For a change of pace I decided with my latest character to give wander spawns a try, figuring it would be neat to have to time my movements with the passing of the massive hordes stumbling across the map. Turns out, hordes don’t really work like that. What I have on my hands is that I’m constantly being mobbed by high-level zombies and have no idea how to escape them. I went into the options and halved the zombie spawn rate and it didn’t seem to help. The problem is getting so bad that I literally cannot find a place to sleep or read. I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn’t found a properly sharp katana in an antique store.
Does anyone regularly play with wander spawns? What are your tactics for dealing with hulks and shocker brutes behind every corner? Is there a way to go back to regular spawns without losing this character? Because I’m using the stylish perk for the first time and wearing a tuxedo and dancing shoes is so much more fun than decking myself out in indestructible survivor gear so this character is really growing on me.
Wander spawns are a bit broken at the moment, though I hear they devs are working on making them more “wandering horde” like instead of “zombies popping up like mushrooms in the swamp”. Supposed to be pretty nifty when they get it working…
And to be less silly, I could’ve sworn wander spawn was the original default spawn method, way back before I’d even heard of this game. Was it just as insane back then, or did something get broken along the way?
I tihnk it should be more like "waling dead"ish wandering style. Gunfire and explosions have a pretty limited audible range now within reality bubble as far as I understand. If in case of gunfire zombies from let’s say couple of miles away could hear it and slowly home to the sounds of intense shooting - it could be great. Especially if you don’t see them on map until some visible range (bonus for binoculars) to leave you with just a matter of minutes to gather your stuff and hit it before they come and see you.
I also play at half-strength Hordes, because no-Hordes is a bit too easy.
My rules for survival are:
1. Run like hell. Quick + Fleet-footed is probably too strong without Hordes, but I need it to survive with them around. A bicycle is a priority but I never seem to find one before solving the combat problem and being able to get into motorcycles.
2. You don’t have to outrun the Horde, you just have to outrun whatever else they’re chasing. I normally play with NPCs on, because like Hordes their broken side is more than compensated by the extra dimension to gameplay. It’s callous, but the fact that NPCs show up on your overmap means that you can kite Z into them. Also consider leading Z into the maw of the fungus (which will beat them) or the insects (who will slow them down). Haven’t experimented with Horde vs. Blob, I presume that Z will get through eventually. Making a semi-permanent camp in insect country (or the swamps) can work well.
3. Be happy underground. Sleep in basements initially (because coming upstairs to find a horde is bad, but having one ambush you at night is worse) and consider making your first permanent camp in a lab.
Zombies and blob don’t fight - they are the same side. Blob infection makes the dead rise as zombies.[/quote]
Right. I guess I should have known that from the behaviour of Hollows, but you’ve probably saved one of my future survivors from “severe inconvenience”.
It’s been a long while since I’ve played the old version, but as I remember things it used to be that there was essentially a zombie ‘reserve’ for a given area. As time passed zombies would spawn from that reserve (just out of sight?); certain actions, especially making lots of noise, would spur more spawning. So if you used a silenced .22 and took care there generally weren’t too many zombies, but if you went around firing a shotgun you’d be spawning more than you killed.
So it wasn’t really that insane as long as you were careful about noise and the like. In fact, since there was something like a 30 minute delay before spawning started it could be pretty easy to bumrush the middle of a city when you started, snatch up the good stuff, and get out before zombies started to accumulate.
[quote=“Random_dragon, post:3, topic:10403”]It is terrifying?
It was inevitable.
And to be less silly, I could’ve sworn wander spawn was the original default spawn method, way back before I’d even heard of this game. Was it just as insane back then, or did something get broken along the way?[/quote]
i do not have any problems with hordes, they are just anyoing
when i am in city they are mostly atracted by another horde what colapsed building (my neigborhood is realy loud, it make me deaf few times in one day) but they spawn on edges of reality bubble so i can steak from place to place without problems even they make things easier because cars destroyed by zomies are nearly infinite source of scrap metal and steel lumps
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.
1.Always look at the map, if there is any wandering horde nearby don’t go anywhere near them.
2.If you get to close they will start spawning zombies and once that happens the zombies will remain there.
3.If you just wait it out and let the wandering spawn disappear no zombies will be spawned.
