PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Laz Man]

Either put the rest of us out of our misery under a spoiler tag, or don't tease us with these little things

LOL..

Spoiler

There is a QR code on one of the new shelves that when scanned takes you to the 7d2d website...

 

[faatal]

2) With my new savegame on a custom random world I wanted to try an underground base from day 1. However, digging holes is pretty weird on that map. The alignment for holes is always angular to anything else above ground. See my attached image where the wooden block can be placed as a square but the holes appear as a rhombus. Digging that underground base like that is really bad as I end up hitting wrong blocks all the time due to that weird alignment of holes. I could not even place a ladder in that shaft as I wanted; had to put the ladders diagonally in a corner. Why is that?

That is how terrain blocks are merged together. It is core tech and not something that is likely to change.

 

[Khalagar]

I find it hard not to go into strength some, unless I am going pure nomad

Yep, I got debated on all sides last time I posted it, but there's absolutely a list of "mandatory" perks for 90% of players. 

Perks you invest at least 3 points in, and probably max out eventually

• Miner 69
  
• Motherlode
  
• Daring Adventurer
  
• Better Barter
  

Perks you put at least 1 point in

• Gardening perk
  
• Health Regen Perk
  
• Stun Resist perk
  

Basically no matter what build you go with, you are going to find it hard for those not to be a pretty core part of your build if you play long enough. You can make it to day 21 or something without gardening or without barter or daring adventurer etc, but you are playing the game on hard mode. If you aren't purposely gimping yourself, all of those perks are 100 times better than any random other perk you think you need imo

I considered the Junk Turrets near mandatory in A18, but in A19 the Auto Shotgun is just so ridiculously better than everything else combined that you can get by without them. I wouldn't though still, and would still say every build will eventually want to put some points into them

 

[faatal]

You are falsely assuming that agility should be about stealth.

Nobody likes stealth, literally nobody, and you're desperate to pretend it belongs. Stealth means nothing, when you have scripted zombies falling through ceilings, immediately detecting you regardless of your "stealth".

Usually when someone says "Nobody likes x", they are automatically wrong. The world is a diverse place and I can probably find someone who likes to play the game blindfolded while juggling chipmunks.

I like stealth and mostly play agility. Does the fact that some sleepers somewhere might always see me invalidate the fact I can make stealth kills elsewhere? Stealth does not mean invisible in all circumstances. Out in a field in broad daylight being a prime case.

Normally I don't put points in From The Shadows, since Hidden Strike with a bow is fine, but Hated was wondering if knifes could ever be used for stealth kills, so last night I put 2 point in Hidden Strike and cleared a POI with stealth knife kills. Only a few hit me, since at certain angles you can't get a head shot for the instant kill. Looking forward to trying it with more points. This was the game I'm playing with my daughter, so I was not going to cheat to find out.

 

[LilMissNorti]

Yep, I got debated on all sides last time I posted it, but there's absolutely a list of "mandatory" perks for 90% of players. 

Perks you invest at least 3 points in, and probably max out eventually

• Miner 69
  
• Motherlode
  
• Daring Adventurer
  
• Better Barter
  

Perks you put at least 1 point in

• Gardening perk
  
• Health Regen Perk
  
• Stun Resist perk
  

Basically no matter what build you go with, you are going to find it hard for those not to be a pretty core part of your build if you play long enough. You can make it to day 21 or something without gardening or without barter or daring adventurer etc, but you are playing the game on hard mode. If you aren't purposely gimping yourself, all of those perks are 100 times better than any random other perk you think you need imo

I considered the Junk Turrets near mandatory in A18, but in A19 the Auto Shotgun is just so ridiculously better than everything else combined that you can get by without them. I wouldn't though still, and would still say every build will eventually want to put some points into them

can confirm - I only have 1 of these (Gardening) by default in this play through although would normally also have Better Barter (this is being done by another member of the team). There is nothing else I need except maybe Daring Adventurer later in the game but certainly NOT mandatory.

 

[madmole]

So madmole, how's your solo world coming along? Any tales to tell, any progression to speak of?

