Kajin

I can't say I'm a fan of cannibalism. Nor am I a fan of butchering human bodies and using them for leather. Gonna have to say no on that. I do like the idea of using bodies as bait for zombies or as warnings to other survivors, though.

NPCs, as always. Vehicles shortly after that.

Sledge hammers are much *much* heavier and harder to wield than a fire axe IRL. I'm not the fittest guy in the world but I can swing an axe for a good while chopping wood without getting overly tired, driving in truck axles with a sledge hammer = different story. I also think the idea that an axe is overpowered is not very well thought out. An axe is, and should be a devastating weapon. Nobody is going to take multiple blows to the head from an axe and still stand, I don't care how hard they think they are, and zombies are squishy. I didn't say "as much" as a sledgehammer does. I said "more like". As in similar to. I'd call complete bullshit if the axe tired you out just as much as a sledgehammer. But I still think it could stand to use more energy to effectively wield an axe, balancing out the raw damage potential by making it more tiring to use. This would stand as an excellent counter balance towards making axe heads reusable after the weapon breaks.

I'd take an overall hit to the ability of the axe to be an effective combat weapon if we could get a way to make a new axe using a renewable axe head. Maybe keep the damage high but have it tire you out more like a sledgehammer does? That seems like a fair balance.

I don't think a "random" zombie attack is entirely out of the question, either. The world is filled to the brim with the undead. Statistically speaking, SOME of them are gonna happen across you entirely be coincidence just from random wandering around. As I said before, the trick is to make it so that the attacks are scaled to an appropriate level of difficulty as well as how likely you are to be attacked based on where you are and how large a profile (how much noise you make and how readily visible you are) you present. If you're based inside a town with a high density of undead, you should be attracting a "random" zombie attack at least once every other day. Less if you're keeping a low profile (sheets on windows, not going outside, no active construction projects) and more if you're not trying to keep a low profile (no sheets on windows, near constant banging of hammers and/or running laps around the house a lot). If you've built yourself a cabin in the woods where zombies are less common, attacks might be as often as once every week or two, but they should still be happening.

>.> Humans can pick up all sorts of scents. It's what your nose is for. And this also isn't getting into the fact that we still don't (and won't ever) know what exactly is causing the zombies to come back from the dead, hence my earlier joke about cybernetic voodoo shamans from the future. Whatever brought them back could have easily given them a better sense of smell than any living human. Normally we try to stick as close to realism as possible on these forums but I'm reasonably certain we can hand wave a thing or two about the physiology of a rotting corpse that is simultaneously walking around and hungering for the flesh of the living. The trick here to having zombies attacking established bases more frequently is balancing it out. You gotta have it happen often enough for it to be interesting/entertaining while also not happening so often that it reeks of fake difficulty bullshit. Often enough to be a viable threat to the players but not so often that it becomes too difficult. I'm confident that the PZ Team will be able to strike that balance if and when they introduce a mechanic that causes such attacks.

This thread again. I'll say here what I've said in a lot of others. Blacksmithing is a highly skilled and highly complicated process and I'm not sure it would even be possible to learn under current conditions. So many metals out there are made of alloys of varying mixes and finding something that can actually be used to forge and is common enough for you to learn HOW to forge with it would be next to impossible. About the only thing you could find that would be common and easy enough to learn how to forge is copper, and it's not exactly a weapons grade metal. I could see people using it to forge basic tools to use in professions and other crafting, but not much else. I would, however, love to see a generalized metal crafting profession. While the fired forge and anvil scenario is highly unlikely to occur, a basic system for crafting simple metal goods would be alright. Using tools and objects like files, pliers, metal cutters or rough stones you could take small amounts of metal and shape it into various useful items. Stuff like arrowheads and spearheads for combat or hooks for fishing. Maybe small shivs to replace broken knives when it comes to crafting recipes that require something for cutting, carving, or butchering. It'd be difficult and time consuming, but I see it as overall more realistic than players becoming old timey smiths with forge and anvil.

Not really sure how the current system is more realistic. Just saying.

I can't really see this fitting into the game.

We don't really know what senses the zombies use. They're DEAD. They shouldn't be able to see or hear you, let alone smell you. For all we know the futuristic cyborg voodoo shaman that grew the zombies in a cloning vat could have used his alien mind powers to scrye your location and teleported his undead minions in to attack you. The fact of the matter is that the game is boring if zombies don't threaten your safe house often enough to be considered a viable threat in the mid to late game but people also hate it when the zombies find their base at all. It's hard to make the zombies find you without it feeling like the game just spawned them in. I don't care how the devs end up doing it. I just want my base to come under attack once in a while to make it feel like I'm actually in danger. You should care how they do it because if zombies have the ability to just spawn right outside our base that would be really annoying IMO and that would make the game much less realistic. It also means the game would be punishing us for no reason other than "were surviving to long" so it decides to spawn a horde right next to our base, or send all the existing zombies in your vicinity to your location because zombies can just sense humans with there magic voodoo demon powers. (sarcasm) I don't know what to say, man. Once you clear out the surrounding area enough, you'll never come under attack because there aren't any zombies close enough to hear/see/smell/have any reason to come looking at all. There are ways to give them reasons to come by (just randomly wandering around, happened to pick up your scent on the breeze and wandered in the direction the breeze was coming from, meta events luring them to the area around you etc.) but few of them are readily visible and most of them would feel, to the player, like a cheap trick to get a horde spawned outside your base. At some point you just gotta suspend your disbelief and go "Hey, it's a zombie game. Zombies do that from time to time. Attacking safe houses and ripping down barricades is their thing." As I said before, I'd be perfectly fine with my base randomly coming under assault by zombies on a semi-regular basis. From the lone zed, to packs of five or six, all the way up to medium sized hordes of two to four dozen, getting a visit from them would surely test my survival skills and base planning. Maybe lower the attack frequency if you're in an isolated area and/or keeping a low sound and sight profile. Maybe raise the frequency if you're in an urban or populated area and you're making lots of noise and/or constantly being seen because you're engaging in an active construction project outside or you just like to run laps around your base. Either way, though, you should still be getting attacked at least occasionally. What's the point of a zombie game if you're not going to be fighting any zombies past the point of self sufficiency?

