PC Ammo consumption, crafting vs buying

[Tahaan]

How much ammo do you use and what style do you play? 

Clearly ammo consumption will be super low if you play melee or use mostly explosives.

The question stems from some comments from people stating that they hardly ever craft and just use what they find and can buy from the trader.  I never find the trader selling more than about 100 to 200 rounds of any one kind.

With 7.62 being the staple of my ammo, if I am very lucky I can find 200 each of plain, hollow point and armor piercing at each of the traders.  With 8 traders (my current map) that gives me 1800 rounds, not even close to enough for a blood moon horde (My traders also reset once per bloodmoon).  I nearly never find any HP and AP in loot, and I spend around 70% of what I find looting during the week.  So I take the rest home - and that is probably around 10-20 rounds of each type per day out looting.

At GS 350 I seem to use on average 3 to 4 rounds per zombie and kill around 1200-1500 on a single blood moon. (While looting I spend much less because nearly every shot is a headshot)

So depending on how well I fare on a specific BM that gives me something in the range from 4000 and 7000 rounds spent.

You might call me super in-efficient with ammo.  I definitely have some moments of wild shooting where half the rounds go off into the air and very few land head-shots.  (I play Run-and-gun, and my base is more accurately described as an arena where I survice by running around and gunning them down).

So how do you manage to get by on only the ammo you find in loot and from traders, and without crafting?  Perhaps I need to work on my efficiency but even if I half my spent, which I can't really imagine, I still wont get enough from traders and looting alone.

I could probably try to use some form of killing corridor to lower my ammo requirement, but that's not fun for me.

 

[Dethar]

7.62 is usually saved for hoard night. Pistol and shotgun more day to day, but still mostly melee into midgame.

Usually spend most of my duked on ammo, and craft if I have too.

 

[Tahaan]

7.62 is usually saved for hoard night. Pistol and shotgun more day to day, but still mostly melee into midgame.

Usually spend most of my duked on ammo, and craft if I have too.

So how much do you actually manage to find at traders and how much do you need for a horde night?

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Buying ammo is very inefficient. I don't have the exact numbers here, but from how many dukes one bullet from the trader costs, you can craft 3 or even 4 bullets if you melt the same dukes.

The only reason to buy ammo would be time saving. But as you already noticed, the traders only offer very limited amounts, so the time saving aspect doesn't fit too.

I can't tell how many ammo we use during a bloodmoon. It hardly depends on what gamestage you are and what weapons you are using.

Last time i played and on bloodmoon around day 100 (don't know the gamestage) we used approximately 1500 7,62mm with AK, 300 AP 7,62 with M60 (for the demolishers), 1000 9mm and 300 .45 plus 1500 for junk turrets and like 20 grenades and molotows each.

 

[SonicSonedit]

In A19, we played on max difficulty and never had any ammo problems, without crafting them even once. And there was 4 of us.

You get more than enough from quests / chest loots at the end of the dungeon. Just take fetch or fetch/clear quest and rush it, easy ammo / guns / anything

By day 50 we had almost 15k unused 9mm ammo, since none of us used SMG. Mind that only 1 of us used AK, we used autisniper + shotguns / (auto)sniper + revolver / ak / and last gal was using bows + melee

 

[Dethar]

So how much do you actually manage to find at traders and how much do you need for a horde night?

Well I only play vanilla during experimental, and since A17 overhauls start releasing in about 2 weeks. Vanilla is just to easy and boring after week of experimental dropping. So think there is more ammo in mods, especially lootable store shelves modlet I use.

I usually dont have to craft any ammo till maybe day 21 horde, and mostly just 7.62. Guess typically have 2k 7.62 for horde night. 

 

[canadianbluebeer]

I don't buy ammo except very early on.  Better to mine the resources and craft my own.

(generally you get more brass casings from the dukes than buying the ammo)

Some of the specialty ammo though... maybe.

I always try to aim for 10k min for horde. (just in case)

 

[Lemmers]

I main the baseball bat in A18 and ideally clear POIs without firing a shot. I perked heavily into looting find tons of ammo everywhere. Early game I have a hunting rifle for birds, dogs, big enemies and keep an AK for when I'm absolutely surrounded. Once I get a marksman rifle I put an extended magazine on it and ditch the AK as it becomes redundant.

Horde nights I hide on the side of a tall POI and focus on head shots with long rifles so I don't go through much ammo at all. Maybe 500-600 rounds max. A teammate likes having an SMG turret going all night so he crafts tons of ammo for it on top of what I already bring back to share. He probably shoots 5k or more brass every horde night, not counting junk turret ammo. It destroys all the weaker enemies while I focus fire on the big guys. Another teammate uses the shotgun and .44 mainly because we find so much ammo for both during the week that nobody else uses, so it all works out.

If I'm a little short on ammo before a horde night I just buy 7.62 ammo from traders. I always sell loot so I'm drowning in Dukes anyway. But if I'm playing SP I bring different weapons to use the random ammo types I find during the week.

