Recipe changes - HUGE change to early game
garath
Texas Join Date: 2017-02-08 Member: 227730Members
Texas Join Date: 2017-02-08 Member: 227730Members
Habitat Builder - Advanced Wiring Kit + Battery
Advanced Wiring Kit - Wiring Kit + 2 Gold + Computer Chip
Wiring Kit - 2 Silver
Computer Chip - Copper Wire + Gold + 2 Table Coral
It seems like the Habitat Builder long ago might have been just the old Computer chip + Titanium when the Computer Chip was Silver + 2 Table Coral + Quartz. So, once you found just a single Silver Ore, you could make the Habitat Builder. Now, I think the recipe ends up being a total of:
2 Silver
3 Gold
2 Copper
2 Table Coral
1 Battery
(I list the battery separately since you get a battery free from the Repair Tool.)
Also, the Solar Panel now takes 1 Silver as well. So, unless you are rolling in TONS of silver early on, you may have an unpowered base for quite a while.
At the moment, I'm overflowing with Copper ore but now it's back to struggling once again to find Silver Ore. I'm not sure if I'll use the next Silver Ore for a Solar Panel or for the High Cap Tank. Wow! Big changes for early game now!
Oh, and the recipe for Locker / Wall lockers change too!
Wall Locker - 2 titanium
Locker - 2 Titanium + 1 Quartz
Strange times!
Advanced Wiring Kit - Wiring Kit + 2 Gold + Computer Chip
Wiring Kit - 2 Silver
Computer Chip - Copper Wire + Gold + 2 Table Coral
It seems like the Habitat Builder long ago might have been just the old Computer chip + Titanium when the Computer Chip was Silver + 2 Table Coral + Quartz. So, once you found just a single Silver Ore, you could make the Habitat Builder. Now, I think the recipe ends up being a total of:
2 Silver
3 Gold
2 Copper
2 Table Coral
1 Battery
(I list the battery separately since you get a battery free from the Repair Tool.)
Also, the Solar Panel now takes 1 Silver as well. So, unless you are rolling in TONS of silver early on, you may have an unpowered base for quite a while.
At the moment, I'm overflowing with Copper ore but now it's back to struggling once again to find Silver Ore. I'm not sure if I'll use the next Silver Ore for a Solar Panel or for the High Cap Tank. Wow! Big changes for early game now!
Oh, and the recipe for Locker / Wall lockers change too!
Wall Locker - 2 titanium
Locker - 2 Titanium + 1 Quartz
Strange times!
Comments
Is the bioreactor not still easy as heck to make? Or am I missing something? Not that solar panels are bad, but bioreactors have always been my go-to for base power (I'm usually too deep for solar panels to be that effective).
You can't make a bioreactor without the Multi Purpose Room...
I'm talking very early game when you plop down just an X-Corridor base piece so you can build lockers and/or wall lockers. At this point in the game, Solar Panels are your only option.
I saw some of those blueprint changes in Experimental earlier this month, but I stopped playing about 2 weeks ago due to outside factors. Have these changes hit Stable?
The changes that added Silver to Solar Panels and other base component changes hadn't hit Experimental yet. I think the Habitat Builder was still a Computer Chip and a Battery. But the Computer Chip had already become the Silver-less blueprint of Gold + Copper Wire (AKA 2 Copper) + 2x Table Coral Samples. Beacons were Silver + Titanium.
At the time I tested, the balance between Gold, Silver, and Copper was good, with the pacing element switching between them. I got the Scanning Room soon enough to alternate searching for Sandstone and Limestone Outcroppings, with Lithium once or twice. Wasn't tempted to go to the Sea Treader's Path for Copper and Lithium even once. Lead was still too common, but it wasn't too much not to stockpile in one Locker for future Fuel Rod use.
What is interesting is addressing the relative shortage of Quartz. Wall Lockers used to be Quartz + 2x Titanium, Lockers were Glass (2x Quartz) + 2x Titanium. Dropping the needed Quartz to 0 and 1 is amazing.
But increasing the need for Silver such that it is now back to where things were in the bad old days of Silver shortages is very alarming. That means Gold will almost certainly become oversupplied. And switching things from Computer Chips to Advanced Wiring Kits...damn. We'll likely have the Gold, but the Silver for the Wiring Kits?
I may have to start a new Experimental game just to give feedback. When I was almost set to go to the Aurora. I do like the early game.