I haven't had much time to play. I'm on about day 30. I started on the interior of the  medieval house, got it painted and stairs in, nothing beyond that yet. Had some laughs tonight clearing a POI an asian zombie ran right by me but I was able to bust his head off as he did with a lucky shot from my club, and he just kept running with no head, then he turned around to face me but then the death code kicked in I think and he just collapsed, it was so LOL.

I noticed that if the mines are too far away, they dont blow up. set up channels for zeds to run through. barb wire was damaged, but the mines didnt go off. it was about the same distance that I stopped being able to see the lanterns.

oh thats easy, make noise along the outside wall. they will come to attack it en masse. then throw the explosive against it. the radius off effect penetrates the walls

Maybe the chunks unloaded to distant terrain. If you can't see them with a rifle scope then they aren't there any more. (technically)

Long time lurker first time poster. Been playing since Alpha 13. Love this game to death! (pun intended) You guys have done such an amazing job with this game. I had this amazing feeling when riding on my motorcycle just how far this game has come and how enjoyable it's been.

Anyways onto why I posted. I saw you mention that in a future update you wanna allow players the chance to do previous tier quests so they weren't always forced to do tier 5. Is that something you'll add in Alpha 19 or a later Alpha? I'm super addicted to quests now and I can't wait to choose any tier of quests at anytime.

It will be alpha 20. At least it takes longer to graduate the quests, I pushed for that change and you can do a lot more before you are at T5.

There is also a hidden easter egg I came across in A19 that I havent seen anyone mention yet...the devil is in the details....

Edit: and no....its not Corona wipes....

There is a massive easter egg actually.

 

[Laz Man]

I haven't had much time to play. I'm on about day 30. I started on the interior of the  medieval house, got it painted and stairs in, nothing beyond that yet. Had some laughs tonight clearing a POI an asian zombie ran right by me but I was able to bust his head off as he did with a lucky shot from my club, and he just kept running with no head, then he turned around to face me but then the death code kicked in I think and he just collapsed, it was so LOL.

Maybe the chunks unloaded to distant terrain. If you can't see them with a rifle scope then they aren't there any more. (technically)

It will be alpha 20. At least it takes longer to graduate the quests, I pushed for that change and you can do a lot more before you are at T5.

There is a massive easter egg actually.

Spill the beans madmole!!!

 

[Roland]

Had to start a new savegame as Navezgane simply felt too boring for me. Not too bad though, starting a new game is pretty exciting and renders putting new ideas into practice possible.

Two things:

1) Have tried putting brightness on 15 % as advertised by some guys here due to too much light at night. As I have said this makes the game in general much much darker and to be honest, it looks stupid. With A19 the lighting at daytime looks really awesome on standard brightness, setting that to 15 % takes away a lot of the beauty. Won't do that. Guess I have to live with too bright nights for the moment.

2) With my new savegame on a custom random world I wanted to try an underground base from day 1. However, digging holes is pretty weird on that map. The alignment for holes is always angular to anything else above ground. See my attached image where the wooden block can be placed as a square but the holes appear as a rhombus. Digging that underground base like that is really bad as I end up hitting wrong blocks all the time due to that weird alignment of holes. I could not even place a ladder in that shaft as I wanted; had to put the ladders diagonally in a corner. Why is that?

View attachment 11594

1) Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm so glad I'm not so picky about the daytime aesthetics so 15% is great for me day and night. However, TFP has some changes coming at some point in this regard that should make us both happy.

2) Early on when the terrain was being smoothed out from its original Minecrafty blocky look the developers experimented with different terrain block configurations. The one we have now gave the most natural looking underground caverns whereas plain blocks that matched perfectly with player constructed blocks looked very unnatural and blocky when underground.

 

[madmole]

Yep, I got debated on all sides last time I posted it, but there's absolutely a list of "mandatory" perks for 90% of players. 

