So I survived night 7..if you could call it survival, since I died 6 times.
My defenses were no where near as effective as I had wished. 70 wood spikes barely did anything to blunt the horde, and I lost 5 metal doors..but my base still stands. Day 8 I even struck out and picked at the edges of Dierville or whatever its called (I saw the sign, I cant remember exactly what it said)
Found a bunch of houses with gun safes in the basement.. Not sure I want to trap myself in a basement for an entire night to hack at a gunsafe with a stone axe to see whats in them, though.
Even managed to make some forged steel..not that I can apparently use it for anything at the moment.
I have an iron fireaxe, too, but it doesn't seem to be doing shit..seems less effective at chopping wood than my plain ol' stone axe..then again, my plain ol' stone axe seems to break up rocks better than the iron pickaxe too.
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Seriously, fuck dogs. What the actual fuck, I shot it in the head with 3 arrows and it didn't even give a fuck.
I'm playing this with a handful of friends I know from MMOs, and we're having a great time. We have a single, large, shared base, and we've self-sorted ourselves into roles based on playstyle, with different people focusing on different things, and it works really well. We have two folks who focus on scavenging, two folks who prefer to stay home and craft, and two people who really like to build, as well as a few other folks who haven't really speciallized yet. People do the aspect of the game they really like, and ignore the parts they don't.
The crafters and scavengers have a really sweet base they don't have to work on, the builders and the scavengers have really awesome weapons and tools they don't have to make, the crafters and builders have a constant flow of supplies that they don't have to gather, and everyone is happy.
So we've got a great friendly commune going where everyone cooperates and gets along. Which is why it's on a private password protected server, because we are so obviously playing this game quite the opposite of how many players do.
I wish my group would act more like this. We also play on a private server which is just pve. For our base we converted the hospital in one of the cities into a giant fortress, which was probably a terrible idea as it is really too big to defend with like 6 players. In the beginning we tried the division of labor so that people could just play the way they liked and help contribute to a shared base, but it quickly devolved into bickering. People hogging materials that were used by multiple crafting professions. Arguing about base design and mining locations.
Eventually our gunsmithing guy decided to be a total goose and hide all of the guns because he didn't want us to "waste them, because we need them for horde nights." Which really annoyed me because he made this decision without any discussion with the rest of the group. And even though everyone else was mad about it, because we know each other in real life, they didn't want to cause drama by arguing with him.
Things are going alright now though, we just passed day 14. I talked with the others about making sure everyone can do at least two things so we don't need to rely on just one person for guns or whatever. As the main scavenger who found 90% of those guns that were horded away, I just started my own hidden gun cache and distributed them freely among the group. I also started reading all the gunsmithing books instead of bringing them back, so now I can put together guns too, which is actually super great for scavenging because I can make them in the field to save inventory space.
Even the one dude put all the guns back into public storage after I undermined his plan to disarm all of us, but I'm still a little bitter about the whole situation. My gun cache is still hidden, but I'd like to leave it in the base, I'm just worried he might take them all again.
Still digging this game though, super well done for an early access title. Even when people are being jerks I'm able to have a good time in it.
I'm playing this with a handful of friends I know from MMOs, and we're having a great time. We have a single, large, shared base, and we've self-sorted ourselves into roles based on playstyle, with different people focusing on different things, and it works really well. We have two folks who focus on scavenging, two folks who prefer to stay home and craft, and two people who really like to build, as well as a few other folks who haven't really speciallized yet. People do the aspect of the game they really like, and ignore the parts they don't.
The crafters and scavengers have a really sweet base they don't have to work on, the builders and the scavengers have really awesome weapons and tools they don't have to make, the crafters and builders have a constant flow of supplies that they don't have to gather, and everyone is happy.
So we've got a great friendly commune going where everyone cooperates and gets along. Which is why it's on a private password protected server, because we are so obviously playing this game quite the opposite of how many players do.
I wish my group would act more like this. We also play on a private server which is just pve. For our base we converted the hospital in one of the cities into a giant fortress, which was probably a terrible idea as it is really too big to defend with like 6 players. In the beginning we tried the division of labor so that people could just play the way they liked and help contribute to a shared base, but it quickly devolved into bickering. People hogging materials that were used by multiple crafting professions. Arguing about base design and mining locations.
Eventually our gunsmithing guy decided to be a total goose and hide all of the guns because he didn't want us to "waste them, because we need them for horde nights." Which really annoyed me because he made this decision without any discussion with the rest of the group. And even though everyone else was mad about it, because we know each other in real life, they didn't want to cause drama by arguing with him.
Things are going alright now though, we just passed day 14. I talked with the others about making sure everyone can do at least two things so we don't need to rely on just one person for guns or whatever. As the main scavenger who found 90% of those guns that were horded away, I just started my own hidden gun cache and distributed them freely among the group. I also started reading all the gunsmithing books instead of bringing them back, so now I can put together guns too, which is actually super great for scavenging because I can make them in the field to save inventory space.
Even the one dude put all the guns back into public storage after I undermined his plan to disarm all of us, but I'm still a little bitter about the whole situation. My gun cache is still hidden, but I'd like to leave it in the base, I'm just worried he might take them all again.
Still digging this game though, super well done for an early access title. Even when people are being jerks I'm able to have a good time in it.
Sounds like its time for a schism, where..like the mighty ant nest, some of you fly off and create new fortresses, so that you may survive.
