For you hardcore players you'll now need a level 3 Primitive bow with 2 ranks of archery and 1 rank of hidden strike to 1 hit kill standard zombies on Insane with a sneak attack headshot. Iron Arrows will make it more reliable. Remember to like and subscribe!
I almost always run the bow early to mid game, regardless of where I'm putting my points. Usually end up ditching it because it just didn't do enough damage as your game stage increases. So this is a very welcome change in my opinion.
Bows even end game (I am level 117, so... that can be considered end game right?). Bows are godly with the right spec. I still one shot almost everything, when sneaking and on the hardest setting. To me, this only pushes more people to the sneak bow set up I have. It was already godly, now it is above God. That is not a mechanic that was needed. I guess the fun pimps play games how I do, with sneak. But, I would never force others to play how I do. You play the game how you want to. It should be balanced, with sneak being the game play for some and not all.
@@justindadswell8610 sneak bonus only applies when not detected. In my experience, hoards always detect, so bow was useless. Or was I doing something wrong?
@@tejarex Yeah, I am talking POI or quest situations. Prior to Alpha 20, 99.9% of horde mobs were normal mobs, making them easy to take down with normal means. Today, with alpha 20 and somewhat increased feral mobs, not sure I would give the same advice. But a Sledge robot with an offset pathing structure is still godly. (even cobblestone can handle supports that are 6 blocks away - to deal with cops and demolition zombies; tested myself - so try it). If you are not doing horde night or a POI with sneak, sure bows suck. But then, you are doing the game wrong. Probably why they buffed something that didn't need to be buffed(you are among the majority, and thank you for making the game easy). Lasty, sneak should work well for those who are spec'd and not for others. Or a game becomes easy, as anyone can sneak. You will not be seen if spec'd and armored correctly. so yes, Bows were already godly. But, feel free to buff my preferred play style.
@@justindadswell8610 I feel like it's just sad that bows are ONLY viable for sneaking. I've always really liked the idea of using bows instead of guns, but the damage just isn't there at all, so i always end up switching over to shotguns
As someone who always used bows a lot. I found it weird that poeple didnt use them more. Great example is i did a lootrun on a server together with someone. His build was around guns and just ronning in and blast everythin. This resulted in him running out of ammo pretty fast and us taking tons of damage. The times he let me go first and do my sneak thing even ferals werent a big problem only taking one melee hit to finish of if the survived the iron bolt to the face on a primitive crossbow. This ofcourse wasnt on insane diff just one below but still. Bows always felt more cost affective to me compare to guns but guns always performed a lot better on blood moons or in the rare case of a trigger location that would wake up all zeds in a room no matter what you did.
This was desperately needed. I was thinking that bows/crossbows were just more of sneak attack weapons and I was just terrible with them/too late in the game to make use of them. Even on a blood moon and using explosives + Atomic candies, they barely seemed to do anything, so I often just ignored bows in general. Perhaps I was just expecting them to be a little too ridiculous due to some other games making them that way in the past (Looking at you, How 2 Survive series), and coming to the conclusion that 7 Days just wanted you to stick around with guns. I'll give them another shot in A20 whenever I get back into it ^^ They sound like they've been 'corrected' (for the most part. Let's hope the flaming ones catch up soon) Thanks for breaking this down for us, Prebuilt ^^ 🧡
Well they've always been the king of sneak attacks. That +200% on top of the standard +50% from sneak, was just not surpassable by any other weapon in the game from sneak ...without even a single perk to help them. But now they stand a chance of being able to be useful during horde night. I'm thinking compound Bow for the rate of fire, with a crossbow & exploding bolts as a much more precise replacement for pipe bombs.
@@mdb45424 Yeah, they're not fast. 5/5 in archery does speed up the effective rate of fire considerably though. And the bows have a higher rate of fire than the xbows. If they do enough damage, it could be worthwhile, but it's hard to justify on blood moon. It would be interesting with the right kind of base on horde night if The Penetrator perk affected arrows, but it doesn't. I've done some tinkering, and I've changed my mind on what i posted above. I think the only archery item useful on blood moon is a compound bow with explosive arrows. It's like a really fast (but weak) rocker launcher. With a bow you can spam explosive arrows really fast (faster than the x-bow). It makes for really good DPS from explosive that you can apply from range. Throwing grenades or pipe bombs is much slower, & rocket launcher is slower to reload. Although if you have a pit trap, you can 'drop' explosives even faster, and then set them all off with 1 'primed' explosive pretty quickly. But if you want to put explosions out at a horizontal distance, explosive arrows are pretty sick. Tried a "no base" high GS horde with the run & gun, pain tolerance, college jacket, etc. type build, with mega crush drinks on the bar. And the quick snap-shot with exploding arrows from a bow was super nice. The crafting cost makes it realistic to go into a horde with like 200 exploding arrows, which is not so realistic with rocket launchers. Also the smaller explosive radius makes it easier to use at fairly short range. The crafting cost on exploding arrows is pretty cheap, so you could make it a spam-weapon all horde night long. I'm not sure how exploding arrows interact with the demolitions expert or archery perk (or possibly even the penetrator perk for anti-armor effect). I need to test it more. One thing about archery though. If you are playing multiplayer with friends, you have a sneak build, and you crouch during a horde, archery suddenly gets much better. During blood moon, zombies spawn per-player, but they only know the location of "their" player (the player they spawned for). So if you are playing with 2 friends, 2 out of 3 zombies coming down the corridor can be hit with sneak damage. A stealth build with 8x sneak dmg just annihilates the zombies trying to eat your friends. Granted, you could get up to 6x sneak damage with guns if you went deep into agility, but a bow does a much better job of keeping you in sneak mode (relative to the zombies which are mad at your friends anyway). Silenced guns (the quieter ones anyway) might be workable that way too.
I was already planning to do a bow playthrough before I knew all this gnarly info. Guess they wanted to make sure archery wasn’t just forgotten in the face of all the pipe weapons and reskinned guns. Thanks for the in-depth look as always!
I guess they wanted the bow to compete with the new pipe weapons. Choose between the shiny new toys, or beefed up old ones; I wonder if the pipe weapons will become a "noob trap" or sorts.
The pipe weapons need a balance pass IMO: the machine gun is bonkers. The pistol is usable. The rifle is Ok ish and the shotgun is utter poopy. Why the gun with the most ammo has the fastest reload I’ll never know 🙄
I feel like the bows and crossbows should do more damage than automatic guns and pistols, because its a trade off, with bows and crossbows your rate of fire is so low that you can easily get overwhelmed by zombies as we saw in the video, but with automatic weapons or pistols they can handle large amounts of zombies much better.
Well when you build into a bow class you basically have a ton of agility and stealth skills to scavenge and loot good stuff without a lot of attention... Also Bows and Crossbows would be insane in PVP for stealth kills, anyone can stealth and one shot someone with a well aimed crossbow snipe now.
From a gameplay perspective, maybe, but truth is... If a bow did more damage than a gun it'd ruin my immersion I think. Bows are cool but gunpowder literally blows them away lmao. Bows do excel over guns in some ways though. 1. A lot cheaper on ammo. 2. Naturally suppressed, whereas firearms you need a suppressor (tier 2 or 3 loot, very rare and late game), and even then a bow will be significantly quieter. 3. You get them at the start of the game, and the early game is the hardest part on higher difficulties, so running an early bow build helps you when you need it most, at the cost of maybe slightly lower late game damage if you were to save those points for guns instead. All in all, the new changes make bows really useful. Even if you don't spec into them, bows are fantastic early game crutches on insane difficulty. They're saving my ass out there.
