Evel Knievel Meets 7D2D

A couple days ago, I logged on 7 Days to Die to play with my buddy Dylan and his boys, and I was beckoned to come to them only with the promise that "it'll be worth it" and "you just gotta see this."

With that I hopped on my motorcycle and drove on over to their location, making guesses the entire way . . . what is it? a new base? A captured hoard of zombies?

Full nerd gear on a motorcycle . . . life is good in the apocalypse!

No.  What I discovered was the most amazing Evel Knievel ramp for us to ride our motorcycles up and through . . . a true test of keyboard and mouse dexterity.  I suppose they had gotten extremely bored of building up our base in hopes of confronting the next blood moon and just thought . . . nope . . . time to change this zombie-killing game into Moto X3M!

YEEHAW!!!!

Dylan asked me how I could tech up the ramp, and I immediately went with lights . . . and not only lights, but lights that would turn on as you took that first ramp.  Much to our disappointment, the pressure plates didn't actually sense pressure from motorcycles, which seems like an oversight from the dev team.

Cranking up the cool

So we replaced the pressure plates with motion-sensing cameras, and that "kind of" worked, but for some reason, a few of the lights just never kicked on.  They would kick on if you approached the ramp from one direction, but not from the other direction. 

Anyway, even with just partial lighting from motion sensors, it was still freaking amazing and I can't wait to log on again to see what became of the ramp.  last I heard, they were trying to build on a loop.  Here's to hoping they found a way to make it work.

Happy Dueling!

An Explosive Bloodmoon in 7 Days to Die

My friend Dylan has been hard at work in 7 Days to Die. Every time he logs on, he sends out a text to me and his progeny that the server is up and ready to rock. It's been a busy week, and I haven't been able to log on and play with him as much as I would like to, but when I did finally log on this weekend, WHOA, these guys (and specifically Dylan) had been hard at work.

The Russian Brutalist Architecture of Dylan's Boys.

I quickly jumped on the bandwagon and started reading a bunch of tech books and wiring manuals so I could try and catch up on my skills as "the intellect gal."

I was unable to lock my second rank in shock baton and learn the basics of making a few things in the workbench like my old favorite . . . the punchy turret! Dylan had never really used the punchy turret, so I introduced him to its awesomeness while we delved into a rank 3 mine and then later at the base.

Pink nails and a blue stun baton, the perfect backup for Dylan's Assassin

He liked punchy so much that we incorporated it into our base defense design because here's the thing, he had been holding back the blood moon with server controls. He did that because he wanted to have as many people logged on and playing when it happened.  

Punchy turrets are the best!

So our first blood moon last night was 24 days in instead of 7 days, and MAN, it felt like we had been holding back a giant poop of zombies. there were spitters and vultures and leapers and all manner of nastiness in this blood moon.  It felt WAY worse than our "first" blood moon.

It's always these birds . . . ugh

As it turns out we had been worried we were over-prepared for the night, but we had prepared just about right. They did break through a weak point in our defenses by going under a wall, but none of us died.  We did go through a ton of ammo though.

Loot bags everywhere and zombies in my sights.

The punchy sledgehammers worked great until the zombies toppled the steps they were sitting on top of. All in all, it was a pretty great night of intense action in 7 Days to Die.

Happy Dueling!

A New Night in the Old 7 Days to Die

This week has been all about LONG DAYS. I've been running my youngest to Band practice and that's also meant a lot of waiting around. Yesterday, however, I got a message from my good friend Dylan (aka Moonstar aka Montgomery aka Hansel), and it was decided that last night would be the official 7 Days to Die night! My wife and I worked it out, and I was in! Time to kill zombies!

My inner critic always thinks the UI sounds could be a little crisper here. I'M BACK BABY!

Why was it official 7 days to die night? Well, the new 1.0 release had launched, and now our wonderful in-development indie darling was official after being, what, 10 years in early release? Listen, it's a glorious game that I've talked a lot about before, and if Dylan says it's 7 Days to Die night, it's 7 Days to Die night!

It wasn't just Dylan who was playing with me, it was his 3 sons as well. I felt a bit like Alice on The Brady Bunch when she was invited to go on vacations with the family. In fact, I somehow accidentally chose the female model when I went in and just ran with it. I guess that's my new persona for this game . . . I'm Alice. I guess I should start reading up more about cooking.

