Multiplayer on 7 Days to Die

[-budd-]

anybody else having trouble reading schematics and then not being able to craft the stuff. I could make flaming arrows then i couldn't....no idea...i've read a lot of schematics and they don't always work.

[JasonPratt]

I suspect the problem is that you have to have a certain crafting level in whatever basic category the book references before you can use the knowledge.

Whether that knowledge is wasted, or is sitting around latent to be activated once you level that skill up far enough, I can't guess.

I will add that the 7DtDWiki doesn't talk about items needing a certain crafting level of skill to be craft-able, so my guess could be completely wrong. But it also doesn't say that someone may fail to understand a book or schematic, so...  :-\

If I'm wrong, I would suppose it's a problem with the desynch tendency of the latest build.

[JasonPratt]

So, since I can't get anywhere on my other multiplayer games at the moment {glare}, allow me to flesh out with photos some of the discussion y'all have been reading about in this thread.

With a typical day at Casa Del Aztank.




The day started a couple of 'hours' ago at midnight (days run 50 or 60 minutes per cycle on the Groghead Invitational Server), with me crouched in the bathroom chilling out when I heard something creeping up near the house; after which bloodcurdling screams began erupting around me, and I scurried undetected upstairs, pulling out and nocking my new crossbow to watch the windows and staircase somewhat paranoidly in case anything managed to creep up the walls into the remaining vulnerable places of the house.

And in the game! :D

(This game lends itself to that kind of joke pretty well.)

So now it's a little after 2 in the morning. AzTank set up the server so that dusk starts at 8pm, but the serious darkness -- and the serious zombie spawns -- start at midnight, and only continue until 4 am. I haven't heard any dying undead terrors in a while. It could have been a lot worse; every seven days, extra large hordes spawn and spread across the land, drawn especially to human activity hotspots. I've heard talk of spider-zombies that can climb walls (I don't know about that yet firsthand, but I've seen giant zombie hornets firsthand); and I've been on the receiving end of a 28 day horde where feral zombies (which are all-purpose ass-kicking melee zombies) were able to jump and climb like players. (That night and the next morning also introduced me to the hornet zombies among other things. And a few clipping bugs. Not limited to the hornet zombies, ba-dump-tish.)

Fortunately, I dropped into the game tonight much earlier, soon after dawn, so I've already gotten a good stock of safe water (more on that later); and before he left, AzTank dropped me off a spare crossbow which I am now thinking of marrying it is so awesome y'all. Also, this is the apocalypse and I'm lonely and the hot blonde woman occasionally sharing my room at the other main house is actually a dude (with a wife), so...

Also, AzTank said he heard the other main house (Budd's) got rolled by the 35 day horde, which is a dang shame as it had a basement filled with water. Which in this game is a lot like having a basement filled with infinite meat but better because it doesn't draw zombies.

Right, but this is a tour of Casa Del Aztank, and a typical day in 7DtD. Well, typical if you live out in the boonies as I prefer to do. Several of the more experienced players are working on scavenging a main town about a kilometer east of here. This whole game-day, however, no one else dropped in, so it was me all alone. With my crossbow. And the zombies, sometimes.

But not at the moment. I can hear random creepy sounds and musical cues, but I'm pretty sure those don't really mean anything. Distant dogpack howling for example could theoretically mean an actual dogpack (by now probably of zombie dogs), but I suspect not really.

So, let me show you around before dawn. I'll rotate left from where I'm crouching. (Oh, crouching helps me not only minimize my 'human hotspot' bloom, but also greatly reduces noise adding to that bloom if I need to move around. But it's better not to move at all after midnight. Or do much of anything else, almost all of which makes some level of noise. Just to be safe.)




Things are well lit in Casa Del AzTank, because zombies may or may not spawn in the dark, and besides it gets REALLY REALLY DARK at night in this game so having light around is handy. I'm not sure if zombies are drawn to light they can see, or to heat they can feel; but inside a house it's generally no problem. Or not on this server: a 'world' can be set so that zombies can sense humans through walls, but more to the point they're drawn to large blooms of human activity (in proportion to the bloom). I don't think lights add to that bloom, but I don't know. If so, it would be a static background blip that doesn't get larger. Or so I guess.

I'm about 99% sure AzTank didn't build this house but rather renovated an abandoned one. I don't know how much, but my guess would be pretty extensively. The walls and internal ceiling are all nice log, for example (and can be upgraded farther although we haven't done so), and that doesn't seem too likely; but then again most of the bottom floor is rockwall, and I haven't seen anyone using that tech in the game yet. Though since the last time I was on, someone figured out how to make brick.

