HOWTO hordes

[quote=“Stelknecht, post:20, topic:8282”]My most recent horde. Guns and melee this time, endgame character. Believe not a single one of these puddles of gore had a pasta extruder?
http://i.imgur.com/bJInblg.jpg?1[/quote]

Offtopic question… do you dig the realistic distances option?

Make them slower and maybe cap the amount of existing hordes in X*X map tile range. Maybe cap number of hulks/shockers etc.

Eh, early game I run from them, late game I start gearing up and going out specifically to thin out hordes.

If you are willing to fill most of your inventory up with weapons, you can do alot of damage :).
Dropping down a few lines of caltrops and setting up 2 or 3 houses to fall back from one window to another then firing off a few shotgun blasts to drag them in has worked well for me.
So yeah, generally for me its a case of having a top tier melee weapon and a few things for maintaining it, 1 pistol like a glock for general killing, 1 high powered pistol, 1 shotgun, 1 sniper rifle and ammo for all of them. Then mollis, nades, etc :).

So I guess my solution is moar dakka

What the hell is this horde ?!
I play with 6 at Spawn rate ( static ) and i ve only a few Z / horde …
How are you doing to gave them as big???

Have* (sorry, fucking iphone…)

Hordes are a separate mechanic to normal zombie spawn rates, they are spawners that move across the map, mostly round towns and are attracted to noises.

There is an option for turning them on and off in world gen, it defaults to off.

To clarify, the name of the option is “Wander Spawns”.

My criticism is that they’re unending. If you manage to stand your ground and keep them at bay, they won’t ever, EVER stop spawning a couple tiles away and coming at you. They don’t ever end and are far too big.

Gave them a shot. In their current form, I personally find them unplayable. I’d -love- to see zombies ‘wander in’ to cleared areas after a while, but Hordes are impossible to fight, they just keep coming. 5+ player lives later, thousands of cheated rounds of ammunition later, cheated vehicles later, they’re just… ugh to fight. Also I learned turrets are no match for hordes. They run out of ammo hella fast, and I don’t know how to keep them in ammo. Even a mininuke launcher wasn’t cutting it ;w;

Hordes are depleted through attrition. Just keep killing and you’ll notice that the group of flashing Zs on the map will begin to shrink until eventually you’ve killed them all and they stop spawning.

It’s not easy, but we are talking about a horde of the undead.

All those saying that hordes are unending … tell that to my latest character.

Sure, the hordes surrounded him for nearly 2 weeks. Sure, about 5 days in I had to start disassembling my farmhouse to provide enough firewood to boil the water. Sure there were hairy moments, but now I am totally safe, and no hordes in a very long distance.

The trick is to set up a kill-zone. The easiest way to do that in the early game is to make a lot of pits (if you have wood to spare, spiked pits are good, but you need a steady supply of wood to make it work)

My killzone looked like this:

00000
00000
00_00
00_00
^^_00
HHDHH

(Key:
_: flatland
O: Pit
^: Pit that needs to be spiked (dropping a 2x4 on that tile makes a very easy drawbridge)
H: My house
D: My Door)

When you fight there, you fight, or die. Retreat is not an option. Use all the tools at your disposal, and do not die, as it is hard to get back in the killzone if you respawn. Pits have 500 movement cost, so you will be hitting them 5 times, for every one of theirs.

Butcher, don’t pulp, because necromancers can resurrect pulped corpses (albeit with low HP)

Eventually you will want to launch offensives. Just make a trap-filled region to fight the hordes on your own terms, and don’t ever fight a fair fight with a horde, as you will lose. Molotovs are pretty useful for thinning out zombies as they approach, but don’t use fire in your killzone, or you will burn. Or at the very least, blister horribly. (Fire doesn’t jump from pits to regular tiles, but a raging fire next to you will probably kill you eventually). I haven’t managed to build advanced traps yet, but when I do, I will be enjoying it :smiley: Firearms are great vs. brutes, shockers, spitters, and hulks, which are your biggest, most dangerous, foe. All other foes are easily defeated with eye protection, a gas filter or similar, and a sturdy melee weapon.

And eventually, after killing 1000-2000 zombies, you should be set :smiley:

What’s up with these new hordes? Instead of a big circular groups it’s hundreds of tiny little single tiles on the overmap. I’ve been trying to lead a horde from a neighbouring city to my base to fight them there, but they only seem to move if i get really close and wait. The old hordes used to get your trail and follow, but these seem to stop as soon as I drive more than a half-dozen overmap tiles away from them. I’ve been driving up to the outskirts, setting off pipebombs, firing 50 cals, running over shrubs and slowly driving home with my alarm on, but unless i stay so close that they might start spawning they won’t chase me. I’ve been using debug menu to check on their progress since I noticed they weren’t showing up and they’re barely moving at all, and it says each horde has “monsters : 1” instead of the several hundred we used to get in a big clump.

HOWTO wrangle these guys into my deathtrap, plz?

Some simple tips for fighting hordes

  1. keep your speed
    use roller blades to kite the horde
    avoid getting high pain level

  2. fight in darkness
    easier to escape

  3. Use terrain to help
    shopping cart, house, window, bushes, car wreckage can save your life when fighting or being surrounded

I usually just run.

[quote=“Meyar, post:29, topic:8282”]Gave them a shot. In their current form, I personally find them unplayable. I’d -love- to see zombies ‘wander in’ to cleared areas after a while, but Hordes are impossible to fight, they just keep coming. 5+ player lives later, thousands of cheated rounds of ammunition later, cheated vehicles later, they’re just… ugh to fight. Also I learned turrets are no match for hordes. They run out of ammo hella fast, and I don’t know how to keep them in ammo. Even a mininuke launcher wasn’t cutting it ;w;[/quote]Give vehicle mounted laser turrets a shot? With sufficient power you should be able to lay down some serious suppressing fire.

Actually, if we gave it more power, it would be more powerful.

Uh… yes?

Is there a way to toggle the hordes on an already existing save? I want to play with them but only after a week of surviving, so I have time to prepare

Open the help menu (?) and then hit 2 to access options in-game.

I have generally never had trouble with hordes unless I was being an idiot. If you see a horde, move the other way. If you can’t, then just lure a bunch into a building and set it on fire. Once you have martial up a bit, zombies become less of a problem, especially if you have nightvision of some sort.

I actually kinda wish they were more responsive to noise. Generally, they seem kinda random right now.