Our server is up to day 115 last I was on. We've found that for our base defense what works for us so far is a house, surrounded by a big ass wall, surrounded by a big ass trench filled with metal spikes, surrounded by barbed wire. During horde we stay on top of the wall and shoot the zombies, who get stuck on the barbed wire on the other side of the trench. Stuck zombies are easy to shoot zombies. Once they break through the wire, they fall into the trench of spikes.
We haven't had another break through this set up yet though we've had a few nights where they've made it all the way to the wall. usually this is fixed by one player getting really drunk and jumping out there with a shotgun (the tipsy buff renders you immune to stuns).
@Buttcleft that tent encampment, did it have walls around it made of what could have been sandbags?
Because if so, that loud explosion was a land mine. That's an army camp, surrounded by land mines. If you managed to get inside of one without either noticing/avoiding the mines or randomly blundering into one, then you were lucky as hell.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Our server is up to day 115 last I was on. We've found that for our base defense what works for us so far is a house, surrounded by a big ass wall, surrounded by a big ass trench filled with metal spikes, surrounded by barbed wire. During horde we stay on top of the wall and shoot the zombies, who get stuck on the barbed wire on the other side of the trench. Stuck zombies are easy to shoot zombies. Once they break through the wire, they fall into the trench of spikes.
We haven't had another break through this set up yet though we've had a few nights where they've made it all the way to the wall. usually this is fixed by one player getting really drunk and jumping out there with a shotgun (the tipsy buff renders you immune to stuns).
@Buttcleft that tent encampment, did it have walls around it made of what could have been sandbags?
Because if so, that loud explosion was a land mine. That's an army camp, surrounded by land mines. If you managed to get inside of one without either noticing/avoiding the mines or randomly blundering into one, then you were lucky as hell.
yes it was surrounded by sandbag walls and a trench.
I was meandering in and out of the camp for a while, looting..didn't blow up till I shot a flaming zombie.. thought for a while some flaming zombies might have a chance to blow the fuck up so been avoiding them..but glad to know it was just a landmine.
I'm getting the urge to relocate..but I've not found anywhere suitable..and I don't want to leave this town I found until I've gone over it completely, but god damn those fucking dogs..they wont die.
Our server is up to day 115 last I was on. We've found that for our base defense what works for us so far is a house, surrounded by a big ass wall, surrounded by a big ass trench filled with metal spikes, surrounded by barbed wire. During horde we stay on top of the wall and shoot the zombies, who get stuck on the barbed wire on the other side of the trench. Stuck zombies are easy to shoot zombies. Once they break through the wire, they fall into the trench of spikes.
We haven't had another break through this set up yet though we've had a few nights where they've made it all the way to the wall. usually this is fixed by one player getting really drunk and jumping out there with a shotgun (the tipsy buff renders you immune to stuns).
@Buttcleft that tent encampment, did it have walls around it made of what could have been sandbags?
Because if so, that loud explosion was a land mine. That's an army camp, surrounded by land mines. If you managed to get inside of one without either noticing/avoiding the mines or randomly blundering into one, then you were lucky as hell.
yes it was surrounded by sandbag walls and a trench.
I was meandering in and out of the camp for a while, looting..didn't blow up till I shot a flaming zombie.. thought for a while some flaming zombies might have a chance to blow the fuck up so been avoiding them..but glad to know it was just a landmine.
I'm getting the urge to relocate..but I've not found anywhere suitable..and I don't want to leave this town I found until I've gone over it completely, but god damn those fucking dogs..they wont die.
Remember where that camp was at least and come back later. Army zombies will spawn in it and they have great loot. Plus they're easy to kill, just lead them into the land mines.
Dogs aren't that hard to kill damage wise, a spiked club to the head will kill them in one shot, but they're fast and come in packs, which makes everyone hate the little fuckers. However, they don't spawn naturally in most biomes, just burned and wasteland (grey stone and a lot of wrecked cars) I think. So relocating may help with that dog problem.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Our server is up to day 115 last I was on. We've found that for our base defense what works for us so far is a house, surrounded by a big ass wall, surrounded by a big ass trench filled with metal spikes, surrounded by barbed wire. During horde we stay on top of the wall and shoot the zombies, who get stuck on the barbed wire on the other side of the trench. Stuck zombies are easy to shoot zombies. Once they break through the wire, they fall into the trench of spikes.
We haven't had another break through this set up yet though we've had a few nights where they've made it all the way to the wall. usually this is fixed by one player getting really drunk and jumping out there with a shotgun (the tipsy buff renders you immune to stuns).
@Buttcleft that tent encampment, did it have walls around it made of what could have been sandbags?
Because if so, that loud explosion was a land mine. That's an army camp, surrounded by land mines. If you managed to get inside of one without either noticing/avoiding the mines or randomly blundering into one, then you were lucky as hell.
yes it was surrounded by sandbag walls and a trench.
I was meandering in and out of the camp for a while, looting..didn't blow up till I shot a flaming zombie.. thought for a while some flaming zombies might have a chance to blow the fuck up so been avoiding them..but glad to know it was just a landmine.
I'm getting the urge to relocate..but I've not found anywhere suitable..and I don't want to leave this town I found until I've gone over it completely, but god damn those fucking dogs..they wont die.
Remember where that camp was at least and come back later. Army zombies will spawn in it and they have great loot. Plus they're easy to kill, just lead them into the land mines.
Dogs aren't that hard to kill damage wise, a spiked club to the head will kill them in one shot, but they're fast and come in packs, which makes everyone hate the little fuckers. However, they don't spawn naturally in most biomes, just burned and wasteland (grey stone and a lot of wrecked cars) I think. So relocating may help with that dog problem.