Perks you invest at least 3 points in, and probably max out eventually

• Miner 69
  
• Motherlode
  
• Daring Adventurer
  
• Better Barter
  

Perks you put at least 1 point in

• Gardening perk
  
• Health Regen Perk
  
• Stun Resist perk
  

Basically no matter what build you go with, you are going to find it hard for those not to be a pretty core part of your build if you play long enough. You can make it to day 21 or something without gardening or without barter or daring adventurer etc, but you are playing the game on hard mode. If you aren't purposely gimping yourself, all of those perks are 100 times better than any random other perk you think you need imo

I considered the Junk Turrets near mandatory in A18, but in A19 the Auto Shotgun is just so ridiculously better than everything else combined that you can get by without them. I wouldn't though still, and would still say every build will eventually want to put some points into them

I don't get Daring adventurer nor better barter. If I do its just 1 rank, that feels fine to me. I'm swimming in coin by day 30 who cares? No I can't afford a jeep but I have a motorcycle so that is good enough, I will eventually have enough money.

I never buy gardening, and haven't done health regen since my fortitude build in A18 food gives me all the health I need, and who cares about stun? YOu don't get stunned any more and good armor reduces it plenty. That will change some, stun isn't happening enough yet, but I usually go heavy armor so its not a huge issue with heavy armor.

It is ok to state what you do, but don't assume everyone is playing exactly how you do. The fact is there are a lot of different play styles and peoples needs and wants are completely different. We're just getting a first look at telemetry and it is very interesting, and surprising.

Mining is a must have for some people, for others nope. Don't care, it just isn't needed. A lot of people don't mine, they don't dig up the concrete either. You can just do quests, make money and buy plenty enough building supplies to fix up a house into a base, or just do the roof top random base every 7 days and use some spikes.

The fact is you don't know what even .00001% of the players are doing. Sure you could say 90% of the players in your tiny control group agree on x perks, but trust me it isn't accurate.

I agree str is a go to build that makes sense, but that can change once we get the other builds closer to a finished state and do more balancing. We have guys who swear by better barter and daring, but I could care less, I'll eventually loot what I want. There are perks ideal for min maxers, and perks suitable for role players and people who take their time and aren't rushing. And that group would surprise you with their must haves.

 

Spill the beans madmole!!!

Not falling for it. There are levels to easter eggs, maybe you have the big one, maybe its just a tiny one.

 

[faatal]

Madmole single handedly cured animal extinction with one patch!! No really, that's been a major issue for a few alphas for me, where animals are totally extinct by like day 2 or 3 and then you ride the struggle bus for the rest of the game trying to find meat.

We complained enough.

 

[MechanicalLens]

I don't get Daring adventurer nor better barter. If I do its just 1 rank, that feels fine to me. I'm swimming in coin by day 30 who cares? No I can't afford a jeep but I have a motorcycle so that is good enough, I will eventually have enough money.

I never buy gardening, and haven't done health regen since my fortitude build in A18 food gives me all the health I need, and who cares about stun? YOu don't get stunned any more and good armor reduces it plenty. That will change some, stun isn't happening enough yet, but I usually go heavy armor so its not a huge issue with heavy armor.

It is ok to state what you do, but don't assume everyone is playing exactly how you do. The fact is there are a lot of different play styles and peoples needs and wants are completely different. We're just getting a first look at telemetry and it is very interesting, and surprising.

Mining is a must have for some people, for others nope. Don't care, it just isn't needed. A lot of people don't mine, they don't dig up the concrete either. You can just do quests, make money and buy plenty enough building supplies to fix up a house into a base, or just do the roof top random base every 7 days and use some spikes.

The fact is you don't know what even .00001% of the players are doing. Sure you could say 90% of the players in your tiny control group agree on x perks, but trust me it isn't accurate.

I agree str is a go to build that makes sense, but that can change once we get the other builds closer to a finished state and do more balancing. We have guys who swear by better barter and daring, but I could care less, I'll eventually loot what I want. There are perks ideal for min maxers, and perks suitable for role players and people who take their time and aren't rushing. And that group would surprise you with their must haves.

 

Not falling for it. There are levels to easter eggs, maybe you have the big one, maybe its just a tiny one.

