DND map for Sigil

 

Why, to me, 7 Days to Die is the perfect survival game

I've posted on this blog years ago about 7 Days to Die. Back then it was Alpha 8 I was talking about, and I already loved the game then. Well, the game has now launched. And it's been one hell of a ride!

It's my most played game on Steam, with, as of writing this, a few hours short of 1300 hours. Yes, not as much as some people, but I think a fair bit enough that I can write this review.

What is 7 Days to Die?

In a nutshell, it's a survival game with intensive crafting options, taking place in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies. This world is voxel-based, meaning it's fully destructible, and every single building and point of interest in the game can be explored. Every 7 days, a big horde of zombies show up, so your task is to basically prepare in the 7 days leading up to that to survive.

Survival

As with any survival game, 7 Days to Die also has the usual features. Hunger and thirst being the two main things to worry about. Now, I say worry about, but in the game these things are never really an issue. Not once have I died because of not finding food or water.

Food comes in all shapes and sizes, with the first piece of food you'll most probably get being a rotten sandwich haha! You can eat it, but it takes away some of your health, and there's also a chance of getting dysentery. A playthrough starts you off with a can of chili in your inventory.

You can hunt animals, like chickens, rabbits, boar, deer and even wolves and bears. These provide you with animal fat and raw meat. Raw meat can be cooked on a campfire to give you charred meat, but finding things like a cooking grill or cooking pot can let you make better versions, like grilled or boiled meat. 

As you progress through your game, you'll unlock better recipes to make better foods like stews, or fish tacos, or steak and potatoes!

As for drink, you can at any time drink from a water source. This too has a chance of getting dysentery though, so only do that when you've just swallowed some vitamins, or have a water purifier mod installed. Some drinks, like beer, or coffee, give you buffs, like faster stamina regeneration, or better performance when brawling. 

Skills and progression

You start as a weakling in the game, but with several options of improving your character. These skills are governed by the main skill it's associated with, like Perception, Strength, Fortitude, Agility and Intellect. Some skills include things like being better with certain weapons, like handguns or spears. Some skills make you less encumbered by wearing certain armor, or can make you jump higher (a very handy skill for survival!) or be better at bartering or crafting.

To level up, simply do stuff in the world - be it looting containers, of which there are a plenty, killing zombies, digging up hidden supplies, completing trader quests, building yourself a house, harvesting resources, etc. Each level up gives you a skill point that you can allocate. 

The game has a skill book mechanic - in the world, you'll constantly find magazines that will provide you with knowledge on how to craft better equipment and gear. Your chances of finding specific skill books improve as you spec into the associated skill. For example, if you want to craft better shotguns, put some points into the Boomstick skill - this will let you find more shotgun parts, shotgun ammo, and the shotgun skill books so you can ultimately craft the best shotgun in the game eventually.

This mechanic has been met with a lot of criticism, but I really like it. It gives a lot more meaning to exploring and looting.

Fighting zombies

This is after all a survival game with zombies. So fighting them is a big part of it. Several of these foes exist, some with better stats and speed and health. During the day, most of the are just walking, but come nightfall, they start running and things become a lot more dangerous. In the early game, it's very common for you to find a place to huddle up for the night and only head out again when morning comes. 

It's not just zombies though, you also have zombie dogs to compete with, they're really scary in the beginning, and wildlife like boars, bears, wolves and vultures.

As you go about your adventuring day, every now and then a wandering horde will show up to make things interesting, and then there's the big horde to prepare for every 7 days.

Later on, stronger and tougher version of the zombies start showing up, upping the challenge even more!

How to prepare for the horde

The hordes you'll be facing every 7 days will get progressively harder as your gamestage goes up - gamestage is a mechanic in the game that is determined by your character level, as well as the biome you're in in the world.

Speaking of biomes, you start off in a forest biome, which is the easiest. You then progress, at your own pace, to a burnt forest, desert, snow and wasteland biomes.

I would suggest you build your first base in the forest biome, as it's noticeably easier to be here hehe :)

Most people find an existing building and convert it to their started horde base. The main idea here is to be off the ground and some kind of barrier between you and the zombies so you can hit and shoot them. Ammo will be scarce to start with, so you'll have to resort to melee attacks to fend them off. 

Defeating the horde provides you with loot bags that some of the zombies drop, and more importantly, experience and level-ups. 

Traders

A big part of the game is finding each biome's trader. This is like a questing hub from where you can get jobs to do, as well as buy and sell stuff. Trader compounds are also safe havens, in that zombies cannot penetrate their walls - but, only during the day! At night time they close and you'll have to seek shelter elsewhere.