While I am glad that the devs are experimenting with recipes (such as the WFM, it finally makes more sense now) as I state in my original post I am apprehensive that some recipes still don't make common sense. I am really hoping they look into some of these issues well before the game officially launches... I don't want new players to scratch their heads pondering "how does this even make sense?"
Expect all this stuff to change drastically back and forth over the coming weeks, and as I always caution, don't get too attached to your current game. c.c
And knowing things like all 3 large coral tubes in the Safe Shallows.
I am really worried that the changes are now returning to a state where veteran players will become frustrated. I wonder how new players will react, not knowing the locations of outcrop clusters and common places for midgame frags.
Oh right! D'uh. I gotcha now. Wasn't thinking.
Well, IIRC, lead is now needed to build a lot of things as well. Especially most of the vehicles.
Did they remove lead from limestone altogether? It would be awesome if they did.
There's still packs of Stalkers around the Safe Shallows and the Kelp Forest. However, there's also a lot of Stalker Teeth.
Limestone outcroppings appear to be less common in the Safe Shallows. And the Quartz is gone.
For both, have to find one of the large coral tubes. Nothing on the outside. It's all along the inside. Watch out for Crashfish.
And have to search the caves in the Safe Shallows and the Kelp Forest for Quartz, Limestone, and Sandstone. More Crashfish.
Of course, my first Sandstone yielded Lead. The PDA text for Sandstone doesn't mention Lead.
And when the Aurora blew up and I got the blueprint for the Rad suit, it took several Sandstone outcroppings to find the second Lead. Lead is in short supply and I've really not got any extra.
The blueprint for Advanced Wiring Kit is initially absent, despite showing the AWK as an ingredient for the Habitat Builder. The AWK blueprint appeared when I crafted a Computer Chip. Prior to that, I'd crafted a Wiring Kit expecting it then, but got nothing. This is going to frustrate new players.
Quartz was impossible to find until I started going into caves and the large coral tube. Limestone and Sandstone outcroppings appear slightly less and now more hidden.
After finding Quartz, I didn't use as much as before with its reduced requirements in base part blueprints. Be sure not to precraft too much into Glass as some blueprints that used Glass, like Hatches and Lockers, now use Quartz to cut the need for Quartz.
I'm being careful in my use of Copper, so I've not really had a shortage. Have a fair amount of Cave Sulphur but haven't been tempted to make Repair Tools to extract the near-free Batteries. Gold is usually present. Because....
We are back to Silver being the pacing element. Searching for Sandstone. And now Silver is in a lot more items, like the Solar Panel and the Medkit Fabricator. I have my initial corridor base underneath Lifepod 5 and it has lockers, a Fabricator, and a Comm Relay. And 1 Solar Panel. Silver is gone. Quartz could easily get tight, as could Lead.
I have had 3 Lifepod messages and 3 message from the Sunbeam. Haven't gone to any of the other Lifepods yet. Have the Seaglide.
Just over 6 hours into my new Experimental game started Thursday. To my usual base 1st base, one Glass Corridor on a Foundation, I've added an X Corridor. In the Glass Corridor there's my usual 2 Wall Lockers and 2 Lockers. In the X Corridor, I've built 4 Wall Lockers. Think of switching entirely to Wall Lockers in the future to avoid using any Quartz, which can be in short supply. Have 2 Bulbo Tree Samples from my visit to Volcano Isle for the Sunbeam tragedy, just need to find and scan a plant pot. Also got plenty of DIamond, but haven't unlocked the Laser Cutter blueprint. And on my way back I found a wreck in a Kelp Forest that can only be accessed by cutting open a hatch.
I did have 1 of 3 Laser Cutter frags. But like the Seamoth, the Laser Cutter for me suffers from savegame frag loss, so both of those are now 0 for 3. The Mobile Vehicle Bay and the Cyclops Engine do appear to keep their progress, both at 1 of 3.
Finding so much Lead in Sandstone it's not funny. Already made use of it for early game (2 in Rad Suit, 2 in base Foundation), now I need Silver and frags. I imagine Lead is balanced for the full game when it's consumed in Fuel Rods, but for now, I'd like more Silver please.
Especially as many critical items like Beacons now use Silver. I'd rather Beacons used 2 Copper. Would like a Medkit Fabricator, Beacons, or a Compass, but they use 1, 1, and 2 Silver respectively. I've got 2 pieces of Silver and I might need them for a number of things before I find more.
