u/BackwoodButch

So, here's a little bit of an update; this is the 3rd round of testing out a 'realistic' WIP Walking Dead preset.

This time, I have not died (but have had a couple close calls, especially night 1 which was actually hellish as apparently zombies are attracted to you having dysentary, lmao). Temu Negan aka "Tegan" here is utilizing the bat/shotgun build (I was testing out the level 6 steel club I looted at the time of the screenshot and still working on scrapping other armours to transmog my actual armour set for Negan's classic look). I looted every POI in the Pine Forest town I was situated in, and was sick and tired of being neighbours with Rekt - though I will say, the Hoarder House made for a nice first base with plenty of resources to clear out at night time (see photos 4&5).

Anyway, I moved everything to the burnt forest around day 19 or so once I unlocked the mini-bike and vehicle storage mods, and am currently clearing out this town (which unfortunately, seems to have more or less the same type of POIs as the last one). I decided to use 'The Bill Gearz' place, mostly with the garage for my workstations and storage.

So with these settings below, here's my feedback and what I'll change for round 4.

https://preview.redd.it/d33qtdk2xkhh1.png?width=1789&format=png&auto=webp&s=f8b97840b034032a9ea3104e99db62bee16e5353

1. Max Enemy Tier. Unfortunately, even with keeping the Level Stat Bonus turned off, I find that the higher level Perks / Armour / Weapons do help mitigate the baseline 100/100 Stamina/Health at this point, and the only close calls I've had were when it was a lot of zombies as found in the wasteland, but the difficulty just wasn't there. Earlier on, definitely, but with the way this game works, you still eventually start to get better. This just delays it. I'll be keeping it off, but I think I need to go ahead and go with the next tier of zombies in the very least even if it's not necessarily 'realistic' to the show with having more than just your regular style zombies.
2. Heat Map Sensitivity. Turning this on Low was a good start; screamers will spawn now and again, and it felt like there were, in fact, more wandering hordes even if that's not a specific setting (yet). I'll up this to default, I think.
3. Medical Abundance. This felt like a fair amount, though kind of frustrating that the specific medical loot containers will still spawn but they'll have actually nothing in them, but I suppose that's the pay off to lowering the medical abundance.
4. Electrical Output. Again, haven't quite gotten far enough along to test this out. I may need to try to do an Intellect build in the future to advance that.
5. Food/Ammo Abundance: These still feel too high, in all honesty. With the number of predatory animals that spawn (especially given that, when you limit Max Enemy tier to Strongs, you get a ton of snakes and coyotes more than anything because Zombie Dogs do not spawn), I had a lot of meat early on, and did find a decent number of canned food. Ammo still felt relatively available especially once you started putting points into gun perks, but I did trade "ammo for ammo" with Rekt (aka selling any 7.62/9mm/magnum and buying shotgun shells). Which leads me to my next point...
6. Traders. Personally, I do think that when you can sell early on is a bit of an advantage, especially if you're a loot gremlin like I am, so that you can get food and drink and keep yourself from immediately dying rather than trying to loot as many POIs as possible. It is boring without doing quests and trade routes to find other traders, BUT with the goal of trying to keep it like The Walking Dead, I need to leave that as is. I think to up it to a true Hard Mode, I will be turning traders off. Even with the 'low item' count and only refreshing every 4 days, they often still had the necessary basics that I needed to buy.
7. Crop Growth. This one was good, it seemed to take about 5-6 ish in-game days to grow crops at 150%. I'd like to try the full 300% now.
8. Repair Degradation. Honestly, 5% is a little low for each repair, so I think 20-25% would make that much more challenging.

Anyway, once again, thank you for anyone who reads my posts. I am always open to suggestions in this process. That said, I do miss playing the regular version of the game with the hordes, and my brother has recently finally updated his game, so I may take a bit of a pause on this trial and error process to play co-op with him. But, as always, I want to make this the most effective preset available for others, so it will continue until I'm satisfied and then I'll share with everyone. :)

It was around Day 12 as "Mick" Grimes (to pair with the in-game playprofile "Rachonne" lol) and I'd looted nearly every POI in the immediate area I was camped out in (shoutout to Joe's USA convenience store; I'm sad I never got to fill the 'yard' with chickens, just the coop!), so I decided to take on the U.S. Army Post 7 on the edge of town...

However, I did not have nearly enough ammunition nor arrows by the time I hit the basement level and soon got overwhelmed (even though I only had Max Enemy Tier set to Strongs!) when I realized I did not have enough points in Parkour to jump back out of the elevator and had no building blocks on my person like an absolute noob.