Anyway, it took a bit to remember how to work the controls in the game since it had easily been, I don't know, over 2 years or more since I had played last. Eventually, it worked out, and I was crafting bedrolls, clubs, and axes with the best of them.

Alice finds the Brady Men standing naked over a zombie . . . 

We all started claiming weapon styles, and so I barked out that I wanted to be the engineer gal. Give me my shock clubs and punchy turrets! It was always truly my favorite way to play the game anyway. I just need to start finding some good stuff -- give me all your engineering manuals, STAT!

By the end of our 3-hour play session last night, I think we were around level 5, I was starving with broken bones, and life was good on top of a local Pass-N-Gas store on Day 3. My gear was less than ideal, and I was still looking for a good shock club, but in the meantime, I was happily wielding a big lead pipe baton to smoosh in the undead skulls and break open the locked doors.

The top of the Pass-N-Gas is where the party gets real!

We actually found our trader right by the town we were raiding. He gave us all our intro quests, and then we started to move on to a few Tier 1 missions.  

oh yeah, you press E to start the mission . . . it's right there in the middle of the screen. Got it.

To be honest, it was all very familiar, and really I'm not exactly sure what's even changed with the game yet. If I took the time to read through the patch notes, I'm sure I'd find some gold, but so far, it's pretty much exactly what I was playing 3 years ago . . . and there's nothing wrong with that. A good game is a good game.

My only thought now is: man that was fun, when can I play again!

Happy Dueling!  

A shocking development in 7D2D!

Recently I progressed my game in 7 Days to Die to the point where I was absolutely swimming in cash and had already purchased a minibike, motorcycle, truck, and gyrocopter. What's a guy in the apocolypse going to do with all that cash . . . buy more bullets?  Yes . . . that . . . AND, that guy is also going to buy solar cells from Trader Joes for absolutely insane prices. What's 48k for a solar cell anyway . . .

...and really it all made sense since I had already gone so far down the intellect tree for stun batons and robotics. Right? I might as well keep on going down the list and max out Advanced Engineering so I could craft advanced traps and stuff. 

Max Engineering

Before I knew it, I had wired up an electric fence around 1/3 of my house. As it turns out, the most difficult part of the process was figuring out that I needed to use a battery bank that interfaced between the solar panels and the wires so I could have electricity running at night. To be extra sure it all worked, I also hooked up a gas powered generator alongside it, and voila . . . the power of electricity was MINE! mUHAHhahahHAHA!

A power station on top of the roof sounds a totally safe thing to do

So when my 112th day rolled around (16th blood moon), I was terribly excited to try out my new electric fence on the invading zombies. It was surprisingly effective on the taller zombies ... not so much for the short ones. For my second attempt I may need to dig a trench and wire up a second layer that will catch the little guys like zombie dogs and the creepy ground crawler guy.

Check it out! I videotaped my blood moon experience.  It was headshot city with that electric fence active!

The one thing I didn't get working yet was my shotgun turret I had set up on one corner of my perimeter.  I think I didn't lock the ammo?  I could see the turret locking on and targeting things, but it never fired. *shrug*  I know it seems strange that an advanced engineer could be doing something wrong, but I could be doing something wrong.

Here's to my 119th day!  I'm looking forward to hooking up more traps and turrets.

Happy Dueling!

Good Golly Miss Gyrocopter! #Blaugust2021 Day 30

Had a great weekend in 7 Days to Die, friends! Lessah dropped by and then ruined and rebuilt my batcave, organized my loot (aka the Good Lord's Work), and drove me up north in the truck to dig a coal mine and kill cougars. While we were up there, we also ended up clearing out a football stadium (full of zombie cheerleaders) and a Preschool (full of administrators . . . and loot . . . but strangely, no kid zombies).

We had such a great time that Lessah even got in trouble with her girlfriends because she almost missed her weekly podcast date. We were happily driving around with a solid goal in mind, having a blast, and whoops . . . where'd the time go? You should check out their podcast if you haven't. The Damsel's of DDO is a fun listen. Episode 153 hasn't been posted to their blog yet, but Sahba Jade gives Lessah a tongue lashing for her lateness . . . pretty funny stuff.

