Baiting Hordes, and Dispatching Them

Wally-kun · 2016-01-27T06:52:05.000Z

So my situation’s pretty good right now: I’m the farthest in I’ve ever been with this character, who still happens to be a bit on the frail side and as such I’ve been playing very defensively. My base is this remote cave in the middle of the woods, surrounded by ant spawns to pull off aggro’s and basically add to the defenses of my location. My base is totally secure and I’m safe in it, and I can make almost everything so far. Blacksmith stuff, welding rigs, all that jazz. I’m ready to do something.

The first thing I wanted to do now is to get out of this cave. I’m tired of having to go in and out of the forest constantly, dragging my handjack this way and that way and between every bush…it’s more trouble than it’s worth, really. And I want to get closer to the nearest town anyway, and secure it while I’m at it.

Hunting zeds is slow and painful. I was thinking about how to best go about cleansing the town, and I thought about making a sort of killbox stationed around an extremely loud noise to draw in the horde consistently and basically let them all wander into me so I can dispatch them. I’m not worried about the killing part, I’ve got guns and I can probably manage some defenses of some sort in my little killbox.

My concern is actually pulling the hordes in. I can draw them easily enough, one shotgun blast will pull in everyone for a good long distance, but I want something consistent, so that it will pull in any zeds that actually physically enter the reality bubble. I also would prefer it not cost something as precious as a shotgun shell.

Any advice on how to most cheaply and effectively ‘summon the horde’, Left 4 Dead style? I really don’t want to spend weeks wandering through a city when I could have the undead losers do all the walking for me.

Malkeus · 2016-01-27T07:24:38.000Z

I think the loudest things in the game are gunshots and explosions. Bringing down trees is loud enough to make you deaf for a short time, but I don’t have any numbers on it. Air horns are loud, but rare and non-renewable…anyone else have some ideas?

We should be able to make some kind of loudspeaker type device out of electronic scrap and scrap metal, maybe leather to form the diaphragm. Put batteries, solar panels and electronic controls on a frame, attach the loudspeaker, turn it on and settle in for the fun.

Wally-kun · 2016-01-27T07:44:36.000Z

Maybe a car alarm. I’m not sure if that’d be loud enough to trip the aggro of zombies at the edge of the screen, however. I definitely know that some loud guns can, but again, I’d rather not have to burn non-renewable resources like that. Maybe it’s worth it, but I’m not sure. I definitely know I’m never going to live to see ALL of those guns and bullets used…

Still looking for alternatives. I need to look up numbers for how loud car alarms are.

Malkeus · 2016-01-27T07:46:48.000Z

I forgot about car alarms

StopGamer · 2016-01-27T08:53:50.000Z

How do you plan to get rid of corpses? My main problem that butchering even with butcher knife takes whery long time. And while Im butchering new zombies arrive and interupt me.
And with x4 zspawn are too many corpses(

stk2008 · 2016-01-27T09:40:32.000Z

How loud are alarms on the gun stotes?

Coolthulhu · 2016-01-27T10:05:01.000Z

A V12 with no muffler pulling something heavy should make a lot of noise.

Logrin · 2016-01-27T10:52:36.000Z

You could play the bagpipes from a bicycle and pied piper all the zeds into one spot.

Malkeus · 2016-01-27T18:10:43.000Z

I like that idea Logrin :).

@StopGamer Corpse disposal is a PITA. I only do it when I want to occupy an area for longer than a day or two, bc it’s such a bastard, but I’m a filthy nomad so it works out.
Azrad like to vaporize corpses on the ground with vastly overpowered weapons systems, like rail launchers and such, check out his posts in the What’s happening in your cataclysm thread.

Wally-kun · 2016-01-27T20:02:40.000Z

I’m not too worried about corpse disposal. I might drag them off via the inventory management thingy and leave them in a big mound on the side of town or something, or go to the trouble of butchering them. If I make a huge ruckus and drag in everything for miles, then I won’t have to worry about new zombies wandering in, because I’ll have already baited them and kill them by then.

The alarms on the gun stores create 40 noise. Probably enough to draw in hordes from around, but not enough to trip aggro from within the reality bubble, if I had to guess. I don’t totally know how large the bubble is.

How many tiles is the reality bubble? That’s going to be important if I’m going to figure out the max sound levels I need.