The kinds of quests you can pick up from these traders are:

• Retrieve the supplies
• Kill all the zombies
• Retrieve the supplies AND kill all the zombies
• Dig up buried supplies
• Infested clear (buildings with lots more zombies than usual)

You can only do one quest at a time for a specific trader, and once you've completed the task, you'll be provided with a reward and experience. What you get can also be improved with relevant skills. 

As you complete more and more jobs, you'll increase the tier of the quests you have access to, raning from tier 1 to tier 6. Completing a tier gives you the location of the next trader in the next biome, as well as a bigger reward.

Getting around

In the beginning, you'll walk and run everywhere. Which is slow and tedious, but fret not! Better modes of transport become available, the first being a bicycle - hey it's better than nothing! You can either craft one, or unlock one by completing the tier 1 jobs with your trader.

Next up, there's the minibike, the motorcycle, 4x4 and ultimately the gyrocopter. These all use gas, which you can harvest and loot in the world, or eventually craft yourself. Each vehicle also comes with storage, something that's very handy if you go out looting!

Loot!

This is a big part of the game! Besides leveling up, finding better gear will pretty much be one of your main priorities! There are weapons, tools, armor sets and mods to go for:

Weapons and ammo

You have the four main types of weapons: Melee, Ranged,Throw-ables and traps.

You can start off by crafting primitive weapons, like pipe-guns and a primitive bow. This can go all the way up to Sniper rifles, SMG's, M60 Machine guns and even rocket launchers. Finding or crafting these is one of the big joys of the game, so I won't spoil too much here! Each can also be modded that can improve things like accuracy, damage, handling etc.

Melee weapons are a big part of the game too, ranging from better reach spears, to heavy hitting sledge hammers, to shocking stun batons. They also all have different tiers in their own right, and they too can be modded :)

Traps can be done too - like spike traps (always handy to have a bunch in your inventory!), blade traps, dart traps and electric fences!

Armor

There are tons of different armor sets you can collect, each giving individual buffs, like better carrying capacity or faster run speed, and when wearing a full set (each set has 4 pieces) provides an additional buff. As with weapons, these too can be modded to improve their stats and give the player buffs.

Tools

Various tools are available. As you need to gather resources, these will come in handy. These are your typical axes, like a pickax, wooden ax, to things like hammers and nail-guns, and even electric tools like augers and chainsaws.

Crafting

This is of course a massive part of the game. Crafting can be done from your inventory for basic things, and then there are several kinds of work stations to unlock and build, like a forge to smelt down iron and lead, a workbench, cement mixer and chemistry station. Some recipes require certain work stations to be able to craft.

And, get this, as a player you have access to everything needed to build any building you see in the game. There are well over 1700 building block shapes you can play around with, and make your base really stand out from the rest! 

Physics is also a thing, you won't find hanging in the air blocks here like Minecraft, here if something isn't structurally sound, the whole building can come tumbling down - speaking of that, you can literally tear down a sky scraper if you want!

The world

The game takes place in a fictional county in America called Navezgane. This is a hand built map you can play on. But wait, there's more! The game has a really extensive random world generator! So each and every playthrough can be completely different and new, and maps can be small or massive! 

100's of hand built POI's exist, from a small tent next to the road, to a massive skyscraper that can take several in-game days to fully explore and clear! And with every minor update, more and more of these get added. You can even use the level editor and make your own, so if you're the creative type and want your own house to appear as an explorable poi in the game, nothing's stopping ya!

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is where the game really shines! Clearing out poi's with friends, and building that ultimate horde base is just the most satisfying thing you can ask for! There are tons of servers to tune into, or you can host your own private games that your friends can join. PVP or PVE or both, go for it! It's a blast for sure!

Modding community

7 Days to Die was built from the ground up with modding support included, and boy has the modding community made some incredible mods. Some popular ones are Darkness Falls and Undead Legacy. Some mods completely overhall the game, while some just introduces quality of life tweaks. 

Each game can also be customized to your hearts' content - want it easier and less hectic, dial down the horde nights to be only every 10 or 20 or 30 days, or turn them off completely. Want a higher challenge, try horde every night! Want progression to be slower or faster? Tweak how quickly you gain experience. The sky's the limit, and if you do hit a limit, chances are there's already a mod for that! 

Conclusion

I keep coming back to 7 Days to Die for a new playthrough. They've just absolutely nailed it on the head! It has everything you want in an open world survival game. Nothing comes close!

