Experimental: How do hordes work?

[123456789]

Can someone explain the mechanics of them a bit more to me? Initially I thought there would be one or two giant hordes that slowly travel the map, but as far as I can tell theres usually 4 or 5, some small and some huge. I can never seem to tell where they are either. Also do they automatically move towards you? Because usually I don’t see any, then out of nowhere I notice a bunch of zombies and then a bunch of Z’s show up on my map. As I move further away the Z’s sort of become smaller and smaller until I run into them again. Does perception affect how far away I can notice hordes? Is there any real way to deal with them? At the moment I usually have no problem running away, but it can get annoying when im trying to go somewhere and then suddeny theres a horde the size of a city in the way and I have to go somewhere else. Also is there a limit to how many there are at a time?

[HunterAlpha1]

Use the debug menu to “show hordes”, and you’ll learn quite a bit about them. I don’t consider it a cheat if used for educational purposes. If you’d like you can limit yourself to only using it when you have a PDA or laptop computer in your inventory.

[KA101]

Can someone explain the mechanics of them a bit more to me? Initially I thought there would be one or two giant hordes that slowly travel the map, but as far as I can tell theres usually 4 or 5, some small and some huge. I can never seem to tell where they are either. Also do they automatically move towards you? Because usually I don’t see any, then out of nowhere I notice a bunch of zombies and then a bunch of Z’s show up on my map. As I move further away the Z’s sort of become smaller and smaller until I run into them again. Does perception affect how far away I can notice hordes? Is there any real way to deal with them? At the moment I usually have no problem running away, but it can get annoying when im trying to go somewhere and then suddeny theres a horde the size of a city in the way and I have to go somewhere else. Also is there a limit to how many there are at a time?

In general:

1. If there’s a city, it’s safe to assume there’s a horde roughly the size of the city around.
2. Hordes have extremely good hearing and can detect muffled car engines from a few map tiles away. If they hear you, they’ll lock onto that square and move to it. Takes sustained 30-40 MPH to escape a horde, and it will have moved quite a ways toward your last known location.
3. You can’t split a horde. If one square of it detects you, the whole thing knows.
4. The only limit on hordes is your exploration. See 1.

[123456789]

Alright. Got it. Any tips on dealing with them? I had a pretty cinematic death in fighting off the horde in the forest with a katana. What should I do next time I find myself being surronded by one? I figure the only thing to do at that point is just pick a direction and hope for the best, right? Also what if I’m indoors and find myself surronded by a horde? Will I be able to wait them out? Or will they pretty much just wait until I exit since they can hear me?

[Arek_PL]

you can use explosiwes or firearms and compressed air horn to lure them away from your base dealing witch them is hard because medium size horde have 500-1000 zombies sometime on realy small towns its 20-200 1 time i saw zombie horde of size 10000

fighting with small hordes is not hard just fight away from base only butchering will be problem and in case of emergency prepare silent car to fast escape from zombies (slap controls seat and foot crank on shoping cart its enought)

[Datanazush]

Also, if you have a big enough pile of dead zombies, and the horde is still coming at you, it may be worthwhile to dump a bottle of gasoline on the pile and light it. The fire works pretty well at killing off zeds if they try to run through it.

[Arek_PL]

[quote=“Datanazush, post:6, topic:6690”]Also, if you have a big enough pile of dead zombies, and the horde is still coming at you, it may be worthwhile to dump a bottle of gasoline on the pile and light it. The fire works pretty well at killing off zeds if they try to run through it.[/quote] acid bombs work too

[Datanazush]

I haven’t tried acid bombs, the gasoline works well because it has a nice habit of setting fire to all the corpses in the adjacent tiles too. Real good way of annihilating those larger piles, whilst also blocking off one lane of attack.