PC Hidden Stashes Needs a buff

I

ihatefallout

New member
They're below average for loot despite being so rare and hard to find.

They were decent back in alpha 16, but now if were going to continue the gamestage tied to loot mechanic, I say Hidden stashes should be buffed so they they offer loot that ignores your gamestage or offers loot between your current gamestage to the max and at all qualities.

So if you just started the game and are on game stage 15, a hidden stash will offer any loot between gamestages 15 to gamestage 200+. Or alternatively, the other mechanic could randomly choose a single gamestage between 0-200+ upon opening and offer you loot only in that bracket.

We could leave loot bonus currently as it is, OR Loot bonus could also be maxed so that lucky looter or eye kandy has no effect.

Eitherway I think this is way better than parkouring or digging yourself to find a hidden stash only to find bullets that a kitchen sink can also give you.

 
They've talked about adding loot (game stage) modifiers for biomes and POIs.  I'm wondering if they would also do that for containers... ?

 
I disagree entirely.

Having the loot in a POI be concentrated in a small number of hidden stashes encourages people to bypass the rest of the POI and rush directly for the known stash location(s) - often by nerdpoling up the building or similar.

It's better to have the loot in a POI distributed through the whole building as evenly as possible to encourage people to take time to search and clear it rather than just diving straight to the good caches and then dashing on to the next building in their quest to power-level their characters and equipment as quickly as possible.

 
A good example of one of these hidden stashes is the coal mine POI where you go up a stair way to the entrance room that has a broken elevator in the middle of it that you normally drop down into a underground coal mine. Now instead of going down the broken elevator shaft you were to look up at the roof beams they from a jump puzzle and at the end of it you're rewarded with a cardboard box labeled as a Hidden Stash.

Now many of the other POIs also have similar Hidden Stash labeled cardboard boxes hidden in them for eagle eyed explorers to find by going off the main path. 

 
StaticScout said:
Agreed, If I take the time to search a POI for hidden stashes I should be rewarded for my efforts
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This only applies the very first time you search a particular POI. Once you know where it is, then forevermore in all subsequent playthroughs it is simply free better stuff that takes none of the searching effort to find. I dunno....

 
Danidas said:
A good example of one of these hidden stashes is the coal mine POI where you go up a stair way to the entrance room that has a broken elevator in the middle of it that you normally drop down into a underground coal mine. Now instead of going down the broken elevator shaft you were to look up at the roof beams they from a jump puzzle and at the end of it you're rewarded with a cardboard box labeled as a Hidden Stash.

Now many of the other POIs also have similar Hidden Stash labeled cardboard boxes hidden in them for eagle eyed explorers to find by going off the main path. 
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Or you go up the ramp outside, chop a block and get the stash.

As other have said, hidden stash are only "hard" to find the first time you do. Afterwards, they would become easy uber loot. After doing POIs for a while, you know where stashes could be even in a new POI.

 
ihatefallout said:
Eitherway I think this is way better than parkouring or digging yourself to find a hidden stash only to find bullets that a kitchen sink can also give you.
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Bullets ARE treasure, but... I do think leveled loot tables could use some attention.

When I loot houses have so many questions;

  • who carries 2 cans of Miso in their purse?
  • why was that white clutch purse so popular?
  • why does almost every cupboard hold empty cans or jars and /or boiled water?
  • why don't we find more cans of things people don't want to eat, like brussels sprouts, or creamed corn, liver, artichoke hearts?
  • why would you go to the trouble of hiding some of this stuff behind a painting, or in a wall safe then leave more valuable stuff out in the open? 
  • why after ( weeks months  years ) can any refrigerator or cooler contain fresh meat?
  • why nobody left underwear, bras or socks behind, just this useful stuff.
  • Etcetera 

 
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Currently these secret stash are allways at the same location, if you know it you can go straight to them like for the regular big lootpile.

So i don't think they need to be a buff.

But when they would be random, basicly any solid block could be the the secret stash, and you need to search for it for every POI it could be more rewarded.

Could you imagine how time consuming it would be to search for such a random stash in a apparment house or factory ?