Anyway, now that I've plugged Lessah and the Damsels, on to the real meat of the blog post here . . . after hanging out with Lessah, I finished off a successful hoard night on the 91st day of the apocalypse, I said to myself . . . self, shall we just peek at that recipe for the Gyrocopter? I peeked and what I saw was that I had the ability and everything I needed to craft 4/5th of the recipe.

All the stuff needed to make a Gyrocopter!

Lead Battery? yup, I have a rank 5 battery ready to go.

Engine? Yup, easy. I get one like every other car I take apart.

3 Wheels? Thanks to that coal mine we dug, I totally could make 3 wheels.

Gyrocopter Chassis? Neat! The requirements for building the chassis on a gyrocopter was actually easier than what you need to build for the truck! I had all the Forged Steel I needed, which is the hardest part.

Gyrocopter Accessories? *record scratch* Ohhhhhh . . . dangit. To forge the accessories I'd have to do some special training and find a book that taught me the recipe.  Ahh well, it was a nice dream, and then I actually thought to myself . . . hmmm . . . I wonder if the trader will ever sell this item just like the truck chassis?

Sure enough, guess what showed up in the trader the very next day. It's like the game knew I wanted to spend all my dukes. It was not cheap. All I had left was 500 dukes when all was said and done. I went back home and BAM! Several minutes later I had the power of flight. 

Oh dang! Someone's going flying!

I'm definitely going to waste some time flying around in this thing trying to get used to the controls. I hear tell that if you press E while in mid-air you launch rockets! Just kidding, I hear you plummet to your death as you "E for Exit" out of the gyrocopter.

Flying around in my Junkcopter

Is flying around like this considered end game? This feels like end game. I keep waiting for the quest to kill the Ender Dragon to show up. :) With the power of flight, I might just be able to take him down!

The only thing stopping me from landing on the top of skyscrapers is my lack of piloting skill

The truer statement is that PvP is most likely the end game, and I'm sure to many people 7D2D without PvP is like cake without frosting.  I may need to start looking to mods soon . . . like Darkness Falls.

Happy Dueling!

It's a Mothergrubbin' Truck -- #Blaugust2021 Day 28

 Ahhhh yeah! I kind of turned a corner here in 7D2D and I'm making all kinds of cash. It's enough that I just casually bought a truck chassis yesterday from the trader. It's legitimately the hardest part of the truck crafting puzzle to create, and then it was off to the races!

Boom! It's a truck!

Not only is this thing a truck, it's a total "apocalypse-ready" truck, with blades on the front just meant for running over zombies, dogs, cougars, wolves, zombies, and even more zombies!

It all kind of started with me thinking to myself ". . . dang, I've got a lot of stuff in my storage boxes here. I bet you I could build a truck!" So I casually looked at the recipe: 4 Wheels, a cassis, truck accessories, an engine, and a lead car battery. 

Well, I had engines and lead car batteries to spare -- Check and check.

Wheels -- Nope, so I checked the recipe for wheels and it was pretty simple. I just needed to get some coal, so I dug down deep at a coal mine and crafted 'em up without much trouble -- Check!

4x4 Truck Accessories -- I was absolutely right about having enough stuff in my storage boxes . . . at least when it came to building the accessories part. Not a problem.

Electrical Parts and Headlights? Short Iron Pipes, Springs, and Mechanical Parts? YES I DO!

4x4 Truck Chassis -- The only thing that made this recipe difficult was the 375 bars of Forged Steel.  That's a lot of forged steel that I didn't have, so I dug myself a mine and started getting the components to make forged Steel . . . what I found was that with this mine what I had really dug was a murder hole. A horde wandered by attracted by my drilling, and the zombies came just POURING down from the top of the hole.

Hi! Thanks for "dropping" in, to say hello! 

After all was said and done, I was really only about half way there to the 375 bars of Forged Steel, when BAM . . . wouldn't you know it, the trader has a Truck Chassis for sale and it was totally affordable. I'm living LARGE AND IN CHARGE in the apocalypse, my friends!

Possibly the most amazing thing about this whole crafting process was that it only took 3 minutes to build a truck once I had all the pieces. Now I'm running over ALL the zombies, like I just don't care. 3 minutes of crafting, a lifetime of zombie apocalypse bliss.

They're surprisingly durable zombies as it turns out.

Happy Dueling!