They are in the town I'm trying to explore.
I put 8 fucking arrows into one of the assholes, several which were embedded in its head.. before it tore through the barricade and killed me. doesn't help that I die in 2 hits and lose all my wellness gains back down to 70 health/70 stam.
i play with friends and we use the valmod overhaul (which i love). I need to upload a screenshot of our base. Metal trussle spikes and a solid door with overhead pillars we can shoot the zombies at may have trivialized most of the horde encounters. the exploding gas cops are still the worst.
I also discovered what doors look like when they are 100% upgraded. Feel like I'm living on a ship now.
Also, here is a rundown of about..20 minutes of gameplay from earlier
"Stupid zombie..OH WOW THIS ZOMBIE HAS A PISTOL IN ITS LOOT! OMG! FINALLY A GUN! I EVEN HAVE AMMO BACK AT THE BASE FOR IT! YES YES! Now I can tackle looting the town and deal with those fucking dogs! [fastforward past running back to base to get ammo and setting out towards the town] Huh? whats that? ..HOLY SHIT THATS A BEAR! NO NO STOP DONT COME AT ME NO STOP *bangbang bang bangbangbang* Huff huff huff...bears dead! FUCK YOU NATURE! YES! wait..fuck, I used all my ammo to kill the bear! FUCK! "
1) Is there a way to carry more stuff? My temporary base is becoming more and more of a permanent base, and if I am to move I am going to have to carry a lot of stuff.
2) Is there any way to move faster? Like..can I find a horse and tame or or something? because I've pretty much discovered what my safe travel radius is to avoid being outside with fast zombies at night, and its not very large.
Also, I found a treasure map and dug up the treasure! had to excavate a huge area to find it, and apparently the supply plane had dropped its last 3 loads practically on top of the treasure site too. So it was a good day. Right now I'm preparing for my second horde night with day 14, and I have about 200 wood spikes around my base, with vault doors to keep them out and iron arrows and some hunting rifle ammo (and the hunting rifle, of course) to deal with things if they get too sticky.
The initial investment into a forge, workshop, and cement mixer is going to make you want to stay in one spot for a bit. But as you progress further recouping those materials isn't a big deal.
The initial investment into a forge, workshop, and cement mixer is going to make you want to stay in one spot for a bit. But as you progress further recouping those materials isn't a big deal.
I haven't made a workshop or a cement mixer yet. I've been trying but I'm short on the mechanical bits required for the workshop, even though I've basically disassembled every car I've come across.
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Day14 survived! Lost about 1/3rd of my wood spikes, but between them and my iron arrows (didn't need to resort to the hunting rifle) I managed to keep them away from the building..so my walls nor my fully upgraded vault door took damage. Huzzah!
The initial investment into a forge, workshop, and cement mixer is going to make you want to stay in one spot for a bit. But as you progress further recouping those materials isn't a big deal.
I haven't made a workshop or a cement mixer yet. I've been trying but I'm short on the mechanical bits required for the workshop, even though I've basically disassembled every car I've come across.
Mechanical bits come from air conditioners, gas stations, office chairs, file cabinets, shopping carts, safes, garage doors, and toilets (and drawbridges, presuming you can find any) only if you disable them with a wrench.
The initial investment into a forge, workshop, and cement mixer is going to make you want to stay in one spot for a bit. But as you progress further recouping those materials isn't a big deal.
I haven't made a workshop or a cement mixer yet. I've been trying but I'm short on the mechanical bits required for the workshop, even though I've basically disassembled every car I've come across.
Mechanical bits come from air conditioners, gas stations, office chairs, file cabinets, shopping carts, safes, garage doors, and toilets (and drawbridges, presuming you can find any) only if you disable them with a wrench.
Not cars, strangely.
I just got some mechanical bits from a car, that I disassembled with the wrench. (I need to find that schematic..all I have are wrenches I've looted, and repairs are lowering theirquality.) nevermind I need a workbench to make wrenches.
The initial investment into a forge, workshop, and cement mixer is going to make you want to stay in one spot for a bit. But as you progress further recouping those materials isn't a big deal.
I haven't made a workshop or a cement mixer yet. I've been trying but I'm short on the mechanical bits required for the workshop, even though I've basically disassembled every car I've come across.
Mechanical bits come from air conditioners, gas stations, office chairs, file cabinets, shopping carts, safes, garage doors, and toilets (and drawbridges, presuming you can find any) only if you disable them with a wrench.
Not cars, strangely.
I just got some mechanical bits from a car, that I disassembled with the wrench. (I need to find that schematic..all I have are wrenches I've looted, and repairs are lowering theirquality.) nevermind I need a workbench to make wrenches.
Woah really? Damn time to go disassemble some cars!
The initial investment into a forge, workshop, and cement mixer is going to make you want to stay in one spot for a bit. But as you progress further recouping those materials isn't a big deal.
I haven't made a workshop or a cement mixer yet. I've been trying but I'm short on the mechanical bits required for the workshop, even though I've basically disassembled every car I've come across.
Mechanical bits come from air conditioners, gas stations, office chairs, file cabinets, shopping carts, safes, garage doors, and toilets (and drawbridges, presuming you can find any) only if you disable them with a wrench.
Not cars, strangely.
I just got some mechanical bits from a car, that I disassembled with the wrench. (I need to find that schematic..all I have are wrenches I've looted, and repairs are lowering theirquality.) nevermind I need a workbench to make wrenches.
Woah really? Damn time to go disassemble some cars!
