C'mon mansions. Really? Really?!

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Yeah, so, I played as a hobo and immediately spawned within 10 squares of an isolated mansion. I’d never seen one before, so I staggered toward it immediately, delirious from alcohol withdrawal. I assumed the mansion would have the same level of zombie density as a hospital or apartment block and figured I’d die in a blaze of tremens fueled glory. I cut my hand breaking a liquor bottle over a straggling zombie’s head and got bitten repeatedly as I tripped over shifting bushes and my own mother. I beat five zombies to death with a rock and crashed headfirst through plate glass into the kitchen. I cauterized myself and set upon a delicious pizza (gourmand) thinking that a horde of zombies was about to rip me apart so I might as well enjoy a last meal. But no zombies came. No real ones anyway. >_>

I lurched through the mansion, shrieking at illusionary bees outside the unbroken windows but encountering no real resistance within. I think I found two waterlogged zombies floating in a pool which I quickly dispatched. By now the vertigo was becoming ridiculous so I gathered enough water and food from the kitchen to outlast the addiction and crashed onto a nine square feather bed. I figured there was a horror somewhere in the mansion waiting for me to sleep but YOLO. Long story short after five days of misery I awoke starving, dehydrated, influezea’d and half frozen (didn’t bother to find any clothing besides my hobo pants and a zombie sweater) but alive and basically sober.

I knew now I was CERTAINLY dead, if not from some lurking terror then from my own crippling detox. But no! I opened some doors and gadzooks - three libraries with collectively EVERY SINGLE BOOK IN THE GAME! I quickly read what I needed to craft a stone pot and rejuvenated myself with bread and water. I upended the whole house - where was the basement with the Jabberwock chained to the wall!? But there was nothing, other than a circus of bears pawing hungrily at the windows. >_>

And that’s when I realized - this enormous 9 square mansion with a treasure trove of EVERY BOOK had been guarded by seven zombies. Seven, measly, stinking zombies. A guard so feeble that a hobo LITERALLY OUT OF HIS MIND had managed to beat them armed with a booze bottle, a rock, and a pizza.

I had a good laugh over it devs, don’t get me wrong. But that’s b/s. Really now. You cannot in good faith put EVERY BOOK in one place and leave it unguarded. It usually takes me 3-4 towns spread out over 2 weeks to reliably collect every book, which of course involves all out urban warfare with 500+ ravening zombies. As it should be.

Morale of the story: put a jabberwock in mansions. Or more zombies. Perhaps unique plutocrat zombies armed with fencing foils and derringers. Or have fewer books. Whatever you want just make it less game breaky. I’d prefer the jabberwock >_>

2

It’s random. You just got an unusually lucky mansion.

Enjoy it this time, next time all those bad things you imagined will probably come true.

3

You leave my mansions alone. Last one I hit had precisely one useful room (kitchen) and the rest were rec rooms, dining rooms, or bedrooms with stuff I already had.

Not every 3x3 has to be a slaughterhouse.

4

You know what would’ve been [size=4pt] almost [/size]better than all the books? A broadsword. Seriously. With no training in melee or cutting, this things to 35-50 damage per hit. Extremely OP.

5

This right here. Mansions can ranged from virtually unguarded treasure troves to an entire mansion of dining rooms filled with bears and zombies.

6

Also exceedingly rare. A powerful weapon indeed, but it’s awesomeness is somewhat blunted by the fact that seeing one is so uncommon.

7

And unless Kevin’s changes were a lot nicer than I anticipate, heavy-duty cutting weapons that weren’t named Katana tend to get stuck depressingly often. I recommended 11 ST just to be able to reliably pull them out when they stuck.

(I’d prefer the Rapier over the Broadsword, FWIW.)

8

Actually that change introduced massive stuck-in penalty reductions across the board. Now a broadsword stuck-in against an unarmored opponent when you have zero skill costs ~11% less move points, and that value only goes up as skill and enemy armor increases. For example the stuck-in with 5 skill against a Hulk was reduced by a whopping 70%, from 204.5 average penalty down to 62.5!

And the decreases only get greater with piercing and slicing weapons.

9

the only mansions I found were the ones with only pool rooms and living rooms with pool (8ball) tables in them, and like, a dining room

10

I was wondering were they went. I guess that we are not on the ultra rich side of New England any more, huh.