Anyway, here are the settings. I made some changes from my first attempt.

https://preview.redd.it/ciwewg1w6egh1.png?width=1769&format=png&auto=webp&s=1f14f4fb8a586e34d15a001d704931405eaee67c

1. Level Stat Bonus. This was one that caught my eye because, realistically, we do not live by video game rules and our baseline stamina and health points would not change as we got more zombie-fighting experience, especially when you are scounging for any kind of edible food to stay alive rather than focusing on getting gains with protein consumption (though certainly running more from zombies would increase your cardio ability over time, provided you were able to eat enough to sustain yourself and all that spent energy). But anyway, I digress. I decided instead of changing the Max Enemy Tier like I proposed last time, to alter this setting in order to make it more challenging even as the loot tiers and skill levels progressed; it certainly added to the feeling and likely possibility that you could still become overwhelmed even by zombies if you weren't careful, just like the show. Sure, walkers are slow and easy enough to kill if you stab them in the head hard enough, but try doing that 20-30 times in the span of 5 minutes while trying not to get surrounded indoors... Even before the army post basement, there were a couple times I got down to <30 HP and thought, well shit.
2. Disallowing Map/Day&Time/Compass. Switching these off definitely challenged my brain a little, in order to remember which direction my base was when coming out of various POIs. I do like it, as it adds a little bit more realism, especially when using a randomly generated map. Obviously, people in the apocalypse could find old maps or begin to draw their own over time, but I just wanted to try it out. I did like the no clock but I've played nearly 600 hours in this game, so I can hear the ambient background sounds and know when I hear 'evening' that it's time to get home. My base had a calendar in it as is, and a clock that wasn't working, so by 'crafting' a new clock, I imagined it was just getting the OG to work again, but it was fun to actually see the clock inside Rekt's working too! Definitely keeping this.
3. Food/Drink/Ammo/Med Abundance levels. This one feels better than last time, though I still found quite a lot of ammo even early on (obviously putting skill points into certain things will add finding specific ammo types more common), but even before I starting putting points into handguns, I had a small stack of like, 80x7.62mm and like 10 magnum rounds that I sold originally to get dukes for canned food. (Mostly as I hadn't yet gotten a cooking pot or grill for food recipes). On that note...
4. Traders. I do like having the traders set to not claimable/protected because it does give you a little safe haven during opening hours (after I respawned and had to run naked and afraid around until I found my old base, I used Bob's in the desert as a reprieve from the wolves hunting me down for sport LOL). Lowering the item count level was also great because it felt more realistic that they'd only have a few things on offer. It's definitely a bit of a crutch to still be able to buy food or meds or what not, so I think if I want to up the ante again, I will turn traders entirely off, and really force more looting of homes and such for food items.
5. Crop Growth. The higher the percentage, the longer it takes crops to grow. Obviously, I didn't get far enough to start growing crops (though I did find a random Super Corn seed in a toilet somewhere LMAO), but I think this will be more 'realistic' again, as most crops take weeks and months to be ready (versus say sprouts, radishes, lettuce, etc). It might be really interesting to take it up a notch and set it to 300% and see how many in-game days it takes to grow them.
6. Zombie Tier/Heat Map. As mention previously, keeping the zombie tier set to Strongs (while turning off Level Stat Bonus) still felt okay as far as I made it with my skill progression. They were still challenging, especially soldier zombies and using the hunting knife I found that seemingly had a shorter range of attack compared to the bone knife. Turning Heat Map to very low did bring a couple zombies to my door now and again once I got a forge going, but again, I think a Screamer won't spawn with the tier level at Strongs, so I may increase the heat level again as of course, walkers are attracted to noise and activity so it makes more sense to have it on than not, imo.
7. Electrical Output. Obviously, I did not get far enough to try it out at 25% so that remains to be seen for round 3.

Thanks for reading; once again, suggestions are welcome! I plan on refining this further as I continue to try out different sandbox settings, and then will post the full preset code here. Maybe for the next round, I'll try a bat build as a knock-off discount Negan... Temu Negan... Tegan?? Anyway... back to the grind.

I'd finally gotten the Gyrocopter and at 2:00AM irl, accidentally yeeted myself out of the thing to my death just as a storm was picking up in the desert, and I was trying to just hit 'w' 😭

RIP 'Rachonne', we had fun.

