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A16 - STARVATION Mod for A16

Yeah, I'm sure there are some working solutions if you're willing to restrict your gameplay this much. It's too much for me personally, which is not saying that it's not very enjoyable for others. For the moment I'm fine with the disabled seasons, but I would love a more moderate version and I'd switch to that.

I'm definitely worried about people getting discouraged to give starvation a proper try because they don't know how to deal with the seasons or that end up on a server and can't do anything about it.

 
We have people joining all the time, sometimes in winter some times in rainy reason, some times in summer. sometimes they join on horde night, die and never come back. it happens. typically our player base has people who invite newbies who join in a bad time, to come to their base, and help stock them with stuff to survive.

but i can understand your frustration too. winter was more difficult before we realized how awesome snowberry juice really was. this is key to deep winter for us

 
@Kat, editing StarvationWeather.xml is very easy. You find that xml file in Saves/Starvation folder. It looks like this for the coldest 2 "seasons":

<Season>

<!-- heavy snowing, heavy temp impact -->

<!-- snow will never dry out -->

<Season Param="DayStart" Value="180" />

<Season Param="DayEnd" Value="210" />

<Season Param="Type" Value="5" />

<Season Param="StartChance" Value="60" />

<Season Param="EndChance" Value="50" />

<Season Param="MinEffect" Value="0.6" />

<Season Param="MaxEffect" Value="1" />

<Season Param="TempModifier" Value="-13" />

<Season Param="DryChance" Value="0" />

</Season>

<Season>

<!-- decrease in snowing intensity and frequency, some temp impact -->

<!-- snow will dry out on ocation -->

<Season Param="DayStart" Value="210" />

<Season Param="DayEnd" Value="225" />

<Season Param="Type" Value="4" />

<Season Param="StartChance" Value="20" />

<Season Param="EndChance" Value="70" />

<Season Param="MinEffect" Value="0.2" />

<Season Param="MaxEffect" Value="0.4" />

<Season Param="TempModifier" Value="-8" />

<Season Param="DryChance" Value="15" />

</Season>

See the tempModifier? Change that to something closer to zero. If you want hotter summers, increase that value to +10 or so. You dont need to bother with the rest to get the effect you want.

 
Yeah I do see the Temp Modifier. When I see a wall of code like in the file, I'm usually scared to experiment and accidentally break something. But if you say edit the Value of the TempModifier, I'm totally willing to try that out. Thank you xyth!

but i can understand your frustration too. winter was more difficult before we realized how awesome snowberry juice really was. this is key to deep winter for us
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Is snowberry juice buff better than the coffee? Usually I'm sticking with coffee, because it's easy to farm, while you can't farm snowberries. But there are tons of unharvested snowberries left, even though I might have squished a lot under my minibike wheels already lol.

 
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Yeah I do see the Temp Modifier. When I see a wall of code like in the file, I'm usually scared to experiment and accidentally break something. But if you say edit the Value of the TempModifier, I'm totally willing to try that out. Thank you xyth!


Is snowberry juice buff better than the coffee? Usually I'm sticking with coffee, because it's easy to farm, while you can't farm snowberries. But there are tons of unharvested snowberries left, even though I might have squished a lot under my minibike wheels already lol.
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It has been for me, I drink them both for both buffs. Here's the wiki for it. Coffee gives you a warm buff similar to meat stew. so I just eat all 3 and im good for a while. :)

"Drinking Snowberry Juice will have a positive effect on your Hydration and Stamina. Under the temperature survival system, it has a heating effect that helps you survive longer in cold biomes, giving you the Cold Resistance buff which raises your Temperature by 15F. As with any other drink, it will add a Glass Jar to your inventory when consumed. As with eating any snowberry product, it will increase the rate at which dehydration occurs.

 


Drinking too much Snowberry Juice will give the status effect Snowberry Poisoning, which damages Health by 1 point every 20 seconds, and Wellness by 0.1 every 20 seconds. It drops off shortly after 40 minutes in game. There is no countdown timer, unlike standard Food Poisoning."

