PC Advice for Higher Level Blood Moons - Base/Defense? Alpha 19 (b180)

[HungryZombie]

Don't build at all. Take all your 7.62 ammo and some bandages and just stay around in an open field. Works fine, no repairs needed. 

Demos are overpowered and since the 5,000 damage was MMs idea, it's probably not gonna be adjusted. 

Alternatively, there is some cheese (door stilts...) and semi cheese (kill corridor) designs. Unfortunately regular bases are pretty much pointless... 

You can but that's no fun. I like building a defense and daring the zombies to 'come get me' 

 

[Teacyn]

There is another option. Build a 5x5 or better 7x7 tower completely out of steel. This should also withstand demolishers until the morning. But you need to have a decent steel production to build and maintain something like this.

This does also work but uses so much steel that from my experience, by the time you can make this kind of structure semi-reliably you're probably just about out of things to do in the game.

 

[Tohskrad]

Do none of you have points in Advanced Engineering ? All schematics needed for base building can be found under this one skill.

It looks like at least 1 person has it maxed and a few other are putting points in it now. Early on the focus was on vehicles more so than base defense, since we thought we could fortify ourselves in and survive.   (My character is more of a resource gatherer/survivor *Mostly Strength/Some Health build* to minimize food/water use, farm fast and built for sledgehammers/shotguns usage.  Early on we were desperately struggling for food, so this made the most sense to get our farm and materials in order.)    We're going to start working on some of the kill bases, although it sounds like one of our older bases (silo) may be usable again as the zombie AI and current mapping causes them to be confused.  We are only just now beginning to use some of the steel recipes (Day 140 or so), materials are always in short supply and take awhile to farm.  

 

[Hellsmoke]

I've had horde night turned off since early Alpha 18. Jail doors have been removed, spikes have been removed, polished steel has been removed, under ground is no longer an option and the super strength zombies chew pretty much through everything else within seconds. Toothy and similar bases are pointless now. Solar panels are not obtainable unless you get the highest barter skill and even if you manage to pay the ridiculous price for them, the vultures will tear them down in no time so if you go the electronics route, be prepared to grind for gas and tons of parts for repairs.

Later at higher game stages the vultures with exploding puke will ensure you have to repair EVERY SINGLE BLOCK on your base after every horde night, even blocks that are hidden 2-3 blocks BEHIND others where you'll never get to in order to repair them. That was a bit frustrating to say the least..at which point I thought "you win" and turned off the horde all together.

All creativity has been stripped  from building now, it's cheese or suffer. I thought about just making a cheese base back then but I later figured I might as well turn off horde all together. This might be another reason I choose not even to try alpha 19 and am waiting on improvements.

Hope some of these methods help you, I am a "veteran player" and I don't understand them lol but maybe you will.

 

[meganoth]

It looks like at least 1 person has it maxed and a few other are putting points in it now. Early on the focus was on vehicles more so than base defense, since we thought we could fortify ourselves in and survive.   (My character is more of a resource gatherer/survivor *Mostly Strength/Some Health build* to minimize food/water use, farm fast and built for sledgehammers/shotguns usage.  Early on we were desperately struggling for food, so this made the most sense to get our farm and materials in order.)    We're going to start working on some of the kill bases, although it sounds like one of our older bases (silo) may be usable again as the zombie AI and current mapping causes them to be confused.  We are only just now beginning to use some of the steel recipes (Day 140 or so), materials are always in short supply and take awhile to farm.  

I assume as STR resource gatherer you have motherlode maxed out and mine in some nights? One never has enough naturally, but a few nights of mining in an iron mine should provide heaps of steel, even if only one in your group is mining.

 

[meganoth]

Asked our current miner. He usually mines only 3 hours a night, often uses candy with blackstrap coffee, has q5 auger with iron breaker and stone mods. In such a night he gets about 60k to 70k iron, plus sand, stone, diamonds.

Could someone post how many iron is needed for a steel bar? And how many steel bars for a steel block?

 

[RipClaw]

Could someone post how many iron is needed for a steel bar? And how many steel bars for a steel block?

A steel bar cost 20 iron and 10 clay. Upgrading a concrete block to steel costs 10 steel.

With 60k iron you can upgrade 300 blocks.

What you have to keep in mind when producing steel is that it is a slow process. Therefore it is preferable to spread the load over several forges.
I usually reserve 3 forges for steel production when I build a base.

 

[Rod064]

Because of reasons, outrunning the horde with a vehicle is strictly forbidden, frowned upon, called cheating etc.

But outrunning the horde on foot however is perfectly fine, at least for the moment.

Yeah... That may be your opinion, but the tactic works pretty well as I use it myself quite a bit.  It is NOT cheating.  It is using all the tools at your disposal except cheating to survive. Cheating is using god mode or other items off of the developer menu and using a vehicle does neither. There is a reason that vehicles were added to the game, and it is not just for going from one point to another.