 

[Ti2xGr]

How do we manage? We adjusted the XML's. We hate grinding for ammo. We bumped up the treasure maps to give crazy amounts of ammo, and bumped up how much is sold in traders of standard ammo as well as upping the loot count a bit. We do have it balanced to the extra zombies we added. On our map, if you go out looting, you're relatively guaranteed to get a bit more ammo than you left with. If you go looting six days in a row, you're pretty much guaranteed to have enough ammo for bloodmoon without having to grind. Mind you, if you want the AP or HP ammo types, you're going to have to craft or spend some dukes. 

 

[TheRani]

Playing single-player, I start out each horde night using up any explosives and molotovs I have (I like to wrench cars and craft molotovs early on), and then switch to using whatever 7.62s I have looted once those run out.   Then I switch to pistol or SMG until the end of the horde.   At the point where I switch to 7.62s, I also down any recog I have looted, which makes me one-shot most zombies while it lasts, so it takes less bullets per kill.  I buy 9 mm ammo whenever the traders have it, and I also buy any bullet casings, bullet tips, and gunpowder they have, and I use that stuff to craft additional 9 mm ammo.  I try to use ammo sparingly, going for headshots when I can.   I haven't run out of bullets yet.   If my ammo supplies start getting low, I like to raid places that have lots of coffins (big church, graveyards, funeral homes, etc.).  I usually end up leaving those places with way more ammo than I arrived with.

 

[kuratowakiru]

I main knife and pistol for looting, machine gun/ak for horde night. on day 50 ish, I have about 2k 9mm and 1k (spent 1k already on horde nights) 7.62 I remember things wrong, I bring 1-2k of each ammo types, got about 6-7k ammo each type from lootings. All from looting, if you don't daka daka spam, you should have no issue with ammo, hs do wonders (setup electric fence or barbwire to slow them down for hs). Traps on horde night also help with ammo consumption, once you get a tree farm up, it free wood spikes. I do craft AP ammo but I haven't use them much...yet.

 

[Sawth77]

On my current playthrough (map name Umbral Instability), i'm doing a str/fort build using the sledge.  I keep an AK on my toolbar, and with just 1 point into LL, i find a decent amount of ammo.  I typically don't buy ammo from the trader, and there's enough nodes in almost any game i've played where making ammo later on won't be a problem.  Might come down to some RNG, but i've never really felt like i was at a disadvantage simply by searching for it in containers.  Animals, or even wights, i'll shoot.  Most other things get the hammer (unless i'm being lazy and just gun them down lol)

 

[hiemfire]

Looking over the discussion here I find myself wondering how many that are having bad ammo loot rng haven't gotten Lucky Looter vol 2 (either through looting or purchasing) and how many of those who are having decent - good ammo loot rng have. The Lucky Looter and Wasteland Treasures Perk mags do have an effect in what you find/salvage.

 

[Darthjake]

Ammo loot is okay for early game, imo, but mid to late game my buddies and I have a huge production line going, ala Mines of Moria, deep under a mountain..  We craft thousands of rounds and pardon the pun, hoard it for day 7.

We usually build a merry go round mouse trap that utilizes iron spikes to encourage the z's to follow the path we want them to go, so they encounter the blade and dart traps while slogging through barbed wire.

We'll finish off the radiated or feral that are damaging the base too badly, and save our ammo to snipe cops, vultures, and spiders.  (Vulture/pukers take a good portion of ammo if we're not careful).

 

[canadianbluebeer]

For early ammo,  check the graves around the church. 

Seems the ammo was buried there. Lots of it.

brass is always the issue early on for making bullets. Late game?

smelting dukes.

 

[Darthjake]

For early ammo,  check the graves around the church. 

Seems the ammo was buried there. Lots of it.

brass is always the issue early on for making bullets. Late game?

smelting dukes.

I try not to break doors down until I get the book for doorknobs.  And once I clear a POI, I break the inside heaters for the radiators, along with all the A/C units.   Fetch quests area boon because you can strip the POI, and then do it again when you activate the quest marker as long as your loot box is outside of the respawn area.

 

[Boidster]

We run three forges , a chem station, and two workbenches crafting 7.62 and 9mm throughout the week, with coal, nitrate, and lead mines scattered around near the base. 2000 7.62 and 1000 9mm by horde night is the goal. We tend to blow through it. Possibly we are not good shots.

I did write a modlet that adds radiators to refrigerators and Ice Cold Drink coolers because brass was a significant limiting factor. Still haven't found the brass-from-doors book yet, dangit.