Those red stairs are all mine; I built them the first day I arrived at CdelAT (about three game days in; I spawned quite far away, and needed to work to make some relative safe zones at night before I got here). They used to go up to a door-sized hole (probably a double window) in the wall there, which I'd often creep up to and look out at night earlier in the game before that was more like suicide. Since the last time I was in-game (last real-time night), someone put a reinforced door there, and that's good. The sleeping bag at the foot of the stairs is mine; and denotes where I'll respawn in case of death (or a hundred yards away in a random circumference, my choice). I can pick up the bag and take it with me, but I'm carrying another one instead which I'll be putting somewhere else eventually, allowing me to easily re-establish safe(ish) respawns at different places by picking up and setting down whichever bag is where I'm at. Bags are SUPER IMPORTANT, because without them (or some beds, activated by being assembled) you will respawn entirely randomly in the game world. Quitting (as I did for the night to write this report) and re-entering the server, drops you right back where you were (or close enough to never mind, within a few feet).

Okay, rotating left again...




You may have noticed now that the lamp doesn't actually work. I'm not sure if it can work in the game; certainly not without electricity, and there are better things to spend gas on generally. All light in the game so far (except in some city buildings) comes from torches or candles, which can be made or found and carried around and stuck on things. They burn forever, and only set zombies on fire (so far. If you're lucky.)

I boarded up those windows back many game days ago, when I first got here, but they could stand to be improved some more.

Left again...




That's AzTank's roost. He built it himself, and has got a couple of torches up there, at least two chests, a sleeping bag, a campfire, and a forge. It also has a couple of weak spots in the wall we haven't gotten around to fixing yet; something on the to-do list. The 'floating' block is my addition; I set it on the table (which no doubt came with the world-generated room) to look out that little nook. But due to the way the game deals with block geometry, it's "floating" above the table a little. To the left you can just make out AzTank's main door, which goes down an outer set of stairs; this is the way he prefers to enter and leave the house, but like (most) all doors currently made by players in the game (with some exceptions that still need fixing), it's locked with a passcode that we can enter once and the door will let us in. Locking a door is important, as some zombies can and will open unlocked doors.

Back left again (past a table and a rock chimney from below)...




...and pre-dawn is approaching at nearly 3am. On this server, the ground is light enough to travel at 3am, although the zombies don't calm down entirely until 4. Possibly the worst ones stop spawning at pre-dawn, though. On this server, zombies don't run at night or at all, but that can be set up per game. And trust me, it is ENTIRELY possible to get murdered by a horde or two of shambling zombies. (Also, dogs and hornets move fast regardless.)

I made the firepit there on the ground, and the chest, when I arrived. Anyone can use any firepit though (or any forge), and I leave the chest unlocked. The small red cabinet to the right, and the red desk previously seen, can hold a number of things, too. AzTank technically leaves his chests unlocked up in his eyrie, and lets anyone take or leave things there as needed, especially to help house defense, but as a matter of courtesy I leave them alone unless absolutely necessary.

Okay, time to go downstairs...




But I stopped for a nice photo op. Which reminds me that those windows dang well need boarding up soon. The paintings on the wall may or may not have come with this house; they can be picked up and moved.




From here we can see the front door, the fireplace (which in this game seems to be only decoration, although it can be repaired), and just beyond the fireplace the community forge (which is definitely useable.) More on that later.




Completely downstairs and to the right a bit, you can see the kitchen area. Those cabinets and the fridge are all usable, but there's no practical difference between them -- also nothing happens to be in them. At Budd's house we keep food things in the fridge, but we could keep them in any 'container' really. Note the REAALLY NICE stone walls. Much of this decor probably came with the house originally. (Although I and other people boarded up and repaired some windows andholes over there.)

Back around to the right...




And that hallway leads to a bathroom with a modern toliet (mainly important for finding human poo, although in earlier versions of the game water could be gotten there -- bad water naturally, but it still made things too easy) and a medicine cabinet, which I think was unsearched when I originally arrived; it had, or maybe still has, a couple of useful medical things. The tables are useful only for scrap really, although technically things can be 'set' on them.

Well, that's Casa Del AzTank -- from the inside. Next time, we'll be going out that front door next to the community forget.

