Disabling Individual Monsters From Spawning

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So, on World-Gen, the options for enabling/disabling monsters are a bit confusing. The opt-in stuff is plenty clear. Want dinosaurs? Enable dinomod. There’s an option that says “Classic Zombies Only” which I’m not sure exactly what it does even after experimenting with it. Obviously I would assume it disables Mi-Go, Fungaloids, Triffids, and giant insects, along with crazy zombies like shocker zombies and acid zombies and bloater zombies and whatnot. But what about zombie children and fat zombies, decaying zombies, skeletons? Do those fall under the “Classic Zombies” umbrella? I know I’ve experimented with this in the past, but I don’t remember what the results were.

The feature I really want, though–and maybe it’s not even something that would require a full mod, just getting into the RAWs or whatever and doing some tinkering? My only other comparably in-depth roguelike experience is playing WAY too much Dwarf Fortress, where I eventually learned to make minor changes to the game directly myself, nothing I would call a mod, but just making different animals trainable for war and whatnot–anyway the feature I really want is the ability to prevent individual monsters from spawning. I just want to disable Zombie Brutes and Shocker Brutes, I think…maybe Shocker Zombies and Zombie Hulks, too, although you almost have to go out of your way to look for the latter. My reason for this is that I feel like encounter a brute anywhere close to the early game is basically an instant death if you don’t have a very efficient build, and I don’t always want to go for a good starting build. Sometimes I like to go more on the “roleplaying” side of things, playing a handyman or a high school student or whatever. To my mind, the late game challenge of taking on a Zombie Brute just isn’t worth the early game frustration of encountering one and knowing you are immediately dead. It makes the game substantially less fun. Often when I die it’s because I made a mistake, did something dumb, or got too greedy or too ambitious, but it sucks when the reason I died comes down to “a Zombie Brute/Shocker Brute spawned on the screen and I didn’t have a shotgun/magnum yet”.

Anyone know of any way to disable individual monsters from spawning that I could use (an existing mod, a way I as a borderline computer illiterate person could do it myself, etcetera)?

Thanks!

[mentos046]

This is a mod that blacklists Hulks and Brutes of any variety.

I’ve never used it myself, so I don’t know how well it works, or if there are compatibility issues.

When you’re creating a world, and are at the mod selection screen, Tab (usually above Caps Lock) lets you move between mods that add content, mods that blacklist creatures and possibly items, and mods that change the balance of the game.

Classic Zombies should turn off all zombies except “Zombie”, and will disable some buildings, like the Lab, I believe. It may also affect zombified wildlife.

Nailboard traps are the best way to deal with Brutes early on. Make 9 of them (180 nails, 27 two-by-fours, and something with hammering 1, a rock or chunk of steel will suffice), then lay them in a square, and walk the Brute through them until it kills itself. It also works with Shocker Zombies, but you will be shocked a few times. I’ve never successfully used it against Shocker Brutes or Hulks, though. A great many enemies are vulnerable to this tactic, including robots like the Tribot, or Riot Control Bot, but it is decidedly inefficient against Tank Drones.

As a bonus, any enemy that has a sense of self preservation, such as Mi-Gos, Grackens, or Scientist Zombies won’t step on Nailboard Traps, so you can surround yourself with eight of them, one on every adjacent square, and they won’t be able to attack you. Then, if you have something with a reach attack, like the Knife Spear, you can safely attack them until they are dead or fleeing.

[Noctifer]

Here is the code for a mod that disables all brutes,hulks and shocker zombies/brutes.

[ { "type": "MOD_INFO", "ident": "no_brutes_no_shockers", "//": "This is what the game uses to call upon the game, it doesn't matter what it is just make sure you don't change it once you use this mod in a world", "name": "No Zombie Shockers or Brutes", "//": "This is the name of the mod you will see in the world creation menu. You can change this as much as you want.", "description": "Removes all brutes and shockers from the game.", "//": "This is the description of the mod you will see in the world creation menu. You can chnage it as much as you want but keep it brief or it won't show all if it ingame!", "category": "monster_exclude", "//": "This is in what category the mod goes in in the world creation menue. It is optional so if you don't want to mess with this then just exclued it.", "dependencies": [ "dda" ], "//": "This si what mods this mod needs to be enabled to work. In this case this mod needs dda mod to work. The dda mod is the game itself, meaning this mod needs the game in order to work." }, { "type": "MONSTER_BLACKLIST", "//": "Self evident, this line means that what ever is in the braces is part of the monster blacklist code", "//": "Everything inside the brackets below are the monsters you are going to exclude. To add a monster just find its id and put it in the list like so.", "monsters": [ "mon_zombie_brute", "mon_zombie_brute_shocker", "mon_zombie_electric", "mon_zombie_hulk", "mon_zombie_brute_ninja", "mon_zombie_brute_grappler" ] } ]

1.) First create a new folder inside your mods folder found at (data -> mods) and name that folder whatever you want.
2.) Next copy the code and paste it into your favorite text editor (I recommend Notepad++) and save it as modinfo.json inside the new folder you created.
3.) It should now appear under the world creation menu.

I added notes on the code to help you decipher it is you want to add more to the list and what each part of the file does. Any questions feel free to ask me.

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Thanks guys, that was super helpful and super fast. I’ve actually never installed any mod that wasn’t one of the ones included with a major release, but I think blacklisting Brutes is probably the best solution to my problem.

The nailboard trap “solution” is hilarious, BTW.

Edit: I could have sworn that I had experimented with the comes-with-default “mundane zombies only” mod and found there were still zombie children, fat zombies, decaying zombies, crawling zombies, zombie cops, and so on. Which I was A-Okay with. I was just trying to build a world where zombies couldn’t chicken-fry me or melt me with acid or blind and choke me with smoke etc etc.

Edit 2: I’ve been playing this game for years–once, I beat a T-Rex to death with my bare hands and ate it–and I didn’t even realize that “Ninja Brutes” were a thing. MOTHER OF GOD.