Playing with Auto-Revivication Off

Game Talk The Bunker
1

Lately I’ve been using the option to keep zombies from getting back up after I kill them. Here are my findings:

The main argument against cancelling revivication, at least in my mind, was that it wouldn’t be as challenging. After a few weeks (and a few terrifying demises) I haven’t really noticed a difference in difficulty. What I have noticed is that I’m having more fun.

Butchering dead zeds is a chore. Plain and simple. After a chaotic battle there are corpses everywhere and I have to meticulously track them all down and butcher them while fending off stragglers. It slows down the gameplay. I want to spend that time amassing casualties, not mercy-shotting corpses.

The 's’mash feature is awful for disposing of bodies. “You see a dog approaching. Are you sure you want to continue smashing this corpse?” How long does it bloody take? I’ve got a sword bigger than I am! One swing, boom, done.

I actually have to develop survival skills the hard way now, by communing with nature and stuff. This feels more natural (ha, see what I did there). Further, I don’t have the mental image of using the same knife to butcher both zombies and my dinner.

Now I can raid the edge of a big mob, take a few out and keep moving and when I return later they’re still down. This allows for strategies other than “kill them all and hold the battlefield for the rest of the afternoon.”

In all I consider it to be a positive change in the game. Give it a shot and tell me what you think.

edit: removed accidental strikethrough formatting

2

Rezing is rather meaningless in the “regular” game mode, but it can get intense in horde mode, where you have to do it before the necromancers get near. And if you fail, you pretty much have to run, unless you’re an endgame monstrosity.

Smashing corpses got buffed really hard in the experimentals. In the stable, it is slower than butchering.

3

Good points. I’ve not played much with horde mode, because once I quiet a map tile I like it to stay that way, but there’s always the idea that when I ran out of challenges I’d turn on hordes and see what happens.

4

Hordes themselves have seen significant reworking since the stable.

In the stable they were ‘moderately effective’ at haranguing you. They came in a consistent trickle and you could only hope to be rid of them by traveling away from the tile in question and staying quiet.

In the earlier experimentals they were so intense they would follow the sound of your car. Effectively meaning you had to leave civilization to get rid of them… and even then Id see them occasionally in the deep forests.

Now there seems to be a concrete number per horde, insofar as I actually consider killing a horde to be rid of it. They do trickle in, but I no longer think of them as innumerable things you cant hope to face. In fact, while combat in general has gotten more dangerous, hordes have gotten easier to handle. And they dont hound you if you make you home in the outskirts of the city or other carefully chosen location.

For instance, Ive made some 1 stopsign towns my base. Cleared them out, fought off nearby hordes, and then fortified the area some. Even had NPCs help me do it and craft/construct. The ai improvements and NPC functionality improvements alone make the experimentals more worth it.

Reviving is annoying, but I prefer to pulp them if Im out of immediate danger. survival skill for butchering a zombie is meh when my guy goes into a depression for running over a pedestrian. Too quick still.
But somebody somewhere was talking about venom maybe removing the rez flag. Which would likely be harvest-able into a bomb/ammo

5

Some sort of blob-neutralizer would be really neat. I can definitely get behind an idea like that for late-game corpse “cleanup” Would also be nice for when alternate dimensions get added, and the blob verse needs some clearing before you can even enter it, safely.

6

I’ve never really let a zed get back up. How long does it usually take?

7

I want to say more than a day. Don’t quote me on it.

8

[quote=“pisskop, post:4, topic:11521”]Hordes themselves have seen significant reworking since the stable.

In the stable they were ‘moderately effective’ at haranguing you. They came in a consistent trickle and you could only hope to be rid of them by traveling away from the tile in question and staying quiet.

In the earlier experimentals they were so intense they would follow the sound of your car. Effectively meaning you had to leave civilization to get rid of them… and even then Id see them occasionally in the deep forests.

Now there seems to be a concrete number per horde, insofar as I actually consider killing a horde to be rid of it. They do trickle in, but I no longer think of them as innumerable things you cant hope to face. In fact, while combat in general has gotten more dangerous, hordes have gotten easier to handle. And they dont hound you if you make you home in the outskirts of the city or other carefully chosen location.

For instance, Ive made some 1 stopsign towns my base. Cleared them out, fought off nearby hordes, and then fortified the area some. Even had NPCs help me do it and craft/construct. The ai improvements and NPC functionality improvements alone make the experimentals more worth it.

Reviving is annoying, but I prefer to pulp them if Im out of immediate danger. survival skill for butchering a zombie is meh when my guy goes into a depression for running over a pedestrian. Too quick still.
But somebody somewhere was talking about venom maybe removing the rez flag. Which would likely be harvest-able into a bomb/ammo[/quote]

I had one experience with hordes. I was a sheltered survivor, I doodled and did my thing, making some clothes for my character so I can raid a town without freezing. So, I went to the forest and shot a deer to eat and after about a day or so of preparation, on the second or third day i kept hearing this banging noise above me (I had Z-Levels turned on) and I walked outside at night and saw a hulk RIGHT NEXT TO ME BANGING ON MY METAL DOOR It promptly launched me into the air and I landed in a clear zone and wondering what the heck was going on I flicked my flashlight on and SAW TONS OF SPECIALS EVERYWHERE NECROMANCERS, HULKS, SPITTERS, SHOCKERS, SHOCKER HULKS EVERYTHING THERE WAS EASILY 50+ ZOMBIES ON MY SCREEN. I looked at my map and saw a massive horde just surrounding my bunker and the tiles around it for miles.

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I saw this and I cried.

(Not shown was a NPC burning down the forest trying to kill the horde)

EDIT: Being on topic though, I do prefer not to have my zombies revive, as it really is a chore and if I took the effort to kill something, I want it to stay dead.

9

Getting back up is pretty variable. Sometimes they get back up while you’re butchering the rest of their squad.

I want to learn c++ just so I can make it so they sometimes become crawling zombies. That would be cool.

10

Less than a day, I think.

11

I do not pulp or butcher zombies in the late game, except for bionics. Sufficiently high combat skills make reviving zombies a non-issue. And by that point you need every practice dummy you can get your hands on to improve further.

I am saddened by the rumours of necromancers not reviving pulped corpses. I eventually run out of zombies anyway because there is not enough left of them to count as a corpse.