Because of this video, I'll make my first playthrough in Alpha 20 an Agility/Intellect build. Intellect because the new drones and vehicle customizations sounds really awesome. Another great and informative video Iz. We appreciate them very much! Still waiting on you to use blue dye on your character in one of your videos lol
Agility has always been a good tree. If you do stealth play, then every single perk in the tree is good. If not, then only most of the perks are good. If you stealth, just remember not to use lights, and pay attention to your noise stats on armor/mods. Also some POI's have trigger zones which alert zombies regardless of how quiet you are. The machete isn't bad, just need some space to retreat (kite), in order to see that bleed dmg. Bit of a different style of melee than some of the other melee options. 9mm is a good early 'quiet' option, if u run into trouble but don't want to wake up the whole neighborhood. The 44 mag sucks. The Desert Vulture is great for a rifle-like playstyle, with much more user friendly recoil effect on accuracy. And the SMG just converts all your ammo into death at an insane speed. Don't use that until u are crafting ammo at a high rate, but once u are, it's an absolute death ray. The ammo consumption is viable when you consider 9mm crafting cost, and that it stacks twice as high as 7.62. Plus it's very quiet with a silencer, and does so much dps that the everything dies regardless of the silencer dmg debuff.
Thank you. In A19 i played "insane" and with that the bow and crossbow were nearly worthless. Now it is much more interesting. A good lv 6 bow or crossbow with all perks (incl. sneaky perks) and books and mods can be very dangerous (if it is silence :)
I really appreciate the time and effort you took on this video to explain the math! Most folks run when they hear the word math rather than embracing it :) You've convinced me to give Agility builds a go. Cheers!
absolutely trying a stealth/archery build on my first playthrough, I heard you mention it in Temreki's stream the other day so it piqued my interest, you weren't lying when you said "whatever you think the buff is, double it"
I always go archery early, even if I technically don't spec into it. I use stealth alot as I hate listening to the zombies beat on a wall for 30+ minutes. This will make things a lot more fun. I'd use the bows up until I found my first silencer. Once I had that there was literally no reason to stick with the bows. 7.62 ammo would be kept for horde night. 9mm would be my day ammo to be used with my silenced weapon, be it a pistol or smg.
Archer Agi/Int main for the longest time here. I've always loved archery and completed games like Far Cry 3/4 with just a bow and arrow. Always felt like archery in this game could do with a boost, this buff sounds great I can't wait to try out the tier 3 bows/crossbows! I usually carry 1 bow and 4 crossbows in my toolbelt; I occasionally rapid fire my crossbows by switching them out quickly for fresh ones after every shot. I use bows and crossbows all the way into late game for exploration and self-defense; I can survive with bows on horde night but I usually end up sticking to guns just to get more exp. Hopefully now with improved explosive arrows I can actually use them as holdout weapons. Would also be nice if adding Penetrator makes arrows pierce 1 zombie when at full draw close range (they can in real life) or repeating crossbows that have lower accuracy and higher spread but reload fast, make them only take standard bolts not the explosive/burning ones For those of you thinking of soloing with archer mains, bring a robotic sledge with you and some frames in your toolbelt. Use chokepoints as much as possible. Aim for the upper chest when the zombies are sprinting to you; it's better to go for a guaranteed hit sometimes over headshots you can't reliably land. Leg shots can slow/dismember zombies; aim for the upper thigh. If you're facing a cluster use explosive arrows to knock them down and buy yourself some time to get to safety. Burning arrows/bolts are good on irradiated zombies and ferals. Special arrows fly slower than regular ones so keep that in mind. Practice long distance shots with every new tier bow/crossbow you get or whenever you install a polymer string mod I do feel like they nerfed the accuracy of bows. I can't seem to land the same long range shots I could in the past so finding arrow rest mods are going to be crucial earlier on now.
I love the compound crossbow with sneak damage, sure it takes time to go through houses and such but when you complete the entire building without being detected its a pretty nice feeling
Im happy for this, you can do bow only runs (maybe one sidearm) now. Plus its more realistic, have you ever seen the SHEER CARNAGE some real life bolts can do? Fucking finally. Honestly hope they dont change anything, this is fine, you can do silent raids now.
I imagine they might nerf the damage at some point but as long as it's not reverted all the way back to Alpha 19 levels we should be good, especially on the lower difficulties like nomad and warrior.
@@IzPrebuilt Yeah I can understand that for sure. It IS quite the increase. I just hope, like you said, doesn't go back to A19, because we both know they drop off about day 14 and onward IF that.
@@johnr.9094 I play on insane difficulty so for me, it was an instant drop off because it took like 6 arrows to kill a basic zombie even with a sneak attack headshot.
@@IzPrebuilt Although I never played insane difficulty, im sure its frustrating. Should take a whole mag of bullets even to kill someone with clothes on, let alone 5 arrows or so. Pain.
Amazing information, thanks. Found your channel thanks to someone mentioning this video in comments on a JaWoodle 7d2d video. Subbed, and can’t wait to see what else you put out on a20, thanks a lot for all your time and effort.
Yeah I like what they did with archery because with bows and arrows your utilizing a slower less dps weapon, unlike an automatic shotgun that can also be improved with better modifications (not sure if you can put mods on a compound bow or anything like that) so your giving up brute strength for a more precise means of dishing out the pain. I don’t think it should be nerfed because it gives means to the agility tree and allow as a completely viable new play style which I personally can’t wait to try out! Great video love all the coverage and statistical data you provided!
I'm very happy with where the bows are now in the early to mid game, we're on day 29 and I'm running a compound bow and iron arrows, with points in archery and hidden strike I get a 5x stealth bonus, so my role in my group is to pick off zombies from a distance and it's so satisfying seeing all but the toughest zombies drop in one shot
9:50 I don't think they'll nerf them. Agitily is by far the worst tree (let's be honest) with the most situational perks and archery in itself is, as it relies on sneak attacks and the RNG of zombies not waking up in POIs due to trigger rooms, not to mention that the whole mechanic is useless during the horde and their DPS is garbage. Just compare this to some dude in heavy armor with an auto shotgun and an M60 doing the same job 5 times faster... yeah, don't worry archery players, it won't get nerfed.
Really like your breakdown. As other people have stated, I usually use bows early game but switch later on because of the damage. Now I'll definitely give bows a shot in A20.
I have to say I've always been an archery agility main. Nothing feels better than going around a house of sleeping zombies in the morning and clearing it out with sneak crossbow attacks I felt they were doing more damage, figured I just hadn't played the game in a while and had forgotten how much damage they could do. But this is insane 😅
Once upon a time the crossbow was king. Red dot sight was in built, it was pin point accurate, suffered no drop over range and did insane damage. Archery is back boys! Enjoy it while it lasts, buffs this broken likely won't last long
My recent play through I’ve been leveling up archery, I was grossly unaware of how insane the buff was. The iron crossbow is actually insane, I got lucky finding a level 5 somewhat early on and I found a draw string mod too. Its like day 25 and it has not disappointed at all. I get to save up pretty much every bullet I find for horde night and can comfortably do most quests even as high as level 4 without using a single bullet from my backup gun. Plus I get to pick up like half the bolts I use which has been great for conservation of resources.
This is a welcome change for me and I feel it’d be dumb if they nerfed bows again. I would think they take more skill to use than spraying a crowd of zombies with an m60. This damage increase makes archery a viable option. Seeing as how you don’t have a clip of 10+ arrows (and will have to reload after each shot), I don’t think this change is too over powered and I hope the devs leave it where it is now.
They definitely SHOULD nerf, but only the stone arrows and bolts, and the primitive bow. It's ridiculous how it currently does the same damage as a stone spear throw and more than the wooden club power attack. Also kinda annoyed they also made the pipe weapons a little too op and easy to get, I loved the early game struggle but now it's kind of a breeze... Also still really annoyed how slow all the vehicles are, even with the supercharger the old minibike was faster than everything currency available.. Especially the bycicle which is pretty much the same as walking if you have the jacket, but SLOWER if you have mega crush, which kind of makes it useless aside the extra storage and encumbrance bypass... Which are also questionable because by the time I get a free bike or can craft it, I'm usually already busy crafting the minibike. I really don't get the devs on many of those decisions, but yeah a buff on bows was definitely needed
Agility/bow build is pretty great in this update. I felt like Legolas on my last Horde Night, probably the most fun one I've done in a while. Side note, I hope they make arrows that miss (or glitch through) targets more visible and easier to retrieve. It's nearly impossible to see where they are most of the time
Outstanding video, as are most of yours. Got a sub, a like, and a bell from me. Looking forward to more of your well-articulated and mercifully concise, analysis.