Well said. Coming from me, if anyone's interested, here is my current perk lay-out (attributes not included):

4/5 Miner 69er

5/5 Mother Lode

4/4 Sex Rex

3/5 Pain Tolerance

1/3 Living off the Land

2/5 Salvage Operations

3/5 Better Barter

2/4 Daring Adventurer

2/4 Advanced Engineering

1/(4?) Physician

3/4 Heavy Armor

1/3 Rule #1 Cardio

1/5 (or /4?) The Huntsman

3/5 Pummel Pete

4/5 Boomstick

Coming from me, my go-to perks are the top three listed above. Pain Tolerance and Advanced Engineering also quite important to me, and I'm on and off with both Better Barter and The Daring Adventurer. I personally consider The Huntsman, Salvage Operations, Living off the Land, Physician, Heavy/Light Armor, and Rule #1 Cardio trivial quality of life perks on my end that I usually end up taking anyway. I abandoned Healing Factor quite a long time ago personally, and I never spec into Master Chef or Pack Mule. Grease Monkey is usually off the cards for me, unless RNG is clinging particularly close to its bicycle parts or schematics. Electricity is an alien place for me, and it's very unconventional for my bases to revolve around it; strong walls or towers suit my fancy well enough and keep the zeds out. Nonetheless, it's a habit that I would like to get into, I just never get around to exploring that particular avenue - I am a master procrastinator after all.

 

[SnowDog1942]

You don't need to throw explosives, you can explode them in your hand and it wont damage you

I have something explode in my hand twice a day

 

[pregnable]

I agree str is a go to build that makes sense, but that can change once we get the other builds closer to a finished state and do more balancing. We have guys who swear by better barter and daring, but I could care less, I'll eventually loot what I want. There are perks ideal for min maxers, and perks suitable for role players and people who take their time and aren't rushing. And that group would surprise you with their must haves.

Yeah, I mean you can totally not go str if you are going nomad and just camp out on a huge poi you have a quest for and get it destroyed, then just start the quest in the morning to repair it lel...

Strength is one of the builds where RNG does not matter much, and it lets you power level enough to usually make up for the points you put into it. 

I tried doing an alternate build with wrench and then going intel, as I said in my other post, but it was slowed down by needing clay and the wrench needing iron, and building from iron frames is costly heh.  It just would have been faster and I would have leveled faster going miner. 

The wrench being cheaper and or only costing pipes to make might have made a huge difference though.  Probably would have made it more on par with miner. 

 

[SnowDog1942]

Meh, food was fine but I conceded by adding more nasty animals and the majority will be chickens and bunnies so you'll either work for it or get wrecked. Dogs should be more lethal so beware

Wait an experimental came out that made something harder, people whined and TFP gave in and nerfed it, i would have never guessed

I kid, i do like more animals spawning.

 

[wolfbain5]

Maybe the chunks unloaded to distant terrain. If you can't see them with a rifle scope then they aren't there any more. (technically)

possibly, but they are close enough to see the lanterns with iron sights, they just dimmed out. about 32 meters

 

[Blake_]

I don't get Daring adventurer nor better barter. If I do its just 1 rank, that feels fine to me. I'm swimming in coin by day 30 who cares? No I can't afford a jeep but I have a motorcycle so that is good enough, I will eventually have enough money.

I never buy gardening, and haven't done health regen since my fortitude build in A18 food gives me all the health I need, and who cares about stun? YOu don't get stunned any more and good armor reduces it plenty. That will change some, stun isn't happening enough yet, but I usually go heavy armor so its not a huge issue with heavy armor.

It is ok to state what you do, but don't assume everyone is playing exactly how you do. The fact is there are a lot of different play styles and peoples needs and wants are completely different. We're just getting a first look at telemetry and it is very interesting, and surprising.

Mining is a must have for some people, for others nope. Don't care, it just isn't needed. A lot of people don't mine, they don't dig up the concrete either. You can just do quests, make money and buy plenty enough building supplies to fix up a house into a base, or just do the roof top random base every 7 days and use some spikes.