9.5 out of 10 for me!

Logitech still sucks! Logitech G603 Double Clicking issue

 Yes. I know. I've been MIA for like 4 years from this blog. But I have to do my little rant now. Years ago I made a few posts here about Logitech devices giving up the ghost. Be it rodents or speakers. Well, for my birthday in 2019 my wife bought me a G603 wireless mouse. 

And it worked great! It finally seemed my hardware failing days with Logitech was at an end. Only for it, earlier this year, to start double clicking. When I'm not double clicking. Do you know how freaking irritating that is?? 

Turns out, it's a relatively common issue with them. After a few years they just start doing that. The solution is to replace the actual switch itself, but I don't have the know-how to do that, nor the patience, nor the access in dear old South Africa. 

So yeah. I think the lesson has finally been learned! I now have a Razer Deathadder V2 Hyperspeed. And guess what! It doesn't double click when I'm not double clicking!! 

Time will tell of course, but so far I'm loving it!

Oh and did you see Logitech let it slip they're considering charging a subscription for their mice? Luckily they backtracked on that bit of news haha. Imagine your mouse stop working because you've used your allotted clicks for the month hahaha! What a clown world we find ourselves in!

Project Man Cave Part 4: RAM and CPU Cooler

Things are progressing!! I just ordered in the RAM and CPU cooler for my Project Man Cave PC.

After watching tons of videos about the difference between 16 and 32gigs of RAM, I've come to the conclusion that, for the time being at least, 16gig is the absolute sweet spot, with 32gigs only yielding a frame or two extra.

I have decided on the G.Skill TridentZ RGB 3200MHz 2x8gig kit from Wootware:

And then, the i7-9700k, which I will most probably order next month (Feb 2020), obviously doesn't come with a CPU cooler, so I've ordered a Phanteks PH-TC12DX Black cooler, which gets great reviews, also from Wootware:

They are on their way as I type this!

It's slow but surely coming together. Literally just the CPU next month, and I can actually build it. Can't wait!

Project Man Cave Part 3: Motherboard and NVME M.2 SSD

I have finally made some more progress on Project Man Cave. The gaming PC I've been dreaming of building from scratch for years and year and years.

Last week, I made a big purchase. I got the motherboard, and a 500gig NVME M.2 SSD.

Two more parts to go, then I can assemble the machine.

Anyway, here's what I got:

Motherboard

After reading up on the Z390 chipset, and the various options out there, I decided on the Gigabyte Z390 GAMING X. This one https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z390-GAMING-X-rev-10#kf

It cost me about R2800 here in SA. It's not the top of range by a long shot, but seeing as this PC will literally only be for gaming, it's more than sufficient for what I'll need.

Ahh that new motherboard smell!

Storage

As for storage, I've opted for the 500gig Western Digital SN750.

Wow these things are tiny! I have plenty of storage in the house, so won't be getting dedicated storage for now, the NAS will serve that purpose just fine for the time being. Can't wait to see what this tiny SSD is capable of, until now I've only ever experienced regular old SSD's...

What remains are the RAM, and of course the CPU and graphics card. I currently game on a GTX970, so I'll be getting the RAM and CPU next and moving the 970 to this machine, until the next generation of nVidia cards get launched, which will probably be around mid 2020.

I had a look at some benchmarks, specifically to compare my current CPU, which is a 8 year old i7-2600, with the i7-9700k, and just the CPU upgrade alone will give me like a 50% frame rate increase at least! So I'm happy to keep on gaming on that graphics card until the next generation gets released. I'll probably be looking at the RTX3070 or equivalent.

The final, and extremely nice to have items, will be kitting the man cave out with an air conditioner (will get that done winter 2020, around July or so), a recliner type chair, and a big 55" 4k TV.

Anyway, Project Man Cave is definitely still a go, and, although it's a bit slower than I hoped for, the end result will just be all that much sweeter!

Cheers for now!

Project Man Cave Part 2: Speakers, Keyboard and Mouse

I'm making progress on my Man Cave Project! To re-cap, I've always wanted to build a proper dedicated gaming rig from scratch, and kit out this room we have in the house next to our kitchen to be the official Man Cave. And I'm going all out (well, for me at least!).

I started in February to buy the parts I'll need for it. In my previous post, I mentioned the first few items: the Chassis, Power Supply, some case fans, and my awesome Steelseries Acrtis 7 Wireless headset.

