Normally I do not comment on games I do not own(but possibly interested in the future), but since the new patch, I want to clarify some changes/nerfs and to explain what I saw:
The previously NPC exclusive backpacks for playable characters are now always avalible when playing as them, which is very useful, since you can use pocket item to expand them, while also storing important weapons and reserve items to help you out. You still going to need chests to store resources and such, as well rucks to vaccum in loot from large battles, but that alone makes inventory management much easier.
New animations for various actions, which is good, since before plenty of characters did not have them, and before that, only certain ones had those. I know they are not easy to make and not every skeleton is meant for everything, so that's a given.
The new shields are truly something that totally made for super high level raids, with guardian shield absorbing all damage and taking only 10% of damage, and wing shield only taking 50% instead of single use only the normal one is(and all of them taking no damage on perfect blocking like mirror shield while having 100% guard rate), and finally making use of excess fighter orbs/diamonds/chaos ore/gold ignots that just sit there otherwise.
Visual ones are to walls - they now, but not all of them have unique graphics related to their destruction, like colored rubbles and things like flesh explosion on "meat" walls, which makes sense for them to be, a detail.
But alright, that's enough of new things, time to say about the "nerf";
That is to meat walls - the "broken scaling" was in fact change of reflected stun damage from 20% of enemy attack to a mere 2% of their damage, so if a enemy deals 1000 damage, instead of taking 200 as a result, they only take 20, an abysmal amount compared to their stun bar, making it useless for both low and high tier raids alike, bar enemies who do not scale properly like halloween ghost(they have no bonus to stun bar). If only the walls were consumable(or repair costing resources), basically if they are destroyed they are gone, but they would have abilities that would make them worth it, alongside ensuring that "some" resources has to go somewhere, unlike now where you build lots of them for minimal effect. This for now forces you to use the good old fashioned way of capturing enemies with best clubs and plenty of speed upgrades to not get killed, and maybe a bunch of allies with pumpkin clubs and food bonuses of halloween cake that is easy to mass produce compared to other food, while the pumpkin club wearing enemies still one shot you(they for some reason gain bonus stun damage against the player)unlike your allies with it at higher levels. Yes, it makes curse shield(and mirror curse shield but that requires perfect blocks)the only thing that can reliably deal stun damage besides high speed upgrades and heavy attack bonuses for diamond club, but its breakable nature and getting mandrakes in the first place makes it fall off at very high attacks. And stun spikes only deal 2 damage per tick, also being useless at such purpose. Oh and stunning enemies instead of killing them denies you their EXP/loot drops, so that's something to consider.
Anyway, here's some things I tested:
Halloween ghosts from what I see have a 1% chance to replace any spawn of their assault similar to special versions of certain animals, meaning that unless you put at least 9 iron dummies, you have a high chance of not seeing one at all, while with 100+ attackers, you are almost garuanteed to see at least one, having more health than regular big attackers, but less than large female ones. In addition, they drop either 5-10 pumpkins or a 1% chance a chainsaw instead. Which means you gotta have to fight at least 100 of them to see one of those, but when you fight lots and lots of them, there's going to be spares.
The elder brother/sister only appear in that, and apparently only if you have acquired them before through rejuvenation method, and they are actually the easiest to capture at higher level attacks compared to their other brethen, since they have a lower stun bar scaling compared to others, though their attacks deal more damage than their own health and as a result, easier to kill since they move faster that results them going first into AOE range of guardian/crystal sword. But they make very strong units if you do manage to subdue them, so that's worthwhile.
Elite natives run and attack faster, though stat wise they are identical, and in halloween attacks they are almost identical in apperance but the female prisoner clothed ones who can wear saw swords are the only obvious distinction between regular and non regular from a distance. And in case of large female natives, all of them wear shields, including non elite ones who use a thurst attack that deals less damage, though as a result of having a shield, all of them will use its ability. Naturally an elite is more valuable as a unit due to faster attack speed resulting in higher damage, especially for capturing enemies.