Oh, and there's now a bug that can report the wrong amount of time played. Last play session earlier today, I start at just over 4 hours of progress. Played for about 2 hours and saved and exitted to main menu. Saw my save game now had just over 6 hours. Came back tonight and see my save game report just over 4 hours. But the save time was at the end of my afternoon session. And I still had the progress, as things like the Sunbeam tragedy had taken place and there were log entries from after it (including the first creepy one from the Warpers).
A good solution to this would be to randomise aggression...
Sometimes freeswimming is safer than being in a vehicle.
Most of the recipe changes I don't mind, even needing a silver for a beacon (why?, whatevs), but needing silver for a solar panel is something I hope they reverse. I didn't build a base for a while because I didn't want to "waste" my silver on solar panels. As a result, I got the bioreactor blueprint early on and just built one of those. (I always dive the Degasi wreck in the mushroom forest to get the MPR blueprint early on.)
Other note about my latest game: I got the Mobile Vehicle Bay and Seamoth before I got a Seaglide. Laser Cutter, too. It was so weird.
A trip to the Volcano Isle for the Sunbeam tragedy got me the 2 Diamond I would need later for a Laser Cutter. (Also Gold, Lithium, and Bulbo Tree Samples for the future when I scan a plant pot.) Then searching locally allowed me to stockpile mats especially all 3 of Copper, Silver and Gold. I wanted to thoroughly explore the wreck near Lifepod 17 and I figured I needed 2 spare High Capacity Oxygen Tanks, so needed 2 Silver. Found 5 and already had 2 Silver, so I also splurged and made a Compass.
That wreck near Lifepod 17 is a gold mine. Even with 2 spare tanks, did about 5 dives down and in. A *lot* of compartments inside, with 2 entrances. Be sure to have the Repair Tool, although the two entrances are on either side of the broken door. Seamoth, Scanner Room, and Propulsion Cannon frags outside. Battery Charger, Laser Cutter, and Propulsion frags inside, as well as many base parts to scan (including Floodlight), 2 PDAs and a Natural Selection 2 poster (which can be hard to grab; aim at the top mounting bracket to get it).
Then back at my base I put in a second Solar Panel and built the Battery Charger, then the Scanner Room, along with 4 Range Extensions and the HUD Chip. Set scan for Sandstone and went out to get more mats. Finally made a Seamoth, about 8.5 hours into the game. As well as splurged and made a single Beacon.
Silver is now as tight as it was in the past. All 3 of the metals, Copper, Silver, and Gold need to be carefully allocated. But Silver is the pacing element and the others will usually be around because you don't have the Silver to make items that use them.
They really do need to fix the beacon recipe. Now that silver is in such short supply, I doubt I will ever use silver to make a beacon. They made two changes to affect silver availability. First, they added it back to several recipes. Then, they took a bunch of it away when they started giving lead from Sandstone. If they keep silver in the beacon recipe at the 1.0 release, they might as well kill off the beacon recipe entirely!!
Beacons aren't intended to be craftable early in the game I don't use them until I have the prawn suit and relax its not like 1.0 will drop tomorrow?
Noticed another blueprint change. Plasteel Ingot now requires 2 Lithium combined with a Titanium Ingot.
I always put my bases on Foundations. And I've really noticed the Scanner Room coming early. I now build one on my initial base underneath Lifepod 5. Really need it to find enough Sandstone and I suspect also Quartz now. It's kind of interesting how the early and middle game has changed and I like some of it. How simple changes can have such impact and cause shifts in game strategy and progress.
Having the Scanner Room and finding Sandstone easily meant I could justify making a Compass (2 Silver) and 2 spare High Capacity Oxygen Tanks (1 Silver each). That made the 5 or so dives down to the wreck near Lifepod 17 easy. That wreck is a gold mine of frags, but so long and winding the extra oxygen is needed. There's also a Natural Selection 2 poster in it.
I can believe getting the Moonpool before the MPR now if you just follow the Lifepod messages and generally searched. However, I get the MPR and other items early because soon after getting the Seamoth (which is where I am now in my new Experimental game) I do a dive down to the Degasi base in the Jelly Shroom Caves. Likely will follow that up with a trip to the Bulb Zone wreck. It's in the Aurora Rad Zone but not that deep. Lots of good frags there including the highly desired Modification Station.
I agree, the Beacon blueprint should be changed back to Copper.
Even with a Scanner Room, I have made exactly 1 Beacon. Partly because I ran out of Silver after that. But even when I get more Silver, I have to think of where it's going. Lots of tools now need a Wiring Kit or Advanced Wiring Kit, 2 Silver each. Each base will need a bunch of Silver. I will likely make 1 more Beacon to mark my 4-Biome Base, then carry one to drop somewhere I want to soon return to. Or I will just record its location.