We don't really know what senses the zombies use. They're DEAD. They shouldn't be able to see or hear you, let alone smell you. For all we know the futuristic cyborg voodoo shaman that grew the zombies in a cloning vat could have used his alien mind powers to scrye your location and teleported his undead minions in to attack you. The fact of the matter is that the game is boring if zombies don't threaten your safe house often enough to be considered a viable threat in the mid to late game but people also hate it when the zombies find their base at all. It's hard to make the zombies find you without it feeling like the game just spawned them in. I don't care how the devs end up doing it. I just want my base to come under attack once in a while to make it feel like I'm actually in danger.

Alright, I think I'll take a shot at this. *hitches up britches* The horde was passing nearby when they smelled your scent in the area and came to investigate. That seems like a pretty good reason to me.

Mid to late game has issues with boredom. Right now it's very rare for any zombies at all to attack your base if you clear out the surrounding area. I'm not too hot on GIANT giant hordes attacking you on a regular basis, but I can honestly say I'd love to have small groups of zeds attacking once every so often. More often if you fail to keep a low sound profile, but even then I'd expect to see a random attack every once in a while. As it stands now I very rarely get attacked unless I go outside the area I've cleared. It's not very fun.

Yup - traits work via chains. Each trait has numerous other complementary traits that can be chosen in a random chain when the dragon is created. Dragons have more traits than players do at present, though we'll look into adding these as proper traits wherever relevant. But the traits lead onto each other, so for e.g. if it rolls an aggressive trait for a dragon, aggressive may lead to cruel or brave or other traits that may complement it, and the path it picks through these chains of traits means often you get really really nice, really really nasty, or more grey and mixed dragon personalities. That sounds awesome. Can't wait to see it in action.

Such Dragon. Very Fire Breath. Much Hot.

You can do that?

Corpses have a tendency to float due to buildup of decomposition gases. Depending on the exact mechanics of the zombies coming back to life, they may or may not have a natural buoyancy which could conceivably allow them to float on top of the water tiles. They definitely wouldn't be able to swim, though, and would just sort of float around aimlessly. This, of course, is completely dependent on whether or not the mechanism of zombification allows for decomposition gases in the first place.

I wouldn't be against this. Wiping it down with a cloth or rag of some kind should likely be sufficient (so long as you kept rinsing the rag out) for the most part, since the act of cooking would hopefully sterilize your pots and pans. Could still cause unhappiness and a slight chance to cause nausea, though, since doing that isn't exactly a thorough cleaning and any food made with unhygienic cookware would have a quality reduction to it. Using some form of soap and a little bit of water would be optimal and prevent such things from happening. Unsure if the devs have said anything against this in particular. Near as I can tell, the devs have only ever been against hygiene on the basis of taking baths or using the toilet. I think dish washing is perfectly fine.

I always found fishing to be a sort of drinking with buddies activity. Whenever I fish by myself it becomes incredibly insufferable.

Does it really matter? Like I said, it happens infrequently enough that I can just assume my character did it whenever they had a convenient moment to do so. It's not something I pay super close attention to beyond the occasional need to refill the bottle.

Easy enough. Stop whatever you're doing for the ten or so seconds it takes to pop the cap off your water bottle and take a swig. It's not that difficult. It happens infrequently enough that I just assume my character does it whenever there's a convenient moment to do it.

You can already harvest seeds from plants you grow. It's the last growth stage of the plant. When they turn mature and you want to get seeds, wait another week or so and the plant will go to seed so that you can get food items AND seeds when you harvest.

Eh, if I don't want my character drinking water from the bottle without my say so I just put the bottle in my backpack. When I was in ROTC Boot Camp (basically summer camp for ROTC cadets in high school) we were flat out told to sip on our water bottles as the day went on as opposed to waiting to be thirsty before we drank our water. Said if we were ever thirsty then we were doing it wrong. My character automatically sipping on the water to keep from getting thirsty in the first place is a good thing to me. One less thing I have to worry about.

If it's harder to get into the vending machines, the devs can put more stuff inside them so that you're getting a more sizeable haul in exchange for the higher difficulty/risk of getting inside.

Could be a good idea. I've never tried to break into a vending machine, but we did have a couple of them in my heating and air conditioning class for study. Suffice to say, it looked VERY sturdy when we opened it up to study the inside components. Taking a bunch of dollar bills you've found and buying the soda inside seems like the easiest, safest option.