[2.4] I Came, I Perceived, and then I Only Perceived: 'Specialist' Challenge Run

Ostentatio

Ostentatio

Refugee
Ever set yourself up for something that you maybe should have thought through a little more beforehand? Because I now have a new one for myself: how would the game play if you only put points into one skill tree (+General)? A struggle, or just fine? You may think what, that's boring, and you might be right, but I was curious and so I set myself some restrictions and various settings- and I may or may not regret some of those choices, because this unintentional suffer-fest induced varying levels of 7DtD burnout over the last four months.

Riamus said:
... The goal of the general tree isn't to keep people out of the attribute trees. You get plenty of points to spend, so it's not an issue getting everything you want by late game. Mining fits in with strength. ... The idea was to move stuff that didn't really fit anywhere out of the attributes. Not to make it easy to avoid attributes. Just my opinion, of course.
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Suxar said:
This is not a problem, but rather a specificity.
When you play alone, you have to do everything yourself.
When you play in a co-op with friends, you can distribute roles and responsibilities.
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I believe there were more discussions that prompted it, but these are the comments I can remember that made me wonder - how would it go to play solo and dedicate yourself to one particular role or stat, similar to what you might do in co-op with assigned teamwork roles? How much would you actually miss not being able to use any perk-skills from other trees? It stoked a curiosity, so at the start of November, I started my personal-challenge run to answer my own questions.
PERCEPTION SPECIALIST: THE RULES
  • Only one perk point can be used outside of the chosen ability, aside from General skills. (Choice: Vehicle Madness)
  • General may not exceed 10 spent points total.
  • No weapons from other trees, must only use what the chosen ability boosts. (ie, Spear & Rifles only)
  • One armor set for the whole run; no swapping for bonuses or effects beneficial in the moment. (Choice: Scavenger)
  • Must turn in one quest per day, at minimum. Once a tier is completed and the quest to find the next trader is received, NO PRIOR TRADER may be interacted with AT ALL. All trader business must be done exclusively with the 'latest' trader. (Added mid-run for clarification: Quests must be highest tier available until at Trader Joel in the Wasteland.)
  • No stat-boosting equipment mods to raise other stats. (includes cigar for its barter bonus, which also falls under 'swapping for bonuses')
  • No double-looting of POIs (normal clear+quest reset). Clearing a POI then doing the quest for it later is acceptable, provided not done consciously & deliberately.
  • No customized worldgen: 10k size, seed 'Specialist1' (because I thought I might do more than one run at the time, such optimism)
I never settled beforehand on what a "finish" condition would be, aside from maxing all skills for the ability.

THE SETTINGS
  1. Difficulty: Adventurer (Default)
  2. XP Multiplier: 50%
  3. 24 Hour Cycle: 120 Minutes
  4. Daylight Length: 18 Hours (Default)
  5. Blood Moon Frequency: Disabled
  6. Zombie Day Speed: Jog
  7. Zombie Night Speed: Run
  8. Zombie Feral Speed: Sprint (Default)
  9. Zombie Feral Sense: *[See below]
  10. Air Drops: 3 Days (Default)
  11. Biome Progression: On (Default)
  12. Storm Frequency: 50%
  13. Player/AI Block Damage: 100% (both Default)
  14. Loot Abundance: 50%
  15. Loot Respawn Time: Disabled
  16. Death Penalty: XP Only (Default)
  17. Drop on Death: Everything (Default)
  18. Daily Quest Progression Limit: 4 (Default)
*Feral Sense: I originally started the run with this enabled during the day. This was purely unmanageable, at least for me, because of the zombie quantity set by the spawning mods below; so, to help replace disabled blood moons for this run, I set Feral Sense to 'Day' on day 7 and 'All' on day 14. This is the only rule/setting I changed in the whole run; other rules were added or clarified over time, but this was the only one I had to scale down from the start.