 

[Scyris]

I use melee (sledge or club, I also spec in shotguns), and bows/crossbows for most things like poi clearing, only pulling out a gun if there is a massive amount of runners in the room, or its horde night. Compound crossbow with some archery+stealth perks and a bandolier mod is a vastly underrated tool of zombie death. It reloads in less than a second with decent archery+the bandolier mod, and hits hard enough and quiet enough you can one shot male feral zombies and greatly hurt radiated ones on a sneak headshot. Once you get some of the books its better, there is one book where if you shoot one in the leg it cripples it for a long time, got a runner on your @%$*#! or several? Shoot them in the leg and reduce them to walking speed. Nice thing about bow/crossbow is you can often get the ammo back, and it looks cool looking at the arrows sticking out of the body so you can admire your handiwork/aim.

Shotguns are vastly underrated as well, if you do the math you would find that next to the rocket launcher nothing else can match a shotguns per shot damage. High skill and a modded pump shotty you can body shot 285 hp male ferals without a sneak attack, or very close to it. Only downside is be VERY careful with it, I used shotgun once for a horde night and dug a 10x2 deep hole I had to fill in from stray pellets. It also demolishes wood, so watch it around bookshelves cuz 1 shot with a few pellets hitting the shelf will destroy it. I rarely use silencers on guns myself as they just don't do enough to warrant the downsides. Most guns are way to loud even with a silencer that there is no point in taking the damage/effective range debuff to use it. Hell some guns are bugged and get LOUDER when you use a silencer for some reason. I am going to love the crap out of the new auto shotgun, as long as they don't do something stupid, like give it less damage than the pump shotgun. Only issue I had with the pump shotty was the low clip size. Though the +clipsize mod in a18 alleivated that somewhat.

By the time horde night hits I usually have several stacks of 9mm and 7.62mm ammo from looting, so I don't really need to craft any, but that doesn't mean I don't. I'd rather have too much ammo than not enough ammo.

For poi clearing I usually use a melee weapon (club or sledge), and have a shotgun and a gun with better range on my bar like the ak47 or m60 or a compound crossbow for sneak attacks as well. I do not like any of the perception guns, way too low clip size, and when you have a pack of zombies chasing you, dps is what you need as your often not going to have time to aim proper headshots if your being chased by a bunch of ferals or radiated.

I am intersted in the new a19 top tier pistol, I hope it uses 9mm rounds, might be worth using if it does.

We run three forges , a chem station, and two workbenches crafting 7.62 and 9mm throughout the week, with coal, nitrate, and lead mines scattered around near the base. 2000 7.62 and 1000 9mm by horde night is the goal. We tend to blow through it. Possibly we are not good shots.

I did write a modlet that adds radiators to refrigerators and Ice Cold Drink coolers because brass was a significant limiting factor. Still haven't found the brass-from-doors book yet, dangit.

Well remember, each player you add pretty much doubles the zombies that can come at you at once, as well as ups the gamestage making them much harder than if you were solo. Default setting is 8 (I think), with a party of 4, thats 32 zombies your going to have rushing your base at once. Ammo costs are insane if you only have 1 person supplying it, if each player had their own little base and each had their own production it'd not be as bad I think.

Also a tip: DO QUESTS, each time you activate a quest it resets a poi, and most of the house-style pois have those radiators, that you can wrench or pickaxe for a brass radiator, a 2 floor house often has more than 5 of these in it, with some tier 3 houses having upwards of 10. Thats a ton of brass. They respawn when you activate the quest as well. so... yeah. Farming them will be even easier in A19! because iirc the quest menu now is going to have multiple pages with quests avail for every tier you unlocked. So you'll always have some t1-3 quests you can do to farm radiators and such from. I'd just go into them in a team all using melee weapons or compound crossbows.

 

[canadianbluebeer]

I try not to break doors down until I get the book for doorknobs.  And once I clear a POI, I break the inside heaters for the radiators, along with all the A/C units.   Fetch quests area boon because you can strip the POI, and then do it again when you activate the quest marker as long as your loot box is outside of the respawn area.

I leave the doors for the same reason.  Amusing to then run about, harvest all the doors from cleared poi, and come back with 100 doorknobs.

We run three forges , a chem station, and two workbenches crafting 7.62 and 9mm throughout the week, with coal, nitrate, and lead mines scattered around near the base. 2000 7.62 and 1000 9mm by horde night is the goal. We tend to blow through it. Possibly we are not good shots.

I did write a modlet that adds radiators to refrigerators and Ice Cold Drink coolers because brass was a significant limiting factor. Still haven't found the brass-from-doors book yet, dangit.

(bold/underlined)  chuckle.  possibly.

Fire discipline. 

 

[Darthjake]

I leave the doors for the same reason.  Amusing to then run about, harvest all the doors from cleared poi, and come back with 100 doorknobs.

(bold/underlined)  chuckle.  possibly.

Fire discipline. 

Yeah, come back drop the doorknobs in the workbench and just walk away man, walk away.

My fire discipline on horde night is not the best, but if you can channel them.  Or make them go through barbed wire it's better.  I was thinking about laying water for them to walk through, but with the vids on A19, they may go through that faster now.  I'll have to test that.