Wait till the buff falls off before you drink another or you can make yourself sick. :)

 
I like to provide some feedback for the Starvation mod. I love a lot of the work that has been done and how it changes 7D2D into a more harder game. But there is one thing i found too much and it frankly ruins my enjoyment of the mod.

Running Zombies!! With only 5 days in-game all game dead's are a result of the random generated Zombies, who can run during the day time.

There is nothing more frustration as sneaking inside a building, triggering a running Zombie and before you even hear him, your getting maul to dead as he is already on top of you and do not have a change to properly defend yourself.

Its like having zombie dogs spawn all the time. Even more annoying is when Zombie hordes spawn and you get random 3 or 4 runners who close the distance so fast you do not get any visual ( unless your in a totally open field ) or audio warning. Hell, maybe its a audio bug but i have had Zombie runners who do not make a sound.

And totally no way to disable this behavior as its not linked to the game start settings. :(

 
You can in the game settings, set zombies to only walk. I myself, prefer this because I like Romero style zombies. However, this does not effect feral zombies. They run no matter what. This also goes for some of the boss type zombies as well. This is Starvation, it's fun as f**k but is not meant to be easy, and can be damned frustrating. Weather or not the mod team can make the ferals walk is a good question, if they can and will, is perhaps a better question. Im sure Mort or Xyth could answer that far better than I could. I know the zombie and dog/bear hordes can seem to come out of nowhere, and it sucks, but it is what it is.

 
I like to provide some feedback for the Starvation mod. I love a lot of the work that has been done and how it changes 7D2D into a more harder game. But there is one thing i found too much and it frankly ruins my enjoyment of the mod.
Running Zombies!! With only 5 days in-game all game dead's are a result of the random generated Zombies, who can run during the day time.

There is nothing more frustration as sneaking inside a building, triggering a running Zombie and before you even hear him, your getting maul to dead as he is already on top of you and do not have a change to properly defend yourself.

Its like having zombie dogs spawn all the time. Even more annoying is when Zombie hordes spawn and you get random 3 or 4 runners who close the distance so fast you do not get any visual ( unless your in a totally open field ) or audio warning. Hell, maybe its a audio bug but i have had Zombie runners who do not make a sound.

And totally no way to disable this behavior as its not linked to the game start settings. :(
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The zombie behaviour can be annoying, frustrating even. It's been bad a few months ago with rapid respawn inside of buildings you're in and with zombies sneaking up on you without making any sound. For me, it has improved for no apparent reason in the last few months and most importantly, I think that's nothing starvation specific.

There are some things you can do, to stay safe, well, safer-ish than without these precautions:

If you're going to loot a building, especially if it's small or medium-sized, clear it before you start looting. Don't break open the door and beeline for the gun safe. Once the entire building is cleared, the chances of getting ambushed dramatically decrease.

Put obstacles in the zombie paths. Even a weak wood frame will prevent zombies from silently sneaking up on you and most often the obstacle causes them to get interested in beating up the wall instead of approaching you. Chairs are good too. If you go into a small room with a safe, a chair placed in the entrance might prevent zombies from getting in there entirely. They often just don't notice the chairs and try to walk through it instead of destroying it. Barbed wire fences are great too, you could bring some, they are cheap.

If you're facing a zombie, or more zombies and they are all feral and horrifying, keep moving. Running past them is often safer than backing away and even if the zombie has double your speed and no stamina issues, chances are good you can reach your minibike or the zombie goes into a fit and starts running in circles.

 
Let me know if non-ferals (ferals have red eyes, corpses say feral) run when inside or in the shade. That is a feature added into the animation code, but should be turned off by default.

 
Let me know if non-ferals (ferals have red eyes, corpses say feral) run when inside or in the shade. That is a feature added into the animation code, but should be turned off by default.
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They are defiantly able to run... I lost count on how many runners i have had.

