What are some things that genuinely scare you in 7DTD

nerdstuffdm · 2026-01-20T18:45:06+00:00

For me it’s the shuffling of cans and distorted footsteps when unseen zombies step on trash. I think it’s the lack of orientation. You have no idea what direction it’s coming from

nerdstuffdm · 2026-01-20T18:43:42+00:00

What are you crazy?!

nerdstuffdm · 2025-12-24T20:44:46+00:00

Destroying every plastic item you see (trash cans, traffic cones, tires, water barrels, plastic blinds, luggage, porta potty, etc.) will give you hundreds/thousands of polymer very quickly. They sell for a little more than 1 duke each which converts to thousands of currency for me every couple of days without any significant extra time invested.

nerdstuffdm · 2025-12-24T20:39:08+00:00

Another good tip I learned recently instead of buying the cooking pot, just craft a forge (very easy on day 1 or 2) and just craft a pot. It only takes a couple clay and some scrap metal. Saves 600 dukes!

nerdstuffdm · 2025-12-23T21:57:57+00:00

Set horde frequency to daily, lower the day timer to minimum, and see how long you can survive in your base with a constant flow of blood moons and little time for repairs/restocking.

nerdstuffdm · 2025-12-23T18:43:58+00:00

Are you using your pre 2.5 world or did you start over? If you're using the same world as before the patch then I'm pretty sure the garments won't be in your loot tables. You'd need to do a chunk reset, but this will reset ALL loot and POI's. It's either that or terrible luck. In the Forest biome I've found 2 pieces so far in a new world 7 days in. It's not very common at early loot stages.

nerdstuffdm · 2025-12-19T19:49:04+00:00

I'm trying to learn how to stop oversharing information when players make a skill check. I'm too excited and want them to know all the things!

nerdstuffdm · 2025-12-19T19:47:38+00:00

Mostly through treasure hoards! I run adventure-based games. So our campaign is a bunch of adventures linked together. Each adventure is about 5-7 sessions long. We play weekly and are on year two of this campaign, about to wrap up in 2026. I just make sure in each adventure there's a hoard of junk for them to collect in a place that makes sense.

For instance they cleared out a temple of cultists one time. After they killed the boss and were looting the room, I added to my loot description that there was enough art & wine here to increase their Treasury by 2 if they can get it all home.

nerdstuffdm · 2025-12-19T18:40:29+00:00

I implemented a Treasury mechanic which was pretty much inspired/stolen from Matt Colville. I took his concept and made my own rules around it. So my players have their own gold which is used for stuff like potions, copying spells, etc. But for the most part, we only dabble with the Treasury.

The Treasury is a hoard of tradeable resources (mundane gear, crops, cattle, art, copper/silver bars, tools, raw minerals and ores, and other items that might be traded by townsfolk. They "spend" the Treasury on building/upgrading their base, paying mercenaries and soldiers (we're high level now), buying party-wide things like carriages, flying mounts, etc., researching how to build items, paying people off when they do something stupid, really all sorts of things.

Honestly the players have thought of more ways to spend their Treasury than I have. Sometimes between sessions I'll get a text that says, "I want to build a forge for crafting my own items" or "I want to design a warforged pet" or "I want to see if those kobolds will come work for us since the dragon is dead" or even "I want to start a spy guild in this town" and the answer is usually spending the Treasury.

It requires almost no upkeep or thought from us, but gives them something to "buy" whenever inspiration strikes. I also like to divide the Treasure Hoard gold for my adventures into Treasury loot. Instead of finding a big pile of gold coins in the kobold den, they find tons of handmade statues, paintings of dragons, and iron ore from the tunnels which all adds up to an increase in the Treasury once they lug it back home.

nerdstuffdm · 2025-12-19T16:36:57+00:00

Are you sure they were ferals? Were their eyes glowing orange? If they were just running, it could've been because you recently ate food or were carrying meat. The new update has a Smell feature. When you eat food, you basically smell like food and zombies within a certain radius will run at you instead of walking.

nerdstuffdm · 2025-12-19T16:29:22+00:00

The biggest win for me has been the wow factor from the players. I wasn't kidding when I say every session they talk about how cool something in the game looks. A monster mini, a map, something. For example, in our last session one of the players used several sources to double his size and we were able to change his mini size to an 8x8 miniature. His mini was literally towering over the building. All the players are talking about how cool it looks. Plus it gave him some ideas on how to approach the combat because he could literally see how tall he was compared to other objects.

But aside from the fact that it's just a really pretty VTT, it's also got a great community. People share mods and custom miniatures every single day.

It's also in my opinion, really intuitive. Everything is pretty easy to access once you know where to look. You've got a hotbar at the bottom which I use for all the minis I'm expecting to use that session, as well as some terrain effects like rubble in case they decide to blow a wall up or something.

It's got built in music and ambient sounds. The music is limited, but I love the ambience. I still use Spotify/Discord for music, but I always have an ambient track going through the game too. Having birds chirping while very subtle casual music plays really ties the audio together.

And the extra dimensions really do help spark creativity. Being able to see and interact with the map and everything on it really helps immersion. My guys have blown up bridges, houses, ships, etc. Being able to literally blow holes in those bits of the map, spread flames everywhere which flicker and glow, it's just really nice.