Jacks from that halloween raid also qualify, stronger version of fire throwing natives that has less radius but much greater damage, and they are considered creatures rather than humanoids, meaning you have to put them in a fence, and they replace said natives as spawns if you use flower totems enough, while dropping pumpkins and dead orbs, though their inaccessible inventory on their demise has same loot tables as those natives, which you can verify by using a ruck vaccum to loot. But still better than getting more candy that said natives drop. Though the main issue is the fact despite being classified as creatures, they are apparently coded the same as their humanoid versions, meaning they can and will dislike most types of people, and other characters who dislike certain types will dislike them in turn, similarly to how cyborgs are classified as laidback and hated by such characters. Which makes them much less useful to keep around than intended.
And the chainsaw may not be as powerful as katana in terms of raw damage, but what it has is the fact it is the only weapon that heavy attack allows you to move while doing it, and doing multiple hits per second that makes it quite powerful with a combination of speed and damage upgrades, but the fact it exposes you to melee range means you can quickly fall to high level attacks/hordes unless you have high speed upgrades to quickly move around(and makes only wing shield usable with it due to passive speed bonus). Fun but not as horde slaying like the guardian or crystal sword do, the staple weapons to handle such things.
Upgrading speed stat of characters who are already fast like rucks to like 1,25 and above makes them so fast, they can go above obstacles(other than invisible walls)while effectively doubling their attack speed.
If you try to change chickens in coop that already has their max amount instead of taking them first, the replaced chicken will dissappear instead of appearing in the ground or in your inventory.
You can put teleport flags in otherwise inaccessible areas, like the northest beach via maxing out your construction ability and putting them after invisible walls of the hill from the lab stairs, then relocating them after teleporting in. Handy but also clearly not its intended function.
Combining curse shield and mirror shield for a high level option seems to be a tough choice, since perfect blocks are not easy to execute, especially with the fact that it has guard rate of 0, considering that curse shield itself has 95% that would be great if it had a reinforced variant of. If only poison shield got its own upgrade as well, since it can be only gotten from chests.
Giant hand, a weapon that can be only gotten from a specific event and then traded in has its base damage boosted to 50 from 45, still doesn't change the fact that guardian sword and crystal sword are much better options for horde clearing. Especially when it doesn't have infinite durability considering the choice it requires you to do to get it.
While you cannot select the trader character, you can, when you have the trade menu open, click on status tab and go through options and you'll notice it has 1 million health, on top of other stats, and if you place a harvest box on neighbouring area due to building limits and set its order to harvest, you can actually see they do consume food and water when doing actions, and can tank enemies if they do appear. You do need construction skill maxed out to make all this work though.
Having too many buildings of any combination, be it something that gives food like fish traps or mere walls can slow down game loading to point it will take tens of seconds to load, which means even if you want to, you kind of want to hold off from building too many, if only there were method to recycle buildings for some resources as some sort of tradeoff, or more preferrably, turning smaller structures into larger, better variants with some extra resources to do so.
Knocking down certain characters like treants and androids will prevent you from looting them, as if they were intended to be carryable like many other capturable characters, compared to bosses who cannot be knocked down at all.
The constant need for iron for many things and minimal payoff of excavation sites that only make them worth at north(high level)areas of the map for diamond drops, makes it more valuable than gold even, since its needed for repair kits(after getting fighting orbs, its better to use those instead, too bad they are not in bulk via shift that forces you to tap hundreds of times), tools like iron shovels for wells, stone houses, wing shields and so on, with the mine east of spawn being the most valuable spot for it as it has between 20-30 iron spots on average, less so for gold/spider mines with 10-15 but still generally easy to get. And it makes gathering skill the most important one to max out, since it increases amount of resources you can get from such things.
But with all that said, I can see why this game has potential, and while I won't see it surpassing the best examples of the survival genre, it likely to hold its own. After all, not many products focus on violent aspect of it.
