My problem with wall costs is mostly for the home base setup. I am doing like 4 and 5 runs of max resources to fortify just one area. A big problem is that I do not know what to expect. Maybe I am overbuilding, maybe I am not building enough.
Right now I am building up a bunch of defenses for the very first shield expansion in pinkerton. Am I going overboard? Is it going to be like shield mission 1 on the first area or is it going to be closer to shield mission 6 on the first area? Who knows?!
Also, apparently, rusty parts do not drop very much, if at all in pinkerton. The really need to address the problem of resource tiers. It just doesn’t work right now. So now I need to go to the first area to farm rusty parts, which is dumb.
I am getting tired of the grindy ness even though I love the core game idea.
I think maybe a better system is that in a given tier, the old resources drop at the same rate as previous tier, but there is a new resource that will be needed for tier + 1 stuff. Tier 2 traps still need the same rusty parts as tier 1, but also need 1 regular, non-rusty part as well.
If you’re talking homebase, you’re not overbuilding for sure. Those walls definitely need to be upgraded and you need to use good materials for the exterior walls. I had thought you were referring to individual missions.
I don’t think you’re alone on the grind aspect, I’ve seen the complaint raised many times and the survey I received had a bunch of questions related to that. If past experience with the dev team holds true, I would expect some changes to be made there (depending on the feedback they receive, of course).
I completely agree about the resource tiers, I don’t think the current implementation is adding much.
Do we have an Epic Friendslist or something somewhere? This game seems like it is a lot better with buddies… Would love to pal up with some of you in game! I had fun with the Alpha, and went ahead and picked up the low rent founders tier. Crafting + Shooting + Exploring is so in my wheelhouse. My Epic is Fozzthulu
Just wanted to return to say your advice was spot on. I’d never upgraded any survivor/survivor leader, so I went back and bumped the ones where I had leader + 2/3 survivors up to say, level 5 using all my unspent survivor xp, and it made a real difference. I can take a husky husk blow and have shields left over, my weapons do more damage, etc.
Agreed on the resource costs, by the way, especially for the home base. Most of the time, I don’t mind harvesting, because it’s part of hunting for chests or looking for encampments or whatever. But when you run dry - like you’re upgrading your home base and suddenly you have 20 metal left - the thought of going out to hammer a bunch of cars, street lights and fences seems daunting and annoying.
Awesome, I’m glad it helped! I think the idea of Survivor squads providing a big chunk of your stats is so different from other games that they need to spend more time explaining it and taking additional steps to point it out. I think that’s where some people have been running into problems thinking they need to keep upgrading their weapon schematics into higher tiers and getting themselves into resource trouble.
I agree that the resource cost on some items need to be adjusted, I think bullets should not require nuts and bolts, i think defenders should already come with a gun of their type. but still need to supply them with bullets. What really is the point of color coding the defender if you still have to equip them. Traps need an adjustment, as do walls. Either the amount you hold should go up or the costs should go down. And i have not gotten an email about a survey yet
The UI for Defenders is really clunky. They were a relatively late addition to the game, but I was really hoping to see the interaction with them improved before EA release.
If they insist on the current system, I would prefer to see Defenders equipment be managed from a menu. Bring up your Defenders screen, select the defender, and click on the weapon you want for them. You shouldn’t have to give them ammo separately, it should just take ammo from your pool.
Really, though, I’d like to see Defenders come with their own weapons or only have to provide them a weapon once (kind of like Mercenaries in Diablo 2 or Diablo 3. You can swap out there equipment but it persists). I don’t think ammo should be a consideration for them at all, it’s too micro intensive to deal with.
So I’m doing the questionnaire … and well I have no clue if I’m done with it or not. It just doesn’t seem very clear.
It seems there are still tutorial like things after the first storm shield mission. As people said here - the whole first “zone” is like an extended tutorial.
I just posted a solution for the problem of lack of tier 1 resources in tier 2 zones. Basically if tier 2 resources could be used in place of tier 1, then this problem would go away. Currently I am having great trouble getting rusty parts. I have plenty of the basic parts.
I am not sure of the mechanic that governs this. I even went to a low level zone and beat down many cars and got more basic parts than rusty parts.
I just did a level 19 mission and what i noticed is that even as a constructor, a rank 2 stone wall in Base effect dies almost instantly against more than a couple non special enemies. So i felt forced to use rank 3 walls which take a lot of resources, especially since this was a mission where i have to defend against 3 directions.
I really hope later on there are passives which increase the resources you gain because the resource grind is getting worse.
I also got a legendary shotgun defender but had no luck with him. I gave him the same gun i use, which is the automatic drum shotgun (bear i think?). This gun does insane damage and is what i use to kill big enemies. I guess it is too short range though for it to be effective on a defender. Not that it helped when enemies broke through a wall and instantly killed him. I think i will stick with my lower grade riflemen and gunslingers.
This game is so much more fun in the second zone. You have to really build effectively and work as a team to succeed on the harder missions.
Having played a lot more, I think the optimal weapons might be
Super Shredder sniper shotgun (very rare, but amazing)
Deathwing rapid fire sniper rifle
confirmed here as well:
The problem with any rapid fire guns is you burn through ammo at an astonishing rate, plus the associated wear level since you degrade the weapon every time you fire.
I have the Tiny Instrument of Death, and I kinda hated it, but these guys say it’s one of the better weapons. It does use energy though which is nice, but super slow rocket fire makes it hard to use for me.
@Telefrog you’re on crack with your comment that the weapons don’t feel good in this game. So much variety, and each weapon plays so differently, and feels fuckin’ great to use, too.