I was playing yesterday with a friend and i did noticed that the bow was better, but not this much xD This video blew mi socks out of my ass, nice job man!
I'm playing a chill Bow/Crossbow Only "Stealth Archer" playthrough right now. It's been fun, but if I miss a sneak attack I'm scrambling for distance and for those sweet head-shots for the damage bonus. The buffs to archery makes me realize that the zombies got a serious buff to evasive movement - their heads are floppin' around everywhere and you've got to snap-shot it to get a headshot. I'm having a blast with it.
Personally! I hope they don’t nerf bows/crossbow damage too soon, as IMO it’s really to soon to tell how big an effect this will have, as despite the large damage increases, which finally seem to make bows/crossbow viable as a later game weapon. Honestly these damages aren’t unrealistic, as bows/crossbows can be extremely powerful, but of course their shortfall is ROF, which these increases don’t change, so after mid game, bows serve very little purpose other than for stealth on quests, and while traveling, but inside higher end POIs using bows/crossbows, will simply require more slots in your storage, as you’ll need to also carry a gun or two for when multiple Zeds are after you within limited areas,
as a a19 agility main i love the fact that i no longer have to spec into another area fully to be able to do horde nights since old bows only did well with sneaking.
I always go bow early game. Later stages, when ammo is more readily available, automatic weapons will always be my secondary. Bows just take too long to load. Great video though, i knew bows seemed better but i hadn't realised the actual statistics were so much better!
No more having to spec into an entirely different trait/perk line (perception) in order to get access to the best stealth sniping weapon (a sniper rifle w/ silencer). A19 I always would bring up perception as soon as I got agility done for that very reason; ended up better off throwing a silencer on a pistol or vulture rather than bothering with bows or crossbows. With how zed-dense the T5 POIs are now, being able to stealth thru and clear buildings with just a bow or crossbow is a much welcome change.
There is a reason behind it. I still play @19 waiting for the stable release and I play on insane and can't stealth kill some of the irradiated zombies even with head shot which makes stealth runs impossible since even in @19 ferals sense you from further distance. I am guessing it's a balancing thing and they might go down a bit if it's too op and rather have a bigger stealth bonus. Same for the knife they need to raise the dmg or stealth bonus thought.
I remember when the 7DTD devs added the variable stats to weapons before, which made the game more interesting and encurraged looting, but also added more variety that wasn't avaliable at the time, then they removed it for whatever reason, kinda like how they did with the iron, you got raw iron which you could either scrap for some quick easy scrap iron, or smelt it for a bigger outcome. The crossbow I'd just like to mention, from my own personal play with crossbows during not only A19 but also A18, I've found that with a level 3 or 4 crossbow with iron bolts, I can easily get through high tier quests from the trader using nothing but a crossbow and being stealthy, the iron bolts mixed with the stealth bonus really did hammer through everything, the only times I couldn't rely on the stealth bonus and crossbow was if there were green glowing ferals like the Cops or Wights and for the bikers, because of their helmet, I'd either need the luckiest shot ever, or maybe a level 5 or 6 crossbow or a level 4 crossbow with steel bolts for that 1 hit, so the crossbow was op anyway for myself when doing quests stealthy or even stealth looting, so this upgraded damage is imo super op'd on the crossbow
I always liked doing archery and felt it was capable of going above and beyond at most everything except horde nights until explosive ammo. All I see here is that archery isn't locked behind mandatory stealth which feels like a good relief.
I’m happy about it. I’ve always thought prim bows should do more. Like blasting a piece of wood with a sharpened stone at ~200 fps should wreck a zombie. I was always pissed that stone arrows and prim bows were so bad
This video really got me thinking about how its now extremely viable to use just bows or crossbows as your "adventuring long range weapon" in A20. In every update, Bows and crossbows, due to their loading times, was not something viable in horde nights due to the DPS factor. This combined with the lower damage in previous alphas meant archery didn't provide much benefit overall. However, now with the updated damage, archery has become very viable as your main ranged weapon for daily exploring & questing. This is due to reasons like: 1. Very cheap and easy ammo - ingredients for archery ammo is dirt cheap compared with bullets, which needs multiple mining, crafting & forging investment to set up for manufacturing. Also, even in early game stages, bolts & arrows are plentiful in containers. By prioritizing archery for your adventures, you can save a lot of ammo for horde nights. 2. Better burst damage - Archery weapons now deal a lot more damage, and their sneak damage multiplier is higher. This makes them useful when clearing POIs or dealing with random zombies. Even against tough wild animals like bears, players can gain the upper hand by making simple barricades or taking the high ground. Also, thanks to the better damage, its no longer a pain to kill those tough enemies. All in all, I think archery now is a decent investment, especially now since you'll need to invest in Agility for flurry of blows and parkour anuways.
All good point but I 'd like to add that bows are actually now pretty good on horde night. I made a corridor base with a load of cobblestone bars (yes bars now come in cobblestone, concrete and steel) and I had a level 4 primitive bow with 300 iron arrows. On insane-nightmare difficulty, with 3 points into archery I was able to very very easily deal with the 7th day horde by about 1am. (I was level 21, so I would have been gamestage 30ish) I think crossbows are far too slow to use on horde night but a fast firing bow and a hordebase that funnels enemies in-front of you is a fantastic way to deal with hordes now. I've not tested that on really high gamestage hordes though. That said, if you combine it with a good electric fence base design and keep a high level crossbow for demos I see no reason the bows wouldn't scale perfectly well into the late game hordes. They [compound bows] have some of the highest damage per shot in the game, second only to the sniper rifle and desert vulture, so if you can hit those headshots and keep the arrows flying, you should be good. Not to mention that explosive arrows are now as nearly as hard hitting as pipe bombs but have the added bonus of longer range and impact detonation. If shit hits the fan you have the 44s and the SMG to fall back on.
@@IzPrebuilt Yea I could see that working. With a zombie jumping base with sledge turrets and some electrical posts, you can funnel and lock in zeds for the headshots pretty easily. The latest armor piercing buff provided by crossbows makes them really good against demos as well, and you can technically have more than 1 crossbows in your toolbelt for cycled shots like a blunderbuss. If you need time to reload just send a explosive arrow for the knockdowns so you have the breather to reload them crossbows. Personally I favor melee horde bases for being a cheap-ass but i can definitely see the benefit of a low cost archery/melee multiple-sectioned base that will be very low upkeep. For me personally, I'll rather be out looting than spending days digging for ammo and doing repairs. Anyways, great content, great analysis, thanks for doing it.
I like playing each round starting with a character in mind who has a specific set of standards for surviving. It keeps me from just going full heavy armor with all the guns on every build which is sort of the default and it's easy to quickly build out a pretty unstoppable murder hobo. My current game is the Machete Cowboy. The end goal is a cowboy hat, leather boots, leather duster, light military armor and a motorcycle. Building up the blade path to end with a machete and all zombie kills have to be hand to hand. Allowed him the bow pathway for animal kills only. It's pretty much a full agility build. No idea how it will end up late game, but it's more fun for me to place those kinds of restrictions and then figure out how to make it work from there.
I’m playing on warrior, and a level 3 primitive bow with ergo grip and bow string mods, no points in archery, iron arrows and I’m poppin heads off of aggro zombies. Literally their heads pop off and roll on the ground. If I make a sneak shot to the head or torso, it’s insta kill. I have noticed some glaring hit box issues at close range. I put one into a zombies chest, saw it go right thru, got smacked up a bit but I lived and there was arrow in the wall behind where the zombie was. It was absolutely a hit, but it passed right thru.