I found a hardware shop that had these boxes in them that I had to beat on with an axe before I could loot.. it had 3 boxes in it, every one had 9+ mechanical bits.
I now have a workbench, and steel tools, and an iron chest armor.
So question abou treasure maps.. Are the treasures in the general region that you find the maps in? or can I pop a treasure map and have to travel like 1000km away to look for it?
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Sweet jehoshaphat the steel pickaxe murders stone like mad. 6 blows to knock out each chunk of rock in my mine. That's..insane, especially compared to how the iron pickaxe was doing. steel fireaxe absolutely wrecks trees, too. I love steel tools.
Treasure maps are weird - they tell you where treasure is, within five or six blocks (default). The easiest way to find it is to mark out the area with empty wooden frames, then dig.
I just grabbed it today too. It's only $10 in the Steam Halloween sale. Do you have any good links for a brand new player @Buttcleft ? What do I need to know going in fresh?
I just grabbed it today too. It's only $10 in the Steam Halloween sale. Do you have any good links for a brand new player @Buttcleft ? What do I need to know going in fresh?
I never really found any beginners guide, Just a few tips and tricks I picked up from watching lets plays.
basically, gather all the wood you can. spend every night making wooden clubs (you can scrap them to get like 3/4ths of the wood back.), this increases your skill with..whatever craft skill that also governs making bows and a couple other things I think. Higher quality weapons last longer and do more damage, so you definitely want a 200 quality bow.
never repair tools, just scrap and remake them. The exception to this being wrenches, which require forged steel to repair..but you'll be able to get forged steel significantly before you can craft wrenches. So keeping them in repair so you can dismantle cars and air conditioners and stuff is paramount.
dont go out at night, once you hear the gong for night time zombies go from slow shambling annoyances to fast running monsters capable of ruining you. Stay in doors where its safe, and grind craft skills/advance your tech base/organize your items.
Headshots. Always headshot. Zombie fell to the ground? Go up, if you cant loot it, shoot it in the head again. Sometimes they just fall over.
Avoid big towns. They are full of dogs. Dogs are bad, dogs shrug off arrows and laugh at clubs. Dogs are bad. Dogs are evil. Dogs are death.
Made a return to that Military camp. You remember, the one that blew the fuck ou of me cause I didn't know about landmines?
This time I knew about landmines, and managed to spot them..Which was difficult considering they were black on black dirt (that burnt forest biome area thing.)
This time military zombies spawned. I managed to take them out..Well, two of them, one wandered onto a landmine and took itself out. Loot was..meh, okay.
Just some military gloves..AND A GODDAMN ROCKET LAUNCHER WITH 6 ROCKETS. I AM THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS.
Picked this up for my GF and I and we're having a blast. Found a little house and started fortifying it. Do melee attacks work against the head? I can't seem to kill anything with this terrible wooden club. I also plan to boot up a server for just me and her on our LAN, that autosaved our progress I hope? No console for it as far as I could tell.
Picked this up for my GF and I and we're having a blast. Found a little house and started fortifying it. Do melee attacks work against the head? I can't seem to kill anything with this terrible wooden club. I also plan to boot up a server for just me and her on our LAN, that autosaved our progress I hope? No console for it as far as I could tell.
Avoid melee if you can. Spend your first nights mass producing (And scrapping the resulting) wooden clubs so you can get your skill up to the quality 100-200 range , then make bows. Bows are not a long range weapon, sadly.. unless you are the bastard spawn of Legolas and Robin Hood and can arc your arrow through the air to hit something more than 30 feet away, but they are a damn sight better than clubs.
Never, ever ever ever melee zombies. They will just fuck you up. Only time you should melee is out of desperation..Though sometimes when you hit them in the head with the bow, they fall...rushing in to deliever a clubbing to their head then isn't the worst idea if you want to save arrows.
Look at your defenses. Do you feel safe? Good, now multiply that by 10..Then you might only die a couple times when the 7 day horde comes.
Picked this up for my GF and I and we're having a blast. Found a little house and started fortifying it. Do melee attacks work against the head? I can't seem to kill anything with this terrible wooden club. I also plan to boot up a server for just me and her on our LAN, that autosaved our progress I hope? No console for it as far as I could tell.
* You'll probably want to move to or build a sturdier structure (cobblestone or cement) eventually, but anywhere is defensible if you upgrade it enough.
* Aiming for the head in general can knock down zombies, and downed zombies take triple damage. My strategy until I get sledgehammers and stuff is to ranged attack the head then rush in and melee while they're down.
* All games are auto saved, and explicitly save on exit.
The initial investment into a forge, workshop, and cement mixer is going to make you want to stay in one spot for a bit. But as you progress further recouping those materials isn't a big deal.
Not if you have a wrench.
If you disassemble a workbench, a forge, or a cement mixer with a wrench, it doesn't drop all the materials, it drops the actual item. As in you will then have a workbench, a forge, or a cement mixer in your inventory, which you can place somewhere else.
It makes up and moving your base much easier because you can take those will you.
Another thing that helps take out zombies is pressing Ctrl, which unless you've remapped it, makes you crouch all stealthily. You get an eye indicator in the center of your screen, closed eye you are hidden, slightly open eye something is looking for you, open eye something sees you and is coming to eat your face. If you shoot/stab/club something when you are hidden, you get a stealth bonus to your damage.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
The initial investment into a forge, workshop, and cement mixer is going to make you want to stay in one spot for a bit. But as you progress further recouping those materials isn't a big deal.
Not if you have a wrench.