Double Punchy FTW in 7D2D -- #Blaugust2021 Day 26

The other day when I was playing with my buddy, Lessah, she showed me the ultimate 7 days to die strat -- at least for now -- against the Blood Moon invasion: Double Punchy.

Day 70, Blood Moon in full swing

Basically you build a pathway upwards to you that zombies will climb. When they get to the top, you have an impact turret punch them back down . . . preferably into a big sea of spikes.  Then all you really need to worry about is your back, which also happens to be an ocean of spikes. It worked incredibly well when she showed me, and it also worked incredibly well when I recreated it by myself.

Max'ed Intellect. Max'ed Electrocutioner, Max'ed Robotics inventor.

Since I had already gone down the Intellect skill tree to max my Stun Baton weapon skills, it also wasn't too hard to just finish out the Robotics Inventor line so I could put down two impact turrets for Blood Moon. With those and my sea of spikes, I was good to go. Double Punchy strat was all I needed to last hour after hour in the same spot.

Let's take a look at the progression of Day 70's Blood Moon in pictures.

1- 12:30am -- After a couple hours of double punchy strat, most of the spikes on the edges were completely gone. The poor hapless zombies would jump up, and either I'd shoot 'em or double punchy would knock them back down.

Come to me, hapless zombie!

2- 2:00am -- They were still coming -- it's pretty much an endless stream the whole night at this point. I had a few try to get behind me, but I didn't have a problem spinning around while double punchy took care of what was in front of me.

lemme just casually reload here in complete safety. 

3- 3:00am -- Most of the spikes were just completely munched up and the loot bags were starting to pile up at the base. Double punchy was totally fine. No repairs needed. They did all seem to be taking a really similar pathway toward me at this point.

Hey, why don't you walk up here, so double punchy can knock you back down?

4- 4:00am -- The blood moon was finally over and that sea of loot demanded I use an eye candy buff and take a look inside each of those delicious lootbags. Double Punchy had done its job to the fullest, and it was all done, safe and sound, behind their rock 'em sock 'em metal fists.

That's a lot of loot bags!

Big thanks to Lessah for teaching me the strat. I would have never really tried it on my own. Shooting down on them from above seemed far safer, but this was incredibly efficient. 

After this I finished the Tier 5 quest to cleanse Higashi Tower of all zombie life. It demanded a rematch. Come to find out the Double Punchy strat works great for dealing with the irradiated zombies as well! I was able to finish that one up, and imagine my surprise when a Rank 5 Steel Club showed up as a quest reward. That's Lessah's favorite weapon!

Rank 5 Steel Club . . . YOINK!

I think she'll be happy to see that the next time she logs in. :)

Happy Dueling!

The Tale of Dishong Tower in 7D2D -- #Blaugust2021 Day 21

Give a good stretch, sit down, and prepare yourself to listen to my amazing tale I'm about to weave about this stupid tower -- this stupidly amazing tower -- in 7 Days to Die. Good?  Ok, here we go.

The first eight floors of Dishong Tower -- there's more

So I'm chilling in 7 Days to Die and I've just survived not only the Day 56 Blood Moon, but I just finished up a tier 5 quest that took me through a skycraper of a book publishing company. It was pretty great and I managed to finish the quest in style, so I take another Tier 5 quest because one skyscraper was fun, so why not do it again!?

That quest turned out to be Dishong Tower. I couldn't really tell the "theme" of Dishong Tower, and I don't think there was one. It was an interesting mix of office space and open floor plans.

Nice entrance way . . . this can't be that bad

So I proceeded to clear out the floors one by one, and it's a loot haven. By the time I hit the 3rd floor, I've already filled up my motorcycle's inventory and a storage crate full of stuff and it's been a solid day's worth of play, so now I'm sitting at day 60.

I continue floor by floor clearing things out, cutting my way though the maze, and being as careful as I can. Another day passes in the tower while I'm exploring and I'm up to the eighth floor or so, and now I'm haphazardly searching for loot at this point because I'm starting to feel the pressure of time on Day 61, and I'm on a quest. When you're on a quest, you can't leave the area . . . at all.  If you do, you fail. If you die, you fail. 

I should have nope'd out of the quest at this point, just like I did on the Higashi Skyscraper, but I stubbornly press on level by level. At this point I'm really just looking for food and liquid to keep me alive as I make my way up. I've scrapped tons of stuff. I've outright skipped looting tons of stuff.