I often take a bow for the stealth shots, and for potshots. but when things get hairy, I really need a GUN to make things lay down. But it's good they're doing more damage! [and hopefully still doing more.]
I am playing an agility stealth build with archery, bows on top of all that do an additional 200% sneak damage. With the night stalker books... I hunt Zombies at night and build during the day.
I was in the diamond club last night, got to the stage full of loot but felt like a trap. Stealthed and one shotted 20 zombies with my lvl 5 crossbow and iron bolts. Saved me such a headache.
1:05 I'm not entirely sure what you mean. If for every level (above 1) you get 10 % more damage (than the previous level) a level 6 bow would give you about 61 % more damage, not 50 %... If for every level (above one) you get 10 % more damage than level 1, basically you would get 10 % more damage for every level, so level 6 would also give you 10 % more damage, not 50 %...
The level 2 bow does 10% more damage than a level 1. The level 3 bow does 20% more damage than a level 1. The level 4 bow does 30% more damage than a level 1. The level 5 bow does 40% damage than a level 1. The level 6 bow does 50% more damage than a level 1. This was implied by me literally saying "a level 6 does 50% more damage than a level 1." I could not have been clearer in that statement.
U forgot to mention exploding and flaming arrows. The exploding arrows is so good. It’s Agility built’s horde weapon. Basically an exploding pipe bomb launcher
Hot damn. I knew bows had been buffed (just started my first A20 game with friends), but not to this extent. I may have to go with it as my weapon of choice after this vid.
Agility build is all I ever made. I eventually transitioned from crossbows to the pistol when I was able to make the ammo and then branched out to the sniper rifle which is in the perception tree. I don't see any reason to move to the perception build except for perhaps the perk that lets you ignore armor. Forget what that's called. Looks like putting one in that would be sufficient and synergize with your bows very well.
Most of the time I used clubs/sledgehammers from the beginning till I got guns and enough ammo and even then I usually used stronger melee stuff, and only used bow for fun or stealth, now it seems like it became a good option? Nice.
Considering a compound bow can, with the right draw weight and arrow, take down a bear, I'd say putting them as a viable gun alternative is fantastic and true to form.
Oh thank goodness, I hated having to dump points into Strength and Sledge my way to victory all the time. Now I can be crossbow ninja. Did ninjas have crossbows? Who cares, I'm agile *Pew pew* **jump jump**
I love this buff really. I've always been a fan of using arrows in 7DtD, but its been very lackluster for a number of years now. So the buffs are very welcome. I'm actually do like the agility tree alot so having arrows in general be a superb form of range damage is most welcome.
From the sounds of it, these might still be a solid choice mid-game? A friend and I play using 2 hour time cycles instead of 1 hour and we are maxing the exp rate since I am newer and he hasn't played in a while. We are in day 5 and in our 30s for levels, although I think that might be partly due to running so many quests since that system is so much better now. I put 7 points into agility so I could get my deep cuts and flurry of blows up and am currently building into Int so I can set up a trap run for horde nights based on Saven's build. I think for me to get rank 4 archery with run and gun, parkour, and both stealth perks, it would require around 15-20 points. Would you say it is still worth going into?
yeah I'm using the crossbow, it's very strong, ammo efficient, and satisfying to use! Make sure to try and use stealth attacks when you can for even more damage!
You don't have to make it your main weapon or even spec into it but always carry a crossbow around just for the sneak attack damage and no sound. Makes every POI 10x easier especially the tier 5.
Only started playing last week. Glad they did buff the bows. Sofar i really like playing with the Bow. Archery books, skills and sneak bonus make a Bow insanely strong T4 primitive Bow with Iron arrows already can 1 shot Most standard zombies that way with a sneak attack
Great changes. Used to always tell my newer friends to the game to just skip archery. Use it if you need it in the early game, but never invest points into it since it'll get outclassed later. Now I'm considering changing my tune on the bow and running it more consistently. Now the scavenger build has a new toy to work with. I think most 7D teams use the same 4 man philosophy. You've got your miner/fooder STR/FORT dedicated class that goes guns blazing, mines, cooks, and farms (usually 2 people), your INT dedicated trader/quester/builder class (usually the player who's online most often or server host), and then the scav class (AGI+Per) who usually would be forced to run pistols since he's constantly indoors, and snipers are situationally awesome but overall meh when combat is usually CQC... and then bows were just terrible at range and CQC and were just a noob trap waste of points. Well now bows aren't terrible. Who would have thunk. Gotta say putting away my pistol/smg build will be hard, but I think I'll give it a go! :D
Thanks. I noticed I was able to 1 shot deers with a sneak attack arrow on day 1 with my tutorial bow and arrows. I have done it 4 times now, so I know it was not a fluke.
So you telling me, that I was running with primitive bow lvl 5 and stone arrows on lvl 100 while feeling like it's too OP, and now it got even better? I love this game so much for being able to be sneaky through most of the game
Alpha 19 bows and Crosbows works awesome, and even better with the right perks, now it going to be deathly, but so far, new POI,'s it's full of ambush scenarios, soooo... i'm starting to think Alpha 20 could be call Ambush City. Lov it!
Archery had always been my first go to stat since I spent so much time sneak headshots while clearing room. WIth this latest update....I AM A GOD HERE!
With archery T4, hidden strike T4 and a T6 compound crossbow with steel bolts my crossbow is at 140.6 base damage. I get a 5.5 times sneak multiplier. Without max perks, I'm often one-shotting zombie bears with my crossbow. I have put my T6 sniper away.
![Are You Using These 7 Underused Things in 7 Days To Die? [Alpha 20]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/978YGPDIYfc/mqdefault.jpg)
![Are You Using These 7 Underused Things in 7 Days To Die? [Alpha 20]](/img/tr.png)
For you hardcore players you'll now need a level 3 Primitive bow with 2 ranks of archery and 1 rank of hidden strike to 1 hit kill standard zombies on Insane with a sneak attack headshot. Iron Arrows will make it more reliable.
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@@6543dann Yes I'm aware but it's not "Random" it's variable. They're still predictable and will still die with the setup I mentioned.
Nice
I almost always run the bow early to mid game, regardless of where I'm putting my points. Usually end up ditching it because it just didn't do enough damage as your game stage increases. So this is a very welcome change in my opinion.
Yeah, same here, and usually keep one on me until I’ve got at least one good silenced gun
Bows even end game (I am level 117, so... that can be considered end game right?). Bows are godly with the right spec. I still one shot almost everything, when sneaking and on the hardest setting. To me, this only pushes more people to the sneak bow set up I have. It was already godly, now it is above God. That is not a mechanic that was needed. I guess the fun pimps play games how I do, with sneak.
But, I would never force others to play how I do. You play the game how you want to. It should be balanced, with sneak being the game play for some and not all.
@@justindadswell8610 sneak bonus only applies when not detected. In my experience, hoards always detect, so bow was useless. Or was I doing something wrong?
@@tejarex Yeah, I am talking POI or quest situations. Prior to Alpha 20, 99.9% of horde mobs were normal mobs, making them easy to take down with normal means.
Today, with alpha 20 and somewhat increased feral mobs, not sure I would give the same advice. But a Sledge robot with an offset pathing structure is still godly. (even cobblestone can handle supports that are 6 blocks away - to deal with cops and demolition zombies; tested myself - so try it).
If you are not doing horde night or a POI with sneak, sure bows suck. But then, you are doing the game wrong. Probably why they buffed something that didn't need to be buffed(you are among the majority, and thank you for making the game easy).
Lasty, sneak should work well for those who are spec'd and not for others. Or a game becomes easy, as anyone can sneak. You will not be seen if spec'd and armored correctly. so yes, Bows were already godly. But, feel free to buff my preferred play style.