If you disassemble a workbench, a forge, or a cement mixer with a wrench, it doesn't drop all the materials, it drops the actual item. As in you will then have a workbench, a forge, or a cement mixer in your inventory, which you can place somewhere else.
It makes up and moving your base much easier because you can take those will you.
Another thing that helps take out zombies is pressing Ctrl, which unless you've remapped it, makes you crouch all stealthily. You get an eye indicator in the center of your screen, closed eye you are hidden, slightly open eye something is looking for you, open eye something sees you and is coming to eat your face. If you shoot/stab/club something when you are hidden, you get a stealth bonus to your damage.
Well, fuck. if I had known you got the item back whole..I could have had a chemistry station and a workbench much earlier. Shit.
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Is there a metal version of wood spikes? Its getting a little old having to replace them after every horde day. Especially this time, where I lost probably 100 of them. God, so many zombies. Cost me almost all of my southern defenses (Every horde I've had has come from the south, is this normal? do all hordes come from the south?), a full stack of iron arrows, and a couple dozen hunting rifle rounds.
Spikes wouldn't be so bad if they didn't cost 100 wood and take so long to craft..
You don't get all items back whole, but in the case of the crafting stations you do, so stealing them from dead peoples houses is the best way to get them.
There is not a metal version of the spikes. The 'upgrade' is the big single spike, which you fill a trench with. Those upgrade several times, so they last much longer than the upright barricade spikes. There is also barbed wire, but I'm not sure how much damage it does.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
You don't get all items back whole, but in the case of the crafting stations you do, so stealing them from dead peoples houses is the best way to get them.
There is not a metal version of the spikes. The 'upgrade' is the big single spike, which you fill a trench with. Those upgrade several times, so they last much longer than the upright barricade spikes. There is also barbed wire, but I'm not sure how much damage it does.
Zombies can fist through anything right, even rock and concrete? So theres no way I could just build a bunker and ignore the hordes with impunity?
Yup. And the longer you stay alive, the more dangerous the hordes will get, until they start spawning cops and ferals, which left alone will get through even concrete during a horde night. You have be out killing them before they can do that.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Yup. And the longer you stay alive, the more dangerous the hordes will get, until they start spawning cops and ferals, which left alone will get through even concrete during a horde night. You have be out killing them before they can do that.
What if I burrow deep into a mountain. Will they dig in after me? What if I make my base in the middle of a lake?
i highly recommend the valmod pack, which adds a lot more craftable items, including metal spikes. Zombie fists do "damage" and everything has a health amount so eventually they beat down anything but its just a question of how long it takes.
Yup. And the longer you stay alive, the more dangerous the hordes will get, until they start spawning cops and ferals, which left alone will get through even concrete during a horde night. You have be out killing them before they can do that.
What if I burrow deep into a mountain. Will they dig in after me? What if I make my base in the middle of a lake?
So regular zombie spawns and specials during non-blood moon nights are only dangerous if they sense and hunt you or happen to path through your area. They can be avoided a bit if you go for the mountain/lake stronghold idea. However, blood moon hordes sense you no matter where you go and will wreck anything to get to you until the blood moon ends.
A trick around this is to build your main base/storage/crafting in one area, underground, but with some semblance of a bunker at the surface and then build a kill box or two elsewhere. That way when it's blood moon time, you can move to the kill box, slaughter the zeds for massive experience and a bunch of loot, then take it all home and live it up.
Depending on where you are playing, loot containers respawn after a time, so if you're near a city, protect the stores. Repair their walls, place spikes, board up the windows, anything you can to keep the zeds out. Those respawning loot boxes are great and specialized in the stores. This is especially important for getting your skills up (crack-a-books), keeping your food stocked with less hunting (shamways), medical supplies (pop'n'pills), and getting your weapons up to snuff (shotgun messiahs). All the stores are worth it in their own way, but those ones are the main things I look for in a city. If the city I'm living near or in is missing 2 or more of those, I move on.
As it stands, since Alpha15 hit, my friend and I setup in a city with 2 bookstores, 2 shotgun messiahs, a bank, 2 shamways, and 2 working stiffs stores alongside a few random car places, pass'n'gass and a bunch of ruins. We have a parking garage with essentially a bunker castle within that leads down into our tunnel system. Our main workshop and storage is underground outside the city, connected to the garage by tunnel and our original base camp in the hills nearby by tunnel. We have fortified all stores and have surface and even tunnel entrances to most. One plot over from the garage? A crater filled with water. Another plot from that? A ruin we converted into a multilevel killbox.
Over the past week and thanks to the sale, our little commune grew from 2 all the way to 6 with a returning player and 4 newbies. The only problem so far is that it spreads our resources really thin. That and the other person who likes to build, thinks like me, but builds differently - so we're having to meld our two styles a bit. Overall it's working well though and we're all getting along. Of course, it helps when you join a commune that one of the people is over level 190 with all the various "necessary" skills at 100. Welcome to the commune, have level 500+ gear if you want or go learn from scratch, your choice.
(For the most part, they're all choosing to go out and learn the basics from scratch first, which I admire as I run around with my 600 sledgehammer and crossbow in my iron and military armor.)
Yup. And the longer you stay alive, the more dangerous the hordes will get, until they start spawning cops and ferals, which left alone will get through even concrete during a horde night. You have be out killing them before they can do that.
What if I burrow deep into a mountain. Will they dig in after me?
Yep. It'll take time, and they may not get there by the end of the Blood Moon, But you'll still have damage to repair.
What if I make my base in the middle of a lake?