The fact is you don't know what even .00001% of the players are doing. Sure you could say 90% of the players in your tiny control group agree on x perks, but trust me it isn't accurate.

Mmm. Too much mansplaining. What does the telemetry say about t-rex, tools, mining, barter and daring ? 

That they are a must have would be my guess. No need to come bartering with a daring explanation if you have the actual numbers.

 

[Ranzera]

The fact is you don't know what even .00001% of the players are doing. Sure you could say 90% of the players in your tiny control group agree on x perks, but trust me it isn't accurate.

I agree str is a go to build that makes sense, but that can change once we get the other builds closer to a finished state and do more balancing. We have guys who swear by better barter and daring, but I could care less, I'll eventually loot what I want. There are perks ideal for min maxers, and perks suitable for role players and people who take their time and aren't rushing. And that group would surprise you with their must haves.

I don't need to know what all the players are doing to see a meta coalescing. Too many game problems are solved in the Strength Tree right now. Sure, people in the first 2 weeks of the alpha are probably trying different builds. What's not up for debate is every player after seeing their problems in game being solved by the Strength Tree and the relative lack of solutions being offered by other trees. The Strength Meta is beginning to form now and you'll see a dramatic shift to STR over the alpha.

I touched on this way back when you guys were dev streaming.

You nerfed Fortitude. This was deserved, I called out Fort as OP last alpha. Then you moved Heavy Armor into Strength. Then you increased stamina consumption of most tools. Then you increased the amount of food drain. Then you made the Blunderbuss everyone's starter weapon.

Strength is benefited by or solves all of those issues. 

Strength:

Reduces Stamina consumed while running in Heavy Armor and by extension, food consumption. (Heavy Armor) Even Rule #1 Cardio doesn't affect food.

Reduces Stamina consumed while using Tools and Weapons and by extension, food consumption. (Sexy Trex)

Makes your low level Blunderbuss better and thusly incentivizes shotgun builds. (Boomstick)

Makes all that canned food you were buying anyway much more effective (Master Chef)

Decreases the amount of time you have to spend mining. (Miner 69'er, Motherlode, Sexy Trex)

Then there's the Sledgehammer thing, but almost no one has figured out how OP that is, but I'm sure they will soon.

That's without discussing Pummel Pete (good if you haven't discovered Sledge yet) or Pack Mule (noob trap).

Compare that to the other stats

Perception:

Gives you armor penetration. Frankly, this is great and makes the Perception tree worth considering for this alone.

Increases your Loot Stage. This was nerfed into the ground, by the time it's actually showing results it no longer matters.

Makes your spears marginally less terrible.

Makes Rifles better. However, nothing makes up for a low fire rate, small mag size weapon platform.

Makes Explosives better. Explosives are amazing without perks. SP is better spent elsewhere.

Makes your lock picking better. I've not met a single person that thinks this is worth investing into.

Helps you avoid traps. Getting gud costs less SP.

Helps you hunt animals. Either you play offline where it's a damn Disney movie, or you play online where no one has seen an animal in weeks.

Makes you find treasure faster. It can be helpful, but perkless gets the job done well enough.

Makes you harvest Mechanical Stuff more effectively. This was great until you removed its ability to let you get Solar Panels from wrenching in world panels.

Fortitude:

Gives you Meme Powers.

Makes the best weapon class even bester.

Lets you Harvest more from animals. Kind of a waste either way, due to the feast/famine thing I mentioned earlier.

Makes you less susceptible to weather. (noob trap)

Makes your farms better. You can get the only perk that matters with 0 points into Fortitude. The rest can be easily gotten spamming buried treasure 1s.

Makes you take less damage. Pretty decent, but it's inversely useful compared to player skill.

Makes you heal over time. Still MVPerk in the game.

Makes you use less food while doing any activity. Clearly one of the better perks for the food challenged. (I think this should affect passive food drain instead but w/e).

Literally stole a perk from the AGI tree, not that hardly anyone cares about stamina while running for long.