Things start to get tricky from this point on because half of the skyscraper is utterly destroyed, so I'm laying down crates and building walkways. I'm fighting vultures AND zombies while the maze factor starts to intensify. At this point, the building really feels like it's more of a 4-person endeavor and I have no business being here, but I press on.

Sky high at Dishong Tower in 7 Days to Die

By the time I reach floor 13 and the top of the tower, I'm already feeling the time pinch, but I'm so close to finishing this quest! I peek my head around the side, and I see something green but human-like in the distance, so I take a long distance aim with my rifle and fire. The next thing I know, I've got what feels like a half a dozen zombies on me and they're covered in green goo like I've never seen before.

Come to find out these are irradiated zombies and they're tougher and regenerate. I tried to make my escape, but my confidence in a round of shotgun blasts into a herd of zombies was far far too misplaced, and my screen turns a disastrous dark red.

. . . and they're eating my corpse

I'm figuring I've lost all my stuff at this point, it's also late in the Day on Day 61, but I stubbornly equip a set of reasonable gear and head back to the ill-fated tower to see if I can recover my stuff.

Having a back up level 5 stun baton helps

The great thing is that I've been rebuilding the stairwell while I was climbing the tower, and getting back to level 8 of 13 wasn't that difficult. After a bit of re-running the maze, I'm finally back up to level 12 and I'm doing ok . . . it's Day 62 at this point, but it's all good.

I start breaking wooden desks on floor 12 gathering wood because I figure I'm going to sneak up by building a tower, grab my stuff, and run. Unfortunately at one point, I fall while building my tower and break my leg. Now things are dire and I've got a bit of a pit in my stomach as I realize I'm at a big disadvantage now, but I finish building the tower and lo and behold, the zombies had reset to their original positions! I can grab my stuff! OK! I'm GOOD! 

Now, a sane person would leave the tower at this point, but I'm feeling super stubborn and go take another look at Floor 13. There's a small communications tower leading up, so I sneak over to it and climb up 2 more story heights, and now I've got this amazing view of the roof of the building.

So I say to myself . . . self . . . let's try this again. If it goes south, I will take these "oh shizz drops" and jump off the side of the building. (There's a medicine you can take where you will have falling damage immunity for 5 minutes.) 

From the safety of the top of the tower, I take aim at an irradiated zombie's head with my hunting rifle and shoot. this drags 2 more irradiated zombies along with him and I start shooting down at them from my tower.

Taking aim at an irradiated zombie safely from my tower

I do this two more times, each time dragging 2 or 3 zombies to the tower and shooting them from above, but they're starting to beat the heck out my tower and I'm legitimately afraid I'm going to come tumbling down, but I make it and before you know it all the zombies on the top of the roof are dead. I've cleared the entire tower. Hallelujah. 

So I make my way over to where the irradiated zombies were standing and it almost looks like nothing's there. No loot whatsoever, but then I look down a sky-lighted roof, and there it is . . . the motherlode of loot in the penthouse suite. 

Loot view 1 -- A table full of loot and a stocked kitchen.

Loot view 2 -- A hardened chest and shelf full of books

I'm dying here because my bags are so full of loot already and I've just stumbled into loot heaven. I loot what I can, and that's mostly ammo when all of a sudden who slips into my DMs, but my old pal Lessah Ismorah. 

I relate the whole tale above to Lessah, and it's too tempting for her. She logs in and starts making her way to the tower to help me haul the loot because at this point I've got two crates down below and the Blood Moon is just around the corner.

After showing Lessah around the tower (which tbh, she's already seen before, but she let me pretend like I was showing it to her for the first time -- it's appreciated), we fill up with loot AGAIN and head back down to scramble together a Blood Moon fight (which ends up going well and she shows me a pretty good trick for efficient farming in the Blood Moon).

Double Punchy Turret for the win

Victory has never felt so bitter and so sweet at the same time in 7 Days to Die. It was by far my favorite moment in game thus far. What a great game session!

Happy Dueling!

To skyscraper or not, that is the quest in 7D2D -- #Blaugust2021 Day 18

Yesterday I got a great quest that popped up that made me incredibly happy, the game said . . . hey . . . you've done enough Tier IV quests, let's open up the Tier V trader for you then. Sound good? Thank you, game!  That does sound good!

