My 8/8/8/8 char
Day 6:
Cleared out half the town and most of its 640 point horde. The horde on the map is gone.
My current stats:
Melee was 4 when I started clearing out zombies.
Wielding reinforced baseball bat/machete.
I was sleeping in the middle of the town and horde and woke up to a zombie biting my head, got a deep wound on my head due to my 75% coverage headgear. Look out the windows and found myself surrounded.
Got reckless and charged the zombies, fought many zombies in a row and got surrounded and could not repair my gear.
Loss 2 chunks of health, used a first aid kit and got it back.
I think I took out 200 zombies in 1 day.
Notes:
Combat is mostly in the day.
Machete got stuck in a zombie once. 8 strength is a pain to play with.
Brutes took 3-4 swings at me before they get killed, all their attacks were blocked by armor. I’m also blocking with my weapon.
Dodge rose to 2 after getting hit many times.
I have to constantly repair my clothing.
I get the occasional hit that bypass my clothing coverage.
No hulks spotted.
I was carrying a mac-10 in case of hulks but didn’t need to use it.
Shock zombies were killed by baseball bat as it is non metal.
Once I got leather I only use melee, no traps, no throwing. Only trained with a bow in my house.
This is with an 8/8/8/8 char who turns into a crippled when he gets a status that reduces his stats. Once I stop on my own nail board because my perception drop so low that he couldn’t even see it.
Conclusion:
As long as you don’t get surrounded by lots of zombies, wearing reinforced clothing you found is sufficient to make you almost invincible to zombies.
Note that I’m not wearing inner layer for my torso. I’m deliberately nerfing my equipment for this. i could have put more clothing on my other limbs as well.
It is armor that is the issue, not stats.
I recommend that you try clearing out a horde with my type of gear. Remember, you only get to dodge once a turn so don’t get surrounded.
Consider balancing this as currently zombies are of little challenge.
Take into account bullets, I suspect this char with this gear will die real quick to bullets.
I’m in agreement with the following points I’ve seen in this thread:
Armor should make you immune to Zombie bites and attacks
Certain monsters should have stronger bites.
The real threat in a Zombie Apocalypse is hordes of Zombies pulling you to the ground, and finding exposed flesh to bite.
All Zombies should be “grabbers”. I dunno what grabber zombies currently do to you, but a good balance change would be the more Zombies that are “grabbing” you at once, the higher the odds that an attack gets around your armor.
Other points:
Certain things should be able to knock you to the ground. While you’re on the ground, there should be a risk of Z’s piling on to you. The more Z’s on you, the harder it is to escape, (dexterity, strength, and encumbrance playing key roles here). Getting knocked on your ass with lots of Zs nearby is a lethal situation.
Kevin has mentioned in other threads the possibility of having multiple Zs sharing a square, making the Zombie mob feel closer to what we think of when we think about classic Zombie stories. This, combined with being grabbed & knocked down could make the Zombie threat as scary as it should be.
After the early game, the norm should be that Zs are not a major threat, provided you’re careful. Recklessness, a careless mistake, or being surprised by a hoard or more Zs than you were expecting should be the lethal situations that end games (outside of “dungeons”).
Is the thing about two 90% coverage items no longer overlapping to 99% already in the game?
Other than that, leather jackets are pretty damn tough, there’s a reason they are encumbering. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt (pun intended) to nerf armor a little more.
What constitutes armor?
Is a leather jacket and a raincoat armor? Because that is what I was wearing on day 2 above.
I consider them low end armor.[/quote]
As someone pointed out upthread, the relevant point is “would this piece of clothing stop a human bite from getting through?”
I don’t remember off the top of my head of Zombie’s have “non-biting attacks”, but I suppose there should be bash damage your character takes from those, mitigated by how strong your armor is. I edited my post above accordingly.
