Why so many zombies!?

Game Talk The Bunker
1

First of all, hi everyone. Been playing this awesome game for a few weeks and lurking the forums a bit but just registered now because I have a seriously game-ruining problem :frowning: So apologies if this is a little wordy (everything I do usually is :p) but itā€™s storytime.

First of all, a little background: My current survivor, Leonardo Mayfield (badass name :D), was doing really well until about an hour ago. His home shelter is in a very safe location pretty far from town which gave him an easy start, got some good loot, some good mutations after meddling with some mutagen and purifier I found in a lab, all that good stuff. Iā€™m now basically at the point where anything short of a Brute is trivial to kill without taking any damage and trying to get a vehicle together to move into this awesome double garage next a gas station that I already found and cleared.

So Iā€™m just in my boarded up, usually very safe shelter cooking up some food when I get a message about seeing a fat zombie approaching from the north entrance. Okay, I think, weird because I wasnā€™t making any noise or anything but whatever. I casually walk over to it to chop it into chunks with my machete and suddenly ā€œSafe Mode: You see a x Zombieā€ times, like, 50. Outside the shelter thereā€™s literally dozens of them just chillin, and theyā€™ve all seen me. Okay, fine, Iā€™ve got the wandering horde thing turned on so this kind of thing happens occasionally. The map only shows one of the green Z horde markers anywhere near me though so itā€™s weird that the horde is this big. I groan, grab my bow, step outside and slog through them for 15 minutes IRL taking very little damage and losing all my arrows but I get the job done and pulp all the corpses. Check the map, no horde Zs. All is well.

I go back inside and realise that now the north door is broken because of that dick fat zombie and I have no construction skill to make a new one. So I start planning out how to increase my construction without books and start doing some other stuff, then about an in game hour later while Iā€™m walking around I happen to pass by the broken door and ā€œSafe mode, you see a Grabber Zombieā€ its pretty close and Iā€™ve got nothing to fear from a lone grabber so I walk up to it and guess whatā€¦ ā€œSafe Mode: You see a x Zombieā€ times, like, 50. Still no horde markers on the map. This time theyā€™ve got a brute with them and Iā€™m out of arrows (no time to craft any since they are right outside) so itā€™s a bit harder but again, kill pulp, back inside. Long story a bit shorter I pass by the door an hour while later and it happens again! I repaired my clothes and crafted some more arrows after the last fight so I could kill them all but I donā€™t want to spend another half hour doing nothing but trivial combat! What the hell is going on! Why are there seemingly permanently massive hordes of zombies outside my base!? Iā€™ve got so much stuff in there and some of it is way to heavy to move without a vehicle like anvils and whatnot. Abandoning all that stuff would set me back so far!

So if anyone knows why my previously secure home base suddenly looks like a zombie music festival, please halp :frowning:
A fast way to increase my construction without reading material would be helpful too, since if I can block off the door and they canā€™t see me I might be able to try and just weather the storm. I have plenty of reading and tasks to get on with and I could probably sneak out of the south door at night if I had to.

Edit: Oh, and Iā€™m playing the 0.B stable.

2

Hordes are lured to your position by noise.

They are not yet totaly fleshed out so activate the wandering spawns with caution.
Its a feature still in development afaik.

3

I know they are attracted by noise but Iā€™m not making any :frowning: One of my mutations is canine ears so I have extra good hearing and Iā€™m still not making any sound above 6 volume.

4

You don`t have to kill everything, you can just wait for them to pass by. Shut the windows or go underground, light a fireplace and read a book.

5

Iā€™ve boarded up the windows and shut all the doors but the space where the destroyed door is I canā€™t fix. And I thought surface time doesnā€™t pass while youā€™re underground.

Edit: Also, having everything shut and boarded up didnā€™t help the first time so I donā€™t see why it would now. That first fat zombie couldnā€™t see me but he Cool-Aid-Guyā€™d his way through the door anyway.

6

Yes it does.

7

Really? Ah, well problem solved then :smiley: I probably got that impression from reading outdated posts. Iā€™d still kind of like to know why the local zombie population suddenly exploded like that despite me doing nothing noisy and having a silent combat style but at least I can wait it out underground for now. Thanks :slight_smile:

8

Some things on the surface get paused while you are on a different level (like fire) but many things (like hordes, and we are constantly trying to add more things to this list) will keep moving like normal.

9

Well, hordes are not static! They constantly move though the terrain, looking for meat and love. Like we all do. Sighs.

Wait wat

10

Even walking generates a low amount of noise, if you did any construction work that also probably helped to lure them in as I think that creates some pretty good amounts of noise.

11

I know walking does. At least, I do now. Thatā€™s actually something I learned recently after getting the doggie ears. Having enhanced hearing has been really informative for noise related stuff. Crafting though I am curious about. How loud is crafting stuff? Are some recipes louder than others? For the first incident I was only making scrambled eggs XD. If that makes the same noise as hammering out steel arrows thems some noisy eggs.

12

I believe this game runs on a sort of Director like in Left 4 Dead (though Iā€™m not a 100% sure, thatā€™s just what I heard) and if you have static spawns turned off (Wandering hordes breaks static spawns from experience) the Director will spawn zombies and move hordes according to noise and randomness. It could be just that the Director is shitting on you, but it would be nice if you could put some photographic evidence in here so we know what weā€™re dealing with.

13

http://www.anony.ws/image/DFXg

Ask and you shall receive.

As you can see, this shit is irradiated bananas. The list goes off the screen and its getting fairly dark so thereā€™s probably more outside the view range I canā€™t see. Thereā€™s a couple of horde 'Zā€™s on the map but none within 3 or 4 tiles of me. You can see all the meat from the corpses of the last 2 waves. (Yes I butchered most of them. I know itā€™s fairly pointless but survival is useful and I canā€™t resist all that free skill levelling). Also the casings in the top right are not from recent gunshots, theyā€™ve been there for days if not weeks.

14

[quote=ā€œEditorRUS, post:995, topic:339ā€]

Just my usual first day in Cataclysm.[/quote]

They are attracted by ANY noise in huge amounts.

15

[quote=ā€œPowersteve, post:13, topic:8108ā€]http://www.anony.ws/image/DFXg

Ask and you shall receive.

As you can see, this shit is irradiated bananas. The list goes off the screen and its getting fairly dark so thereā€™s probably more outside the view range I canā€™t see. Thereā€™s a couple of horde 'Zā€™s on the map but none within 3 or 4 tiles of me. You can see all the meat from the corpses of the last 2 waves. (Yes I butchered most of them. I know itā€™s fairly pointless but survival is useful and I canā€™t resist all that free skill levelling). Also the casings in the top right are not from recent gunshots, theyā€™ve been there for days if not weeks.[/quote]

Perhaps a few wandering zombies triggered a trap which in turn brought a horde over, and they triggered a trap and that alerted more. Did any of the mines go kablooey?

16

I donā€™t think so but itā€™s entirely possible one did and I just didnā€™t notice. I suppose maybe touching landmines is a good idea but only if you are a zombie and want to call for reinforcements.

17

be zombie
want more friends
knock on wall
next day, many friends arrive
yfw

18

something steped on mine maybe when you was away but reality bubble still had minefield

make new base somewhere and use night to hide you from eyes of horde