Multiplayer on 7 Days to Die

[OJsDad]

So, you guys are playing the same server/map but your not together.  You're doing your own thing. 

[JasonPratt]

It's a big map, so we're working on bases each of us can visit and move between. I was taking care of Aztank's house while he was away doing other things, and Budd could use it going back and forth between his house and the city he's working in. Then I moved west nearer to the center of the map (we're all working in the right third of the map, north and south of center), and created a tunnel safehouse halfway between Aztank's house and the central city, which will usually be the largest city but on this map is also smack in the middle of a large cold zone. Early attempts at getting to it failed due to the extreme cold; now we're in a position to try again.

Plus, with extra people on the map, we can split up our multi-part efforts; Aztank is working with someone else north of his first main house for example. Other times people will drop in and work around AT's house on things.

So we're all still cooperating, but more spread out. That also helps prevent giant human-activity "blooms" which attract big hordes.

[JasonPratt]

Note that I'm not sure how large the map is; I spent some time scrolling on the map one gamenight, and got out to 40 x 40 km (20 north and 20 east from the center). That may only be a map-engine thing. Some enterprising ranger could easily spend game-weeks hiking out to find and plot the effective map edges (where the nuclear radiation starts.)

(Or take a minibike with a ton of gas and sealed food and water. :) )

[Staggerwing]

Are there any larger vehicles in the game?

[JasonPratt]

Yes.

But they're all dead.

But they aren't undead.

So there's that.  :D

[Staggerwing]

Too bad. A leftover MRAP would be nice but even a rusty old Datsun B210 could come in handy.

[ArizonaTank]

here's my situation.hope the sounds come thru, just uploaded so its not HD

Scary stuff

[OJsDad]

Well, I just purchased 7 Days to Die.  Downloading now, but won't get to it until tomorrow.  So you will probably see me pop in at some point in the not too distant future. 

[ArizonaTank]

Well, I just purchased 7 Days to Die.  Downloading now, but won't get to it until tomorrow.  So you will probably see me pop in at some point in the not too distant future.

Excellent, looking forward to it.

Highly recommend you take in a tutorial, otherwise your first half hour could be very hard. Here is one that seems pretty good:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8LSC6buO3Q

[-budd-]

well i was on for most of the day, enough to go through 3 hordes. One was still out front when i logged out, frankly i was running out of ammo. It was a never ending horde that started in daylight and pretty much kept coming and was still present when i logged off the next night. A lot of puking cops and dogs and those monkey running zombies plus add in about 10 hornets and a pissed off bear. Died 3 times and got infected and had to take AB's . When back to load up on ammo 3 times for my pistol and hunting rifle plus 10 pipe bombs, hell i just crafted a couple hundred rounds and i'm about out. If you can take out the cops before they explode they usually carry good weapons. I'm underground now so i dont have to worry about repairing my up top base. but i do have an idea for a wall defense i want to try.

[-budd-]

another thing if any new players catch me online i can outfit you with some armor and weapons. i have plenty of food and water to get you started and if you want to base at my place i have plenty of supplies and when i find a few more parts i make you some wheels. I'm working on getting my cornfield up and running for cornmeal  to mix with biofuel for gas for the minibikes, so keep your animal fat and collect as much corn as you can.

[Rekim]

I worked all weekend so haven't been on since Thursday night. Should be back in action Monday. Currently holed up in the cop shop in hub city. Not a very safe spot to spawn from with only a bow, beer and the shirt on my back. But I have plenty of beer...

Anyone else near the city? Where you holed up at bud?

[JasonPratt]

You spawned in the cold central city, Rekim? Harsh!

I've been setting up a safebase (or two) north of the 0,0 city, from which to stage raids. Next time we're both on I'll send coordinates. One is a deep, long hole in the snow (though not as extensive as Budd's, which he started working on after mine, and yet somehow madly shoved dirt around with an iron shovel for some super-boss underground basing.) It has a small open-top wood fort around it, but that's mainly there to make it easier to find at draw-distance. There's a forge in it now -- I spent a whole game day playing with my new forge once I built it -- toward the back, and the better firepit is there, too, but the community chests and a quick firepit (and my spawn bag) are toward the front. Be aware that a horde can and will smell you through snow, and (if inadvertently) dig through it to get to you; that happened soon after I first dug the pit; so if night comes, get back under the dirt.

My second base I only recently made last night, north of Deepbase1, farther from the city but on a ridgeline with good eyesight on both the cold region (just a block or two northward) and the surrounding forest region (downhill to the north). It's a brick tower, which I'll eventually dig a further base under. Currently there's a ground floor; a secondary floor (nothing in either yet but torches); a third floor with shooting holes (which I'll soon put iron bars over), meant for scout-shooting deer and pig (I sure wouldn't recommend it hiding from zombies; and then a roof with a hatch. I fully intend to add as many more floors as the game will allow, mainly to see if I can get 'above' sabbath-horde sensing. And make the bottom walls at least one block thicker, with barbed wire on the ground and walls.  (Although this may aggravate hordes: when they start dying from tower defenses, other zombies start spawning in agitated states. It may be better for them to just take a couple of whacks at the walls as they walk by.) Finally, I mean to make a ladder chimney going from whatever-the-top-is, down to an enclosed hatch for tunneling; and to tunnel back to link up with Deepbase 1 (from where I'm slowly digging toward that tower.)

