It's just me, or the experimental version it's way TOO hard?

[RogueEsp]

Title. I don’t know if “mah skillz” are shit or something, but for some reason the lastest stable (0.A Kauffman) it’s way more easy than experimental… Like wow, flurries, -24 degress, zombie dogs/skeletal dogs/spitters/shockers everywhere… I tried everything, from attacking in a window/bush, incinerate bushes and make zombies walk over them, etc, etc, etc… I die before day 3, more often before day 3…

It’s any way to make the game easier? I don’t know, there’s some newb-friendly ammount of spawn rate scaling? Just wow, I don’t want to play stable because I feel like experimental as a lot of interesting stuff…

[deadmerits]

I used to be able to walk into town with just about any character, find a window and go to town. Develop from there after I have a clear area. Now with hoards, accurate temps(for early spring anyhow) and the (maybe updated now) clothes that don’t fit the season, I find I have to take things alot slower. Find or start with warm clothes then slowly build up combat skills on easy enemies such as the dogs that seems to constantly follow you, waiting to pick your carcass clean when you fail.

Also maybe turn down the spawn rate, make a new character, then turn the spawn rate up. The spawns (zombies ect…) will be low around where you started, then you load a new area it will have the new spawn rate. Gives you like an easy starting area, surrounded by the peril.

[Snaaty]

You should take more points for the start, I guess. Go ahead and take 20, there are still enough ways of screwing up. That way you’ll start with decent stats and skills though.

Also, taking one point in tailoring is mandatory, really. (Or not, depending on how patient you are.)

Check your torse encumberance, and consider taking a profession that already has some combat skills, scoundrel and gangster both are very good, imho.

[jimboblordofeskimos]

Tailor is a top notch starting prof as well. Being able to craft all your basic gear in the shelter is damn handy.
My general advice for builds is: 12 points negitive traits, tailor, 1 point in dodge, night vision, 10 dex, 10 per, 12+ str, 10+ int, use the rest on maybe another good trait like stylish (super powerful) or some extra stat points.

Dont think you should be seeing temps that bad starting in spring though, I fired up todays experimental and was getting temp ranges of about 2+ to -6 day one in spring, its rough, but workable.

[Coolthulhu]

Many people disliked DDA for being way too easy. Now it’s no longer way too easy during daytime.

Shockers and spitters make windowknife less of an insta-win. Dogs make running away in the day less of an insta-win (although I don’t like how they also ruin early characters who can’t hit them). Shocker brutes actually force melee chars to stop and think and maybe even wait till night. The only insta-win left against zombies is nightvision+night.

Early game isn’t even about “gitting gud”, more about discovering simple stuff like “zombies can’t see in the night”. Seriously, I’m not joking with the whole night thing. I think I read about it in the tips&tricks thread and it instantly made me 5 times better at the game.

[Nubsawce]

While I do think some of this difficulty hike is because the player-base has become used to the challenges (they make it even harder and thus for the less initiated ITS REALLY HARD), I do also think that certain tactics worked -too- well and some parts of the early game were too easy. Fruit was just laying around everywhere in piles, for instance. Once you hit melee skill of about, 5 or 6, with a decent weapon (combat knife, wood axe, whatever) you would slap just about anything. Even a Jabberwock.

I think it’s good that we’re forced to handle a challenge differently from grinding a melee skill level. We’ve very possibly got to run from an area until we can also learn archery or gunmanship. Some enemies literally should never be fought because they’re too strong for a normal guy without a mininuke in his pocket (which can go so well in so many ways, as I’m sure you know).

That being said, perhaps shocker stunning should be toned down a little bit to give people a chance to learn without being instakilled when they hadn’t been exposed to it yet. Or maybe not, since I suppose that’s not really the roguelike way to not kill you.

[Coolthulhu]

That being said, perhaps shocker stunning should be toned down a little bit to give people a chance to learn without being instakilled when they hadn’t been exposed to it yet. Or maybe not, since I suppose that’s not really the roguelike way to not kill you.

That’s the one kind of difficulty I’m against - the “You did something new. You die…” kind. While toning down isn’t the only solution (even prompting the player “Do you want to get shocked? Y/N” before every attack would work) I think shockers should be made less capable of instakilling unaware players (both new and those with bad displays). Being aware of a simple fact that shockers zap back on hit is not a skill.

DDA is generally well designed in that you usually know what to expect from things or get informed about it when you attempt to do something. You don’t need to lose a character, read wiki (or even sources) or use debug mode to learn new things. Intentionally going for old Nethack style (newer forks generally avoid bullshit) at this point would be a bad idea.

[Barhandar]

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:7, topic:7398”]I think shockers should be made less capable of instakilling unaware players (both new and those with bad displays). Being aware of a simple fact that shockers zap back on hit is not a skill.

DDA is generally well designed in that you usually know what to expect from things or get informed about it when you attempt to do something. You don’t need to lose a character, read wiki (or even sources) or use debug mode to learn new things. Intentionally going for old Nethack style (newer forks generally avoid bullshit) at this point would be a bad idea.[/quote]
They need two things: recharge time (so they can stun, but not stunlock in a cycle of “oh wow, so you’re tough and have full winter survivor armor, but struck me in melee? Have some -1 full bar on all your bodyparts.”), and their description stating that their electricity sparks around metallic items nearby.
While prompting player before every hit is bad idea, bad style, and is detrimental to the game.

