★ Root beer, materials, loot, and a new weapon -- 7 Days to Die Alpha 18.3 ep 81

Let's play 7 Days to Die alpha 18.3! It seems like it's been a a year since the last alpha release, and that's because it has. But holy crap, have you looked at the change log? If you haven't, then I can't even begin to describe how much has changed. This is going to be a familiar game, but in many days different. How different? We're going to dive in and find out--it's time to play with new stuff, shoot zombies, and have a good time. Thanks, Fun Pimps, for allowing me to join in on the festivities. To paraphrase every Microsoft employee from their event in October, I'm pumped to play alpha 18!

7 Days to Die has redefined the survival genre, with unrivaled crafting and world-building content. Set in a brutally unforgiving post-apocalyptic world overrun by the undead, 7 Days to Die is an open-world game that is a unique combination of first person shooter, survival horror, tower defense, and role-playing games. It presents combat, crafting, looting, mining, exploration, and character growth, in a way that has seen a rapturous response from fans worldwide. Play the definitive zombie survival sandbox RPG that came first. Navezgane awaits!

★ Follow me on https://twitch.tv/kicgaming to receive notifications when I'm streaming on the purple site.

★ Support independent content creation at https://patreon.com/kicgaming

★ 7 Days to Die alpha 17 with modlets playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxi3OrXN7WY&list=PLHHKPKrAY-RHQqmCIRL1HGakNKQNQ9ANR

★ Subscribe for even more videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/letsplaykicgaming?sub_confirmation=1

★ Outro music (The Veneration Symphony) by the ridiculously talented Neurotech: https://neurotech.bandcamp.com/

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7 Days to Die is an open world, voxel-based, sandbox game that is a unique mix of First Person Shooter, Survival Horror, Tower Defense and Role Playing Games combining combat, crafting, looting, mining, exploration, and character growth. 7 Days to Die is currently in early access alpha 13 status, so check back to see how it gets updated. Every 7th day, beginning on day 7, a feral zombie horde will hunt you down. Will you be ready for them?

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★ Official site: http://7daystodie.com

★ 7 Days to Die Alpha 18 release notes: https://7daystodie.com/a18-official-release-notes/

★ Buy and download 7 Days to Die on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/251570/?snr=1_5_9__205

★ 7 Days to Die wiki: http://7daystodie.gamepedia.com/7_Days_to_Die_Wiki

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Alpha 18 features:

Alpha 18 is finally here! To make Alpha 18 a great build we combed through hundreds of community reviews and forum posts to compile a large list of the most common Alpha 17 feedback. You spoke, we listened, and committed a ton of effort and resources to address what the Team and Community felt needed improving.

We think folks will notice this effort and believe Alpha 18 to be by far the most impressive version of the game to date. And, we suspect you’ll come back.

XP Earning & Balance
We had a lot of feedback from Alpha 17 on how XP was was mostly earned by Zombie Kills, making play styles other than ‘Killers’ invalid as you could only level up by killing zombies. In Alpha 18 we streamlined and balanced the ways players earn XP to support multiple play styles and supporting rolls. These include XP for Killing Zombies, Completing Quests, Harvesting Resources, Mining, Upgrading Blocks, and more.

There are many ways to play the game, but we believe players primarily play as one or more play-style archetypes that we have identified as The Killer/Looter, The Quest/Builder, The Builder/Gatherer, and/or The Miner.

The testing team painstakingly played build after build purposely playing as these archetypes and collecting XP earning data, recording and analyzing the results, and working with the game designers to re-balance. We believe the game now supports all the current play-styles. We plan to collect telemetry data in the future to help us further improve this aspect of the game.

Stamina Balance
TFP also heard a lot of A17 feedback about how starting player stamina was too low, and player stamina drain made actions like harvesting, mining, and running a grind and a chore.

We’ve reduced stone axe stamina costs, so a new player can get started harvesting resources and not be interrupted with low stamina alerts. Many other primary attack stamina costs have been reduced. Power attacks still have a hefty cost, but also a reward. Armor perks and mods now reduce stamina and movement penalties as well. There are perk books in loot that reward stamina for kills.

We changed encumbrance so players start with a larger backpack in new games so the penalty is less when your inventory fills up. We also added deep pocket mods to allow you to carry more without being encumbered, which doesn’t require you to perk into pack mule.

A bajillion more. Really. Go look.