THE MODS (the non-aesthetic and relevant ones, at least)
More Quests (12 quest options)
Bdub's Vehicles
BFT2020_BallAmmo (re-adds standard ammo to loot)
CraftFromContainers (customized: range: 5.0)
Enhanced Zombie Scaling
Vitamin and Painkiller Recipes (customized: more than doubled the recipe costs, added additional ingredients)
Improved Zombie Threat (customized: nerfed mod's loot changes; increased spawn numbers, ranging from x8 to x20 depending on biome/entity group, reduced respawn delays)
Working Devices (customized: only coffee machine and stove appliance were enabled and I only used the coffee machine this run anyhow, which removes most drinks from campfire)
15 Slot Toolbelt
Screamer Zombie Amount (customized: 10-25 per scream)
Zombie Reach Adjust (customized: reductions 10-20% from vanilla ranges)
T2 into T3 Grade Weapons
ZR Army Truck
SpawnSleepersInRange (added mid-run; customized: radius 10, vertical radius 4, current POI only, POI spawning method)
SStackTweaks (customized: don't remember specifics, but reduced a lot of the settings to half the default setting's stack sizes and number of affected items)
AirDropChallengeMod (customized: increased number of spawned zombies, 4-8/12-20/24-40/40-60)
Wandering Hordes PLUS (customized: zombie range 12-50; time range 6-18 in-game hours. Hindsight, should've made them more frequent because they were rare in this run)
Wasteland Cuisine
ZombieFallDamageFix (customized: I don't remember specifics, but I lowered it to half or less of the default damage settings)

Short-version for anyone who curled their lip in disgust at Adventurer difficulty and disabled blood moons: average 15x the normal zombie spawn amounts, feral sense added on days 7+14 with 50% XP and loot. I'm not saying it's necessarily a hard challenge run, but I found it to be a grueling grind.
  1. Night 1: Sprint-toggle fumble... straight into my own spike trap and died. Yup.
  2. Day 7: Two burning ferals giving a concussion and the unending streams of ambient zombies following their feral-sense nose
  3. Day 9: Bug swarms and zombie swarms - right outside Bob's gate
  4. Day 18: I made a loud noise near an Army Post #7 in the snow biome. Dead within a minute; worst non-spawn-trigger ambush I've had in a long while in this game, likely thanks to SpawnAllSleepersInRange.
  5. Day 28, morning: At exactly 0100, in the middle of a nighttime Army Post #7 quest in the wasteland; 20-30 life-minutes running in circles without ever touching the central building, and got myself cornered. First (and only!) failed quest of the whole run.
  6. Day 28, evening: 2200, storm and nighttime happened at the same time... and I didn't have a roof or defenses on my base yet.
  7. Day 29: See above.
  8. Day 29: See above above. Storm ended right after this death, though, so I just went to pine forest to gather stone in the night.
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■■■■, issues with posting next sections due to auto-merge and size limits
 
