One of the bigger problems with the hordes is the sudden influx of high-end zombeis in an area that might not necessarily be that developed. From what I can tell, there’s nothing telling the horde spawning to not spawn certain tier zombies, so a brute is as likely to spawn as anything else, never mind a hulk. A single zombie master means you’ve got hulks and predators everywhere, which is just something you can’t deal with unless you’re seriously primed with gear, and a necromancer on top of that means the horde is effectively twice its size unless you take it out immediately.
The best way I can find to deal with hordes is to get just close enough to them to spawn them on the edge of the screen. It’s still a huge threat, but at least it’s not following me around on the overhead map. That roots down the horde and creates a more tangible threat in a select location. From there I can deal with them eventually or just avoid them outright. Most of the time I never find a good way to deal with them until something big comes up later.
Ants are surprisingly effective against zombies. Two ants took down a hulk, and I was able to sneak in quietly a little later and butcher it so it couldn’t get back up. If you can walk them through a fungal bloom, that’d also effectively neutralize them. The fungus is much less of an active danger than any number of zombies…for now. I expect this to bite the player in the ass someday in a future update. Ideally when fungaloids aren’t broken.
The triffids don’t seem like they’d be able to deal with them as effectively, but drawing the big ones into a triffid horde could take care of them…maybe. It’s a big if, but at least they’re busy with the triffids and not me. It’d be a decent way to lose a few zombie bears maybe. Or a shocker brute.
If you can weave around them enough, those lava rifts in the ground are an effective zombie grinder, if you don’t mind losing all the loot. In a big group it’d take a few passes, because zombies tend to stumble and can wave through the tiles harmlessly. This kind of doesn’t make sense to me, cuz you’d expect the rift to be a solid barrier to walk through, but idk, maybe it’s an uneven crag with smaller gaps you can step over instead of into.
