Honestly they need to put the default back to Nomad, as adventurer gives a really unbalanced game experience, as on Adventurer the player deals I think 25% more damage to zombies, while the zombies deal 25% less to the player. Nomad is even both zombies and players deal full damage to each other. I have no idea why the default switched from nomad to adventurer, well.. unless its just because new players today are just that god aweful that they get owned on Nomad... Which is possible, as I watched a streamer play the game her first time and it was... pretty painful to watch as even when I was a new player I was not anywhere near THAT bad. She didn't even do her intro quest. Was using raw corn as food, didn't even spend her skill points, did alright on horde night as she was in a group with 3 other people. Twitch intergration was on, so they never had to struggle for anything as people in the chat just kept handing them everything. Poor girl did not even make a stone axe, and was using a stone sledge (sometimes a bone knife) to break into things, when the stone axe would have been better overall. It just was REALLY sad to watch. Streamer I mentioned thou IS fun to watch, she just did.. horribly at 7dtd, and I largely blame the fact her first game ever was multiplayer with twitch intergration turned on, so she never really had to learn how to play the game much.
Yes you do, in todays 7dtd you pretty much have to. At a mimimum use khaines 60 slot backpack mod, this alone is a massivle quality of life change, its only 15 slots more than the vanilla backpack but the gameplay difference is MASSIVE. Really wish tfp would make it 60 by default. Also the amount of skulls also gives you a loot bonus. like a t4 poi in forest generally has your loot scale equail to your game scale, where as a T1 poi, your loot scale is about or a bit higher than half your gamestage.
The skulls represent more the amount of zombies and the size of the poi and also chance of higher tier zombies spawning as some sleeper volumes are set to use higher tier zombies than normal.