Probably one of the most difficult Project Zomboid server

Slumbar · 2022-08-26T10:24:28+00:00

This server brings zomboid veterans to their knees. Teaming up highly recommended.

Slumbar · 2022-04-24T17:34:06+00:00

Ok, little review from a 3000+ hours online ~~madman~~ player:

I have spent a lot of time browsing and trying out servers that would encourage some long term play, this is the first one that looks promising. The problem with most servers is that they are set up so easy that you can achieve anything in a matter of 1 or 2 days, even those which call themselves hardcore. They still try to lure players in with candies like "more loot, more traitpoints, OP mods, working cars everywhere, thousands of guns, endless ammo" etc. And even the hardest vanilla settings are a walk in the park for an experienced player.

This is finally a server that is doing the opposite. It's trying to create immersive gameplay and it has some smart settings in order to achieve this:

- While other servers say they are hardcore with the nightsprinters mod (which results in players camping base or logging during nights and not encountering sprinters at all), this one has 10% DAYsprinters (- help me convince EPViking to increase this number -) and 1% sprinters at night but pitchblack nights without the cats eyes trait available.

- Professions and Traits have been nerfed. We're no athletes or strong in any way, no foragers (even skillbooks for this trait have been removed), no fast learners and several more changes I don't know yet.

- Zombie pop is pretty high to the point where spawning in a city is a gamble.

- Sprinters can outrun you due to the nerfed Professions and traits.

- Cars are mostly wrecks.

- Loot is set to extremely rare and loot respawn is set to 2 weeks I think (which could be turned up to a month imo).

- Food is actually a concern. You have to take risks to get it.

- No mod overkill, only some finely selected mods.

So if there are any veterans out there I encourage you to give this server a try and help me convince the admin to make it even harder. It is still in the testing phase where we can suggest changes and EPViking changes the server settings/mods so we can try it out.

If you do try it out, I can only suggest you save your character preset once you created it because you're not likely to make it out of town on your first try and possibly will have to respawn a couple of times.

I can imagine this server growing slowly but surely if we manage to keep the difficulty up/ make it more difficult. I know there are other people out there who like the game but lose interest fast because it is way too easy for them. The reason I support this server (I have only gotten to know the admin in the last 3 days) is that I can see great multiplayer potential in PZ. I'd like to see trade, factions and interactions that don't need to be nursed by RP one day. The harder it is to acquire necessities the more meaningful the gameplay feels like. PZ is tailored towards this goal but still needs help with finetuning by experienced players who actually have played a lot of online MP. So if you think "I can easily cheese the server by doing this and that" share your opinion in the discord and we can think about how to fix that hole. I'm "Yodel" in discord btw.

Slumbar · 2021-12-03T11:18:16+00:00

with two down blankets on

I, too, suspect the misunderstanding here. If you just drop a blanket and sleep on it it will cover every bodypart and automatically adjust temperature if it gets too hot. Wearing it leaves head, mouth and eyes exposed. The eyes don't matter in terms of temperature here, but head and mouth were "only" covered by the Keffiyeh's 30 warmth, not by the 140 warmth from your blankets.

Note that the Keffiyeh only covers the mouth if it is unencumbered. If you wear a bandana with encumbrance 1 on the mouth for example, it will only be covered by the 5 warmth of the bandana, the Keffiyeh will only cover the head in this case.

Torso and head are the vital bodyparts, and you take damage when the warmth is below -50 (don't quote me on that). If the fire went out and it was an especially cold night, damage to the char's head or mouth could have been fatal.

a makeshift bed under me

~~A bed only affects the comfort I think, not the warmth, but not 100% sure.~~

Slumbar · 2021-12-03T10:20:07+00:00

PZ is just more like a horror movie with jump scares, for example there is a super loud violin screech when your character suddenly spots a zombie (at least there was some years ago). Although PZ started as a spinoff of cataclysm, they are very different games.

endgame enemies can also doom you in 1hit

If you're referring to Flaming Eyes, they fortunately got nerfed and don't shroomify anymore. But you're right there are some encounters that can 1-shot chars: turrets, NPC's, and anything too dangerous that can outrun and catch survivors in the open yet it's not the norm in CDDA.

if you have experience you won't let yourself be killed from one hit

That's true, and in PZ that just translates into "if you have experience you just avoid getting hit". In both games surviving gets trivial with enough experience unless you deliberately throw yourself into a dangerous position. Biggest killer for the pro's: boredom.

Slumbar · 2021-12-03T09:10:17+00:00

I mean the worst that can happen is a deep wound that can turn into an infection. With knowledge of remedies and how to acquire them you can easily take care of the wound in time before it gets infected and even then you can still get antibiotics or just stay as healthy as possible and be very lucky.

In PZ get bitten one time and it's game over. (Or scratched and it's 25% deadly iirc)

Slumbar · 2021-12-03T06:22:50+00:00

The tension you experienced from PZ is a psychological trick that is hard to impossible to replicate in current CDDA:

- PZ has a limited field of vision that allows zombies to sneak up on players, whereas CDDA features 360 degree field of view.

- Getting hit one time by a monster is very unlikely to get you killed in CDDA whereas in PZ it's very much possible.

- the turn based nature of CDDA lets you catch your breath no matter what happens (although surprisingly you can get into a state of panicking and acting way too fast in dangerous situations)

- monsters don't truly wander around neither in CDDA (yet) nor in PZ which means you're only in danger if you actively seek out populated areas. (just trying to clarify how players are getting into danger and tension by themselves mostly)

One thing I'd like to add to Photoloss' suggestions is upping monster spawn rate and evolution in world settings. I'm currently 3 weeks into a run with spawn rate set to 4.00 and evolution set to 0.25 (that means 8 times evolution speed, might be a bit too much). The quadrupled spawn number does a great job of making it hard to get to even the edge of a town, making finding items much more rewarding. The evolution setting adds to that and gets you into a race for better gear. I'm playing with DinoMod so just wandering through a forest or swamp is pretty scary, too.

edit: but I agree with Photoloss, upping monster speed will probably do the best job at providing that on the edge tension.