@@justindadswell8610 I feel like it's just sad that bows are ONLY viable for sneaking. I've always really liked the idea of using bows instead of guns, but the damage just isn't there at all, so i always end up switching over to shotguns
Finally i can play with bows without questioning my life choices
I'm happy to hear this. I've always scrapped the bow and arrow from the tutorial as soon as I made them and never used bows at all.
Same, I just recycled it instantly back in A19, I've had a lot of fun with it so far though. I've played like 30 hours over the weekend.
@@IzPrebuilt Can't wait to play Alpha 20 :)
Also looking forward to more Alpha 20 content from you.
As someone who always used bows a lot. I found it weird that poeple didnt use them more.
Great example is i did a lootrun on a server together with someone. His build was around guns and just ronning in and blast everythin. This resulted in him running out of ammo pretty fast and us taking tons of damage.
The times he let me go first and do my sneak thing even ferals werent a big problem only taking one melee hit to finish of if the survived the iron bolt to the face on a primitive crossbow. This ofcourse wasnt on insane diff just one below but still.
Bows always felt more cost affective to me compare to guns but guns always performed a lot better on blood moons or in the rare case of a trigger location that would wake up all zeds in a room no matter what you did.
This was desperately needed.
I was thinking that bows/crossbows were just more of sneak attack weapons and I was just terrible with them/too late in the game to make use of them. Even on a blood moon and using explosives + Atomic candies, they barely seemed to do anything, so I often just ignored bows in general. Perhaps I was just expecting them to be a little too ridiculous due to some other games making them that way in the past (Looking at you, How 2 Survive series), and coming to the conclusion that 7 Days just wanted you to stick around with guns.
I'll give them another shot in A20 whenever I get back into it ^^ They sound like they've been 'corrected' (for the most part. Let's hope the flaming ones catch up soon)
Thanks for breaking this down for us, Prebuilt ^^ 🧡
Well they've always been the king of sneak attacks. That +200% on top of the standard +50% from sneak, was just not surpassable by any other weapon in the game from sneak ...without even a single perk to help them. But now they stand a chance of being able to be useful during horde night. I'm thinking compound Bow for the rate of fire, with a crossbow & exploding bolts as a much more precise replacement for pipe bombs.
the issue is rate of fire.
@@mdb45424 Yeah, they're not fast. 5/5 in archery does speed up the effective rate of fire considerably though. And the bows have a higher rate of fire than the xbows. If they do enough damage, it could be worthwhile, but it's hard to justify on blood moon. It would be interesting with the right kind of base on horde night if The Penetrator perk affected arrows, but it doesn't.
I've done some tinkering, and I've changed my mind on what i posted above. I think the only archery item useful on blood moon is a compound bow with explosive arrows. It's like a really fast (but weak) rocker launcher. With a bow you can spam explosive arrows really fast (faster than the x-bow).
It makes for really good DPS from explosive that you can apply from range. Throwing grenades or pipe bombs is much slower, & rocket launcher is slower to reload. Although if you have a pit trap, you can 'drop' explosives even faster, and then set them all off with 1 'primed' explosive pretty quickly. But if you want to put explosions out at a horizontal distance, explosive arrows are pretty sick.
Tried a "no base" high GS horde with the run & gun, pain tolerance, college jacket, etc. type build, with mega crush drinks on the bar. And the quick snap-shot with exploding arrows from a bow was super nice. The crafting cost makes it realistic to go into a horde with like 200 exploding arrows, which is not so realistic with rocket launchers. Also the smaller explosive radius makes it easier to use at fairly short range.
The crafting cost on exploding arrows is pretty cheap, so you could make it a spam-weapon all horde night long. I'm not sure how exploding arrows interact with the demolitions expert or archery perk (or possibly even the penetrator perk for anti-armor effect). I need to test it more.
One thing about archery though. If you are playing multiplayer with friends, you have a sneak build, and you crouch during a horde, archery suddenly gets much better.
During blood moon, zombies spawn per-player, but they only know the location of "their" player (the player they spawned for). So if you are playing with 2 friends, 2 out of 3 zombies coming down the corridor can be hit with sneak damage. A stealth build with 8x sneak dmg just annihilates the zombies trying to eat your friends. Granted, you could get up to 6x sneak damage with guns if you went deep into agility, but a bow does a much better job of keeping you in sneak mode (relative to the zombies which are mad at your friends anyway). Silenced guns (the quieter ones anyway) might be workable that way too.
I love math. Great video man! Seriously considering archery build now
Hidden strike is the key
I was already planning to do a bow playthrough before I knew all this gnarly info. Guess they wanted to make sure archery wasn’t just forgotten in the face of all the pipe weapons and reskinned guns. Thanks for the in-depth look as always!
I guess they wanted the bow to compete with the new pipe weapons. Choose between the shiny new toys, or beefed up old ones; I wonder if the pipe weapons will become a "noob trap" or sorts.
The pipe weapons need a balance pass IMO: the machine gun is bonkers. The pistol is usable. The rifle is Ok ish and the shotgun is utter poopy. Why the gun with the most ammo has the fastest reload I’ll never know 🙄
FINALLY IT IS POSSIBLE TO DO AN ARCHERY BUILD i was sick of having thousands of feathers
I feel like the bows and crossbows should do more damage than automatic guns and pistols, because its a trade off, with bows and crossbows your rate of fire is so low that you can easily get overwhelmed by zombies as we saw in the video, but with automatic weapons or pistols they can handle large amounts of zombies much better.
@@jamestaylor9887 i had to never make ammo in my playthru. on a20 they just drop so much more. i have around a full crate of ammo
Well when you build into a bow class you basically have a ton of agility and stealth skills to scavenge and loot good stuff without a lot of attention...
Also Bows and Crossbows would be insane in PVP for stealth kills, anyone can stealth and one shot someone with a well aimed crossbow snipe now.
From a gameplay perspective, maybe, but truth is... If a bow did more damage than a gun it'd ruin my immersion I think. Bows are cool but gunpowder literally blows them away lmao.
Bows do excel over guns in some ways though. 1. A lot cheaper on ammo. 2. Naturally suppressed, whereas firearms you need a suppressor (tier 2 or 3 loot, very rare and late game), and even then a bow will be significantly quieter. 3. You get them at the start of the game, and the early game is the hardest part on higher difficulties, so running an early bow build helps you when you need it most, at the cost of maybe slightly lower late game damage if you were to save those points for guns instead.
All in all, the new changes make bows really useful. Even if you don't spec into them, bows are fantastic early game crutches on insane difficulty. They're saving my ass out there.
@@dra6o0n umm, i dont think there is a sneak attack modifier in PVP. As a pvp player i wish bows were more viable but they lose to sniper rifle
Been waiting 2 days for this. I'm satisfied.
Because of this video, I'll make my first playthrough in Alpha 20 an Agility/Intellect build. Intellect because the new drones and vehicle customizations sounds really awesome. Another great and informative video Iz. We appreciate them very much! Still waiting on you to use blue dye on your character in one of your videos lol
Agility has always been a good tree. If you do stealth play, then every single perk in the tree is good. If not, then only most of the perks are good. If you stealth, just remember not to use lights, and pay attention to your noise stats on armor/mods. Also some POI's have trigger zones which alert zombies regardless of how quiet you are. The machete isn't bad, just need some space to retreat (kite), in order to see that bleed dmg. Bit of a different style of melee than some of the other melee options. 9mm is a good early 'quiet' option, if u run into trouble but don't want to wake up the whole neighborhood. The 44 mag sucks. The Desert Vulture is great for a rifle-like playstyle, with much more user friendly recoil effect on accuracy. And the SMG just converts all your ammo into death at an insane speed. Don't use that until u are crafting ammo at a high rate, but once u are, it's an absolute death ray. The ammo consumption is viable when you consider 9mm crafting cost, and that it stacks twice as high as 7.62. Plus it's very quiet with a silencer, and does so much dps that the everything dies regardless of the silencer dmg debuff.