Agility:

Makes bows better. The Sneak attack buff makes this moot.

Makes Pistols better. Jury is still out on this pending review of the new Desert Vulture. SMG certainly didn't need it.

Makes you better at making zeds bleed on you while they beat on you. Yippee.

Makes you better at reloading on the run. This would be a great perk if not for base building rendering it moot.

Makes you swing certain weapons faster and recover stamina on killing blows. It's probably pretty good, I haven't used it myself though.

Gives you pointless buffs to light armor.

Turns a you into a Mario Brother. Here we go!

Makes you better at going without detection. Too bad just about every POI has at least one room that's scripted to activate every sleeper in the room the moment you step into the doorway.

Makes your Sneak Attacks hit like woah. Made moot by the bow sneak attack buffs, the most commonly used weapon to sneak attack.

Intellect:

Makes your lol, a little less lmao. Lol.

Makes your Junk ahem Robotic Turret shoot faster and eventually gives you 2. Pretty great! What? No, there isn't any other robotic weapons. You must have had a fever dream.

Makes Traders give you all their money and later all their items. A+

Gives you more quest rewards. Good if you care about that sort of thing.

Party PERK!!!!! Yeah I didn't think so.

Gives you access to some items you should have looted schematics for in the first place. Oh and Chem Stations, which are mostly covered by the camp fire for the important stuff until you loot a schematic from one of the 2123435125 destroyed chem stations in the world.

Gives you exp from Electrical Trap Kills and access to Forge/Work bench if you're really unlucky. Nice stop gap perk, but the most useful point is available at Intellect 1.

Gets you a bicycle and other vehicles if you really care about them. Particularly good if you find a nerdy glasses early, otherwise the extra point isn't the end of the world.

Obviously, Strength is Key All Star MVP #1 tree. Fortitude is still a strong number #2 and Intellect is great in multiplayer for one focused player, or as a splash tree. Perception has 1 good perk line and Agility is best left uninvested.

You don't want my ideas on this, but I'm giving them anyway.

Move Master Chef to Intellect.

Madmole, you like to say you have to be a good cook to be strong. Well I say you can't be a good cook if you aren't smart. One of us is implying strong people don't need brains and I don't think it's me. Game wise, Strength is too good and Intellect is the recipes tree. Make things right.

Move Heavy Armor back to Fortitude.

In a vacuum, this change might have made sense, but you did all those other things that also buffed Strength. Put it back. The Natural Healing nerf is good enough.

Move Rule #1 Cardio to Agility.

No one outside of TFP thinks this makes any god damned sense. And while you're at it, make it consume less food too. That poor AGI tree needs a damn bone.

More importantly, bring back the little black dress.

You people even went and gave it a sexy pun. Natural progression beats a forced fake arcade system.

I say all of this as a STR/FORT player. It was the strongest tree pairing in every alpha since you've introduced this fake @%$*#! Arcade System and you've only buffed it since.

 

[faatal]

Question about picking up forges -

I put LCB down, picked up forge (it spit out my Bellow and anvil) but when I put back down it was empty - lost all my smelted material. Is this intended design ? Thx

Picking up the forge would turn it into an item. The item would not have data on what materials were in the forge. I don't know that we would ever change that.

 

[Dethar]

Well seems to me there ought to be a little warning "your gonna lose material" or spit out the materials. I did not lose the anvil or bellows... So it's coded to check for those and and put in ur inventory

It can't put it into your inventor. Smelted reassures dont have a physical item. You either smelt or craft it into physical resource. Never played Minecraft, but isn't it same way?

I have never tried picking up forge without crafting raw iron, brass, stone... Always seemed logic to me you would lose it.

 

[Khalagar]

I don't get Daring adventurer nor better barter. If I do its just 1 rank, that feels fine to me. I'm swimming in coin by day 30 who cares? No I can't afford a jeep but I have a motorcycle so that is good enough, I will eventually have enough money.