My last death ( when i stopped playing because ... fed up ) involved the Zombie type that in Vanilla normally is the big head weaver.

Entered a hardware store that i cleared mostly. Wanted to finalize looting the backroom ( it was already broken open as i activated the sleepers before and draw most of them out ).

Enter and look inside ( long darkish room but spotted no obvious Zombie sleepers ). Turn left, place several wood frames to block the doorway so nobody can sneak up on me. Before i knew what happened, i had this Zombie on my neck ( lets say it was bad for my heart ). As i tried to get away, it was ran so fast i was clearly a running variant. It also made no sound until it started hitting on my skull. I jumped probably 20cm in my chair here not expecting a Z attack and it took me beyond any surprise.

I have had running Zombies even during pure day time.

* Fat Hawaii zombies running in daylight and outside. Check. One dead from a Hawaii sleeper that activated on the floor above me and broke out, jumped down and ... even trying to outrun him on the street. No go and dead.

* Hungry Fat Women zombies running. O yes in daylight.

* Slim ( normally head weaving in Vanilla ) running. O freaking yes. Two dead ( one inside sleeper ).

* The darker skinned security Zombie running. O yes ... That one activated after my last dead when i tried to get my stuff back.

Horde spawns in 3 or 4 runners. I was pure lucky that when the horde spawned in, that i had just moved to go chop a tree and a building prevented them from detecting me. As the AI is designed to run to your exact position when they spawn/activate. But i so clearly notice 3 or 4 running Z's first, then followed by more normal walking Z's. And was thinking if i did not move by pure change to go after a tree, they will have been one me so fast like the Zombie dogs.

Type:




All of them had NO red eyes that i can remember. Just normal default types. That last game was only 5 days in with 2 deads so the game never spawns advanced zombies like that.

The only Zombie with special eyes has been a special /custom school girl zombie that attacked and that was a 100/iron club/pummelPete 1 bullet sponge that took so many hits to put down it was insane.

Note: that Zombie did not turn into goo and was not harvestable!

The issue is that Starvation seems to mix animations patterns. Aka give crawling zombie pattern to Hungry Fat Women or ...

And i assumed that one of the animation being the running Feral running animation was also randomly getting spawned. Finding out that this is not normal behavior surprises me. I assume that like with other mods this was done deliberately to make it (insane!) harder.

Given the quote mentioning shade or inside, well, some of them did spawn from inside sleepers. But it does not explain the horde with runners or from a previous game attempt one slim weaving Zombie on Day 1 that got activated on the street and ran a marathon behind me.

I remember trying out Starvation in the past with A15 and also getting running Zombies on the street on Day 1 and giving up on the game because of it ( i hate runners ), so my assumption was with A16 this was still normal behavior.

Note: using 7D2D Mod launcher to cleanly separate mods. Other mods are Vanilla and Ravenhearst.

Side note: So far every runner zombie has been when i was inside a city zone. Grassland city, plains city, with a small bit of cactus in the middle .. areas you expect to be more peaceful. But when you even get rare rat scorpions spawning ( no hyenas or snakes in that city in 5 days )...

Silenced Zs.

Also not the first time that i got Z's that simply do not make a sound. Customs like the Yeti at times make sound but can also not make sounds ( see below ). One of them was also a Semi-runner.

Start of game:

Another issue is that when you start a new game, Zombies in your area are not activated until midday so you can have a change to harvest / get your gear done.

But ... Spiders, Yetis, snow panthers etc are actived. As a result you can be shopping wood only to have a sneaky Yeti be on your behind and nothing to defend. Or having Spiders running very fast and large patterns forcing you to fight them ( with almost nothing ) or getting pushed outside the safe zone into more animal foes or getting pushed outside the safe zone into a area that will trigger early Zombie spawns.