Thank you. In A19 i played "insane" and with that the bow and crossbow were nearly worthless. Now it is much more interesting. A good lv 6 bow or crossbow with all perks (incl. sneaky perks) and books and mods can be very dangerous (if it is silence :)
I really appreciate the time and effort you took on this video to explain the math! Most folks run when they hear the word math rather than embracing it :) You've convinced me to give Agility builds a go. Cheers!
absolutely trying a stealth/archery build on my first playthrough, I heard you mention it in Temreki's stream the other day so it piqued my interest, you weren't lying when you said "whatever you think the buff is, double it"
I always go archery early, even if I technically don't spec into it. I use stealth alot as I hate listening to the zombies beat on a wall for 30+ minutes. This will make things a lot more fun. I'd use the bows up until I found my first silencer. Once I had that there was literally no reason to stick with the bows. 7.62 ammo would be kept for horde night. 9mm would be my day ammo to be used with my silenced weapon, be it a pistol or smg.
Archer Agi/Int main for the longest time here. I've always loved archery and completed games like Far Cry 3/4 with just a bow and arrow. Always felt like archery in this game could do with a boost, this buff sounds great I can't wait to try out the tier 3 bows/crossbows!
I usually carry 1 bow and 4 crossbows in my toolbelt; I occasionally rapid fire my crossbows by switching them out quickly for fresh ones after every shot. I use bows and crossbows all the way into late game for exploration and self-defense; I can survive with bows on horde night but I usually end up sticking to guns just to get more exp. Hopefully now with improved explosive arrows I can actually use them as holdout weapons. Would also be nice if adding Penetrator makes arrows pierce 1 zombie when at full draw close range (they can in real life) or repeating crossbows that have lower accuracy and higher spread but reload fast, make them only take standard bolts not the explosive/burning ones
For those of you thinking of soloing with archer mains, bring a robotic sledge with you and some frames in your toolbelt. Use chokepoints as much as possible. Aim for the upper chest when the zombies are sprinting to you; it's better to go for a guaranteed hit sometimes over headshots you can't reliably land. Leg shots can slow/dismember zombies; aim for the upper thigh. If you're facing a cluster use explosive arrows to knock them down and buy yourself some time to get to safety. Burning arrows/bolts are good on irradiated zombies and ferals. Special arrows fly slower than regular ones so keep that in mind. Practice long distance shots with every new tier bow/crossbow you get or whenever you install a polymer string mod
I do feel like they nerfed the accuracy of bows. I can't seem to land the same long range shots I could in the past so finding arrow rest mods are going to be crucial earlier on now.
I love the compound crossbow with sneak damage, sure it takes time to go through houses and such but when you complete the entire building without being detected its a pretty nice feeling
I didn't even know this buff happened. I had forgotten bows existed. It seems like a very good change.
Im happy for this, you can do bow only runs (maybe one sidearm) now. Plus its more realistic, have you ever seen the SHEER CARNAGE some real life bolts can do? Fucking finally.
Honestly hope they dont change anything, this is fine, you can do silent raids now.
I imagine they might nerf the damage at some point but as long as it's not reverted all the way back to Alpha 19 levels we should be good, especially on the lower difficulties like nomad and warrior.
@@IzPrebuilt Yeah I can understand that for sure. It IS quite the increase. I just hope, like you said, doesn't go back to A19, because we both know they drop off about day 14 and onward IF that.
@@johnr.9094 I play on insane difficulty so for me, it was an instant drop off because it took like 6 arrows to kill a basic zombie even with a sneak attack headshot.
@@IzPrebuilt Although I never played insane difficulty, im sure its frustrating. Should take a whole mag of bullets even to kill someone with clothes on, let alone 5 arrows or so. Pain.
@@6543dann Chicken spawns have been drastically increased.
You got my like and subscribe. Just built a compound crossbow got 2 mods and been steam rolling into the snow biome. Love the 105.8 damage
Oh! It's my favorite 7 days to die youtuber! Keep it up!
Very clear concise vid, well done mate. Agility also goes into parkour which is sexy.
I've been using bows since alpha 15. This buff is absolutely welcomed for me
Amazing information, thanks. Found your channel thanks to someone mentioning this video in comments on a JaWoodle 7d2d video.
Subbed, and can’t wait to see what else you put out on a20, thanks a lot for all your time and effort.
Liked and subbed just because I found out about variable statistics. Keep up the good work!
I love this breakdown with calculations and stats buffs and stuff lol
Yeah I like what they did with archery because with bows and arrows your utilizing a slower less dps weapon, unlike an automatic shotgun that can also be improved with better modifications (not sure if you can put mods on a compound bow or anything like that) so your giving up brute strength for a more precise means of dishing out the pain. I don’t think it should be nerfed because it gives means to the agility tree and allow as a completely viable new play style which I personally can’t wait to try out! Great video love all the coverage and statistical data you provided!
When I first started playing 7 years ago you simply one shot anything with a bow. I'm glad that it's becoming at least more relevant again.
I'm very happy with where the bows are now in the early to mid game, we're on day 29 and I'm running a compound bow and iron arrows, with points in archery and hidden strike I get a 5x stealth bonus, so my role in my group is to pick off zombies from a distance and it's so satisfying seeing all but the toughest zombies drop in one shot
9:50 I don't think they'll nerf them. Agitily is by far the worst tree (let's be honest) with the most situational perks and archery in itself is, as it relies on sneak attacks and the RNG of zombies not waking up in POIs due to trigger rooms, not to mention that the whole mechanic is useless during the horde and their DPS is garbage. Just compare this to some dude in heavy armor with an auto shotgun and an M60 doing the same job 5 times faster... yeah, don't worry archery players, it won't get nerfed.
Really like your breakdown. As other people have stated, I usually use bows early game but switch later on because of the damage. Now I'll definitely give bows a shot in A20.
I have to say I've always been an archery agility main. Nothing feels better than going around a house of sleeping zombies in the morning and clearing it out with sneak crossbow attacks
I felt they were doing more damage, figured I just hadn't played the game in a while and had forgotten how much damage they could do. But this is insane 😅
Excellent and concise analysis from Prebuilt as usual. The best utuber for making informed tatical build choices....
Glad you like them!
Once upon a time the crossbow was king. Red dot sight was in built, it was pin point accurate, suffered no drop over range and did insane damage. Archery is back boys! Enjoy it while it lasts, buffs this broken likely won't last long
My recent play through I’ve been leveling up archery, I was grossly unaware of how insane the buff was. The iron crossbow is actually insane, I got lucky finding a level 5 somewhat early on and I found a draw string mod too. Its like day 25 and it has not disappointed at all. I get to save up pretty much every bullet I find for horde night and can comfortably do most quests even as high as level 4 without using a single bullet from my backup gun. Plus I get to pick up like half the bolts I use which has been great for conservation of resources.
This is a welcome change for me and I feel it’d be dumb if they nerfed bows again. I would think they take more skill to use than spraying a crowd of zombies with an m60. This damage increase makes archery a viable option. Seeing as how you don’t have a clip of 10+ arrows (and will have to reload after each shot), I don’t think this change is too over powered and I hope the devs leave it where it is now.
They definitely SHOULD nerf, but only the stone arrows and bolts, and the primitive bow. It's ridiculous how it currently does the same damage as a stone spear throw and more than the wooden club power attack. Also kinda annoyed they also made the pipe weapons a little too op and easy to get, I loved the early game struggle but now it's kind of a breeze... Also still really annoyed how slow all the vehicles are, even with the supercharger the old minibike was faster than everything currency available.. Especially the bycicle which is pretty much the same as walking if you have the jacket, but SLOWER if you have mega crush, which kind of makes it useless aside the extra storage and encumbrance bypass... Which are also questionable because by the time I get a free bike or can craft it, I'm usually already busy crafting the minibike. I really don't get the devs on many of those decisions, but yeah a buff on bows was definitely needed
Brilliant kiddo, im looking forward to all yer new videos
This was such a well made video. I just subscribed!