Azrad · 2016-01-27T20:24:52.000Z

Malkeus:

Azrad like to vaporize corpses on the ground with vastly overpowered weapons systems, like rail launchers and such, check out his posts in the What’s happening in your cataclysm thread.

With regards to that, most of the live zombies are the ones that get vaporized on hit. Having a very high rifles skill helped with the damage, as I leveled up rifles skill up to 20+ using normal rifles before moving to the hypervelocity driver.

The explosion doesn’t seem to be powerful enough to damage corpses, but the flying shrapnel does - that however seems to fly around in random tiles centered around where the shot was fired, so it’s not very reliable in vaporizing corpses, though it works well enough due to the volume fired.

TheFlame52 · 2016-01-27T20:42:31.000Z

As far as I’ve noticed, everything I do attracts zombies. I’ve never had to worry about attracting them, just hiding from them. What about church bells?

As for corpse disposal, it is a bitch. I usually stick around long enough for the corpses to start rising again. When I use my diamond broadsword zombies explode, but the less-than-occasional hulks and masters I have to butcher. Usually while fighting off the last remnants of the horde.

StopGamer · 2016-01-27T22:20:43.000Z

Im playing x4 Zrates and still dont have diamond weapon. So I have 3 top geared NPC to guard me while I butchering corpses. Main problem is that they generate corpses faster then I can butcher them . And corrosive/shoker/splitter zombies are real pain in ass, when supported whith hulks and necromancers. So I usually go round at night killing and butchering one by one. But this is so f long(

deoxy · 2016-01-27T22:38:51.000Z

Meh, I don’t find it that bad most of the time (except for hulks), and I play on 5x zombies. Butcher in order of importance*, and if there’s a necromancer nearby, use the advanced inventory to put corpses in a pile in your own square while you butcher - eventually, the necromancer will give on that and attack you directly.

Order of importance:

Necromancers.
Everything else depends on the situation. Generally, you want to deal with the things that are the biggest pain to put back down first (so acid, shocker, and predator, mostly, but not shocker if you have a way to deal with electricity), but hulks take WAY too long to do anything about (the only ones I really find annoying - they are also too big to have more than one of in a single tile, so they are hard to deal with when there are necromancers nearby), so sometimes, it makes more sense to get rid of the little stuff, just so it’s gone. Also, once the necromancers are gone, you can pulp a few things to buy some time while you butcher the rest.

As for actually attracting the horde, just leaving a shrieker alive near for a bit usually takes care of a lot of it well enough for me. There’s also the flashbang CBM (I think it’s called something else, but that’s what it does) and the truck horn (easy to find), both of which use renewable power. There’s also a noisemaker you can make from a radio, if I recall correctly, but I’ve never tried one, so I don’t know how effective it actually is.

TheFlame52 · 2016-01-27T23:05:32.000Z

Oh yes, necromancers. When I’m fighting a big horde the necromancers hang in the back and resurrect all the corrosives and hulks and stuff. I hate it.

Blaze · 2016-01-27T23:17:55.000Z

When I want to clear out cities at 20x spawn rate, I just set a bunch of blade traps in their general direction and honk a truck horn or something. They’ll walk straight into the traps, and 2-4 hits is enough to deal with most zombies. Anything that survives is easily dealt with, and anything that revives before you can pulp the corpses will stumble right into another blade trap.

With some sufficiently heavy armor and/or dodge, you can then pick out which items you want; or pick out the ones at the edges of your traps. Then use a molotov to burn everything else. You can disarm them with sufficient skill to get the materials back, but electric motors aren’t particularly rare.

pisskop · 2016-01-27T23:35:17.000Z

I assume this is static spawn only.

Best bet is to walk around with music on. Use a boombox or use a mounted stereo. You can collect w.e. in the toted stereo system and use an engine to ferry yourself/the loot back and forth.

Wally-kun · 2016-01-28T02:21:19.000Z

Noise maker is 30 noise. Loud, but won’t drag stuff off the edge of the screen, I don’t think.

It’s starting to look like shotguns and the like are my best bet, or else there’s no real way to pull every zombie in a massive area into a single spot.

I wish you could use the weather radio station things to turn on the tornado alarm. THAT would pull stuff in for miles.