[-budd-]

My house is still standing :D, still cant get in the front door. I've been coming back[read when i die and respawn] and grabbing some stuff. I've been spending my time at the pharmacy in town, got a forge up finally and am pretty stocked up with supplies. I just died trying to lead the 42 day horde away from the pharmacy, so i'll have to trek back. Think i'll just move my bag to the pharmacy. i'm toying with the idea of making a base out of the power plant, fenced perimeter is nice. plan is too have some rows of stake ditches and more rows of stakes outside of the fence and more stakes and landmines inside the fence perimeter and of course a roof escape and a tunnel if i can ever find an auger. Took a break from scavenging and went exploring beyond the town quite a ways down the road, didn't find anything of note yet. I've started staking the pharmacy and will plan other defensive measures and started grabbing soil for my rooftop garden. Az's house doesn't show on my map, maybe it only shows when he's online. I did find someones temp shelter with a bunch of wood frames inside.

[ArizonaTank]

So, since I can't get anywhere on my other multiplayer games at the moment {glare}, allow me to flesh out with photos some of the discussion y'all have been reading about in this thread.

With a typical day at Casa Del Aztank.

A great review of the house.  Glad you like the crossbow.  Happy to make you another when that one wears out.

So, what to do about spider zombies? I will build some barb wire barriers for the walls....kind of like nasty squirrel guards

[ArizonaTank]

My house is still standing :D, still cant get in the front door. I've been coming back[read when i die and respawn] and grabbing some stuff. I've been spending my time at the pharmacy in town, got a forge up finally and am pretty stocked up with supplies. I just died trying to lead the 42 day horde away from the pharmacy, so i'll have to trek back. Think i'll just move my bag to the pharmacy. i'm toying with the idea of making a base out of the power plant, fenced perimeter is nice. plan is too have some rows of stake ditches and more rows of stakes outside of the fence and more stakes and landmines inside the fence perimeter and of course a roof escape and a tunnel if i can ever find an auger. Took a break from scavenging and went exploring beyond the town quite a ways down the road, didn't find anything of note yet. I've started staking the pharmacy and will plan other defensive measures and started grabbing soil for my rooftop garden. Az's house doesn't show on my map, maybe it only shows when he's online. I did find someones temp shelter with a bunch of wood frames inside.

I think one of those brick buildings, or the power plant would make a great "next base".

[bbmike]

Jason, I'm playing single player and just found that house in my game. Glad to discover it had a forge!
In other news, if you see a building on or very close to caves, be careful! I've had two crash in on me just trying to open the door.  :o

[JasonPratt]

Oh, wow, that house spawns with a forge!  :o

Budd, I found that it's important to save shared waypoints, as if they aren't saved they'll disappear when I log out (maybe also die). You should take the main road west from the pharmacy; AzTank's house isn't more than maybe 30 game minutes down the road, on the left, out in the middle of a large grassland.

(There's at least one more house on the left up in the woods while on the way there, but it's abandoned.)

[ArizonaTank]

Jason, I'm playing single player and just found that house in my game. Glad to discover it had a forge!
In other news, if you see a building on or very close to caves, be careful! I've had two crash in on me just trying to open the door.  :o

Come join us on the server!  The server is configured so that low level characters create a "quite zone" for 12 hours when they first spawn in (I don't know if it moves with you however).  Then all you have to do is get to one of our "safe houses".  I'll make you a crossbow if you come. 

[JasonPratt]

Bbmike spawned in at one point, a couple of real days ago, and was promptly killed; fastest death yet, he said.  :P

Of course, he may not have been a low-level character anymore. I don't know. My stats (such as they were) reset when the server reset; would his have reset when first entering a server he hadn't played in before?

[JasonPratt]

I'm at work for a while, so can't continue posting the visual tour for a while.

[ArizonaTank]

LOL, I logged in for a bit during lunch.  A horde rolled through the house like a freight train.  They trashed the place... and me...:(

[JasonPratt]

We might have reached the point where it's too late for new characters to join even if they're experienced players. :-[

[Rekim]

So, what to do about spider zombies? I will build some barb wire barriers for the walls....kind of like nasty squirrel guards

spider zombies can't get past a house with an eave...so look for them, or add a row of frames to create your own spider proof lip

[Rekim]

We might have reached the point where it's too late for new characters to join even if they're experienced players. :-[

Naw. There are sure fire ways of surviving hordes. Moving underground or building a stand => four frames are popular techniques. The 7DTD forum is full of good ideas

http://7daystodie.com/forums/