Now, I have some more progress to share :D

At the end of April, I bought myself the Logitech Z607 5.1 Speakers, and I just couldn't let them sit in their box until I finally have everything, plus I wanted to make sure they work. They are great! The only hassle I had was it only included one cable to connect to my PC, which meant it wasn't 5.1 sound after all, so I bought a couple of extra RCA to 3.5mm cables and now it's connected properly. They sound great!

I already have a wireless headset, but for when I'm not gaming online I don't want to sit with a headset on while playing, so I decided to get some decent speakers as well. The rear speakers have nice long cables. Can't wait to move them to the man cave when it's done in the near future!

Next up, I got a nice wireless mouse, the Logitech G603. My awesome wife bought it for my birthday in June. I've been using it since, and it's great as well! It doesn't feel like a wireless mouse at all, it's very responsive and works great, plus, it has a bluetooth mode as well, so on days I feel the need to be quirky I use it on my phone haha!

Last but not least, just last week Friday I went and picked up the Corsair K63 Wireless Keyboard with Lapboard. Remember, I plan to have a reclining chair in there, and a big ass TV to use as a screen :) so I need something I can game on such a chair with. My two options with the Roccat Lapboard and the Corsair option. From what I could tell, the Corsair is the better of the two, and boy oh boy, I can't wait to give it a proper go once the whole project is completed. This will also be my very first mechanical keyboard!

Project Man Cave is progressing very nicely. My next purchase will most probably be a 1TB M.2 SSD. It's either the WD Black or the Samsung EVO. After that, it will be finishing up the room itself, and then the last two purchases will be the TV (currently I'm looking at the Samsung NU8500 55 inch, but who knows if that will change closer to the end of the year...), and of course the Motherboard, CPU, RAM and Graphics Card.

Excited!!

Project Man Cave Part 1: PC Case, PSU and Wireless Headset

Since forever, I just wanted to buy a brand new gaming PC. As in everything new. From scratch.

A quick history

My wife is a graphic designer, and in roughly 2011 she bought a new PC to work on. At the time, it was pretty well spec'd. i7-2600 with 16GB RAM, SSD. Basically everything you would want at that time. It was her work PC for 3 years. Then, in October 2014, our son was born. We both work from home, and we thought (not sure why haha), that for her to get a Laptop as her main PC would be great, then she can sit with the baby and work and things like that.

So, she bought a MSI mid-range gaming laptop (i7, 16GIG RAM, SSD, GTX760m), and her old PC became my dedicated gaming PC.

We have this room next to our kitchen, which is a glorified walk in pantry/storage room. I put a table in there, took a network cable through the ceiling and turned it into my man cave. I put a GTX970 into that PC, and it became dedicated just for gaming. It was awesome!

Meanwhile, my normal work PC was in our main study and was doing it's thing fine. It was an i5-650 with 12GB of RAM. For web design and general scripting it was perfect. Until the motherboard gave in. This was about 2 years ago (mid 2017).

So, finances didn't allow to replace it, so the gaming PC became the work/gaming PC. And it moved out of the man cave to the study. A sad day indeed.

Meanwhile, web designing sucks more and more, so I give much more time and energy to my Herbalife business. It's amazing what can happen if you put some serious focus into something. I've since closed my web design business, and I'm now doing Herbalife full time. I'm never behind on bills anymore, and I'm actually doing well enough that I can start buying a luxury item here and there. And the business is just growing, so I'm super excited about that and what the future holds.

PROJECT MAN CAVE

So yes, I've been forever yearning to build a brand new PC from scratch specifically for my man cave. But not just that, I want to kit out that man cave to be super nice and a dedicated spot just for me to go relax in.

Now that business is going so well, I've actually started with it! I have decided to do something for it every month as time goes on, and I started with the PC case, PSU, some case fans and a wireless headset last month.

PC Chassis

I watched numerous videos online and I wanted something really stylish and smart looking, with RGB because why not haha! And this video grabbed my attention:

The Phanteks Eclipse P350X, and I bought it from Wootware: https://www.wootware.co.za/phanteks-ph-ec350ptg-dbk-eclipse-p350x-tempered-glass-black-steel-atx-mid-tower-desktop-chassis.html

It cost me R999 when I bought it, although I see the price has gone up slightly now.