The zombie behaviour can be annoying, frustrating even. It's been bad a few months ago with rapid respawn inside of buildings you're in and with zombies sneaking up on you without making any sound. For me, it has improved for no apparent reason in the last few months and most importantly, I think that's nothing starvation specific.
There are some things you can do, to stay safe, well, safer-ish than without these precautions:

If you're going to loot a building, especially if it's small or medium-sized, clear it before you start looting. Don't break open the door and beeline for the gun safe. Once the entire building is cleared, the chances of getting ambushed dramatically decrease.
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Trust me, not my first rodeo with 7D2D :)

I know most of the tricks and normally if a Z surprises me, its because of lack of attention on my part. But running Zs inside a building can be frustrating. Even outside runners with even runners on Day 1. And even worse when some Zs do not even make a sound. Its just a hart attack game like that. I like a challenge but with the current Starvation runners / silent Zs issue that i had, it was like playing with constant tension level at 1000%.

I even ended up using Rust game tactics none stop circle bolder resource gathering because i knew how fast those runners got to me.

Put obstacles in the zombie paths. Even a weak wood frame will prevent zombies from silently sneaking up on you and most often the obstacle causes them to get interested in beating up the wall instead of approaching you. Chairs are good too. If you go into a small room with a safe, a chair placed in the entrance might prevent zombies from getting in there entirely. They often just don't notice the chairs and try to walk through it instead of destroying it. Barbed wire fences are great too, you could bring some, they are cheap.
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See above. One can only say in the last encounter when i finally was fed up, that was the direct result of my dead. Getting stuck with a running Zombie inside a enclosed wood framed room with a running Z. And i was not even stunned, he was so fast on my behind without a sound, dropping my health by half before even turning to know what the hell is hitting me. Tried to get move, jumped, moved another meter, dead ...

The chair trick is a big AI cheat. Its like misusing there AI so i try to avoid it. It makes the game less fun.

But to prevent sneaky Zombies, i try to mine on wood frames to prevent sneaky Zombies from surprising me. Building wood ramps, standing 2 frames high, picking up the old ones while crouched, moving to a new spot 3 frame away. Bridge building i like to call it, especially in biomes with too much grass where if you crouch you have 0 visibility. But that does not work inside buildings ...

 
Let me know if non-ferals (ferals have red eyes, corpses say feral) run when inside or in the shade. That is a feature added into the animation code, but should be turned off by default.
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I don't have this issue and I feel my sample size is big enough. To make sure I played through a few hours of starvation in the last couple days and I do get runners, but all of them were either feral or it happened during night time (I have zombies run default) just as expected. I paid special attention to those in buildings and dark places, even waited for them to stir and move so I could see if they were running. There have been a few single zombies too far away to see their eyes and didn't get to the corpse in time to read their names, and some of them I just killed before they were moving, I counted a dozen. I killed about 500 in total. So that makes 488 confirmed negatives with proper behaviour, 12 undetermined and 0 confirmed positives for the deviation. Pretty safe to say at least for me this issue doesn't occur in my installation of the game.

There might be something off with Benjiro's installation.

Benjiro: The chair trick an AI cheat? Thinking about it, yeah, you're probably right. I won't feel bad for using that. If the game throws zombies at you that spawn in rooms you just cleared moments ago that sneak up behind you without making any sound, that's cheating as well. Me and the Z's, we're even now, no bad karma.

So, you played Ravenhearst and Vanilla as well. For me, zombies in starvation behave mostly like they do in vanilla. The most obvious exceptions are of course the added entity types (which for the most part are rather slow) and the movement animation of carwlers.

I've recently played Ravenhearst and what ever issues you got with runners, they are FAR worse in Ravenhearst for me. The runners are obscenely fast in that mod. And it doesn't help that the feral wights start populating every single garden variety poi, can onehit you from full health (which is 70 by default in that mod) take more hits to kill off than a wall safe and all the game gives you to fight back is a wet noodle, but only after you collected and assembled the wet noodle schematic and maxed the accompanying 4 wet noodle skills (overdramatizing here, yeah, but honestly, if you find starvation having more runner issues than Ravenhearst, I'm pretty sure something's wonky about your installation).

