Im digging it, on multiple levels. Especially now that I bought a new computer and I can run it on ultra. I enjoy the early game the most, and this has stretched it out quite a bit. This makes me pretty happy.
Melee is back to being my hot sauce, until I get critted. In the past, I ran around without armour until I absolutely needed it, usually by the first horde night. Now, im scared to come outta my boarded up house without at least getting my hands on cloth armour. I almost never used cloth. All the basic primitive weapons have been upgraded, and modding them feels chunky and weighty. I have even started to like the knife, which was a garbage weapon until now. Fists feel better in gameplay as well. I've stopped scrapping my club during the tutorial as well. I love the modded upgrade textures, especially spikes on the basic club. If you are gunna stay ranged, then you better get REAL cozy with the primitive bow and the blunderbuss, because they are gunna be your closest friends for a while. I am really in love with the new zombie animations and how they interact with environments. The lurching that zombies have had is now enhanced with animations for stumbling and even loosing balance. And that, my friends.. was a really cool point of immersion for me. It almost made me forgive some of the very un-immersive things that have been added over time.
I looted the gun range/shotgun messiah combo and came away with kinda a ridiculous number of blunderbusses, stone spears (which seemed oddly unimmersive, but not game breaking), and a metric crapton of ammunition for weapons that were not present, nor had I owned yet. I lol'd. It might be best to leave these places alone until you get to your next tech stage. Was good fun though, fighting in all the clutter. Personal bubble space runs a premium indoors now. I am excited to explore the new POi's, with the exception of the busted up shamway POI. It's a pretty big place, with some fortification potential, but I either missed the main loot completely, or there was none in it to begin with. feelsbad
I hate spider zombies now even more than I did in A15-16. Dogs and pigs can also @#$^ right the hell off. Vultures being able to tear apart weak roofs is also a nightmare fuel I didn't really need. They were already annoying as all get out. They didn't need a buff, im my humble opinion.
Meat is easier to come by. The food system is now of VITAL importance. You run into more hunger and more often, but it's not tough to come back from it once you start doing bacon & eggs. Speaking of which, eggs seem to be a bit incrementally harder to come by, so boiled meat has sorta moved up to the position that bacon and eggs has traditionally held. Food numbers don't seem to stack like it used to. Eat one thing at a time, and wait for the timer before doing it again.
Cheap oh @%$*#! candy eliminates fall damage, making parkour seem less about fall damage, and more about jump height.
Rando horde spawns seem.. off. Not sure how I can best explain it. Like.. the first morning I saw a group walk through my area. I was stealthed so they just kept going. Then all them stopped about 50 meters from my base, and then.. just stood there collectively like they were waiting for further instructions from the zerg overmind. They didn't start moving as a group again until I closed the distance.
Although I have not yet tried it, I like the plausibility of being the group medic. It seems like it could be a new style of game play. If TFP wanna do this and make it a thing, it would be pretty baller to flesh that role out. I could see the potential benefit of giving us medical journals for this. Medicines also feel more streamlined, which means that if you're in a group and people are reckless or good@dead it is a no bueno. That's a player issue though, not a game one. I don't like the idea of needing multiple medicines on my hot bar if I am going to tank though.
I still have philosophical problems with the idea of zombies being able to rip through reinforced concrete and steel with their bare hands, but - this is not a new thing. I will still try to keep getting over that. I never built a wedge wall base, but I think that removing them kinda invalidated the idea that horde basebuilding is about physics and how to stem the tide. I get that there needed to be a way to clap back at the serial horde cheesers, but buffing zombies now to do very unzombie things brings out all my side eye. If you're gunna let zombies swim, please add zombie eating sharks
a la this classic scene.
New zombie models look great. Although its crazy creepy to be stared at by them, in group play it clearly shows who has the agg. The mixture of the new zombie meshes in combination with the old ones, feels a little off tho. But of course, that will rectify itself over time.
Boarding up the windows is now less painful. Good on TPF for adding that QoL bit! The music of being at a trader kinda caught me off guard. Was a nice change.
This list is not exhaustive, but so far I think it's started off on the right footing, so I give it high marks in my initial impressions. Keep up the good work!