Zombie's can't swim, only walk along the bottom, so you will be completely and totally safe from the zombies in a lake base. Your base, however, is probably doomed as the zombies knock out all the supports your base is built on and the whole thing comes crashing down, destroying everything you own.
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Yup, I think they're called an Iron Log Spike. Might just be Iron Spike. You can upgrade the Wood Spikes to Iron, but it's cheaper (iirc) to just build them as Iron. You can also upgrade the Iron ones to Steel.
Yup. And the longer you stay alive, the more dangerous the hordes will get, until they start spawning cops and ferals, which left alone will get through even concrete during a horde night. You have be out killing them before they can do that.
What if I burrow deep into a mountain. Will they dig in after me? What if I make my base in the middle of a lake?
They'll dig after you, but if you dig down deep enough it basically doesn't matter. I used to have a bolt hole in my bases for when I panicked. The zombies ignore water, so that doesn't really help unless you're hiding from other players.
Well thanks for the input. Knowledge that the 7 day hordes are me seeking regardless, and will plow through even concrete bare fisted (because of course they can:rotate:) has lead me to abandon every idea for a new, permanent base that I had.
Now I'm considering just some big giant hole filled with top tier log spikes, with some kind of empty space beneath them so I can repair them from beneath, with the zombies unable to get me, with maybe my base in a tower in the middle..or even below it. So much digging though..
Oh, I'm not abandoning them.. I'm just saying if I cant build a castle on an island or in the middle of a lake and be safe from zombies..then I'm gonna have to double down hard on statics. I've already begun digging a 31x31. Steel shovel makes it go super fast, and its leveling my heavily neglected mining skill to boot.
Just wish there was an easier way to dig out all this dirt, heh.
On an unrelated topic, is temperature bugged to hell? Cause I'll randomly overheat for no reason. Taking off all my clothes and putting them back on seems to fix it more often than not, and sends my temperature plunging back to normal.
Posts
My defenses were no where near as effective as I had wished. 70 wood spikes barely did anything to blunt the horde, and I lost 5 metal doors..but my base still stands. Day 8 I even struck out and picked at the edges of Dierville or whatever its called (I saw the sign, I cant remember exactly what it said)
Found a bunch of houses with gun safes in the basement.. Not sure I want to trap myself in a basement for an entire night to hack at a gunsafe with a stone axe to see whats in them, though.
Even managed to make some forged steel..not that I can apparently use it for anything at the moment.
I have an iron fireaxe, too, but it doesn't seem to be doing shit..seems less effective at chopping wood than my plain ol' stone axe..then again, my plain ol' stone axe seems to break up rocks better than the iron pickaxe too.
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Seriously, fuck dogs. What the actual fuck, I shot it in the head with 3 arrows and it didn't even give a fuck.
I wish my group would act more like this. We also play on a private server which is just pve. For our base we converted the hospital in one of the cities into a giant fortress, which was probably a terrible idea as it is really too big to defend with like 6 players. In the beginning we tried the division of labor so that people could just play the way they liked and help contribute to a shared base, but it quickly devolved into bickering. People hogging materials that were used by multiple crafting professions. Arguing about base design and mining locations.
Eventually our gunsmithing guy decided to be a total goose and hide all of the guns because he didn't want us to "waste them, because we need them for horde nights." Which really annoyed me because he made this decision without any discussion with the rest of the group. And even though everyone else was mad about it, because we know each other in real life, they didn't want to cause drama by arguing with him.
Things are going alright now though, we just passed day 14. I talked with the others about making sure everyone can do at least two things so we don't need to rely on just one person for guns or whatever. As the main scavenger who found 90% of those guns that were horded away, I just started my own hidden gun cache and distributed them freely among the group. I also started reading all the gunsmithing books instead of bringing them back, so now I can put together guns too, which is actually super great for scavenging because I can make them in the field to save inventory space.
Even the one dude put all the guns back into public storage after I undermined his plan to disarm all of us, but I'm still a little bitter about the whole situation. My gun cache is still hidden, but I'd like to leave it in the base, I'm just worried he might take them all again.
Still digging this game though, super well done for an early access title. Even when people are being jerks I'm able to have a good time in it.
Sounds like its time for a schism, where..like the mighty ant nest, some of you fly off and create new fortresses, so that you may survive.
We haven't had another break through this set up yet though we've had a few nights where they've made it all the way to the wall. usually this is fixed by one player getting really drunk and jumping out there with a shotgun (the tipsy buff renders you immune to stuns).
@Buttcleft that tent encampment, did it have walls around it made of what could have been sandbags?
Because if so, that loud explosion was a land mine. That's an army camp, surrounded by land mines. If you managed to get inside of one without either noticing/avoiding the mines or randomly blundering into one, then you were lucky as hell.
yes it was surrounded by sandbag walls and a trench.
I was meandering in and out of the camp for a while, looting..didn't blow up till I shot a flaming zombie.. thought for a while some flaming zombies might have a chance to blow the fuck up so been avoiding them..but glad to know it was just a landmine.
I'm getting the urge to relocate..but I've not found anywhere suitable..and I don't want to leave this town I found until I've gone over it completely, but god damn those fucking dogs..they wont die.
Remember where that camp was at least and come back later. Army zombies will spawn in it and they have great loot. Plus they're easy to kill, just lead them into the land mines.
Dogs aren't that hard to kill damage wise, a spiked club to the head will kill them in one shot, but they're fast and come in packs, which makes everyone hate the little fuckers. However, they don't spawn naturally in most biomes, just burned and wasteland (grey stone and a lot of wrecked cars) I think. So relocating may help with that dog problem.
