Demonata Core for 7 Days to Die

Description

I’m excited to drop the official launch of Demonata Core — a small mod for 7 Days to Die designed to bring back the sandbox feel, reward skillful play, and raise the stakes.

Summary: Demonata Core restores the sandbox, puts real weight behind progression, and rewards skillful play. Expect headshot-centric combat, smarter spawns, tougher choices, and quality-of-life fixes that cut grind without gutting survival.

Highlights

• Headshots Only (ranged, knives, spears): Precision matters; spray-and-pray is dead. Shotguns are exempt.
• Difficulty-aware balance: Headshot damage and zombie HP scale by difficulty to keep TTK fair.
• Sandbox restored: The world, spawns, economy, and crafting tie back into meaningful choices.
• QoL without shortcuts: Annoyances trimmed (reach, pickups, stacks) while risk stays real.

World & Biomes

• Infection “Survival Ladder” (Tree Stumps):
  • Pine Forest: spawn rate 0.000575 (≈ +50% vs vanilla).
  • Burnt Forest: 0.0001917 (≈ –4% vs vanilla; Pine ≈ 3× Burnt).
  • Snow: 0.0001095 (≈ –45% vs vanilla; Burnt ≈ 1.75×, Pine ≈ 5.25× Snow).
  • Honey drop per stump remains 20% (vanilla).
  • Impact: Snow sick? Sprint to Burnt for faster odds, or push to Pine for best odds—your risk, your reward.
• Mines added to all biomes. Terrain is dangerous again; watch your step.
• Wasteland ambience: Increased gore decorations for a harsher vibe.
• Fog tuning: Adjusted across biomes/weather to raise tension while keeping visibility playable.
• Gore hazards: Gore blocks now have a 50% chance to cause Infection on contact.

Combat, AI & Enemies

• Headshots Only (ranged, knives, spears):
  • Headshot damage modifiers by difficulty:
    • Scavenger: –50%
    • Adventurer: ±0%
    • Nomad: +100%
    • Warrior: +200%
    • Survivalist: +300%
    • Insane: +400%
• Difficulty-based zombie health (preserves vanilla ±15% variance):
  • Scavenger: –25% | Adventurer: ±0% | Nomad: +10% | Warrior: +20% | Survivalist: +30% | Insane: +40%
  • Intent: Higher difficulties hit harder but don’t turn enemies into pure bullet sponges.
• Zombie reach overhaul: Calibrated around spear-length melee.
  • Longer reach retained for Cops, Mutated, Frostclaw, Plague Spitters to keep them scary.
• Zombies no longer climb ladders. (Lore/realism pass.)
  Re-think base paths—no more easy ladder baiting.

Spawns, Hordes & Blood Moon

• Custom entity groups: Spawns now respect biomes and RWG tile tags, reinforcing theme and pacing.
• Wandering hordes: Composition and counts adjusted to sharpen difficulty and variety.
• Blood Moon: Now lasts all night. The final wave loops until dawn.
  Note: This is step one toward a larger future BM rework.

Loot, Items & Medicine

• Z-Paks: Now last 45 minutes. Slightly increased drop chance.
• Chickens: Harvesting can yield eggs (because… chickens).
• Compass cleanup: Removed red zombie dots—use your eyes and ears.
• Lanterns & traps pickup:
  • Writable storage containers and lanterns can be picked up when not inside a Land Claim by destroy/harvest.
    No material refunds (balance).
  • Mines, wooden/iron spikes, and barbed wire can be picked up.
• Honey nerf: Cure strength –50% to offset increased stump access.

Weapons & Gunplay

• Crosshairs removed from ranged weapons (shotgun exempt) and from laser/scopes.
• Bullet spread reduced to support headshot-only precision (does not affect shotguns).

Crafting, Repairs & Economy

• Repairs require parts:
  • Armor repairs use Armor Parts.
  • Tools & weapons use their respective parts.
• Nails economy: Increased nail drop rates; many wood items now require nails.
  • Frame Shapes (helper variant) now require nails (nerf to easy nerd-poling).
• Recipes tuned for scarcity & play:
  • Rotten meat recipes cost 10 (it’s everywhere).
  • Raw meat recipes cost 8 (encourages hunting).
  • Planted crops (e.g., Corn) cost 4 per recipe (promotes real farming).
  • Dynamite: 2 per craft (pack smarter).
• Stack sizes:
  • Resources: up to 12,000
  • Food/Drugs/Drinks: 20 (Rotting Meat reduced 125 → 20)
  • Medical supplies: 15

Food & Disease

• Canned foods:
  • Tuna & Beef: 30 food
  • Chicken: 35 food
  • All others: 20 food
• Dysentery realism: Because of rotting meat,
  • Hobo Stew, Sham Chowder, Canned Sham have 12% Dysentery chance.

Progression & XP

• XP sources trimmed: Only quests and zombie/animal kills grant XP by default.
  Intent: Crafting/survival matter; kills and missions carry progression.
• Curve rebalanced:
  • Base XP/level = 9,000 (vanilla: 3,000–10,000 by version)
  • +4% XP per level (vanilla +5%)
  • Clamp at Level 50 (vanilla 60) with ~61,500 per-level post-clamp (vanilla ~177,897)
  • Attributes: cost multiplier +16%/level (was 14%)
  • Feel: Faster midgame; roughly ~47% faster to midgame vs vanilla. Total XP to 300 ~60–65% lower (playstyle dependent).
• Optional Module: An XP Tuning add-on lives in the mod root so creators can adjust pacing for videos/streams.

Traders & Economy Loop

• Shops open 12 hours with staggered schedules to nudge exploration:
  • Joel: 06:00–18:00
  • Jen: 09:00–21:00
  • Bob: 00:00–12:00
  • Hugh: 03:00–15:00
  • Rekt: 06:00–18:00

UI, UX & Atmosphere

• Lighting pass: Interior/exterior lighting adjusted for mood and readability.
• Fog pass: (See World & Biomes) More tension without cheap blindness.
• HUD tweaks: Food/Water bars moved to left; toolbelt lowered slightly for clarity.

Persistence & Death

• Injuries and debuffs persist through death. Death isn’t a full reset—plan accordingly.

Notes for Players

• Pickups by destroy/harvest never refund mats—this is intentional.
• Shotguns ignore headshot-only rules (pellet identity).
• New saves recommended for best results due to broad spawn/progression changes.

If something doesn’t play like it reads here, tell me. I’ll investigate and tune. Now go make the apocalypse behave.