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In the order I noted them:
  • Feral sense from day 1 is a no-go. 20 zombies (I counted) chasing me out of Rekt's, not even 30 minutes into the run? Hard no. (Setting change: Feral Sense)
  • Realization: Knife is an Agility weapon, therefore, no knife for harvesting from animals. Axe butcher it is.
  • Day 4: Moved to Burnt Forest. Only able to make a forge after buying books from Jen.
  • Later on day 4, made the decision to put my non-Perception skill into Grease Monkey. In hindsight, really, really glad I did.
  • Restore Power on the night of day 6 had the sleepers-not-spawning issue. Consoled to clear quest, added SpawnSleepersInRange.
  • Day 7: Rifle has not been used much at all up to this point, because attracting attention is almost always worse than just using spear. Also: Feral sense during day is now enabled.
  • Days 9-11 were spent doing the daily quest turn-ins... and then spending the rest of the day in the pine forest for trees and honey because the desert's insect swarms have been a brutal, merciless, and unrelenting bringer of infections. With daytime feral sense, more activity is now done during the night.
  • Day 11: No silencer, but at this point, it doesn't make much difference - the lever-action is good enough to keep up with the constant streams of zombies, and incoming all-time feral sense will make attempted stealth moot anyway.
  • The desert at this point has been a brutal wall of struggle and agony. The bug swarms, the quests regularly being in a more dense city area meaning constant zombies from behind... no deaths, but misery without death is still misery. I was doing multiple quests per day before, but this desert situation is too oppressive to keep that up.
  • Finally got the minibike (didn't note specific day); no cement mixer or chemistry station, Workstations was only 7-8, only had workbench because I bought it off Bob, no seeds for farming.
  • Day 14, evening: At long-suffering last, found the book for the spear to penetrate multiple enemies and finish Spear hunter. 24-hour feral sense is now active, and on day 14, 28 hours of playing, the spear can penetrate more than one target. Grueling. Finally made a horde-base-style mini-tower to deal with the swarms at night, so there's some respite at least.
  • Never actually bothered before to make use of the grass fibers into cloth recipe, but without being able to farm (cotton), I finally realize that's a very strong way to get cloth + yucca-food in the desert. Learned something new!
  • Didn't note the day, but Shady Swine's barn gave me the final Vehicle Madness to make the motorcycle the night before I had to move to the snow biome. Huzzah!
  • Night of 21/morning of 22, explored over to the wasteland biome to start the progression challenges - first off, long drive(3km to the border), second, I almost died multiple times. I predicted the wasteland would be miserable, and... I was half right, in hindsight.
  • Days 22-23, unlocked the 4x4 tier of vehicles. Made the Box Truck (bdubyuh's vehicles) and a ZR Army Truck (LittleRedSonja), the former for the wasteland moving day and the latter for daily driver. Note of reference: 44-46 hours to get to the 4x4, equivalent of 44-46 days normal day-length. Felt slow to me, but I don't remember how long it takes normally.
  • On Day 23, 219AM, sniping from a stairwell windowsill in a Pass-N-Gas #5, got the 10,000th kill - 9,996th kill was the levelup to hit 57. (Still not a single silencer found, though at this point it's worthless, just curious how long it takes to come up)
  • Nothing much to do during the night in snow, so the nights of 25+26 were spent trying to explore wasteland to see if I can find a Joel early. I did not. During a drive, I realized the rules didn't exclude interacting with future traders, but I never found a Joel to take advantage of that anyway.
  • Day 27, I was able to stuff my whole existence into the bdubyuh box truck (a blessing, after the 2-3 trips the burnt>desert and desert>snow moves took on the minibike and motorcycle). 6.1km drive over hills and mountains to reach Joel. After 15-30 minutes of nonstop brawling, I got a no-zombies-spawning window to start unloading the truck and getting some base-basics started. Also, 27 2-hour days later, and the first silencer of the run appeared in Joel's inventory[did not buy].
  • Took a quest for the neighboring Army Post #7 to do in the night for the first quest to turn in the next day... what could possibly go wrong? (Deaths log callback: It went wrong.)
  • About day 29 or so, the base is established and safe and the wasteland felt pretty manageable. Took an Army Post #7 quest again... and did it during the daytime, because I learned my lesson and brought a rocket launcher. Also made more vehicles for funsies (Stallion + MD-500).
  • Night of day 33, during a quest, I hit the final level-up to fully max all Perception skills; got back to my Wasteland base at exactly 0000 after finishing a Haven Hotel fetch/clear, which was a miserable 30 minutes triple-backtracking through the whole POI dealing with constant streams of outsider zombies while trying to track down the last five POI zombies which spawned but didn't activate their triggers to break out of their hidey-holes.

THE END: Level 70; all Perception skills maxed; Grease Monkey 1/5; Medium Armor 1/3; Master Chef 1/3; Living off the Land 2/3.
 
The basic test of this self-imposed challenge was to answer the question of whether or not it's "viable" to play the game wrong using only one tree of perks. In that answer, I feel comfortable saying 'conditionally, yes' - I allowed using harvesting tools, pickaxe and wood axe, for resource gathering because they were not explicitly weapons (which disallowed the knife); however, not being able to put any perk points into Strength made them horrendous to use. I found myself thankful for the constant streams of zombies, because without the stamina refill from spear kills, gathering wood and stone would be the worst and grindiest part of the whole run (remember: no stamina regen perks, no stamina cost reduction perks, no increased yield perks...)- and it'd be worse if I ever wanted to mine any ores, which I was able to get away with not doing because of Salvage Operations giving ample forged steel, forged iron, gas, and money from so many things. If I had chosen Agility, Fortitude, or maybe even Intelligence, the resource-gathering situation in trying to mine with that many feral-sense zombies constantly approaching would have been a horrible, grueling nightmare, so I'm fortunate I decided to do Perception. I never needed coal, nitrate, lead(only when I wanted to make frag rockets), iron, or brass, my only hurt was clay in the forge.

