150 hours of A26

[Caninicus]

For background, I'm new to Cryofall. Have only played solo vanilla PvE, and have only played A26.

With A27 looming in the background, thought I'd give my first impressions on Cryofall. This game heavily rewards my packrat and hoarder tendencies. There was never anything I saved that I didn't end up using either. And while there were things that I did make choices to throw away, I always remembered finding one or more uses for them later. Every. Single. Thing.

At this state, the game is an interesting mix of sparse guidance and learning on your own. The early quests are a form of a tutorial, but the instructions were so inadequate that I had to rely on help from the other players all the way through and beyond. Fortunately (on the American PvE server at least) the players were uniformly helpful and polite in chat and often funny. The is unique in my online experience, and hopefully it will remain this way.

The survival challenges of the early game in the tropics were relatively relaxed. I normally played at night local time, but often I found myself wishing for more elbow room. I try hosting my own server later, since I run more towards the loner and solo gamer end of the spectrum. The size of the land claims seems appropriate, forcing decisions about what to build where at every junction, though the ability to move structures rather than destroy and rebuild would have been appreciated.

I found myself with a delayed entry into the end game, due to not seeing two important t2 trees: Xenology and Vehicles. Without oil and lithium salt extractors, and without the hoverboard to speed up the very long walk to the desert (I spawned at the very southeast tip of the tropics) and with no prior knowledge of where to find the technology in the tech tree and no quests to guide me there, I kept assuming the tech I needed was further ahead, when in reality it was just out of sight, hidden at the bottom of the t2 tree. I was starting to research t4 before my mistake was rectified, and the game suddenly became much easier.

Another oddity that results from my playstyle as much from game design is my inability to make use of a commodity that seemingly all end-game players use. Cheese. I am unsure why this tasty condiment is in so much demand. The 10% bonus to learning and LP is nice, yes, but it can be duplicated by other recipes. But I have been unable to make cheese because I have been unable to find any milkmellon seeds for the entirety of the game. I have, with endless searching of ruins, found all the others. (I refuse to buy them. I refuse to buy anything, actually. I will only use what I have made myself.) I have found 2 (different) gems so far, but no milkmellon seeds. At some point, I may consider looking into modding just to look at and perhaps alter the drop rate of seeds that are found in ruins.

Overall, I think more data needs to be available to the player in-game. For example, cybernetics. The player doesn't actually know what a given implant will do until after he's spent the LP to unlock the option. He doesn't know that he needs to build empty biomaterial vials, then build the biomaterial collector. Nowhere is it explained how to equip the collector or powerbanks, or how to use batteries to recharge powerbanks or night goggles. (Most of the cybernetic implants themselves don't seem to be worth the rather high cost of creating and replacing them, either, and that's a separate issue, but it's worse when it's a T4 tech and you don't know what they do even in general terms until after you unlock them.)

Another example would be medicine. How do radiation medicine or psi blockers or anti-heat gel interact with protection from your armor? I don't know and the game doesn't tell me, and it's rather expensive to try to find out when it costs prag to build, let alone experiment.

On the positive side. I've really enjoyed playing, if the 150+ hours didn't give it away. Here are a few suggstions, for whatever they're worth.

I read elsewhere that some people want the biomes to be more diverse. Here are some ways to do it:

Animal uprisings (perhaps PvE only) Instead of hordes of zombies, having the local fauna gather and swarm bases, attacking walls, structures, eating or trampling crops. Perhaps spawn a mega creature (not like the prag queen!) or two suitable for seriously damaging or destroying tougher bases. I had the tropics in mind when I thought of this, but really anywhere. Also gives us PvEers a reason to actually build the strongest walls we can.

I love the swamp. Make it darker (the day not as light, produce fog, reduce line of sight, something!), make things decay faster. You've got a good theme; now build on it. If you can, make burrowers and beetles actually burrow under ground and pop up. I know some people avoid it. There's no reason to for them to risk the dangers. Put something inside you can't get anywhere else, or a higher drop rate of something you can get somewhere else. Even the tropics have rubber, and that's the newbie zone.