They are in the town I'm trying to explore.
I put 8 fucking arrows into one of the assholes, several which were embedded in its head.. before it tore through the barricade and killed me. doesn't help that I die in 2 hits and lose all my wellness gains back down to 70 health/70 stam.
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
I also discovered what doors look like when they are 100% upgraded. Feel like I'm living on a ship now.
Also, here is a rundown of about..20 minutes of gameplay from earlier
"Stupid zombie..OH WOW THIS ZOMBIE HAS A PISTOL IN ITS LOOT! OMG! FINALLY A GUN! I EVEN HAVE AMMO BACK AT THE BASE FOR IT! YES YES! Now I can tackle looting the town and deal with those fucking dogs! [fastforward past running back to base to get ammo and setting out towards the town] Huh? whats that? ..HOLY SHIT THATS A BEAR! NO NO STOP DONT COME AT ME NO STOP *bangbang bang bangbangbang* Huff huff huff...bears dead! FUCK YOU NATURE! YES! wait..fuck, I used all my ammo to kill the bear! FUCK! "
1) Is there a way to carry more stuff? My temporary base is becoming more and more of a permanent base, and if I am to move I am going to have to carry a lot of stuff.
2) Is there any way to move faster? Like..can I find a horse and tame or or something? because I've pretty much discovered what my safe travel radius is to avoid being outside with fast zombies at night, and its not very large.
Also, I found a treasure map and dug up the treasure! had to excavate a huge area to find it, and apparently the supply plane had dropped its last 3 loads practically on top of the treasure site too. So it was a good day. Right now I'm preparing for my second horde night with day 14, and I have about 200 wood spikes around my base, with vault doors to keep them out and iron arrows and some hunting rifle ammo (and the hunting rifle, of course) to deal with things if they get too sticky.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I haven't made a workshop or a cement mixer yet. I've been trying but I'm short on the mechanical bits required for the workshop, even though I've basically disassembled every car I've come across.
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Day14 survived! Lost about 1/3rd of my wood spikes, but between them and my iron arrows (didn't need to resort to the hunting rifle) I managed to keep them away from the building..so my walls nor my fully upgraded vault door took damage. Huzzah!
Not cars, strangely.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I just got some mechanical bits from a car, that I disassembled with the wrench. (I need to find that schematic..all I have are wrenches I've looted, and repairs are lowering theirquality.) nevermind I need a workbench to make wrenches.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I found a hardware shop that had these boxes in them that I had to beat on with an axe before I could loot.. it had 3 boxes in it, every one had 9+ mechanical bits.
I now have a workbench, and steel tools, and an iron chest armor.
So question abou treasure maps.. Are the treasures in the general region that you find the maps in? or can I pop a treasure map and have to travel like 1000km away to look for it?
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Sweet jehoshaphat the steel pickaxe murders stone like mad. 6 blows to knock out each chunk of rock in my mine. That's..insane, especially compared to how the iron pickaxe was doing. steel fireaxe absolutely wrecks trees, too. I love steel tools.
Its fun as fuck solo, get it.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
I never really found any beginners guide, Just a few tips and tricks I picked up from watching lets plays.
basically, gather all the wood you can. spend every night making wooden clubs (you can scrap them to get like 3/4ths of the wood back.), this increases your skill with..whatever craft skill that also governs making bows and a couple other things I think. Higher quality weapons last longer and do more damage, so you definitely want a 200 quality bow.
never repair tools, just scrap and remake them. The exception to this being wrenches, which require forged steel to repair..but you'll be able to get forged steel significantly before you can craft wrenches. So keeping them in repair so you can dismantle cars and air conditioners and stuff is paramount.
dont go out at night, once you hear the gong for night time zombies go from slow shambling annoyances to fast running monsters capable of ruining you. Stay in doors where its safe, and grind craft skills/advance your tech base/organize your items.
Headshots. Always headshot. Zombie fell to the ground? Go up, if you cant loot it, shoot it in the head again. Sometimes they just fall over.
Avoid big towns. They are full of dogs. Dogs are bad, dogs shrug off arrows and laugh at clubs. Dogs are bad. Dogs are evil. Dogs are death.
Build stuff. You'll want construction levels to get workshops and concrete and steel.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
This time I knew about landmines, and managed to spot them..Which was difficult considering they were black on black dirt (that burnt forest biome area thing.)
This time military zombies spawned. I managed to take them out..Well, two of them, one wandered onto a landmine and took itself out. Loot was..meh, okay.
Just some military gloves..AND A GODDAMN ROCKET LAUNCHER WITH 6 ROCKETS. I AM THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS.
Avoid melee if you can. Spend your first nights mass producing (And scrapping the resulting) wooden clubs so you can get your skill up to the quality 100-200 range , then make bows. Bows are not a long range weapon, sadly.. unless you are the bastard spawn of Legolas and Robin Hood and can arc your arrow through the air to hit something more than 30 feet away, but they are a damn sight better than clubs.
Never, ever ever ever melee zombies. They will just fuck you up. Only time you should melee is out of desperation..Though sometimes when you hit them in the head with the bow, they fall...rushing in to deliever a clubbing to their head then isn't the worst idea if you want to save arrows.
Look at your defenses. Do you feel safe? Good, now multiply that by 10..Then you might only die a couple times when the 7 day horde comes.
* Aiming for the head in general can knock down zombies, and downed zombies take triple damage. My strategy until I get sledgehammers and stuff is to ranged attack the head then rush in and melee while they're down.