Speaking of electricity, wearing conductive material on every body part (i.e. full medieval armor) should make you ELECTRIC_IMMUNE. Hail path of least resistance! Hail Faraday!
Oooh, and ‘induction coil’ bionic which makes you get bionic power if struck by electricity (regardless of immunity to it)!

[Coolthulhu]

While prompting player before every hit is bad idea, bad style, and is detrimental to the game.

No, prompting player every time they attempt to enter a nearly-harmless smoke cloud, a zombie appears far in the distance while crafting/reading or rubble is examined could all be considered bad ideas, bad style and detrimental.
Asking player if they want to get stunned for 5 turns is an idea better than asking if they want to enter an acid puddle - which is a good idea. The game even asks you if you want to enter a cloud of sparks shockers create, which is far less harmful than zapback.
It’s not like anyone ever mows through a horde of shockers without having the CBM on. Attacking a shocker with a conductive weapon is either an act of desperation or carelessness.

There is really no way to defend this claim. Not in this game. For asking to attack a zapbacking enemy to be anything but a great idea, you’d first need to remove poison cloud warning, smoke cloud warning, spark cloud warning, acid puddle warning, “do you want to butcher with hostiles around” warning and prompts on rubble, underbrush, fruit shrubs/trees and chain fences (except when it’s ambiguous). Every single one of those is far less needed and more detrimental than zapback warning would be.

[Nubsawce]

[quote=“Barhandar, post:8, topic:7398”]While prompting player before every hit is bad idea, bad style, and is detrimental to the game.

No, prompting player every time they attempt to enter a nearly-harmless smoke cloud, a zombie appears far in the distance while crafting/reading or rubble is examined could all be considered bad ideas, bad style and detrimental.
Asking player if they want to get stunned for 5 turns is an idea better than asking if they want to enter an acid puddle - which is a good idea. The game even asks you if you want to enter a cloud of sparks shockers create, which is far less harmful than zapback.
It’s not like anyone ever mows through a horde of shockers without having the CBM on. Attacking a shocker with a conductive weapon is either an act of desperation or carelessness.

There is really no way to defend this claim. Not in this game. For asking to attack a zapbacking enemy to be anything but a great idea, you’d first need to remove poison cloud warning, smoke cloud warning, spark cloud warning, acid puddle warning, “do you want to butcher with hostiles around” warning and prompts on rubble, underbrush, fruit shrubs/trees and chain fences (except when it’s ambiguous). Every single one of those is far less needed and more detrimental than zapback warning would be.[/quote]

I second that a prompt is probably the stylistically most appropriate idea given the rest of the game’s decisions for such things.

[Valpo]

Well you could add a prompt but i d just deactivate them all (including the prompt for shocker zs) safe the ones that warn you while doing drawn out actions. I think the times i died by my own carelessness where very enjoyable :D.

[Nathan]

[quote=“RogueEsp, post:1, topic:7398”]Title. I don’t know if “mah skillz” are shit or something, but for some reason the lastest stable (0.A Kauffman) it’s way more easy than experimental… Like wow, flurries, -24 degress, zombie dogs/skeletal dogs/spitters/shockers everywhere… I tried everything, from attacking in a window/bush, incinerate bushes and make zombies walk over them, etc, etc, etc… I die before day 3, more often before day 3…

It’s any way to make the game easier? I don’t know, there’s some newb-friendly ammount of spawn rate scaling? Just wow, I don’t want to play stable because I feel like experimental as a lot of interesting stuff…[/quote]

Armor got a much needed tone down, it was simply too good in 0.A, but they also vastly reduced the amount of loot you can get from wandering around. Some of that is warranted, but given the new dangers in the world there isn’t much reason to go exploring into the wilderness the way that there was. I’d still like to see a game mode with lots of loot and the labs packed with enemies however.

The best tip I can give you is to keep safe mode on, you really need to think about engagements now.

[Nighthawk]

Most enemies still can’t see as far as the player, correct? I would find out myself, but the wiki isn’t exactly up to date and I don’t know how to check the game files for that kind of thing.

[Nathan]

Most enemies still can’t see as far as the player, correct? I would find out myself, but the wiki isn’t exactly up to date and I don’t know how to check the game files for that kind of thing.

yeah, in good light conditions as long as you are careful you can run from any engagement.

[KA101]

[quote=“Nighthawk, post:13, topic:7398”]Most enemies still can’t see as far as the player, correct? I would find out myself, but the wiki isn’t exactly up to date and I don’t know how to check the game files for that kind of thing.

yeah, in good light conditions as long as you are careful you can run from any engagement.[/quote]

monsters.json, look for VIS# tags where VIS is a number less than 60. That’s the critter’s vision range under perfect conditions. If the critter has SEES without a VIS# tag, it can see as far as a typical human/PC can. Critters don’t have night vision/IR, though.

“Careful” likely translates to “don’t mess around in urban areas during the day”.

[Nathan]

[quote=“Nathan_, post:14, topic:7398”][quote=“Nighthawk, post:13, topic:7398”]Most enemies still can’t see as far as the player, correct? I would find out myself, but the wiki isn’t exactly up to date and I don’t know how to check the game files for that kind of thing.

yeah, in good light conditions as long as you are careful you can run from any engagement.[/quote]

monsters.json, look for VIS# tags where VIS is a number less than 60. That’s the critter’s vision range under perfect conditions. If the critter has SEES without a VIS# tag, it can see as far as a typical human/PC can. Critters don’t have night vision/IR, though.

“Careful” likely translates to “don’t mess around in urban areas during the day”.[/quote]

Its also good to be weary around forests.