Agility/bow build is pretty great in this update. I felt like Legolas on my last Horde Night, probably the most fun one I've done in a while.
Side note, I hope they make arrows that miss (or glitch through) targets more visible and easier to retrieve. It's nearly impossible to see where they are most of the time
You slayed this, bro. I think you're right to anticipate the nerf. These types of changes don't feel intentional. Use it while you can!
Outstanding video, as are most of yours. Got a sub, a like, and a bell from me. Looking forward to more of your well-articulated and mercifully concise, analysis.
I was playing yesterday with a friend and i did noticed that the bow was better, but not this much xD
This video blew mi socks out of my ass, nice job man!
I'm playing a chill Bow/Crossbow Only "Stealth Archer" playthrough right now. It's been fun, but if I miss a sneak attack I'm scrambling for distance and for those sweet head-shots for the damage bonus. The buffs to archery makes me realize that the zombies got a serious buff to evasive movement - their heads are floppin' around everywhere and you've got to snap-shot it to get a headshot. I'm having a blast with it.
Personally! I hope they don’t nerf bows/crossbow damage too soon, as IMO it’s really to soon to tell how big an effect this will have, as despite the large damage increases, which finally seem to make bows/crossbow viable as a later game weapon. Honestly these damages aren’t unrealistic, as bows/crossbows can be extremely powerful, but of course their shortfall is ROF, which these increases don’t change, so after mid game, bows serve very little purpose other than for stealth on quests, and while traveling, but inside higher end POIs using bows/crossbows, will simply require more slots in your storage, as you’ll need to also carry a gun or two for when multiple Zeds are after you within limited areas,
Excellent stuff. In my current game definately going to go agility build.
as a a19 agility main i love the fact that i no longer have to spec into another area fully to be able to do horde nights since old bows only did well with sneaking.
Nice breakdown, you've got my sub
Welcome aboard!
Awesome info... people often neglect bows and 2 meter jumps! Strength is getting so old.
Also light armor anyone?
I do a strength+agility build and with the shotgun or club, light armor, run and gun, and parkour it's absolutely busted
I always go bow early game. Later stages, when ammo is more readily available, automatic weapons will always be my secondary. Bows just take too long to load.
Great video though, i knew bows seemed better but i hadn't realised the actual statistics were so much better!
No more having to spec into an entirely different trait/perk line (perception) in order to get access to the best stealth sniping weapon (a sniper rifle w/ silencer). A19 I always would bring up perception as soon as I got agility done for that very reason; ended up better off throwing a silencer on a pistol or vulture rather than bothering with bows or crossbows. With how zed-dense the T5 POIs are now, being able to stealth thru and clear buildings with just a bow or crossbow is a much welcome change.
There is a reason behind it. I still play @19 waiting for the stable release and I play on insane and can't stealth kill some of the irradiated zombies even with head shot which makes stealth runs impossible since even in @19 ferals sense you from further distance. I am guessing it's a balancing thing and they might go down a bit if it's too op and rather have a bigger stealth bonus. Same for the knife they need to raise the dmg or stealth bonus thought.
I remember when the 7DTD devs added the variable stats to weapons before, which made the game more interesting and encurraged looting, but also added more variety that wasn't avaliable at the time, then they removed it for whatever reason, kinda like how they did with the iron, you got raw iron which you could either scrap for some quick easy scrap iron, or smelt it for a bigger outcome.
The crossbow I'd just like to mention, from my own personal play with crossbows during not only A19 but also A18, I've found that with a level 3 or 4 crossbow with iron bolts, I can easily get through high tier quests from the trader using nothing but a crossbow and being stealthy, the iron bolts mixed with the stealth bonus really did hammer through everything, the only times I couldn't rely on the stealth bonus and crossbow was if there were green glowing ferals like the Cops or Wights and for the bikers, because of their helmet, I'd either need the luckiest shot ever, or maybe a level 5 or 6 crossbow or a level 4 crossbow with steel bolts for that 1 hit, so the crossbow was op anyway for myself when doing quests stealthy or even stealth looting, so this upgraded damage is imo super op'd on the crossbow
I always liked doing archery and felt it was capable of going above and beyond at most everything except horde nights until explosive ammo. All I see here is that archery isn't locked behind mandatory stealth which feels like a good relief.
I’m happy about it. I’ve always thought prim bows should do more. Like blasting a piece of wood with a sharpened stone at ~200 fps should wreck a zombie. I was always pissed that stone arrows and prim bows were so bad
Thanks a lot! Nice!
This video really got me thinking about how its now extremely viable to use just bows or crossbows as your "adventuring long range weapon" in A20. In every update, Bows and crossbows, due to their loading times, was not something viable in horde nights due to the DPS factor. This combined with the lower damage in previous alphas meant archery didn't provide much benefit overall. However, now with the updated damage, archery has become very viable as your main ranged weapon for daily exploring & questing. This is due to reasons like:
1. Very cheap and easy ammo - ingredients for archery ammo is dirt cheap compared with bullets, which needs multiple mining, crafting & forging investment to set up for manufacturing. Also, even in early game stages, bolts & arrows are plentiful in containers. By prioritizing archery for your adventures, you can save a lot of ammo for horde nights.
2. Better burst damage - Archery weapons now deal a lot more damage, and their sneak damage multiplier is higher. This makes them useful when clearing POIs or dealing with random zombies. Even against tough wild animals like bears, players can gain the upper hand by making simple barricades or taking the high ground. Also, thanks to the better damage, its no longer a pain to kill those tough enemies.
All in all, I think archery now is a decent investment, especially now since you'll need to invest in Agility for flurry of blows and parkour anuways.
All good point but I 'd like to add that bows are actually now pretty good on horde night. I made a corridor base with a load of cobblestone bars (yes bars now come in cobblestone, concrete and steel) and I had a level 4 primitive bow with 300 iron arrows. On insane-nightmare difficulty, with 3 points into archery I was able to very very easily deal with the 7th day horde by about 1am. (I was level 21, so I would have been gamestage 30ish)
I think crossbows are far too slow to use on horde night but a fast firing bow and a hordebase that funnels enemies in-front of you is a fantastic way to deal with hordes now. I've not tested that on really high gamestage hordes though.
That said, if you combine it with a good electric fence base design and keep a high level crossbow for demos I see no reason the bows wouldn't scale perfectly well into the late game hordes. They [compound bows] have some of the highest damage per shot in the game, second only to the sniper rifle and desert vulture, so if you can hit those headshots and keep the arrows flying, you should be good. Not to mention that explosive arrows are now as nearly as hard hitting as pipe bombs but have the added bonus of longer range and impact detonation. If shit hits the fan you have the 44s and the SMG to fall back on.
@@IzPrebuilt Yea I could see that working. With a zombie jumping base with sledge turrets and some electrical posts, you can funnel and lock in zeds for the headshots pretty easily. The latest armor piercing buff provided by crossbows makes them really good against demos as well, and you can technically have more than 1 crossbows in your toolbelt for cycled shots like a blunderbuss. If you need time to reload just send a explosive arrow for the knockdowns so you have the breather to reload them crossbows.
Personally I favor melee horde bases for being a cheap-ass but i can definitely see the benefit of a low cost archery/melee multiple-sectioned base that will be very low upkeep. For me personally, I'll rather be out looting than spending days digging for ammo and doing repairs. Anyways, great content, great analysis, thanks for doing it.
in Alpha 19, a Compound Crossbow level 3 with a 4X Scope and a Polystring mod was already a very potent long range weapon.