This could hurt deep exploration, as I've seen videos where a lot of Beacons were used. It's certainly going to need more preparation.
There's the very early game when you need a bit of Lead for the Rad Suit and a Foundation or two. Because it's in Sandstone, that could take a while. Then every time you find Lead, it's not Silver or Gold and a bit of a nuisance. Then later need 1 Lead for the Seamoth and Foundations for more bases. Even later more for the Cyclops. Then it's just for the Nuclear Reactor and Fuel Rods, as well as more Foundations.
One possible solution would be to drop Lead from Sandstone. Replace it with several Titanium in the blueprints that currently have it. Or add another process or two to the Fabricator, where Lead can be extracted from a piece of Metal Salvage. Or 4 Titanium can be processed into 1 Lead, representing focusing on trace amounts of Lead.
Comes down to the same thing: effective removing Lead as a gameplay factor. But it's really only a factor early in the game. Hard to get the first few needed. Afterwards likely in greater supply than needed and requires stockpiling somewhere.
I *still* disagree with removing the beacon from beginning of the game crafting. Before they required a blueprint for the beacon, we'd tell new players to craft a bunch of beacons and never leave home without a couple. This allowed you to mark wrecks or other resources while you were out exploring. When they made the beacon require a blueprint, I thought that was a TERRIBLE idea, and I haven't changed my mind about that. They actually *DO* give the beacon recipe early enough in the game that players could be expected to start making beacons relatively early on. If I recall correctly, when we complained about them making it require a beacon, the DEVs said we'd find the recipe fairly early on. The change to beacons to make it require silver was a random thought from the DEV's to find some use for silver after they ripped it out of all the recipes and we had stacks and stacks of silver with nothing to do with it. I have no doubt they'll change the recipe back to using copper wire as long as we continue to remind them--hence me talking about it again...and again...and again.
As long as I get a re-breather and a high capacity tank, I'll dive the Degasi base in the jellyshroom caves with just a Seaglide. Same with the big wreck near Lifepod 17 (Seamoth bay?). But I know my way around that wreck really well by now so it's not as perilous for me as it used to be. Love my ultra-high capacity tank, though, even if it makes me slow.
The nuclear reactor itself doesn't require lead anymore, just the rods. Strange.
I always avoided a Scanner room before because it was so hard to get any use out of the list, and because of how it marked spawn points for things instead of where things actually were. Oh, funny thing just happened. I built my base near a kelp forest, and just today built a scanner room. Along comes a Stalker that promptly plucks out my camera drones and starts playing with them! Had to chase it off with my knife to get my drones back, lol.
Recipes are part of the problem, but the bigger problem IMO is the randomness in the resource drops. Randomized resource drops is a cheap trick used to pad game time without adding meaningful gameplay. Having each resource node provide only one resource eliminates the annoyance of random drops and the problem of ending up with a bunch of unneeded resources. If you don't need something, you don't need to gather it.
Back on the topic of recipes, disposable or frequently constructed items should not require scarce resources unless they are very powerful and/or endgame items. Right now everything except titanium and renewable items (fish, plants, salt) are relatively scarce until the PRAWN suit with the drill becomes available.
For all tanks, they need to be charged/recharged by swapping into the paperdoll when on the surface or in a base or vehicle. A charged tank will stay charged in inventory or in a locker but will not charge from empty there. When you swap identical items, the removed copy becomes the right-most/lower of the ones in inventory. So always pull the one on the upper left into the paperdoll when under 45s of oxygen.
I go with the Ultra High Capacity Tank (180s) too, sometimes with 1 spare, along with the Swim Charge Fins, but the Modification Station is needed for them. (Thus the Bulb Zone wreck dive below.)
With the High Capacity Oxygen Tank (90s), I commonly use 2 spares to safely explore deep and wrecks. Did the wreck near Lifepod 17 and that one has so many rooms and twists I did 5 or more dives to it even with 315s of total oxygen per dive. That one wreck can get you the Battery Charger, the Mobile Vehicle Bay (maybe), the Seamoth, the Scanner Room, the Laser Cutter, and the Propulsion Cannon. And 2 PDAs and a Natural Selection 2 poster.
