I have had the same problem. This is definitely "Black Smearing" and is a hardware related issue (the monitor).
7D2D is especially bad for black smearing (or especially good for 'testing' any tendency towards black smearing on a monitor).
It's not related to reflection settings. Occlusion...
Well I don't think 'anything' in UL is terrible :)
Personally, I'd kill the regen on scorpions, and scale back their spawn rate.
Maybe I just saw so many of them because I was in the snow (which spawns animals heavily)? But the place was totally infested.
Main reason to kill the regen...
I know about the biome loot stages. Not my first rodeo with the zombies ;) The vanilla game has some balance to difficulty/loot stage though. Exaggerating that by a lot seems... I'll go with "very tricky to balance".
There's uh... "MMO logic" where you just don't play outside your difficulty...
Technically I shot it 79 times with a scrap pistol (35 dmg), and then stabbed it continuously with a found steel spear, in a 'perfect' defensive position.
I killed the bears and dire wolf and cougar with twigs & rocks. I only mention them for comparison purposes.
I didn't attack a scorpion...
SCORPIONS ...
TL/DR: scorpions are broken
I attempted to do a play-through in harder biomes (no grasslands), in the 20.6 UL build. (Nomad/permadeath) And scorpions are just out of control.
Ended up in the snow biome. And on my map, scorpions were about as common as lumberjacks.
The...