Perception as a skill tree is a very forgiving one, I found out; I usually skipped it because the rifle and spear always seemed eh compared to other options, and I never saw potential in a salvager build. However, maybe as bad RNG, not getting that spears-penetrate-multiple-enemies until day 14/hour 28 because it's part of Spear Hunter and not the spear combat skills was one of the most agonizing parts of the first half of the run; half the point of the spear is its narrow arc offset by doing damage in a line, and that being frozen behind an RNG book drop rather than an investment really sucked. I'm sure Perception isn't the only weapon with this sort of issue (koffthereasonswhymacheteisconsideredworsethanhuntingknifekoff), but it's the one I had to deal with for over twenty hours.

This run kept me stuck in 2.4 while 2.5 brought big survival changes, and I remember seeing in the dev diary that people were lamenting how "unnecessary" the honey and honey recipes were - and after this, I think the honey recipes are a good thing. I added a mod for craftable vitamins, but during my hours and hours of grinding honey off of trees during the desert phase, I came to the realization: the game seems to be aiming for condition treatment, not condition prevention as the approach to surviving. You can't craft vitamins, but you can craft two levels of antibiotic (+honey farming and recipes, now); you can reduce but never eliminate the risk of broken limbs from fights, but you can make casts which still take time to heal you (unless you dump into INT which is part of why I think INT is relatively overpowered). I'm going to be removing the craftable vitamins mod to maintain the gameplay idea of treatment over prevention, which I kind of like.

Not being able to put points into getting better Workstations books did cause a little pain. I couldn't get a forge until Burnt Forest; I had to buy the workbench in Burnt Forest; I had to buy the chemistry station (twice, a yeti destroyed the first one I bought mere minutes after I set it down on my first day in Snow and it was two days deep in Wasteland until I saw another to buy). I didn't unlock the recipe for the chemistry station until day 31 or 32, plus none of the recipe cost reductions that come from Advanced Engineering. Personally, this just reinforced my thinking that not only does Grease Monkey need a buff to effects, it should perhaps be a General perk.

I think explosives might need a slight balance-glance. The grenades and throwables are good, but the rocket launcher is so tremendously expensive to feed that I only used it in the last couple days (great fun to stealth-damage-boost-rocket into the peripheral structures of Army Post 7, though). I also somehow accumulated more pipe bombs than I could practically use, so I never got to throw any of the actual grenades I'd been stockpiling (aside from in the desert, the desert was the worst experience of the whole run). Likely, explosives are better for blood moons which admittedly weren't a factor here.

Never again do I foresee myself playing with feral sense. MAYBE if I change to less spawns, MAYBE in a co-op world where there's another person to split the aggro, but definitely not in solo. 50% XP is horrendous, but I really liked the 2h days and reduced loot abundance, so I may try my next normal-playthrough world at 100% XP, 50% loot, 2h days. I think 2h day blood moons will be kinda fun, since I've learned a decent bit over the last year or so about horde base design.

I was really dreading having to live in the Wasteland, but once I actually settled there (ie, had a roof and protected doors), it was more cozy than the Desert and its constant bug threats or the Snow where I was constantly paranoid about losing workstations and crops to yeti rocks.

Finally, confirmed: I am not a masochist.
Riamus said:
Also, it helps to have [blade traps] only hitting the heads of enemies because enemies are less likely to randomly target it compared to placing it at leg level. ... Also, having it on its side on block 3 lets hit hit heads and won't be targeted at all, if you have places where you can place it on its side like that.
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Putting blade traps on the block right over the doors is such a simple, ridiculously effective crafting-base defense that single-handedly made the wasteland far less stressful to live in than either the snow or desert biomes. The pure catharsis of those two doorframe traps churning away while I did other things was well worth not getting any XP from their kills. Plus I was able to repair them through the solid block they were mounted on, which is probably not intended but worked out great for me.

Did anyone ask or put me up to this? No. But I did it, and I wanted to share my experience of slogging through it.

#savethescrollwheels
 

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Interesting test. As long as I have access to Lucky Looter and Living Off the Land, all others are nice but secondary.
 
I considered Lucky Looter, but I hadn't thought it to be that big of an effect before the conversation in the other thread about it - but by that point, I was deep enough into and done dealing with this one that I didn't want to prolong it by spreading points outside of Perception. Living Off the Land's final level was always a consideration, but without the ability to hotswap farmer gear for the harvest bonuses, 2 levels was more than enough as a passive thing
 
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