Anyway, here are my sandbox settings for this save.

https://preview.redd.it/fs5xhzxhfzfh1.png?width=1630&format=png&auto=webp&s=310b05979212bcf21522847fbbd92848fc284484

I was intending on going for something true to the show. I did take some leeway as originally I was going to just be entirely nomadic, going home to home each night, but a lot of the time in the show they made encampments, especially as groups gathered together, so I chose a base that looked like it could house a number of survivors, which was the "Navezgane Civil Defence: Emergency Operations Centre" POI, which is a two-level underground bunker. One of the rooms was originally a kitchen and living room, and that's where I kept my things and eventually made workstations, etc.

However, I'm going to tweak a few of these settings because after about 10 days, it began to be really easy to fight the zombies, and at a certain point, I was just playing 'base camp decorator' to match the vibe of the show.

Changes to make for my next playthrough:

1. Ammo Abundance. Even with it down to 75%, I still had a lot of bullets. Mind you, I did only use it in situations with a mob of zombies, but I still had at least 8 full stacks of 7.62mm just from looting. I will make it harder and put it down to 25%.
2. Trader Protection. I mostly just wanted to try this out, and while it was fun getting to see what was behind the counter or in the construction boxes, it felt like a bit of a tap out on loot. Not to mention, Traders Bob, Hugh, and Joel, despite being in the 'tougher' biomes, have wooden fences and zombies constantly broke in while I was trying to sell my loot! I may keep traders ON, and that they can be OPEN all the time, but not claimable. We'll see.
3. Max Enemy Tier. As much as I wanted just... normal zombies, this game's progression system makes it too easy, too quickly. It was definitely hard at first as the towns were very densely populated with zombies and they really focused attention on you quickly until I levelled up sneak related perks. Unfortunately this is a limitation to this game bringing in freaky and radiated zombies, but for the sake of challenge, I'll have to change it. (BTW, the 'Strongs' are Lumberjacks, Bikers, the fat zombies, and the Spider zombie; and predatory animals were limited to snakes, coyotes, and wolves - coyotes replaced zombie dogs in POIs).
4. Electrical Output. This one is interesting and I'm still experimenting with it as I didn't get a chance to really try my defenses out, given that I had Bloodmoon hordes turned off. I think it's reasonable to be able to find and get a gas generator working, or eventually, use solar power if you had knowledge to do so. Still might lower it down though, for realism's sake.
5. Heat Map Sensitivity. This one has always driven me crazy in the base game, so I turned it off entirely. However, I felt like my home base really didn't get that many zombies after about 10-14 days. Now and again there would be a wandering horde but again, maybe the challenge would be to have it back on - especially since Walkers are drawn by sound more than anything, so it might be helpful to emulate that through the heat map mechanic. Or at least, until they give us a setting to change Wandering Horde frequency...
6. Medical Abundance. Similarly to the ammo situation, I think I need to lower this. Sure, anyone can make bandages out of old clothes and rags, but I was finding a lot of antibiotics with just a little bit of effort (roughly about 1 in 7 or so tree stumps would have honey) or easily finding painkillers/steroids, in loot. I think I'll also lower food/drink too.
7. Dew Collector Time. I think I misread this setting for how fast/long it would take, though I didn't really use my dew collector that much until I got a water filter for it because there was water at the bottom of the bunker and I'd just collect it and boil that overnight. Anyway, definitely wanna make it take longer than not.
8. Traders/Quests. Overall, I still think it's somewhat realistic to think that maybe someone would establish some kind of trading eventually, though maybe for this next save to make it harder, and truly rely on looting only, I'll turn traders off too - or just personally limit myself to what I can buy/sell per trader (e.g. Rekt is the farmer, he produces food; Jen is the medic, she has medical supplies, etc., and so I can only trade them items they don't 'have'? I'll workshop that).

Looking at the current sandbox options now after the Coop Update, I can see we can also change Night Time density/spawn rates, so I will change those to be equal with Day Time. I think 25% block damage is fair, given that with enough walkers, they were able to break down doors/pull down fences, etc. I'm debating on doing a horde night but keeping them walking (I allowed ferals to jog because we did see some in the show that moved a little faster than others! - though I forgot to change the AI smell mode from Run down to Jog so that was a bit of a jumpscare at first!). They've also added Zombie Digging which I will be turning off forever lol. (At least, I'm assuming that was added since the update but I will definitely be trying it out!).

My build varied as a knife/bow/agility spec but found an AK-47 relatively early on, and then a sniper rifle which I felt was kind of fitting given the context of the show and just how armed the survivors wound up. I was trying to emulate Michonne with the machete since we don't have a katana or sword in the vanilla game. I'd say I'd try to play as Daryl next time, but that's the same skill set in this game just with the crossbow instead, so maybe it'll be Rick's turn with the .44 magnum...

Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions, please throw them my way. I'm taking a break for a bit after last night's fumble LOL.