 
I don't have this issue and I feel my sample size is big enough. To make sure I played through a few hours of starvation in the last couple days and I do get runners, but all of them were either feral or it happened during night time (I have zombies run default) just as expected. I paid special attention to those in buildings and dark places, even waited for them to stir and move so I could see if they were running. There have been a few single zombies too far away to see their eyes and didn't get to the corpse in time to read their names, and some of them I just killed before they were moving, I counted a dozen. I killed about 500 in total. So that makes 488 confirmed negatives with proper behaviour, 12 undetermined and 0 confirmed positives for the deviation. Pretty safe to say at least for me this issue doesn't occur in my installation of the game.
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Are you getting Feral's on a fresh game? Because that sounds a bit too much...

I can defiantly confirm i did to not get any glowing eyed Zombies in my game. And some of those runners i looked right into the eyes (trying to) club them. Only one glowing eye Z and that was the custom Zombie School girl.

Trying to go by memory in a 5 day game ( just one as sample size but it also happened in other saves ):

2 Fat Women Runners

2 Head weaving Runners

1 Hawaii Runner

2 Security guard runners

2 or 3 more from the hoard. Do not remember the types exactly. Think mother, Cheerleader and ...

All are daytime Runners. All in a relative "safe" city zone. There may be more but i spend a lot of time on roofs and try to use bridges from building to building, so i can not tell those that attacked the building below me, when they are inside.

For instance the security guard was beating the little church next to my base. Sneak up to him, had a clear and perfect view on his face before he started running ( he first got a bit stuck on a piece of debris ). He ran in the church, outside, on my spikes. No eyes. The Weaver that killed me, happened fast but notice nothing. The Hawaii runner, close look, no eyes.

Also take in account, i died one time, got stat losses several times from lack of food and normally the game can not spawn any Feral types. I had the Security guard runner after dying the second time to the Weaver Zombie on the same day ( at best a hour difference in game ). By default the game reduces your enemy aggression spawn type after dying. So my bad luck?

And while looting the bodies of runners, i do not exactly pay attention to the labels but i never noticed any annotation of Feral. You know when a runner can appear at any second you do not exactly spend time looking in the their inventory of anything :-)

There might be something off with Benjiro's installation.
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I am suspecting the same... It is odd because all my mods are installed from the 7D2D Mod Launcher utility and are copies from the base ( not modified ) game.

On other mods like Valmod i get normal zombie behavior. In Vanilla i never got any abnormal behavior. All standard vanilla tame zombies on the first days.

Benjiro: The chair trick an AI cheat? Thinking about it, yeah, you're probably right. I won't feel bad for using that. If the game throws zombies at you that spawn in rooms you just cleared moments ago that sneak up behind you without making any sound, that's cheating as well. Me and the Z's, we're even now, no bad karma.
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*lol* ... Yea, i hate the whole zombie respawn in buildings. That mechanism is clearly broken. The building i died in on the first clear, pulled out a bunch of Zombies one by one but never left the "load" zone. One spot had a fat women zombie. Killed it. When re-entering the building, the game spawned a new fat women zombie sleeper on the exact freaking spot that i just cleared!

As a programmer i do not understand the 7D2D developers their system. One expect to have sleeper spawns that you populate on the first load. After this you do not respawn in building until the 30 days have past. Yet, leaving the loading zone can respawn them or even respawn them even in front of your face ( seen that happen that you end up with 2 zombies occupying the almost exact same spot ).

So, you played Ravenhearst and Vanilla as well. For me, zombies in starvation behave mostly like they do in vanilla. The most obvious exceptions are of course the added entity types (which for the most part are rather slow) and the movement animation of carwlers.
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Slow? Maybe i am a bit rusty in 7D2D but it felt like all zombies in Starvation have a slight speed buff. Like they move and react 10% faster then vanilla. Trowing my aim / timing with bows off. So i end up using the Club much more.

