Special zombies having higher quality drops

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

right now zombies always drop some form of damaged clothing. there is a small chance that they randomly drop other stuff. One special zombie can drop bionics when you Butcher them. I think special zombies should have a higher chance of dropping gear. the harder the zombie the more likely it is to drop better gear. Id make it a little based on what they are.

zombie cops/soldiers more chance of guns/ammo/armo
zombie science more chance of stuff you find on science corpse

Is there a mechanism in game to determine what differnet mobs drop other then when butchered? Not sure how adjustable this is right now.

not a massive increase. the zombie drop rate is pretty low right now. not sure what the percentage is.

2

It’s reasonable if it makes sense, e.g. cops/soldiers dropping police/military gear, but I’m more interested in making zombie drops make sense rather than specifically making them a reward, they specifically aren’t a reward, it’s just whatever the person was wearing when they died.

A general principle of the game is that we don’t link rewards in traditional game-y ways, it’s a more organic thing where we just place resources where they would logically be. That’s the goal at least.

3

Shock zombies have a pretty good chance of dropping working CBMs. Other than that I am inclined to agree with Kevin. The drops should make sense, not feel like an arbitrary reward. People have also talked about locations with better loot arbitrarily having more and more dangerous enemies, and that was shot down for similar reasons.

4

Well i think this already takes place (at least it happens with swimmers cops and soldiers)

5

Not sure why you put ‘other than that’, shocker zombies were originally cyborgs before the cataclysm, that’s why they fire lightning everywhere and have CBMs inside of them.

Also, there should probably be a greatly reduced chance to get functional bionics from a shocker if you pulp its body with a sledgehammer, not sure how hard that would be to implement though.

6

Not totally sure, but I think damage to the body increases butchering difficulty, so it already works like that.

7

I dig the zombie soldiers dropping soldier stuff and whatnot, but we generally try to avoid overtly game-y stuff too much, like making it so that rare monster automatically equals rare rewards.

However if the stuff the zombie drops makes sense due to the circumstances of the zombies death/whomever they were prior to death, that’s fine.

8

Unfortunately, there’s no good way to handle monster drops at the moment, our current system is… kind of super crappy.

9

Let’s make spitters drop all sorts of awesome things, that you have to watch dissolve in a pool of acid before your eyes.

10

They do drop stuff on occasion, and if you (e)xamine their square as soon as they die, you can often save it before it melts.

11

Not sure why you put ‘other than that’, shocker zombies were originally cyborgs before the cataclysm, that’s why they fire lightning everywhere and have CBMs inside of them.

Also, there should probably be a greatly reduced chance to get functional bionics from a shocker if you pulp its body with a sledgehammer, not sure how hard that would be to implement though.[/quote]

I know why they drop CBMs. I said ‘other than that’ because no other zombie drops any particularly valuable loot by default. It wasn’t meant to imply anything other than ‘some zombies already do this, and there’s a reason for it beyond gamey mechanics meant to disproportionately reward the player.’

12

Hmm. IME Hulks and Masters, etc actually did have better loot. (Above/beyond the heap of leather and Tainted Meat you get from butchering a Hulk.)

The motorcycle-retrieval mission’s Keg came from a Master Zombie kill, for instance.

No real objection if that’s been changed, though.

13

What about those who do not play with specials because they seem to silly?

And in any case, zombies already drop rare things. I have gotten army gear off army zombies, guns from normals and more army gear from cops.

14

I figured many of the specials actually did have better loot drops. Cop zombies with more armor, ammo, gun drops, ditto army zombies. Boomers often seem to drop a can of drink or a MP3 player, spitters I feel tend towards guns or electronic gear (gotta be quick), and yeah, hulks and masters seem to just drop piles more loot.

Or is it just all in my head?

15

Ah, I misunderstood you.
One thing I’d like to see is some zombie scientists/military wandering around outside labs/outposts rather than just finding all their corpses. Surely some of them got infected before getting horribly killed in the middle of the road somehow, right?

16

Strict bottled-water rations FTW, I guess.

17

[quote=“jimboblordofeskimos, post:14, topic:3707”]I figured many of the specials actually did have better loot drops. Cop zombies with more armor, ammo, gun drops, ditto army zombies. Boomers often seem to drop a can of drink or a MP3 player, spitters I feel tend towards guns or electronic gear (gotta be quick), and yeah, hulks and masters seem to just drop piles more loot.

Or is it just all in my head?[/quote]

It’s less that Boomers and Spitters drop electronics and food more often, and more that they don’t drop much else. Likewise, Hulks and Masters have the same drops as normal Zombies as far as I could tell.