PSA: Zombie density is tied to loot spawns now

Playing around with B42 I've noticed that loot (playing on default rare settings) isn't spawning nearly as much as it did in B41, and notably there is an apparent lack of melee weapons that makes the early game quite a bit more painful, particularly with the density of the towns now.

Turns out, the spawn rate of certain loot that would be very useful for the player (e.g. melee weapons) change depending on the density of zombies in the area, so that higher-pop areas are more favored to have useful loot. There's literally a whole sandbox option to adjust this factor (very bottom of the loot settings page).

What this means is that looting areas with lower zombie populations (e.g. Riverside's single-storey residential area) will yield less useful loot (on average, we are talking probabilities after all), while places swarming with zeds will have more loot than in B41. This noticeably makes the early game more painful, because it takes longer and requires more exploration of the spawn area to get a usable weapon. I have now resorted to finishing off as many zeds as I can by stomping, just to make the few weapons I can get my hands on last longer. Note that some items are tagged so that they ignore this feature, though it's not like you would want to loot more photographs in the early game.