That's what I meant by gimping yourself and playing on hardmode lol. You can play with no perks at all, but it depends on how determined you are to not be optimal. It's just that some perks are *so* much better than others. Daring Adventurer and Better Barter let you buy parts, guns, ammo, workbenches etc and completely avoid having to spend points in other trees. You can do a no mining or no crafting play through thanks to Daring Adventurer and Better Barter making it  way more feasible. You can eventually get everything . . .or with those two perks you can get the things you need more reliably and 2 weeks faster than relying on RNG loot

It's like the "I'm going to do a no trader playthrough to prove you can!" thing. Yeah, you can, I'm not saying you can't . . .just why? It would be like doing a "wrench only" challenge run. Def possible, just a player imposed handicap

I never buy gardening, and haven't done health regen since my fortitude build in A18 food gives me all the health I need, and who cares about stun? YOu don't get stunned any more and good armor reduces it plenty. That will change some, stun isn't happening enough yet, but I usually go heavy armor so its not a huge issue with heavy armor.

Good to know stun is AWOL ATM, that would explain a lot. Health Regen and Stun are just nice to haves QoL but aren't as high priority as stuff like a few points into Miner 69. The gardening perk just lets you get twice as much food for a single point, IMO it's one of the objectively best perks in the entire game because it's so cheap and offers a 100% increase in food output for only a single health point which is huge. Most perks give you like 5-10% increases for a point, but gardening one instantly doubles your food and lets you craft cheaper farm plots too.

Hard to say no to, and long term there's just no real reason not to stick a single point in it unless you have a GIANT garden where 50% output is enough to feed you

The fact is you don't know what even .00001% of the players are doing. Sure you could say 90% of the players in your tiny control group agree on x perks, but trust me it isn't accurate.

Well yeah, every game has filthy casuals, but who cares about filthy casuals?!

Joking aside, there's no point in talking about role players and uber casuals when talking about which perks are best, you'll have people like my friend who will invest 15+ perks in Agility solely to get the ability to jump 3 blocks high and not pick up a single other agility perk or use a single agility weapon.

But if you are actually objectively comparing perks, some are just way more value per point at specific game stages, or over all. Sure, you can invest points into sneaking if you want, but it's basically a complete waste of points besides for roleplay because stealth doesn't do anything currently and doesn't even work on the main day of the week. It's objectively a worse perk than something that provides a much more reliable and tangible bonus like boosting the damage of your primary gun and being able to craft a higher level version of that gun, because even with the extra stealth damage (if stealth worked) it wouldn't even balance out against the flat out higher damage from your main gun perk working 24/7

It's pretty easy to get a feel for which perks are good and bad by looking at what other people on the forums and subreddit do and don't pick, and seeing their analyses and opinions. You can pretty quickly tell which ones are "I just think it's neat" and which ones are from people testing the perks and doing the math and theory crafting on whether they are actually good.

if anyone's interested, here is my current perk lay-out

I definitely agree with nearly all of those being solid perks, a few are build specific though. Some like Sex Rex and Cardio just don't age well as late game you just aren't going to be going melee with 8 irradiated military guys regardless of stamina, especially with the new injury system as someone else mentioned. They are great early game, but once you are driving around everywhere and basically don't use stamina they aren't doing much of anything for you.

My list was just ones that are so QoL and consistent that *any* build will benefit from them. Health Regen could be dropped, I just keep it because I like passively healing while I'm off mining cement bags and digging through walls in a PoI and don't want to waste my healing items

Pack Mule (noob trap)

This is a major problem with several perks like Cardio, Iron Gut, Sex Rex, the Insulated perk etc. They are good early game, but scale like hot garbage into late game so investing in them early just assures that you will need to respec down the line. A lot of the int crafting perks are still like that, but at least now I can justify putting two points into Grease Monkey to craft gas cans, but it's still debatable if it's worth it

Spot on with the rest of your thoughts too though, at least IMO if you are min maxing and actually trying to be optimal

Stuff like Pack Mule can "save you a mod slot!" but there aren't enough good mods to actually *need* that mod slot. Triple armor mod / clothing pocket mods >>>>>>> Pack Mule