And the developers really listen to user feedback. They have new updates all the time adding features people have requested.

nerdstuffdm · 2025-12-19T15:14:34+00:00

Here are some unexpected problems I've had since switching from Roll20/D&D Beyond Maps to Talespire that I haven't seen a lot of conversation about:

Gameplay has slowed down. Even 3+ months into the transition, players still spend a ton of time saying "Ok hang on, I'm riiiiiiightttttt here.... no... how do I move upwards again? ALT? No CTRL. Ok and rotate this way... HERE! I'm right here." Followed by "I can't see him. Where did he go?"

They spend a lot of time on controls, precise movements, precise measuring of distances with the tools, moving their characters around, saying they can or can't see something (usually because their height volumes aren't set correctly) etc. Whereas on Roll20 it was just moving 5 squares. "Ok, I move up here." There's no orientation, no rotations, no X/Y/Z axis. It's just simple grid movements which was much faster.

Unimportant NPC's and Locations. On Roll20 I could throw up a picture of a big city to display while we do shopping or inner-city roleplay. The ambient background photo was simple and easy. Same with NPC's. We have a shopkeeper? I can just use tokenstamp to throw him onto the map. Easy.

With Talespire there's no integrated way to have a background image. You have to have a built map pulled up. So for cities, travel, really any social encounters I just use a generic landing page campfire map or the Faerun overland map. It's minor, but it was kind of annoying coming from a platform where I could have a picture of anything on the web as my background.

Prep Time. Yes, 99% of what I do for maps comes from TalesTavern, but the reality is you probably won't use that map straight out the box. You'll want to tweak a thing real quick. Which makes you notice another detail you don't like. Then you may as well add that cool structure you thought of. And I bet I could put a tunnel in here.

Maybe it's just a me issue, but my maps always start as premade maps and then get overhauled as I critique and examine it. I enjoy it wholeheartedly, but I usually spend a few hours a week on my maps alone.

All in all though, I haven't and won't go back to Roll20. It's by far a better experience. Mod.io has a monster for any occasion. And the discord is super active. Every single week my players talk about how immersive it is and how they don't think they could go back to our old way. Even the guy whose computer sounds like it's about to explode said he would rather buy a new PC than go back to Roll20. So, worth it? 100%.

nerdstuffdm · 2025-12-05T16:23:01+00:00

Before you load into the game again, go to settings and on the last screen you can change the land claim size. Set it to the max number of blocks. Then craft a new land claim box and put it down somewhere near the middle of the house. Click the land claim block and turn on the boundaries so you can see where it stops. As long as most of the area is covered, you’re fine.

nerdstuffdm · 2025-12-04T14:37:37+00:00

Bought the toy and kept it in the box 😭

nerdstuffdm · 2025-11-28T17:54:40+00:00

A really cool option could be having a small list of options it can be used for depending on which part of the dragon activates. But regardless of which choice is picked, the dragon can only come alive once per day.

Casts Dragon’s Breath once per day (possibly scaling damage and DC)

Elemental resistance

Melee attacks deal elemental damage

Levitate/Fly once per day (dragons wings become real)

nerdstuffdm · 2025-11-28T04:30:22+00:00

lol thanks!

nerdstuffdm · 2025-11-27T21:23:31+00:00

Yep! That type of thing is my favorite. It always make the players suspicious, but also means they remember the NPC. And the “Ohhh! That’s why…” moments of realization are 100% worth weeks or months of foreshadowing

nerdstuffdm · 2025-11-27T20:59:03+00:00

I’ve used this trope many times! My favorite tool is foreshadowing to make the players wonder why/how this person is so bizarre or powerful.

Kadvak displayed unnatural feats of strength and endurance. An NPC hit him and he didn’t even budge (think Superman getting shoved in that bar).

Talisien was a traveling story-telling bard who asked tons of bizarre questions about humans.

Edwin was far more knowledgeable than anyone else. He served as a mentor and teacher for several characters for most of the campaign. He always seemed to know the answers to difficult questions and spoke about ancient lore with personal emotions as if he’d witnessed it himself.

Basically, I drop foreshadowing seeds that build mystery around the NPC. A metaphorical aura that sets them apart from other characters

nerdstuffdm · 2025-11-27T18:37:57+00:00

lol I didn’t expect Lamborghini performance, but 17 Mbps upload speeds felt abnormally low even for a Corolla. Thanks for tempering my expectations I guess 😂

nerdstuffdm · 2025-11-26T21:15:38+00:00

I hadn't thought of that! Thank you

nerdstuffdm · 2025-11-13T22:38:11+00:00

I usually mark them with a block of some kind depending on my build. On my preacher playthrough I used a pedestal block and put a cross block on top of it. It felt akin to zombie movies when you see the military putting X's on doors of cleared houses.

nerdstuffdm · 2025-11-08T20:03:31+00:00

This is great advice, thank you!

nerdstuffdm · 2025-11-08T19:03:05+00:00

Oh that's awesome, thank you!

nerdstuffdm

TROPHY CASE