 
Canute said:
if you know it you can go straight to them like for the regular big lootpile.
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If they made the hidden painting, floor, cupboard block loot helper optionally just be a copy of an adjacent solid block 90% of the time, and then placed more of them it would serve the same purpose.  90% of the time you'd be wrong even if you knew where to look.

 
No change to their loot is really needed beyond maybe a few tweaks to their existing special loot table. However naturally any loot will get limited by the Game Stage gating system as the devs do not want players to bee line to high value loot too early with out grave risk involved to discourage it. Aka having to face more tougher zombies and deal with environmental effects that need special gear to mitigate.

 
Danidas said:
However naturally any loot will get limited by the Game Stage gating system as the devs do not want players to bee line to high value loot too early with out grave risk involved to discourage it.
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In the D&D vernacular dungeon dressing enough loot to repair the armor.  There are some issues with "Trash" loot. in fact, I fined the actual trash is one of the best loot sources, while POI leveled loot is some of the worst.  I'd like a bit more diversity in leveled loot items, but maybe just things you can scavenge into raw materials. (more metals).   But, then on the other hand, there are some materials already in the game hat have little or no crafting purpose.  For example, brass and lead seem to only exist in loot to enable crafting bullets.  However, if they added the realism of copper, and some rare tin ore, you wouldn't need to continually scavenge to melt down door knobs, trophies, and radiators.   In the post apocalypse world you would go back and pick up your brass for reloading.  This then leads to the need to award lots and lots of bullets as loot in order to keep the guns in play, 

IRL, I do bronze casting, and the bulk of our metal comes from recycling copper pipes and buying the tin, rather than finding enough brass door knobs or plumbing fixtures.  Tin is everywhere but is almost always going to be an ingredient in an alloy. Purest sources would be spools of solder, but that would also be an alloy with antimony and lead.   Our modern world is chock full of aluminum, which has a lower melt point than iron or steel, and would be an actual useful material for making some intermediate things.  Silver and gold are only useful to sell in game, but in an actual apocalypse have great value as conductors.                                                      

Currently in 19.3, above ~GS 50 the quest reward, especially with 4/4 "The Daring Adventurer" perk will far exceed anything I would find in any loot, from "Lucky Looter" or be able to buy from the trader with "Better Barter".  

 
Roland said:
This only applies the very first time you search a particular POI. Once you know where it is, then forevermore in all subsequent playthroughs it is simply free better stuff that takes none of the searching effort to find. I dunno....
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Agree with this.

I prefer to highlight the notion of treasure maps.    Random locations with semi-nice loot negates the need for hidden stashes entirely.

 
Random idea.

If you clear the POI, you get good loot.

If you don't clear the POI, you get crap loot and a mini horde spawns. 

 
SylenThunder said:
Random idea.

If you clear the POI, you get good loot.

If you don't clear the POI, you get crap loot and a mini horde spawns. 
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Not sure thats a good idea.... lots of times I run into a POI looking for specific things like a cooking pot early game.   I wouldn't want to get a mini horde just because I don't want to clear the entire poi to raid the kitchen.

 
Kalen said:
Not sure thats a good idea.... lots of times I run into a POI looking for specific things like a cooking pot early game.   I wouldn't want to get a mini horde just because I don't want to clear the entire poi to raid the kitchen.
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No, we're just talking about the stash/reward box in that regard.

 
Roland said:
This only applies the very first time you search a particular POI. Once you know where it is, then forevermore in all subsequent playthroughs it is simply free better stuff that takes none of the searching effort to find. I dunno....
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But that also applies to every single other POI, and to avoid “free stuff” we can easily code in formulae or multiplier where the chances of a high game stage loot spawn is drastically lower in the early days, plus the good thing about having all game stages unlocked for hidden stashes, is that as you progress to a higher game stage, the loot actually can get worse as you are potentially looting at a lower game stage, which by that time should be less of a concern as the end loot would compensate for that easily.

meaning it’s should be a good early day boost so that you have a (small) chance of no longer getting stuck with 10 blunderbusses and primitive bows that everyone is complaining about.

 
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