The new brick tower was made (along with, and by, my deepbase forge) while I was playing on my Surface 3 Pro, since the main cooling fan on my main computer went kaput Sunday morning. I tried to avoid combat as much as possible, since my Surface tends to get chuggy when the action starts (and I'm running things on minimum gfx with only one notch above 800x600 resolution).

My overarching plan to use the Deepbase as a forward launching point to loot Central City, has been delayed only by my new hobby of making secure bases nearby from which to safely hunt game and hide from hordes at night. ;)


Oh, and Budd gave me a minibike he built; which I lost back at his place soon afterward when the morning after his epic horde assault I zipped over to scout out the area. I tried to make it down a garage hatch to ask for some gas (and help him repel any remaining invaders), but a zombie dog tore me up good and while I did kill it (and got safely down the hatch, locking it behind me) I died from bleeding and infections before I could medicate. So I'll have to spend half a day hiking back east to that city to recover my new minibike again. Besides I'll want to bring budd some collected animal fat (from there and from Casa Del Aztank) to help him make fuel for our bikes, since I figured out last night he needs to combine biofuel with grain alcohol to create plastic gas tanks (presumably with gas ;) ). There's a lot of corn growing reusably at Aztank's place, halfway between our bases, so I'll bring some of that, too. (Make sure to snip off only the top, and the bottom will regrow.) Corn meal cooked with bottled water = grain alcohol + animal fat refined into biofuel (with a beaker on the firepit) = gas (if you've read the right book, which budd apparently has but which I haven't yet).

[JasonPratt]

OJDad, the most important thing you can do in a co-op server (like the Groghead Invitational), is promptly hit the tab key to bring up your main user interface (and inventory -- alternately, tap 'm' to bring up the map and then go for the players list); mouse-click the "players" icon on the upper right (I don't know a keyboard shortcut to get there directly) for the players list; and send out invitations to anyone currently on-sever to be your ally. (Or accept requests if we've already made them.)

This will allow you to track us on the map (although you'll have to manually click a box on that players' page to do that -- and you'll have to do that each time you quit and reload), and will allow us to share waypoints with you and vice versa (using the map screen. Be aware that when you receive a shared waypoint, you have to accept it from the shared list to make it permanently part of your list. Otherwise it eventually disappears.)

The other, arguably even more important thing in a multiplayer game, is use 't' to open the chat window to type messages. This server does accept microphone inputs, so if you have a headset (and the game recognizes it) you can also hold down 'v' to open the voice channel. But sometimes that works better than others.

The game won't be paused while you do all that, and it is entirely possible you may die while trying to figure out how to connect with us, but you'll respawn somewhere else anyway. Dying early in this game (and to some extent regularly afterward) is expected. :) But because you'll be randomly spawning when you die for a while, it's super-important to get connected with anyone else in the game, so that (once we're in a safe place to do so) we can check where you are on our maps and guide you somewhere safer. Which could be extra-important if you spawn in a cold or desert zone. (So far we've found only one of those latter that I know of on this map, but we've only been scouting the east third of it so far.)


The next most important thing, is that whenever you get to making doors and chests, remember to hold down the 'use' key (nominally the 'e' key as in many first-person shooters) while facing it to open a little sub menu where you can set the community password which is "ace". (No quote marks, little letters. Make sure there are no invisible spaces before or after!) Chests will start locked automatically, but unless you don't want to share you should unlock them; no one but players will (or can?) open chests, so no reason to pass-lock them. Doors start out unlocked, and I've heard that only players can open unlocked doors, but I have trouble believing that -- everyone locks the doors, but since everyone is (so far!) on the same team we all need to be able to get inside each others' locked doors (and floor/roof hatches), so pass-lock them. If you forget, NO ONE ELSE CAN GET THROUGH YOUR DOOR, unless we break it down. Which could be disastrous for several people in several ways if a horde (or a bear, or a dogpack) is on our tail.


I guess the next most important thing is to punch grass.  ;D And punch trees, or woody brush. And punch rocks (or pick up occasional rocks from the ground using the 'e' / 'use' key.) Wood, rocks, and grass (in roughly descending order) are how you'll survive more than a day in this game. And e-search anything the game allows you to. (Most of the time this is obvious, as the game will label things "empty" or "unsearched" if you can.) Which is how you'll live more than a few game hours.

[Hofstadter]

I have this game as well, but i havnt opened it it in months. I looked at the most recent alpha build, 13 i think and a metric ton of stuff was added, so I might pop in later today