Frosty Boreal: Boreal is kind of tame. It's got very good resources (such as coal), but it's too close to other sources of coal and oil. Boreal, as I understand it, is supposed to be cold, sparse, barely inhabitable. In fact, it's practically a paradise where most of the high-level players settle down to retire and occasionally step out of their megabases to collect space debris or meteorite droppings. Don't get me wrong, I like having easy access to good resources. But the swamp was so dangerous I put brick walls up (the best I could afford at the time) in my swamp base right away, and never bothered with walls at all in my Boreal base despite bears and boars and blue snakes all around. And my Boreal base is still much safer to travel to and live in.

Visually, make it colder. Put frost on things. When you get temperature working, that will help. Make sure we need fires in Boreal environments. Needing hot foods or liquids (while outside) will help, too, I think. That's another reason to need walls in a survival game, to keep out the cold. If you do it right, the cold will be as dangerous as radiation. 

I don't know what to think about the desert. Mainly I think it's too crowded. That by itself should tell you something. I'm tempted to ask that you prohibit making land claims too close to prag spawns, but I think that's too much of a brute force solution. I think the desert itself should be inhospitable enough that only the truly crazy or desperate (or alien) would build there. You could do something with heat, but you're already using heat for the volcano, so.... sand. People wanted sand in the desert? Make sand get into anything built and stored in the desert and degrade our equipment and structures at like 10x the rate. Oh, and we need to dehydrate at least 3x as quickly. I've done a three day prag run without carrying any food or water and didn't eat or drink anything the entire time. Make prag runs a balance between how much water you carry and how much prag you'll carry back. Something like that.

Hope my thoughts are helpful or at least entertaining. Loved the game and looking forward to what's next!

[MGS]

For background, I'm new to Cryofall. Have only played solo vanilla PvE, and have only played A26.

With A27 looming in the background, thought I'd give my first impressions on Cryofall. This game heavily rewards my packrat and hoarder tendencies. There was never anything I saved that I didn't end up using either. And while there were things that I did make choices to throw away, I always remembered finding one or more uses for them later. Every. Single. Thing.

At this state, the game is an interesting mix of sparse guidance and learning on your own. The early quests are a form of a tutorial, but the instructions were so inadequate that I had to rely on help from the other players all the way through and beyond. Fortunately (on the American PvE server at least) the players were uniformly helpful and polite in chat and often funny. The is unique in my online experience, and hopefully it will remain this way.

The survival challenges of the early game in the tropics were relatively relaxed. I normally played at night local time, but often I found myself wishing for more elbow room. I try hosting my own server later, since I run more towards the loner and solo gamer end of the spectrum. The size of the land claims seems appropriate, forcing decisions about what to build where at every junction, though the ability to move structures rather than destroy and rebuild would have been appreciated.

I found myself with a delayed entry into the end game, due to not seeing two important t2 trees: Xenology and Vehicles. Without oil and lithium salt extractors, and without the hoverboard to speed up the very long walk to the desert (I spawned at the very southeast tip of the tropics) and with no prior knowledge of where to find the technology in the tech tree and no quests to guide me there, I kept assuming the tech I needed was further ahead, when in reality it was just out of sight, hidden at the bottom of the t2 tree. I was starting to research t4 before my mistake was rectified, and the game suddenly became much easier.

Another oddity that results from my playstyle as much from game design is my inability to make use of a commodity that seemingly all end-game players use. Cheese. I am unsure why this tasty condiment is in so much demand. The 10% bonus to learning and LP is nice, yes, but it can be duplicated by other recipes. But I have been unable to make cheese because I have been unable to find any milkmellon seeds for the entirety of the game. I have, with endless searching of ruins, found all the others. (I refuse to buy them. I refuse to buy anything, actually. I will only use what I have made myself.) I have found 2 (different) gems so far, but no milkmellon seeds. At some point, I may consider looking into modding just to look at and perhaps alter the drop rate of seeds that are found in ruins.

