Ok, about the latest balance changes... I usually make do with stone arrows until I can make iron arrowheads in a forge.
Right now, that's gated by needing an anvil in hammer and forge 2, which is gated by intelligence 5.
So for a sp game, you have to mine and dig for almost 2 days for the resources needed for the anvil, you don't get enough xp from that to level up much, and can't kill zombies other than occasional strays.
I'm on day 5 and it's been a struggle just to find enough food and water to survive, and there is no way I'll have iron arrows on horde night... I'd need 8 more points to spend, and if I grind zombie killing and don't put points in anything but that progress, (and if I can stumble upon animals for food) I'm probably looking at day 13 or 14 before getting an anvil in a found forge.
And by then I'll be able to make a forge and iron tools, so found forges are pretty much worthless now unless you make iron for repairing found tools.
I get Gazz wanted it harder for forge use, but quintupling the resources needed for it and ALSO gating it behind so many points really kills a sp playthrough. Day 14 horde night without at least iron arrows is just going to suck.
If this follows by our last playthrough, we couldn't have a forge till day 28 or so with two players.
Maybe just increase the resources needed and not gate the anvil? If you invest no points in anything at all now, you can have a found forge working by day 7 or 8... but you won't be able to cook food, carry anything, fight, or literally do much else progress wise.
Imho this was a bad knee jerk reaction to Jax's post about the stone age. Our mp with two people will see irradiated in day 14 hordes, and we are supposed to fight them with stone arrows?
If this is the last build before the holidays, we'll just have to cheat the current balance and spawn in a forge, because this is just rediculous.
I want it hard, but fair and winnable, and with this imbalance it's pretty much neither.
I also only play single player, and whilst there are some aspects of this game that appear to be weighted slightly towards the multiplayer genre as far as balance, I think you must have been super unlucky to be struggling as much as you stated here.
With only one point in Boom! Headshot, and one point in Hidden Strike, stone arrows were comfortably able to keep me safe, at distance, as long as I opened with a crouch shot, especially when hunting at night. An iron reinforced club as backup to land a single finishing blow if anything made it past my onslaughts and I don't believe I had taken a single point of damage before Day 7 horde. After that I'll admit I got cocky and reckless, but thats my fault not the games.
I had looted enough POI's to have more than one full stack of Steel arrows looted which I saved for the horde, found 3 anvils in working stiffs boxes, along with a working forge at my trader, I had crafted 500 iron arrowheads, and kept them back to only be used from days 8-14.
Admittedly I play 90 min days, so reaching level 25 by day 7 was a breeze, even though I wasn't deliberately power-levelling by any means. Going outside and shooting things from a safe distance with stone arrows, whilst predominantly sneaking is a powerful, safe and easy strategy for the early days of the game.
Learn to love the burnt forest biome, the zombies keep themselves nicely lit as easy target practice at night, and also super easy to see them long before they can see you. Shoot them once from distance and they will come running to roughly where you were when you fired, and they just stop. As long as you've to maybe 7 or 8 blocks away, you have an easy headshot.
Even more so for the dungeon POIs where it becomes quite obvious where the 'jump-scares' are going to be coming from and sneaking is able to pull one zambie at a time with no drama (except ferals, but that requires a bit more care - and a change of underwear occasionally - but they are also few and far between in early days). It is possible to sneak shoot the slatted doors that often hide the zeds from the far side of the room, which breaks the door and doesn't wake the zombie. Easy headshot, which knocks them down, second headshot when they get up and its dead. Maybe need a third/fourth headshot for big Moe/Bertha, but they move so slowly this is still easy.
Once you've got your iron arrowheads (fired from a dyed Compound bow - not even remotely difficult to find in loot), and a couple of points in Perception, almost all of the zombies (warrior level) are one-shot dead if you land a crouch headshot, including screamers, which saves a lot of night-time aggro once your forges are all burning away. Get used to the arrow drop and this is easy too. You'll never run into stamina issues after the first few days, and there are plenty of boars/rabbits/chickens/deer around to keep up with your food needs. Eggs are a little rare, but if you're going hardcore bow mode then you never stop looting birds nests anyway (currently sitting on a chest full of just over 1000 feathers).
If you wanna stick with the bow as it sounds like you do, make the most of it by dabbling a little in stealth too, and you may find you'll never touch a gun again (except maybe on horde nights). Its hella fun, and super safe!!