[5243] Invincible Shambling Zombies

[Szara]

Not much to explain, the only way to get rid of them seems to be the debug kill all monsters, they can have c4 blow up at their feet or be crit with an awl pike and remain uninjured. The version I was running before was 5241 and it seemed fine there. Newly spawning Shambling Zombies definitely are also invincible.

Wait, no. Strange. I went back to my 5241 backup, killed one Shambling Zombie just fine but found another that was also invincible, so perhaps it is random or there is something more I’m not seeing.

Edit:
While trying to reproduce the problem after reinstalling 5241 again, came across a Big Blob that at first seemed to be invincible, taking no apparent damage, around the 10th hit or so it just suddenly died and split, not sure why. Haven’t found another Shambling Zombie yet. Except one I spawned in with debug and it took damage normally.

More Edit:
Still 5241.
Alright, found one, and looked at the fight a bit closer. At first it seemed to be invincible as well, but after about more than ten minutes of stabbing it (the log doesn’t go past that) I noticed it was at yellow health, and one more hit ended it. So it almost seems like I was hitting the arms and legs, uselessly, and inflicting damage that is irrelevant to zombies. This time I made a save right before engaging it and tucked that away in another file, so I can replay the encounter easily.
I know it’s the sort of things that can happen to players as long as the arms/legs are hit, but it’s not supposed to happen to zombies, is it?

[niglow]

Hello.

I was thinking the same as you until I noticed that they “dissolve items” and peeked into JSONs. It just the way flag “ABSORBS” works: if a creature with such flag moves over anything it adds the objects volume to its health. Simple as that. In vanilla Cata only Shoggoth has such flag but in PK-mod this flag is granted for “shambling zombie” and “amoebic mold”.

Once I came across a shambling zombie that, according to its trails, has spent some time around smashed & burned cars left by a passing horde: debris, frames, wheels, bodies… since a regular corpse has volume of 250 and this bastard was creeping there for some time, our meeting escalated into the longest fight I’ve ever had: I had to run away for meals, first aid & sleep a couple of times, not to mention the times I had to catch my breath, and there was no way to tell how soon this thing would die: his health seemed full no matter what. Throwing things directly at it was a bad idea - it just absorbed them right away. After wasting two days I’ve put a bear trap and lured it there, and then I’ve thrown two molotovs to the tiles next to it. This worked because objects are absorbed only when the zombie leaves the tile and the bear trap stayed intact.

Still, sometimes a shambler might be useful to make a sludge trail around the base so any wandering creature becomes an easy target, but otherwise the monster should be put down ASAP or it might come across some corpses… If it seems to have tons of HP - just kill it with fire.

[pisskop]

So too much health on them? This isnt the first person to come out and say that.

and yes, you could upload the save. I would have to consider taking the tag off of the zombie or making it rarer or an upgrade…

[Coolthulhu]

ABSORBS has no cap.

[niglow]

No cap, exactly. That makes a shambler way too overpowered to be killed in a melee fight if it absorbed some corpses/debris already. Even ramming it with a bulldozer takes many-many rams. They became the reason why I carry a flamethrower now because it’s always a lottery with them: is it a fresh one or did it feed already? In the recent game I had a shipwreck and two shamblers there were constantly fighting with razorclaws & fish making me think of somewhere else to go for obvious reasons.

I guess they could get the “ABSORBS” flag only when they reach their ultimate form whatever that could be and until then they could have “REGENERATES_50” at most. Too much !FUN! sometimes with no rewards for putting down a 5k HP monster.

[Szara]

Ah! Thank you so much for explaining the phenomena. These things have been a real pain in the ass. I’ve taken to just running away to my deathmobile (The Endtimes, now larger than any tank) and running them over whenever I see one. Or let my mounted turbolaser take them out.

It’s incredibly frustrating to encounter these things, especially with the acid attack, and triply so with wander spawns. If you’re unlucky they can quickly skyrocket your pain while apparently shrugging off thousands of points of damage… While dozens of other zeds descend upon you. And there’s pretty much never any reward for killing them other than getting them out of the way. I’m sure I’ve found something useful on one of them, like aspirin, but that’s about all.

I’m going to take a guess that the newly spawning Shambling Zombies were spawning somewhere with a bunch of corpses and the like.