They are definitely not vanilla zombies :)

I've recently played Ravenhearst and what ever issues you got with runners, they are FAR worse in Ravenhearst for me. The runners are obscenely fast in that mod. And it doesn't help that the feral wights start populating every single garden variety poi, can onehit you from full health (which is 70 by default in that mod) take more hits to kill off than a wall safe and all the game gives you to fight back is a wet noodle, but only after you collected and assembled the wet noodle schematic and maxed the accompanying 4 wet noodle skills (overdramatizing here, yeah, but honestly, if you find starvation having more runner issues than Ravenhearst, I'm pretty sure something's wonky about your installation).
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Only played Ravenhearst for a few hours ( day or three in-game ) at best. Loved the detailed crafting, hated the Zombie detection range. Higher Zombie spawns + Zombie detection range what is almost 20km makes it that your non-stop clearing out areas. Be on roof, show your head and every zombie in the entire block instantly detects you and b-lines it to you. So did not get in too much in the mod as i wanted. True Survival does the same annoying trick with extended detection ranges.

Maybe its because i played Ravenhearst before Starvation but i do not remember runners in Ravenhearst. Where as Starvation it was a lot.

Going to try reinstalling 7D2D + mods but really do not feel like playing Starvation anymore. If they show up again it just feels like wasting hours of gameplay as i hate to play games with day-time runners.

 
I tried this on an existing savegame, not a fresh one. Ferals can appear early and I've been run over by a dog horde lead by a zombie bear on day 3 or 4 before. There are only very few ferals compared to later game stages though.

So you're listing 9-10 runners in a five ingame days period of time. Alright, that number doesn't sound much different from what I'd expect, maybe a little bit unlucky, considering you died.

The zombies might also be a little bit faster than vanilla, as you stated. I won't argue with that, because I think that's possible and I don't think 10% is a very notable difference that will make or break your gameplay.

I'm pretty sure the detection range of zombies is increased in starvation as well, I didn't even notice a difference to Ravenhearst. Again something that I probably didn't pay attention to, because it wasn't giving me any issues and I was occupied with a lot of other things that did.

For me, of the "challenging" mods, starvation is the most moderate and most fair, gameplaywise. It shifts the challenge to inventory management and preparing yourself and "hides" most difficult encounters in lategame areas or situations with rewarding loot (difficult zombies in difficult poi, not everywhere, ambushes from airdrops, rad zone etc.). As long as you don't "make a mistake", your death count will be low. There may be some deaths you can't avoid.

Fast zombies are in the game, even in vanilla. You can get dogs on day one for example.

Some other issues (like wellness loss, lack of food you mentioned) are things you really avoid easily once you get used to the mechanics and are not as bad as they look in the beginning. Starvation also doesn't gate many things you really need to progress behind random loot luck.

To a random person I will always recommend the starvation mod before any other (yeah, I'm kind of a fangirl be definition it seems) as long as the person doesn't dislike a particular feature. But we're all different and the mods are all different, which is a good thing. You definitely shouldn't feel like wasting time ever when playing a game, in my opinion. So considering all this and looking at the issues you list, I think you're one of the persons I'd recommend some other mod to. I'll send you a pm, advertizing other mods feels inappropriate in the starvation thread.

 
Spider-Zombies can walk upright and all the other zombies can be spider-zombies, in Starvation. I don't really notice very many crawlers in starvation. But I do notice I see more running zombies then I do walking zombies. :)

 
Spider-Zombies can walk upright and all the other zombies can be spider-zombies, in Starvation. I don't really notice very many crawlers in starvation. But I do notice I see more running zombies then I do walking zombies. :)
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The original spider zombie is the only one that climbs up walls though and the zombies that lost a leg are the only ones crawling on their stomachs.

I'm pretty sure you're encountering a lot more runners than walkers, heh. You've probably progressed far in your current savegame to have a high gamestage and your experience and gear gives you the confidence to leave your base at night and explore more dangerous places wihtout thinking twice, right? ;)

Benjiro was having issues with runners at daytime in the first week and what he described as a rather safe area.

 
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