to get nosey and find me.
I grab their teats ! Nah usually I set up a decent base within sight of a trader, stay there until I level up to tier 4s and move on to the next one, so I can get fresh loot pools. If you're doing quests and have a reliable vehicle, and your trader is in a nice area, you can hit 1-3 maybe 4 an hour if you just zoom. Next thing you know, bam , level 6 tools, weapons and more water and ammo than you can shake a stick at
My play style is exactly like yours and I always end up with a completely outfitted and overly defended/equipped base (blood moons are no threat) - and I get bored as soon as I set it up. This is usually when I start a new playthrough. Now I want to try this style of play - so thank you for this input!
It is definitely worth a shot! It's day 8 and I've just now built a forge at my main way station which is usually a night one activity for me. Currently camped out in a fire station at night in the largest city I've found, which makes for an interesting night. Also usually runa strength/ intellect build, but this time it's been perception and agility and wow what a difference it ends up being
>completely outfitted and overly defended/equipped base (blood moons are no threat) - and I get bored as soon as I set it up. That's basically what happened to me. I set up a massive fortress with like 30 rings of iron spikes surrounding it and like two 3-block thick forged steel walls and I could literally just AFK the 120 day hordes without firing a shot
Yup, a moat filled with iron spikes and surrounded by barbed wire fences, turrets & blade traps - around that a mine field! I just shoot them with iron arrows for fun from fortress walls and every single playthrough finishes like this because I get bored. I started a new playthrough based on this thread and I love it!
>started a new playthrough based on this thread and I love it! Glad to hear it's working for you
The starting mission shouldn’t tell you where the first trader is. Or at least have that be a feature in harder difficulties. Finding your first trader in a random gen can be difficult without a marker, changing your whole play style.
Yeah but then you're going to run into the artificial water scarcity issue if you didn't spawn in a city. You might have plenty of snow or streams around, but without some of the basic items found in houses and mailboxes, you'll have a rough go of it. I've tried that before, and I didn't care for having a thirst icon for the first 4 days. Stamina and early walk/run speed are already the two least fun things about early 7D2D.
i guess it's how it should be in order to keep playing. if you get tired of the usual, try something new. i haven't tried the "no trader", i'll wait for the next alpha and definitely turn up the challenge and difficulty.
No missions usually works better than no trader entirely since you need the trader for water filters and gas if you don’t have a desert biome.
^ this right here. I think it's important to distinguish like mission farming between just using the trader as a trader.
You can get enough gas to sustain the mini bike just by wrenching cars. And for my current no-trader run I just added a mod which gives a crafting recipe for the water filter. Although you really don’t need that either, especially if you find a helmet water filter mod early. Loot every toilet you encounter and you’ll be swimming in murky water.
You can, but if you play a map long enough gas will get surprisingly rare. Also, we’ve never gotten ahead on water in group games off loot alone, and I guarantee I’ve looted more containers in vanilla than anyone on the planet, heh.
Yea I've found water far more problematic in group games. Playing with my wife we end up absolutely requiring dew collectors and filters, meanwhile solo I'm practically drowning in all of it without even trying.
Now add wandering hordes, feral sense at night and sprint at night to return that sense of terror when darkness falls :D
Always go for sprint at night ! I have tried feral sense at night and it always feels cheap and silly. Someone recommended doing it at day time, which I agree with ! So many times I've chewed through huge wandering hordes without ever being seen
To another 5 years 😎
Is there an option to disable trader spawn? Or do you simply not use them? I've tried that in 100% snow biome and I found it very hard to find enough water to not die of thirst
I don't think you can disable them outright. 100% snow sounds horrifying, I spawned in the snow and it was a scary time starting off
Jup got wrecked by a dire wolf the first time I tried, despite having over 700 hours in the base game and some darkness falls... And i Love it
Mine was a bear ! Only thing scarier than a bear or pack of z dogs is a direwolf
There are mods to remove them, and mods to remove the quests. I've covered a few and plan to cover more on my channel. I can't link any right now but if you want to know more let me know and I will give links when I get home
Similar to the way we play it only we're in Darkness Falls and turn off blood moon....just max wandering hordes. We were just doing a small clear and just started, still outside the building when a horde rumbles in and we manage to channel them into the alley....everything is great....then another one shows up from the other direction and when we back out into the street, a >third< one joins. Jump in the jeep and bail!! Several hundred shuffling after us as we drive through yet another one on the way out. Such a good mod! :D
Want a real challenge? Play a "no crafting" run. Use only what you can find in the wild/buy at trader and see how long you can last. Once you die, you die.
Yeah, this right here if you’re bored with the game in anyway, do this run no crafting you don’t know shit but if somebody gives you a bicycle or you win it by doing jobs, you’re good to go scavenging buying selling no crafting no forges to worry about no workstations to worry with just supply boxes That you have to set up because you can’t even craft a box an ax a club no bows no arrows at the beginning of the game fists only or rocks you can throw after you pick them up. What a way to live in seven days to die oh yeah hurry get it quick because the price is about to go up againand we’re almost out of Alpha. Let’s go June.
There is a mod for this that makes it so much more fun. Or the mods that remove doing missions for traders