7D2D A18 First Impressions: When the Professor Got Lucky.

Something unprecedented and serendipitous happened in the life of your humble Professor this weekend past.  I gained access to the A18 launch a day before the general public, which filled me with monumentous joy. I was still after those blessed Streamers who were graced with a code on Friday, but even this mere 24-hour lead was something to celebrate.

I immediately dived in full assumptions about how they adjusted things based on their dev log.  My experience was of an update far better balanced than I anticipated, with much to love and a few things that made me apprehensive about the long term experience ahead.

Let's Explore Its Weak Points First

A18 Has Greater Optimization?  Perhaps For Some.

A18 hit my robust gaming laptop (16G, 6 processor, 4G GPU) like a ton of bricks at first.  The initial load in showed me a beautiful landscape that chugged a bit more than I had expected.  Some minor tweaks to the graphics settings (of which there are more than previous, it seems) had it running smoothly with only the occasional hitch.  This experience seems to be echoed across the community.  Periods of exceptional performance punctuated with odd lag spikes and jerks on even the strongest machines.  Ultimately it became hardly noticeable, with a quick freeze sneaking up only once or twice an hour.  The Fun Pimps are aware and are working on it, so kudos to them.

The Looting Is A Bit Monty Haul IMO

When I started looting one of the first things that caught my attention was the sheer prevalence and variety of loot.  While loot seemed to scale as you advanced in A17, A18 had me in possession of numerous lockpicks (More on these later) a steel sledgehammer, two iron sledgehammers, and 3 stun batons in a matter of moments.  The first four items were found spread between one of the new sedans, and one pile of road garbage less than 6 meters from each other.  This monty haul of early game loot only continued, with me amassing a couple hundred pistol ammo, two hunting rifles, and a few dozen ammo for that.  By the end of my first day, I had looted a junk turret in the house I opted to spend the night with.  

For this avid survivalist, this quickly made good loot become blase and the excitement of finding something neat quickly wore off.  I could reasonably surmise something better was around the corner.  I'll definitely be playing with the loot turned down after I give it a solid go in full vanilla.

Of Feathers And Ammo Caches

Now I want to come back to this aspect of looting.  Nests appear half as often and don't seem to have as many feathers in them as previously.  The one exception to this was the nest in which I found 105 feathers, which has yet to be repeated.  Other than this one fluke, feathers in quantities sufficient to sustain my love of bows were far too few in number.  Ammo, on the other hand, seemed to rain from the loot caches.  This may be an attempt on TFP's part to rebalance weapon usefulness and distribution, but I don't see it is an improvement.

Sprains/Breaks Seem Less Frequent, And Less Logical

I'm one of those 'devil may care' types when it comes to sprains and breaks.  I'll hop off tall buildings to get away from a fight, drop into basements that are inadvisably deep, etc.  Following my earlier behaviors, I didn't experience any of the issues with sprains and breaks that I did before.  Even when coming off the top of a pawn shop.  I don't know if this is intended, but I sincerely hope it isn't.  My ability to survive falls unscathed seems neigh on superhuman.

What I Love About 7 Days To Die A18

Combat and Zombie Spawns

Now that I've gotten most of my bitches out of the way, let's get on to the things that I fell in love with.  They've added a few new weapons, a few new ammo types, and have changed how zombies behave and their spawning habits.  All of this comes together to create a far more challenging experience than I had in A17.

Spears...  How I love thee.

Spears are easily my favorite addition to A18.  They stand in the middle between the melee centered combatant and the ranged specialist.  While they don't stack I found it easily worth it to lose a couple of inventory slots to the spear.  The spear has a decent range and tends to cause a little bit of knockback even in melee attack form.  Throwing the spear, on the other hand, creates a beautiful experience that may even be a bit OP.  You can throw a spear by pressing R, resulting in a steadily building strength meter that indicates how far it will go and how hard it will hit.  At point-blank range its a damned fine way to knock a zed on its ass and get yourself some much needed breathing space.