So I took the quest to open up the Trade Routes, got on my minibike and rode the 3.2 kilometers to talk to Mister Fabulous Beard (aka Trader Joel). There I was sitting late in the day on Day 48 of 7 Days to Die where Day 49 (ye' old 7 x 7) was just about to happen. 

It's a precarious place to be honest, and it's one of the feelings that I love so much about this game: Judgement calls. It makes you teeter back and forth between the chaotic explorer side of your personality versus the cautious wise side of your personality. I love when games manage to conflict you like this.

So I took my first Tier V quest, which happened to also be in the direction of my house -- wise decision, right?  I believed so, but when I arrived at the Skyscraper, I realized that this looked hairy. 

Welcome to the corporate offices of Higashi Pharmaceutical

So I went in anyway to see if perhaps it was a bit of a façade, you know? I've seen hollowed out buildings before where you can manage it in a half an hour. Maybe this is one of those situations?

After being swarmed by a gaggle of suits on the first two floors I had some hopes that maybe I could do this quest after all.

The rag doll physics of these suit zombies dropping down the broken escalator was hilarious

But when I looked up the shaft of the elevator on Floor 2, I quickly realized that I was going to have to nerd pole up to the top of this thing and fight for my life with each floor. This was not the façade I was looking for.

The cubicle farms of Floor 3 were full of things to check for loot, but I just started skipping past them at this point feeling like time was running out.

The wise part of me finally spoke up when I got to floor 4, and I totally noped out of that quest. I'm just glad I had a boot mod that allowed me to drop down the elevator from floor to floor so I could quickly get out of there and got home just in time for the zombies to all wade through my moat of wooden spikes.

Whew . . . ok, now we can let the real fight begin.

It makes me wonder though . . . What would happen if I spent the blood moon at the top of this skyscraper instead at my home base. I might survive it by just hiding out, but what's the fun in that? The Blood Moon is an opportunity for experience and loot! I may have to try that next Blood Moon just to see what the experience is like. I imagine they'd find their way to me, but maybe not?

Either way, I'll be back to explore a Tier 5 quest when I have more time and don't feel quite as pressured. Higashi Pharmaceutical looked like it'd take a nice 1.5 to 2 in-game-days to complete. I wouldn't mind exploring that more fully.

Happy Dueling!

Red Mesa in 7D2D -- #Blaugust2021 Day 17

There's a particular Tier IV quest I've been repeating a lot of lately in 7 Days to Die, and it feels like I've almost got it down to a science. It's an underground Military installation called Red Mesa.

Welcome to Red Mesa -- it ain't restricted no more!

Upon entry beyond the front outer perimeter you get attacked by 4-5 zombies. There is a chance that one or two of them may be feral, but usually it's easy pickins with a hunting rifle. 

If you scoot off to the left, you get a side view of the end of the "dungeon" and you can actually help yourself out here and pick off a couple of the zombies from shooting the outside in through the window grates. It takes a bit of creative jumping, but it can be done.  If you really wanted to, I suppose you could use boxes to get to the top of the building and hammer your way through the top door and crawl the dungeon backwards, but I haven't done that yet.

Just inside, you open an access hatch to a broken elevator and slip down through. The first door in below this has a nice horde of zombies that try to swarm out. Use that door's pinch point to your advantage.

Off the right there's a chance that the vending machine will be active. Check that for your favorite buff food. I always buy the loot finding buff here if it's available. This is car part nirvana and you have 2 full military vans and a car -- great place to get gas. After this room, you may actually need to lay down a crate for all the goodies you've collected just at the front. There's plenty more loot to come.

The door beyond this always has at least one zombie, usually hidden off to the left. Up the stairs you'll find a broken window for you to crawl through and make your way down the catwalk level by level until you get to the bottom. Every door and false wall here contains a zombie or two on your way down. Eventually you'll jump down to the bottom and crawl the tunnel between buildings. There's a zombie dog here that's very bitey.

I'm ready for you bitey dog!

Across the tunnel, you'll find a couple of old barracks. These two rooms are book reading paradise! I can't tell you how many books and schematics I've found here. Reading is for winners! You'll find a couple zombies in the showers here that connect the two barracks, but nothing that can't be dealt with easily.