* All games are auto saved, and explicitly save on exit.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Not if you have a wrench.
If you disassemble a workbench, a forge, or a cement mixer with a wrench, it doesn't drop all the materials, it drops the actual item. As in you will then have a workbench, a forge, or a cement mixer in your inventory, which you can place somewhere else.
It makes up and moving your base much easier because you can take those will you.
Another thing that helps take out zombies is pressing Ctrl, which unless you've remapped it, makes you crouch all stealthily. You get an eye indicator in the center of your screen, closed eye you are hidden, slightly open eye something is looking for you, open eye something sees you and is coming to eat your face. If you shoot/stab/club something when you are hidden, you get a stealth bonus to your damage.
Well, fuck. if I had known you got the item back whole..I could have had a chemistry station and a workbench much earlier. Shit.
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Is there a metal version of wood spikes? Its getting a little old having to replace them after every horde day. Especially this time, where I lost probably 100 of them. God, so many zombies. Cost me almost all of my southern defenses (Every horde I've had has come from the south, is this normal? do all hordes come from the south?), a full stack of iron arrows, and a couple dozen hunting rifle rounds.
Spikes wouldn't be so bad if they didn't cost 100 wood and take so long to craft..
There is not a metal version of the spikes. The 'upgrade' is the big single spike, which you fill a trench with. Those upgrade several times, so they last much longer than the upright barricade spikes. There is also barbed wire, but I'm not sure how much damage it does.
Zombies can fist through anything right, even rock and concrete? So theres no way I could just build a bunker and ignore the hordes with impunity?
What if I burrow deep into a mountain. Will they dig in after me? What if I make my base in the middle of a lake?
valmod link in case you want to check it out. It's basically one of the devs planned additions to the game that they keep separate
https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?31730-Valmod-Pack
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
So regular zombie spawns and specials during non-blood moon nights are only dangerous if they sense and hunt you or happen to path through your area. They can be avoided a bit if you go for the mountain/lake stronghold idea. However, blood moon hordes sense you no matter where you go and will wreck anything to get to you until the blood moon ends.
A trick around this is to build your main base/storage/crafting in one area, underground, but with some semblance of a bunker at the surface and then build a kill box or two elsewhere. That way when it's blood moon time, you can move to the kill box, slaughter the zeds for massive experience and a bunch of loot, then take it all home and live it up.
Depending on where you are playing, loot containers respawn after a time, so if you're near a city, protect the stores. Repair their walls, place spikes, board up the windows, anything you can to keep the zeds out. Those respawning loot boxes are great and specialized in the stores. This is especially important for getting your skills up (crack-a-books), keeping your food stocked with less hunting (shamways), medical supplies (pop'n'pills), and getting your weapons up to snuff (shotgun messiahs). All the stores are worth it in their own way, but those ones are the main things I look for in a city. If the city I'm living near or in is missing 2 or more of those, I move on.
As it stands, since Alpha15 hit, my friend and I setup in a city with 2 bookstores, 2 shotgun messiahs, a bank, 2 shamways, and 2 working stiffs stores alongside a few random car places, pass'n'gass and a bunch of ruins. We have a parking garage with essentially a bunker castle within that leads down into our tunnel system. Our main workshop and storage is underground outside the city, connected to the garage by tunnel and our original base camp in the hills nearby by tunnel. We have fortified all stores and have surface and even tunnel entrances to most. One plot over from the garage? A crater filled with water. Another plot from that? A ruin we converted into a multilevel killbox.
Over the past week and thanks to the sale, our little commune grew from 2 all the way to 6 with a returning player and 4 newbies. The only problem so far is that it spreads our resources really thin. That and the other person who likes to build, thinks like me, but builds differently - so we're having to meld our two styles a bit. Overall it's working well though and we're all getting along. Of course, it helps when you join a commune that one of the people is over level 190 with all the various "necessary" skills at 100. Welcome to the commune, have level 500+ gear if you want or go learn from scratch, your choice.
(For the most part, they're all choosing to go out and learn the basics from scratch first, which I admire as I run around with my 600 sledgehammer and crossbow in my iron and military armor.)
Twitch/Mudzgut
Fall down seven times. Stand up eight.
Yep. It'll take time, and they may not get there by the end of the Blood Moon, But you'll still have damage to repair.
Zombie's can't swim, only walk along the bottom, so you will be completely and totally safe from the zombies in a lake base. Your base, however, is probably doomed as the zombies knock out all the supports your base is built on and the whole thing comes crashing down, destroying everything you own.
They'll dig after you, but if you dig down deep enough it basically doesn't matter. I used to have a bolt hole in my bases for when I panicked. The zombies ignore water, so that doesn't really help unless you're hiding from other players.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Now I'm considering just some big giant hole filled with top tier log spikes, with some kind of empty space beneath them so I can repair them from beneath, with the zombies unable to get me, with maybe my base in a tower in the middle..or even below it. So much digging though..
http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/226696864098688996/93C7DECB72905F981FD1FDFA3874A1AA3EBD9D31/
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
Oh, I'm not abandoning them.. I'm just saying if I cant build a castle on an island or in the middle of a lake and be safe from zombies..then I'm gonna have to double down hard on statics. I've already begun digging a 31x31. Steel shovel makes it go super fast, and its leveling my heavily neglected mining skill to boot.
Just wish there was an easier way to dig out all this dirt, heh.
On an unrelated topic, is temperature bugged to hell? Cause I'll randomly overheat for no reason. Taking off all my clothes and putting them back on seems to fix it more often than not, and sends my temperature plunging back to normal.