Zombie hordes and breeders

[youtoo]

I know we have static spawns, but I tihnk we can enhance this to make the later game more challenging. the early game is pretty hard, but once you get going, you can get seriously tough to hurt.

1. ADOM has a concept of a breeder where some mobs can summon other mobs. and you can literally have massive amounts of mobs. A zombie necromancer is sort of a like a breeder. how about some mob types that can spawn or ‘call’ other types? so you literally get surrounded with 50-100 mobs? this should be coded to come in later in the game.

2. Zombie Hordes: Zombies can attract other zombies. so they mass together. you can also have zombies travel en masse through the woods (like in walking dead)., you can wake up one morning with 100 zombies outside your shelter. this makes it more urgent to build protection and traps around the shelter.

3 .have zombies spawn in the woods. ok we can keep static spawns, but as the game goes on and we get stronger have the game react by throwning nastier scenarios at us.

[Samscale1]

I like the idea of having forest zombies, just rarer than in cities I assume?

Hordes is a neat idea, though it could be tough on newly created survivors if they get attacked by a hoard after 2 or 3 days. It’d have to have some kind of timer (maybe a week) before hoards started to spawn.

Wouldn’t a screamer be like a caller? It creates noise that draws the zombies towards it. And 50-100 seems a little excessive. Though I can see it working again it would be tough for the new characters. (Perhaps zombies could evolve over time into the callers?

[Belteshazzar]

I imagine that by the mid to late game zombies in any number or organization (short of them acquiring a proficiency in firearms, driving and martial arts) would cease to be a considerable threat. Maybe cultists, mad scientists or other monsters using or controlling zombies as fodder with some tactics but even then, the zombies become more like projectiles, expendable ammunition for something else.

Reality itself is breaking down in Cataclysmic New England, and the zombie plague is only an early symptom of this. The acid rains, fungaloids, triffids and even more obscure horrors are signs that well after boom population of ‘dead dudes walking’ are disposed of survivors are going to be looking at an entirely alien and shifting ecosystem. An ecosystem for which humans are laughably uprepared.

To me the zombies represent only the ‘first wave’ of this ecosystem, and thus need little upgrading to maintain an appropriate threat level. Sure there should be some ways for massed zombies to still appear on occasion as a throwback to the early days (perhaps the aforementioned mad scientists, cultists and necromancers) but I’m confident that a more engaging game stems from ‘what new horrors will the next day hold’ approach than ‘ah, yes… more of those fuckers’.

[TheGrifter]

I’d love for more Things to spawn. I mean, that sort of mob could be quite contagious. You find a deer. You go to hunt it, you shoot, it’s a Thing. Good luck. And everything else in the forest is also a Thing.

[Tee]

I think a much larger concentration of zeds should spawn right at the city centers, and then have like 75% of them go into a ‘roaming’ mode, where they pick a random direction and start slowly walking that way. Each 6 hours, they’d change direction randomly. Gunshots have a 25% chance of drawing in any zamboibonis within 15 map tiles. This way, you could set off a huge explosion on one side of town to draw the entire zomboid population over to that side, allowing you to loot the other side. Plus, gunshots would have the added problem of hundreds of zeds showing up about an hour or so after the shot’s fired.

[vache]

The big problem is there are no zombies with ranged attacks except for spitters and shockers (and possibly boomers?), so that as long as you make sure you’re faster than the zombies, you are practically indestructible. The only way they pose ANY sort of real threat is if they surround you, or catch you off guard somehow. There are few zombies that are faster than you, and zombie dogs are annoying enough, but easily countered with basic ranged ability. Maybe instead of, or in addition to, the horde, either master zombies or a new zombie type spawns with them that increases the speed of any zombies nearby by 10-20%. This makes all the zombies a much more potent threat and forces either a massive showdown, a hasty retreat, or a precision attack against the master zombie.

[Tee]

Maybe have zombies carrying things (Ive come across several with wrenches and hammers) and they start lobbing stuff at you. A few ‘thrower zombies’ that grab items they walk near and chuck them at you.

[vache]

Also, if the zombies are just blobs mind controlling people shouldn’t they have the ability to use weapons that cops and soldiers would have been carrying when they died?

[Bladerock]

There’s an interdimensional crisis dragging horrors beyond our imagination into our reality. And people just want more zombies…

[pingpong]

If I recall correctly, there are plans for more spawners, where maybe there’s like 3-5 spawners in an area, and until you kill the spawner or all the associated creatures, more of them will spawn. Eventually after wiping out one of the mobs, another one would spawn. Only annoyance to that is there probably isn’t a permanent murder solution, even traps need to be replaced currently, so it’d get tedious being swarmed by everything eventually, with the only solution being to keep roaming, or have some impenetrable walls or walls monsters can’t get past or aggro through.

[Samscale1]

If I recall correctly, there are plans for more spawners, where maybe there's like 3-5 spawners in an area, and until you kill the spawner or all the associated creatures

That sounds waaay to minecrafty…

new zombie type spawns with them that increases the speed of any zombies nearby by 10-20%

Ringleader zombie? Can draw zombies towards it and boosts their speed and attack

[Endovior]

The trick, then, is that ‘surrounded’ aspect, right? Maybe Master Zombies and such could project better AI at their minions? The thought that comes to mind is something like the Brain from Deadly Rooms of Death… which though otherwise fairly harmless, turns mindless and easily-defeated enemies into a deadly threat. Consider the idea of a Master Zombie, with senses better than your own, sneaking around beyond your vision, rounding up mobs of lesser zombies, following your scent trail, tracking you back to your safehouse, maybe even waiting for you to sleep… and then suddenly you’re awakened by a siege in the darkness, and have to fight or run… and if it looks like you’re winning, the Master is already in retreat, looking for another horde to gather.

Having zombies that are actually able to track you by scent like that, perhaps like in Rogue Survivor, would do a lot to keep them threatening, since it’d be harder to run away (they keep coming, and don’t stop to rest), and since they’d be able to attack you while you’re vulnerable.