I like playing each round starting with a character in mind who has a specific set of standards for surviving. It keeps me from just going full heavy armor with all the guns on every build which is sort of the default and it's easy to quickly build out a pretty unstoppable murder hobo. My current game is the Machete Cowboy. The end goal is a cowboy hat, leather boots, leather duster, light military armor and a motorcycle. Building up the blade path to end with a machete and all zombie kills have to be hand to hand. Allowed him the bow pathway for animal kills only. It's pretty much a full agility build. No idea how it will end up late game, but it's more fun for me to place those kinds of restrictions and then figure out how to make it work from there.
very good at getting the basics out and informative as fuck.Good job, matey
I’m playing on warrior, and a level 3 primitive bow with ergo grip and bow string mods, no points in archery, iron arrows and I’m poppin heads off of aggro zombies. Literally their heads pop off and roll on the ground. If I make a sneak shot to the head or torso, it’s insta kill.
I have noticed some glaring hit box issues at close range. I put one into a zombies chest, saw it go right thru, got smacked up a bit but I lived and there was arrow in the wall behind where the zombie was. It was absolutely a hit, but it passed right thru.
I was running a crossbow in my a20 playthrough and it was feeling much better than I remembered, I guess this is why xD
I often take a bow for the stealth shots, and for potshots. but when things get hairy, I really need a GUN to make things lay down. But it's good they're doing more damage! [and hopefully still doing more.]
i was an agility main in A19, so this is a very welcome change, i think i'll be able to reliably one-shot sleeper rad's when i get to that stage
I am playing an agility stealth build with archery, bows on top of all that do an additional 200% sneak damage. With the night stalker books... I hunt Zombies at night and build during the day.
I was in the diamond club last night, got to the stage full of loot but felt like a trap. Stealthed and one shotted 20 zombies with my lvl 5 crossbow and iron bolts. Saved me such a headache.
They used to laugh at us Agility mains, now we are on the top.
Amazing, with this buff perhaps having the best crossbow with just stone bolts when exploring could be enough for regular zombies.
Here for the extraordinary information and leaving a comment for that pesky algorithm. Can't wait for the farming info. Keep it up Prebuilt!
1:05 I'm not entirely sure what you mean. If for every level (above 1) you get 10 % more damage (than the previous level) a level 6 bow would give you about 61 % more damage, not 50 %... If for every level (above one) you get 10 % more damage than level 1, basically you would get 10 % more damage for every level, so level 6 would also give you 10 % more damage, not 50 %...
The level 2 bow does 10% more damage than a level 1. The level 3 bow does 20% more damage than a level 1. The level 4 bow does 30% more damage than a level 1. The level 5 bow does 40% damage than a level 1. The level 6 bow does 50% more damage than a level 1.
This was implied by me literally saying "a level 6 does 50% more damage than a level 1." I could not have been clearer in that statement.
there is no lvl 0 bow ma brother
U forgot to mention exploding and flaming arrows. The exploding arrows is so good. It’s Agility built’s horde weapon. Basically an exploding pipe bomb launcher
Hot damn. I knew bows had been buffed (just started my first A20 game with friends), but not to this extent. I may have to go with it as my weapon of choice after this vid.
Agility build is all I ever made. I eventually transitioned from crossbows to the pistol when I was able to make the ammo and then branched out to the sniper rifle which is in the perception tree. I don't see any reason to move to the perception build except for perhaps the perk that lets you ignore armor. Forget what that's called. Looks like putting one in that would be sufficient and synergize with your bows very well.
Most of the time I used clubs/sledgehammers from the beginning till I got guns and enough ammo and even then I usually used stronger melee stuff, and only used bow for fun or stealth, now it seems like it became a good option? Nice.
Considering a compound bow can, with the right draw weight and arrow, take down a bear, I'd say putting them as a viable gun alternative is fantastic and true to form.
Oh thank goodness, I hated having to dump points into Strength and Sledge my way to victory all the time. Now I can be crossbow ninja. Did ninjas have crossbows? Who cares, I'm agile *Pew pew* **jump jump**
As a bow main, this make me hella happy.
Dude I've always loved archery. Up to 6(?)x more damage on stealth sneak attacks, that's something
I love this buff really. I've always been a fan of using arrows in 7DtD, but its been very lackluster for a number of years now. So the buffs are very welcome. I'm actually do like the agility tree alot so having arrows in general be a superb form of range damage is most welcome.
Finally! A buff to bows. Now I wont feel stupid in leveling up archery as primary ranged weapon.
From the sounds of it, these might still be a solid choice mid-game? A friend and I play using 2 hour time cycles instead of 1 hour and we are maxing the exp rate since I am newer and he hasn't played in a while. We are in day 5 and in our 30s for levels, although I think that might be partly due to running so many quests since that system is so much better now. I put 7 points into agility so I could get my deep cuts and flurry of blows up and am currently building into Int so I can set up a trap run for horde nights based on Saven's build. I think for me to get rank 4 archery with run and gun, parkour, and both stealth perks, it would require around 15-20 points. Would you say it is still worth going into?
yeah I'm using the crossbow, it's very strong, ammo efficient, and satisfying to use! Make sure to try and use stealth attacks when you can for even more damage!
try to use the bow on horde night, lol
You don't have to make it your main weapon or even spec into it but always carry a crossbow around just for the sneak attack damage and no sound. Makes every POI 10x easier especially the tier 5.
I'm pumped to use bows I always liked them before and I started with bows in my first time ever playing with the buff I might have to use them again
Only started playing last week. Glad they did buff the bows. Sofar i really like playing with the Bow. Archery books, skills and sneak bonus make a Bow insanely strong
T4 primitive Bow with Iron arrows already can 1 shot Most standard zombies that way with a sneak attack
Great changes. Used to always tell my newer friends to the game to just skip archery. Use it if you need it in the early game, but never invest points into it since it'll get outclassed later. Now I'm considering changing my tune on the bow and running it more consistently.
Now the scavenger build has a new toy to work with. I think most 7D teams use the same 4 man philosophy. You've got your miner/fooder STR/FORT dedicated class that goes guns blazing, mines, cooks, and farms (usually 2 people), your INT dedicated trader/quester/builder class (usually the player who's online most often or server host), and then the scav class (AGI+Per) who usually would be forced to run pistols since he's constantly indoors, and snipers are situationally awesome but overall meh when combat is usually CQC... and then bows were just terrible at range and CQC and were just a noob trap waste of points.
Well now bows aren't terrible. Who would have thunk. Gotta say putting away my pistol/smg build will be hard, but I think I'll give it a go! :D
im doing a agi/bow build in a PvP server.... and BOY im having a blast.... my only issue is scavenging for resources and horde days
Thanks. I noticed I was able to 1 shot deers with a sneak attack arrow on day 1 with my tutorial bow and arrows. I have done it 4 times now, so I know it was not a fluke.
Makes sense considering it's a one shot with a substantial reload time compared to guns
ive just started alpha 20 2 days ago , and in first day found lvl 5 pipe stuff , not gonna touch the arrows and bolts again :))
So you telling me, that I was running with primitive bow lvl 5 and stone arrows on lvl 100 while feeling like it's too OP, and now it got even better? I love this game so much for being able to be sneaky through most of the game
Alpha 19 bows and Crosbows works awesome, and even better with the right perks, now it going to be deathly, but so far, new POI,'s it's full of ambush scenarios, soooo... i'm starting to think Alpha 20 could be call Ambush City. Lov it!
Agility was always my favorite tree. The agility buffs are crazy A20 ngl. Parkour and sneak is so much better in big cities
looks like the zombies are still equally as good as dodging the player. Can we increase the hitboxes?
Archery had always been my first go to stat since I spent so much time sneak headshots while clearing room. WIth this latest update....I AM A GOD HERE!
I almost always run with melee weapon and a bow (better crossbow) in non-horde times. I hope they won't make it boring with this overpowering.
As someone who always ran bow builds this is a fucking lifesaver, lol
With archery T4, hidden strike T4 and a T6 compound crossbow with steel bolts my crossbow is at 140.6 base damage. I get a 5.5 times sneak multiplier. Without max perks, I'm often one-shotting zombie bears with my crossbow. I have put my T6 sniper away.
I am so glad they did this because I never used the Primitive bow and Alpha 19 it was garbage
Next alpha we'll see the slingshot's channel repeating crossbows.