Overall, I think more data needs to be available to the player in-game. For example, cybernetics. The player doesn't actually know what a given implant will do until after he's spent the LP to unlock the option. He doesn't know that he needs to build empty biomaterial vials, then build the biomaterial collector. Nowhere is it explained how to equip the collector or powerbanks, or how to use batteries to recharge powerbanks or night goggles. (Most of the cybernetic implants themselves don't seem to be worth the rather high cost of creating and replacing them, either, and that's a separate issue, but it's worse when it's a T4 tech and you don't know what they do even in general terms until after you unlock them.)

Another example would be medicine. How do radiation medicine or psi blockers or anti-heat gel interact with protection from your armor? I don't know and the game doesn't tell me, and it's rather expensive to try to find out when it costs prag to build, let alone experiment.

On the positive side. I've really enjoyed playing, if the 150+ hours didn't give it away. Here are a few suggstions, for whatever they're worth.

I read elsewhere that some people want the biomes to be more diverse. Here are some ways to do it:

Animal uprisings (perhaps PvE only) Instead of hordes of zombies, having the local fauna gather and swarm bases, attacking walls, structures, eating or trampling crops. Perhaps spawn a mega creature (not like the prag queen!) or two suitable for seriously damaging or destroying tougher bases. I had the tropics in mind when I thought of this, but really anywhere. Also gives us PvEers a reason to actually build the strongest walls we can.

I love the swamp. Make it darker (the day not as light, produce fog, reduce line of sight, something!), make things decay faster. You've got a good theme; now build on it. If you can, make burrowers and beetles actually burrow under ground and pop up. I know some people avoid it. There's no reason to for them to risk the dangers. Put something inside you can't get anywhere else, or a higher drop rate of something you can get somewhere else. Even the tropics have rubber, and that's the newbie zone.

Frosty Boreal: Boreal is kind of tame. It's got very good resources (such as coal), but it's too close to other sources of coal and oil. Boreal, as I understand it, is supposed to be cold, sparse, barely inhabitable. In fact, it's practically a paradise where most of the high-level players settle down to retire and occasionally step out of their megabases to collect space debris or meteorite droppings. Don't get me wrong, I like having easy access to good resources. But the swamp was so dangerous I put brick walls up (the best I could afford at the time) in my swamp base right away, and never bothered with walls at all in my Boreal base despite bears and boars and blue snakes all around. And my Boreal base is still much safer to travel to and live in.

Visually, make it colder. Put frost on things. When you get temperature working, that will help. Make sure we need fires in Boreal environments. Needing hot foods or liquids (while outside) will help, too, I think. That's another reason to need walls in a survival game, to keep out the cold. If you do it right, the cold will be as dangerous as radiation. 

I don't know what to think about the desert. Mainly I think it's too crowded. That by itself should tell you something. I'm tempted to ask that you prohibit making land claims too close to prag spawns, but I think that's too much of a brute force solution. I think the desert itself should be inhospitable enough that only the truly crazy or desperate (or alien) would build there. You could do something with heat, but you're already using heat for the volcano, so.... sand. People wanted sand in the desert? Make sand get into anything built and stored in the desert and degrade our equipment and structures at like 10x the rate. Oh, and we need to dehydrate at least 3x as quickly. I've done a three day prag run without carrying any food or water and didn't eat or drink anything the entire time. Make prag runs a balance between how much water you carry and how much prag you'll carry back. Something like that.

Hope my thoughts are helpful or at least entertaining. Loved the game and looking forward to what's next!

With regards to cheese. Eating it is an additional bonus and not the main reason people use it to grind LP.

Crafting cheese while you have low crafting initialy gives 2 LP per cheese ! For a task that once setup, works in the background.


So basicaly take in to account all the ways that you yourself have been gaining LP and then imagine how quickly you would unlock everything if every 45 mins or so you were recieving upto 120 LP in the background. (This eventually comes down to 60 LP as with every skill there are diminishing returns to LP)

And like i said the side bonus is always having someting to eat and a futher 10% bonus to other tasks. Its a no brainer really.

To gain M.M i couldnt find any in loot boxes so i traded some with a player. Actually he  just gave them to me.