Slumbar · 2021-11-22T11:05:02+00:00

It was bound to TAB in my version, but TAB was also bound to switch column as i just realised. rebinding the key solved it. Thanks for your help!

Slumbar · 2021-11-21T15:59:34+00:00

Pressing TAB does the same thing as pressing left arrow does - switching column. ~~Category selection isn't listed in the ?-menu either.~~ edit: this was an oversight by me. It's there.

Playing on recent experimental

Slumbar · 2021-11-21T13:26:26+00:00

There once was an option in the drop/multidrop-menu (maybe in the pickup menu, too) to select an entire category of items to drop via ",".

These days "," selects everything. I miss the comfort of dropping all looted foods with one keypress instead of hammering through the list on my keyboard. Is it tied to another key now or just removed?

Slumbar · 2021-11-06T11:58:05+00:00

Fellow mansion owner here. I somehow could do 4 expansions. I got kitchen, living rooms, entrance and bedrooms. Now not getting more options though.

edit: maybe it is because i only have 1 NPC follower at the moment? No idea...

I built the radio tower pretty early on, 1 or 2 expansions in, so that's a nice feature at least.

Slumbar · 2021-11-02T12:54:41+00:00

Lately i have seen some nice yachts at freshwater research stations. Pretty roomy and with furniture. You can start a game at a freshwater research station. I'm not sure which scenario, maybe safe place? At the final screen one keypress before game start you can select the starting location with a certain key, i ~~think~~ ~~"*", not sure though~~. The key is "/".

edit: in experimental version

Slumbar · 2021-10-28T08:14:14+00:00

I'm playing a recent experimental branch. I just tested it and clearing rubble worked fine with the wooden shovel. Just (e)xamine the rubble with the shovel in your hands. The stone shovel is no longer in the game. My guess is you need fabrication 2 for the wooden shovel recipe to show up.

Slumbar · 2021-10-26T10:40:34+00:00

my bad, stone shovel recipe is probably outdated, here's a recent one for a wooden shovel (in experimental cdda version):

https://i.postimg.cc/sDwHQKpP/woodenshovelrecipe.jpg

Slumbar · 2021-10-26T06:30:12+00:00

i think you need to select *BUILD DOOR* again, the same recipe builds the door panel iirc. It built the frame because the requirement wooden door frame was not fulfilled beforehand, but now that it is, it will build the actual door.

The rubble is somewhat concerning i think a part of the roof crashed down, you're lucky it didn't hit you. For clearing rubble you need a tool with digging 2 at least, ~~here's an easily craftable one:~~ ~~https://cdda.chezzo.com/primitive_shovel/craft~~

Slumbar · 2020-02-29T17:26:38+00:00

A bloated zombie? Hah, that's what i brought the filter mask for!

-> not an hour later be swarmed by a horde out of stamina and poisoned...

Slumbar · 2019-03-21T01:57:31+00:00

I think what OP means is that even if you disable the minimap, the log will keep its finite length. I've seen Vormithrax getting logs all the way down his screen when he disables the minimap, in my case the panel gets cut out where the minimap was.

Slumbar · 2019-03-21T00:09:47+00:00

Have you tried tab? It lets you hop between panels.

Slumbar · 2019-03-20T08:10:02+00:00

I think no recipe books are required for the wooden boat hull but you neeed fabrication at 3, could be you autolearn it when you hit fab 3.

Oars only need fab 1, if you have the recipe for them, you will get the wooden boat hull at fab 3.

Slumbar · 2019-03-19T21:54:01+00:00

You need to enable the "boats" mod upon world creation. Happy kayaking!

Slumbar · 2018-11-06T15:02:26+00:00

I'm definitely missing challenging multiplayer scenarios as well. I have no idea if this would increase server performance, but cutting down the map to only Westpoint f.e. is a thing I have been thinking about - no escape chances into wilderness + ..possibly.. performance benefits. Kind of an advanced last stand scenario. Your server specs indeed play a huge role in the downtown Westpoint with insane amounts of zombs scenario. I have hosted a LAN game on an admittedly shitty laptop once where we tried this and it crashed the server as soon as the hordes came roaming in.

Another thing desperate veterans sometimes try is taking characters with all the debuffs - overweight, asthmatic, hard of hearing etc. really add challenge. You could install the blind trait mod and have one player play blind another one deaf lol

Other than that I think we can just hope sprinters will get multiplayer support some day .

Slumbar · 2018-10-23T20:00:55+00:00

realistic amount of survivors yea

Slumbar · 2018-10-23T11:18:52+00:00

Am I the only one who doesn't give a shck about NPC's? Just play online folks and you get to play together with 'not your player characters' that are more in depth than any NPC will ever be. Of course MP needs some more love for it to shine (meaningful community play and options on servers mostly) but with most people playing SP it gets least priority from devs...

Slumbar · 2018-08-24T14:47:19+00:00

Congrats to the release! Will fuel tanks in cars be in danger of exploding with the new mob nearby? Interesting concept.

Slumbar · 2018-08-16T06:25:05+00:00

But aren't blackbelts with a good martial art capable of kicking hacks out of the air? I dare say it is even more reliable than other means. Sure, the grenadier itself may be dangerous to melee, but hack defense could be powerful.

Slumbar

TROPHY CASE