My current policy is to head in with three spears on my hot bar and do my best to handle zeds one at a time.  Three spears and a poke in the face is enough to take out your basic zeds.  Also, you can easily retrieve the spears even in the middle of combat, which means you can just keep the hate coming.  Part of me wants to see the spears nerfed a bit, but I wouldn't want them to lose their unique role in combat.

The one bad point about spears?  They sometimes pass right through the torso of a target without causing damage.  A glitch I'm hoping TFP will be on top of.

Zombie Rage...  Take Care

The new enrage mechanic can turn a manageable fight into a very bad situation pretty quickly.  When a zombie becomes enraged it suddenly moves faster, even if it's the middle of the day.  This left me wondering if they hit harder as well.  More playtime will tell (I prefer the experiential route for this kind of learning), but so far it's had a noticeable effect on how I clear a POI.

More Animals... Everywhere

So the balance in this instance seems to have changed as well.  The first POI I cleared had three dogs in it.  This isn't something I'm used to seeing in the early game.  There were also wolves and coyotes out in abundance, and they can seriously screw up your day if you aren't careful.  They do run now, but don't trust them.  They're certain to come back and ruin your day if you haven't killed them.  This I find a bit onerous.  If they run, let them run and not come back.  Having them run only to later aggro on you again seems disingenuous.  For the record, from wolves to pigs, these little bastards seem to hit harder too.

Lockpicking

This aspect of the game adds a fun new element, but there's no minigame or anything involved.  My only complaint is that it's not usable on doors.  Safes, boxes, and Gun Safes are all open game though.  The way they work is every time you use a lockpick, it starts a timer on the object.  The timer counts down until you break your lockpick.  You can then use another lockpick on the same object, and the timer starts from where it left off.  My first gun safe took me three picks to open, which seemed an acceptable amount of resource investment.

One more issue: These things seem really prevalent on the loot table, and have a reported value of 160 Duke Coins each...  A bit too rich for my tastes for something so common.

Getting Sick Can Be A Serious Issue

We see the return of the infection in force in A18.  Getting hit by a zed is far more dangerous than just having to deal with the damage.  They also give you the infection which will kill you in a matter of a couple of days.  Honey is out in the world, typically found in stumps, and will be your first antibiotic.  After that, you better hope for some good antibiotics or vitamins (Which give you immunity to disease). 

Food Sickness? Better be careful with this too.  You're playing a dangerous game when you eat food that can give you food sickness.  If you get sick, you'll vomit, losing half your remaining hunger.  In most cases, this makes your situation worse.  I loved the extra challenge this took, and how it made desperate measures a real experience.

No More Dysentery From Canned Foods

This is definitely a plus, especially given how much more dangerous food sickness is (even though it is not directly fatal).  When you find canned foods in the wild, you can safely eat them without fear of getting sick.

The Parts I'm Ambivalent About

Getting Clean Water Is Easier... Kind of

So boiling water no longer needs a pot. I'm pretty ok with this particular addition, especially since bottled water now has a 3% chance of giving you dysentery.  Only mineral water, teas, and other prepared drinks restore water without leaving you with a risk of dysentery.  I think I'd prefer the pot be involved, but that could easily be nostalgia talking.

The Perk System

It's changed, and I haven't nearly enough experience to say whether it's for the best or not.  More playtime will be necessary.  I do love that leveling is harder than it used to be, but only because it appears there are fewer levels to go through.  Again, I can't really comment on my overall feelings about this yet, though I will say it makes me less likely to plug in the 25% XP setting.

Overall

Overall the new version is a lot of fun, and the parts I dreaded aren't as bad as I thought they were going to be.  It's a wonderful new development and I'm looking forward to spending more hours of my life on it.  I also want to hear what everyone else's experience is, what they love and hate, and how the game is going for them.

Feel free to follow along on my twitch channel to follow along as I play through the new version, and spend some time with A17 as well.  Thanks for reading!