I also added two of these 120mm case fans, also by Phanteks: https://www.wootware.co.za/phanteks-ph-f140sp-bbk-black-1200rpm-140mm-high-airflow-low-noise-case-fan.html

Then, seeing as I was buying from Wootware, I checked out what PSU's they have, and I was looking for a well rated one that was fully modular, so I ended up buying this Super Flower 650W 80 Plus Gold PSU: https://www.wootware.co.za/super-flower-sf-650f14eg-bk-leadex-ii-650w-80-plus-gold-certified-fully-modular-desktop-power-supply.html

Here are the pics for them:

That was what will be my purchase for February for the man cave. The plan was to buy the headset now in March, so I checked out all the videos about the contenders out there. I saw the HyperX Cloud Flight, the Corsair HS70 and the Steelseries Arctis 7.

I have had a Steelseries Siberia V2 for 6 years. And it IS AWESOME! But, it is beginning to show wear and tear, the earpieces are giving off little black flecks and so on. It still works and is beyond comfortable, so I was leaning towards the Steelseries as I had such an awesome experience with that set. 

And, out of the blue, as if Takealot read my mind, they had said headset on special for R2000 instead of R2500. I had some ebucks saved up, so I took the plunge and bought it as well, and I am extremely happy with it! Still super comfy, and sounds great, and it's, of course, WIRELESS!! whoohoooo!!!!

Here are the pics:

So, Project Man Cave started with a bang! First month, I ticked off three items on the list already! This is gonna be beyond fun!

The rest of the stuff

So yes, obviously I want to go all out, so here's what's on the list still:

The PC:

• CPU, Motherboard and RAM (i7-9700K and 16GB DDR4 RAM with a suitable motherboard, still shopping around)
• Graphics Card (looking at the RTX2080 currently, but would love the RTX2080ti of course)
• SSD + HDD
• Lapboard (looking at the Corsair K63 Wireless Mechanical Keyboard, and then you also get a Lapboard that it slots into)
• Wireless gaming mouse (love Logitech)
• Logitech Z607 Speakers (for when I'm gaming solo, don't want headset on all the time hehe)
• Windows 10 Pro license

Then, this is for the room itself:

• Air conditioner
• Recliner chair and other furniture (carpet, plasma unit, etc)
• Paint and fixing up
• 65 inch 4k TV (looking at Samsung for low input lag)
• Bracket for the TV

So yeah, I'm dreaming big for this, and the best part is, I've already started! 

Look at me being all pro in Overwatch with the snipers...

Last night me and Alister played some Overwatch, or, Oversalty as we like to call it haha! We had some truly horrendous games! I don't think I'll ever understand how the Overwatch matchmaking system works - in one game, we totally destroy the enemies (and to be honest, it's not that fun!) and the very next game, we get put against an uber OP team, with a bunch of idiots on our side (trying to line up the perfect team kill with McCree's ult, oblivious of the rest of the team or the objective for that matter!).

Anyway, we played Mystery Heroes mostly. The first clip is us defending on Numbani. It was all going relatively well defending the point (I was Orisa if memory serves), but they overwhelmed us (thanks to the 2 or 3 guys on our team just running off doing their own thing). I died, and rolled a Widowmaker. Oh boy, me and sniping... Now I'm not all bad, and sometimes luck is just totally on my side, as you'll see in the clip. I kill the Orisa too, but the highlight ends just before that hehe...

The Mystery Heroes just went to all hell, so we tried some Quickplay - I had some really good runs with Sombra in MH, so decided to try her in QP, and ended up making this nice play - was a rocky start, but thoroughly enjoyed playing her. We still lost though...

Lastly, Hanzo hahaha! It was this game where the McCree kept on trying to ult himself into the record books. It was on Oasis, and at the start of the one match, nobody captured the point for like a good 30 seconds after it became available! I tried Zenyata, then Soldier 76, then I was just screw it, I'M PLAYING MY MAIN! After switching to Hanzo, I got numerous lucky shots in and ended up with silver elims and gold damage. The game recorded this play of mine, makes me look like a pro - that Pharah in the end of the clip, I didn't kill her haha, so it was sheer luck!

Anyway, hope you enjoy :)

Overwatch plays compilation

Finally had a chance to compile and upload a bunch of replays I saved for Overwatch:

Beyond Good and Evil - get it for FREE

Beyond Good and Evil. Boy, what a unique and fun little game from a few years back. I remember vaguely what it was about - you're a reporter with a camera and your best friend is a pig. It's an action adventure game, with some stealth thrown into the mix too. Oh, and you also have a boat with which to travel around. And a staff to fight with. Great fun indeed, can't wait to fire it up again - ahh nostalgia :)

Well, it's now FREE on Ubisoft's Uplay - if you have an account already, simply click the U30 link at the top (this is their 30 year anniversary promotion = free games every month!). Thanks Ubisoft!