Next up in your crawl is the mess hall and it's full of goodies! After you've looted the store room, try sneaking around the corner and picking off a couple of the motionless zombies down the hallway. It makes this spot easier so you don't get swarmed. Always check the soda machine here. It's great for finding energy drinks that give you a speed boost.

After the mess hall comes a place I like to call the control room. Not only is it full of office chairs, but it's full of zombies. What I like to do is path to the far stairway, take a quick step down to spawn the hoard, and then sprint back to the beginning. Typically they just come around the corner and start walking down toward you in a nice straight line. Armor piercing bullets can cut through them all with super efficiency.

Line 'em up, and gun 'em down!

There's an extra room of loot down here that's through a door that you have to break down, but I typically skip it because my bags are full anyway to be honest, and your end goal is just up some stairs. Cue this fight by getting close to the motherload door and then sprint backward a bit . . . in fact, going all the way back down the stairs you came from is a pretty good idea because they always seem to find a way behind you.

Thank you for your service

This final horde of zombies is no joke. It's about 6 army zombies and a few others.  If you're ready for it though with a full load out of loaded guns, it's not a problem.

Pop those loot bonuses my friends because at this point you're entering ammo and weapon heaven. Those military zombies were hiding a couple boxes of shotgun supplies, a gun bag, a couple ammo piles, and two locked chests of loot. 

Loot heaven!

If you're low on ammo, this is a good spot to quest. If you happen to have any other tips or tricks for this area or if I've missed something you like to do when in this Tier IV quest, let me know!

Happy Dueling!

The aftermath of Day 35 in 7D2D -- #Blaugust2021 Day 15

 To say I've been playing a lot of 7 Days to Die lately would be an understatement, and it's been my go to game for the past week. I'm finally starting to get my groove in the game, and it feels great. 

As I talked about previously, I started a new game along with the acquisition of a new computer for my birthday. It is the base "Navezgane" game world, which is completely new to me because I've never played this game before. I don't have any special rules running on my game as well.  If you die, you have to make a corpse run. Day and Night lengths aren't modified, and stuff happens as it happens.

Yesterday I just finished up Day 35's Blood Moon and lived through it, which felt pretty great. So far my score is as follows:

- Day 7 Blood Moon: Victory! It wasn't bad at all. I sat on the roof of my first house and shot the zombies down as they invaded my base.

- Day 14 Blood Moon: Fail :( I wasn't prepared for the jump in difficulty, and they broke through my base's defenses and I ran out of bullets, which made me panic, and I opened a door that led to me getting swarmed. They should have had to break through 3 more doors, and I could have possibly ridden it out and survived.

Tower Defense Base 1 

- Day 21 Blood Moon: Victory! I moved my base to a house in the snow and made a defensible building. Most zombies got stuck on a stairway as a turret punched them back down. I shot them safely from a corner of a roof.

Tower Defense Base 2 

- Day 28 Blood Moon: Fail! I moved my base to a house in the desert and ran out of time. My defenses were weak, my fences were weak, my bullet supply was low, but I had earned enough to buy a motorized bike from the trader in the desert, and quickly found out that you can't run from a blood moon.

- Day 35 Blood Moon: Victory! I stayed in the desert and fortified my walls, doubled my walls, added a ton of barriers inside the house, made walkways to get around, and generally, just did much better against the relentless hoard. I didn't even have to resort to hiding in my secret enclosed, double doored safe room on the third story of the house.

Tower Defense Base 3

I don't know why it took me so long to fully realize what the Blood Moon actually is . . . it's really just an immersive 3D Tower Defense game where you set up a base and the zombies try to break through and kill you as you act as a player-controlled turret. 

. . . and that's why my friend Lessah completely made fun of me when she visited my house yesterday for the first time after I finished my 35th Day. It was the ultimate guy-in-the-apocalypse house, treating the game like it was simply Tower Defense. My set up was a maze; I had broken stairs and trash around the house; and the only food and water I had was Grilled Meat and Boiled Water. 

By the time Lessah was done playing with me, the house had a small garden started and a little water source. She helped me craft a forge. My boxes were a touch more organized, and she just generally improved the place overall. 

It went both ways though! Knowing that someday Lessah would drop by to visit, I had been saving some stuff I found, just especially for her . . . including a much-beloved Iron Club. I gotchu fam! It's nice to have friends in the apocalypse. :)

Happy Dueling!