Saturday, August 21, 2021

The Tale of Dishong Tower in 7D2D -- #Blaugust2021 Day 21

Give a good stretch, sit down, and prepare yourself to listen to my amazing tale I'm about to weave about this stupid tower -- this stupidly amazing tower -- in 7 Days to Die. Good?  Ok, here we go.

The first eight floors of Dishong Tower -- there's more

So I'm chilling in 7 Days to Die and I've just survived not only the Day 56 Blood Moon, but I just finished up a tier 5 quest that took me through a skycraper of a book publishing company. It was pretty great and I managed to finish the quest in style, so I take another Tier 5 quest because one skyscraper was fun, so why not do it again!?

That quest turned out to be Dishong Tower. I couldn't really tell the "theme" of Dishong Tower, and I don't think there was one. It was an interesting mix of office space and open floor plans.

Nice entrance way . . . this can't be that bad

So I proceeded to clear out the floors one by one, and it's a loot haven. By the time I hit the 3rd floor, I've already filled up my motorcycle's inventory and a storage crate full of stuff and it's been a solid day's worth of play, so now I'm sitting at day 60.

I continue floor by floor clearing things out, cutting my way though the maze, and being as careful as I can. Another day passes in the tower while I'm exploring and I'm up to the eighth floor or so, and now I'm haphazardly searching for loot at this point because I'm starting to feel the pressure of time on Day 61, and I'm on a quest. When you're on a quest, you can't leave the area . . . at all.  If you do, you fail. If you die, you fail. 

I should have nope'd out of the quest at this point, just like I did on the Higashi Skyscraper, but I stubbornly press on level by level. At this point I'm really just looking for food and liquid to keep me alive as I make my way up. I've scrapped tons of stuff. I've outright skipped looting tons of stuff.

Things start to get tricky from this point on because half of the skyscraper is utterly destroyed, so I'm laying down crates and building walkways. I'm fighting vultures AND zombies while the maze factor starts to intensify. At this point, the building really feels like it's more of a 4-person endeavor and I have no business being here, but I press on.

Sky high at Dishong Tower in 7 Days to Die

By the time I reach floor 13 and the top of the tower, I'm already feeling the time pinch, but I'm so close to finishing this quest! I peek my head around the side, and I see something green but human-like in the distance, so I take a long distance aim with my rifle and fire. The next thing I know, I've got what feels like a half a dozen zombies on me and they're covered in green goo like I've never seen before.

Come to find out these are irradiated zombies and they're tougher and regenerate. I tried to make my escape, but my confidence in a round of shotgun blasts into a herd of zombies was far far too misplaced, and my screen turns a disastrous dark red.

. . . and they're eating my corpse

I'm figuring I've lost all my stuff at this point, it's also late in the Day on Day 61, but I stubbornly equip a set of reasonable gear and head back to the ill-fated tower to see if I can recover my stuff.

Having a back up level 5 stun baton helps

The great thing is that I've been rebuilding the stairwell while I was climbing the tower, and getting back to level 8 of 13 wasn't that difficult. After a bit of re-running the maze, I'm finally back up to level 12 and I'm doing ok . . . it's Day 62 at this point, but it's all good.

I start breaking wooden desks on floor 12 gathering wood because I figure I'm going to sneak up by building a tower, grab my stuff, and run. Unfortunately at one point, I fall while building my tower and break my leg. Now things are dire and I've got a bit of a pit in my stomach as I realize I'm at a big disadvantage now, but I finish building the tower and lo and behold, the zombies had reset to their original positions! I can grab my stuff! OK! I'm GOOD! 

Now, a sane person would leave the tower at this point, but I'm feeling super stubborn and go take another look at Floor 13. There's a small communications tower leading up, so I sneak over to it and climb up 2 more story heights, and now I've got this amazing view of the roof of the building.

So I say to myself . . . self . . . let's try this again. If it goes south, I will take these "oh shizz drops" and jump off the side of the building. (There's a medicine you can take where you will have falling damage immunity for 5 minutes.) 

From the safety of the top of the tower, I take aim at an irradiated zombie's head with my hunting rifle and shoot. this drags 2 more irradiated zombies along with him and I start shooting down at them from my tower.

Taking aim at an irradiated zombie safely from my tower

I do this two more times, each time dragging 2 or 3 zombies to the tower and shooting them from above, but they're starting to beat the heck out my tower and I'm legitimately afraid I'm going to come tumbling down, but I make it and before you know it all the zombies on the top of the roof are dead. I've cleared the entire tower. Hallelujah. 

So I make my way over to where the irradiated zombies were standing and it almost looks like nothing's there. No loot whatsoever, but then I look down a sky-lighted roof, and there it is . . . the motherlode of loot in the penthouse suite. 

Loot view 1 -- A table full of loot and a stocked kitchen.

Loot view 2 -- A hardened chest and shelf full of books

I'm dying here because my bags are so full of loot already and I've just stumbled into loot heaven. I loot what I can, and that's mostly ammo when all of a sudden who slips into my DMs, but my old pal Lessah Ismorah. 

I relate the whole tale above to Lessah, and it's too tempting for her. She logs in and starts making her way to the tower to help me haul the loot because at this point I've got two crates down below and the Blood Moon is just around the corner.

After showing Lessah around the tower (which tbh, she's already seen before, but she let me pretend like I was showing it to her for the first time -- it's appreciated), we fill up with loot AGAIN and head back down to scramble together a Blood Moon fight (which ends up going well and she shows me a pretty good trick for efficient farming in the Blood Moon).

Double Punchy Turret for the win

Victory has never felt so bitter and so sweet at the same time in 7 Days to Die. It was by far my favorite moment in game thus far. What a great game session!

Happy Dueling!

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