And I'll take the 2 spares again when I take the Seamoth to the Degasi base in the Jelly Shroom Cave and later the Bulb Zone wreck. Bulb Zone you really need the spares as it's under 100m but in the Rad Zone, so you can't use the Rebreather. At least the Seamoth can be parked nearby. Have to be careful as there's a lot beasties in the area.
Some of the blueprint changes are strange.
The early Scanner Room is a necessity now I think. Else it will take too long to find enough Sandstone and maybe even Quartz. Just have to put up with it showing some empty spawn points, although I have seen that slowly change in the past.
Workaround to select the lower items on the scan list: The list is rebuilt when a Scanner Room is created. Or when the program has restarted and a save reloaded. That way I can select Sandstone and Quartz.
For some reason, one of my camera drones keeps moving off and I have to keep bringing it back. And I don't think it's Stalkers in my case. Couldn't communicate with 1 drone, so I pulled out the 4 range upgrades, disassembled the Scanner Room, and rebuilt it. At least now I can connect to both drones.
Even with the Beacon blueprint changed to 1 Copper and 1 Titanium, Beacons will be in tight supply until the player either stockpiles it in a larger base (likely needing the MPR) or find out about the Sea Treader's Path and the outcroppings they stir up.
EDIT: Actual numbers from a swimout guided by the Scanner Room set to Sandstone.
Found 20 Sandstone. Extracted 8 Lead, 6 Gold, and 6 Silver. That's 40% Lead, 30% Gold, and 30% Silver.
I remember seeing something about the ratios of the items in outcrops the increase of lead drop rate might mean that there're alot recipes will require lead at least that's what I think
Creature Decoy: Fabricator: 3 Titanium + 1 Wiring Kit
Power Transmitter: Habitat Builder: 1 Silver + 1 Titanium
Bioreactor: Habitat Builder: 3 Titanium + 1 Wiring Kit + 1 Lubricant
One thing I'd like to point out that with multiple sources of mats and multiple uses, it's not surprising we end up with excess in some mats. Balancing this out is hard. I just feel the balance was better in Experimental at the beginning of September. The pacing mat switched between Gold, Silver, and Copper then. Obviously UWE had to make changes from that. But I wish they could recapture some of that balance, tough as that is.
In the last week, in my new Experimental game, there are some issues early game with not enough Lead, Copper, and Gold, but soon the need for Silver overwhelms all. And then being very careful using Silver means the other mats accumulate and never become pacing mats as searching for Sandstone for Silver also yields more than enough Gold and Lead, as well as enough Copper from Limestone near the Sandstone. Quartz can be tricky until enough caves are searched, as it is mostly now in caves; there's also less Quartz used in making bases.
Late early game and after other mats like Diamond, Magnetite, Lithium, and Aluminum Oxide are needed, but I usually get enough of them in 1 or 2 trips, often when exploring new locations. Titanium and the other mats I usually find enough while out on other trips. It's really only for Silver that I have to plan to do explicit resource sweeps.
But as I mentioned, this sort of situation is almost unavoidable. And if I really think I have too much of bycatch mats, there's always the Trash Can. Or piling them in a low spot on the sea floor.
Besides the 2 Lead each in Foundation and Rad Suit, there are single Lead in blueprints I already know about (Seamoth, Modification Station) and likely more elsewhere I've not yet discovered (Moonpool, Cyclops, PRAWN), but AFAIKS no where near the need for either Gold or Silver. I'm 16.5 hours in and I've stockpiled 22 Lead.
For my main base near the Grand Reef at the confluence of 4 biomes, I have most of the mats I need already, including 8 Lead for 4 Foundations, leaving 14. I will also need 6 Silver, 1 for Beacon, 2 for 2 Solar Panels, 2 for Battery Charger, and 1 for a Medkit Fabricator. I have 5 Silver stockpiled, so I would have to do another Silver gathering run, or remove some items from my first base. Either way, after setting up that base, I'm going to be searching for more Silver just to have a reserve.
I still have to find out the latest blueprints for the Moonpool, Cyclops, PRAWN, and many of their upgrades, so I imagine I will need more Lead. But I think I will be fine for Lead just from having to search for Silver.
I hope the DEVs really are planning to add a scroll bar to the Scanner Room as someone suggested. If I can use the Scanner Room to find as much Silver as I need now for all these recipe changes, it might not be so bad. But, wow, telling me the bioreactor takes 2 silver now. That's such a huge change for me... I was just about to build a new base. With my five silver I found in a huge cave, I thought I was rich! I thought I had spare silver. Now, I find out I'm still short. *sigh*