 

[Scyris]

Make a base like this, it works in a mod called darkness falls that has a worse horde night on day 7 than vanilla does at day 70+ It works in this mod and in this mod the zombies come from 22:00 till 4am non-stop. Give it a try. p.s. the bunker is 5x5 with 4 block height, the catwalk is 13 blocks long. then 2 more after that which you attach 2 blocks to the side then the stairs. You don't need the double bars, and u can also move the electric fence pole colums out farther, as for the log spikes, you can replace those with normal spikes in vanillla, they are used more to keep the zombies away from hitting those poles than doing damage to them. As the AI Avoids traps. Only downside to the base its a gun heavy base, you can't really drop bombs on them etc unless its exploding bolts. The blue blocks are from the mod, its titanium a tier above steel. By this base should work in vanilla as steel/stainless steel, and the log spikes swapped to spikes.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

We play on survivalist now and i  again highly recommend someone specs into demo. We have an electric fence where they get stuck, i use a contact grenade on demolishers followed by a frag rocket wich kills them when you use atom junkies. Very importnant: Everyone else stops shooting when a demo shows up so the button doesn´t get triggered by accident. Works like a charm. We hardly ever have a demo exploding.  Add in some dart traps and it´s even easier. The base design can vary as long as you have an electric fence where they get stuck.

 

[Scyris]

We play on survivalist now and i  again highly recommend someone specs into demo. We have an electric fence where they get stuck, i use a contact grenade on demolishers followed by a frag rocket wich kills them when you use atom junkies. Very importnant: Everyone else stops shooting when a demo shows up so the button doesn´t get triggered by accident. Works like a charm. We hardly ever have a demo exploding.  Add in some dart traps and it´s even easier. The base design can vary as long as you have an electric fence where they get stuck.

People really underestimate how good the electric fence poles are. The stun is amazging on horde night, for 2 reasons: 1: it stops them from hitting your base, and 2: when shocked their heads are ALWAYS in the same position, so once you learn this position you can aim for headshots and just wait for them to be stunned then BOOM. I just wise they didn't break so fast, they lose durability with each zombie stunned, (can stun about 300 before it will disable itself) Though in vanilla this may not be a problem with how you can finish horde night by midnight usually.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Scyris Midnight? Meh, nope. Not in MP. Day 35, 90mins, they came all night long. Those fence poles look very exposed on your screenshot. Don´t they get destroyed by cop puke?

 

[HungryZombie]

Make a base like this, it works in a mod called darkness falls that has a worse horde night on day 7 than vanilla does at day 70+ It works in this mod and in this mod the zombies come from 22:00 till 4am non-stop. Give it a try. p.s. the bunker is 5x5 with 4 block height, the catwalk is 13 blocks long. then 2 more after that which you attach 2 blocks to the side then the stairs. You don't need the double bars, and u can also move the electric fence pole colums out farther, as for the log spikes, you can replace those with normal spikes in vanillla, they are used more to keep the zombies away from hitting those poles than doing damage to them. As the AI Avoids traps. Only downside to the base its a gun heavy base, you can't really drop bombs on them etc unless its exploding bolts. The blue blocks are from the mod, its titanium a tier above steel. By this base should work in vanilla as steel/stainless steel, and the log spikes swapped to spikes.

View attachment 15767

How do you get this setup by day 7 hordenight?

 

[Fox]

You guys try way too hard to defend against zombies, which in the end just leaves you vulnerable for a long time until you finally get set up, which leaves you committed, and what if it doesn't work out in the end?

I've been sticking with my simple 5x5 tower base with 7+ layers of metal spikes and 1 or 2 layers of barbed wire since around Alpha 1-ish and it has yet to fail me. I also run electrical fencing around it mainly for the spider zombies that manage to jump over the spikes. Even those suicide bomber zombies can't penetrate my defenses, yet it costs so little to create. I have the base raised by 2 blocks before the floor and it's completely solid concrete, so even if by chance the zombies break through the wall, they still can't get inside the base and it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. 

I've said it before and the devs kept telling me my base design would only work for so long... but they're wrong because I'm still able to use it and feel like it's the most efficient base to build.

I was considering putting a draw bridge instead of a jump gap, but that's far too ugly and expensive for nothing. And yes, I do plan on putting more blade traps near the stairs... but it already works great as is, so I'm in no hurry at all to make improvements.

Something I have yet to try out is waiting out the blood moon in a gyrocopter. Just fly around until it's over. Or if you're a jerk... fly over top of someone's base and have your zombies attack them.

 

[Scyris]

How do you get this setup by day 7 hordenight?

90 min days, making it out of cobblestone/cement works too for early hordes. only real damage will be the bars.

@Scyris Midnight? Meh, nope. Not in MP. Day 35, 90mins, they came all night long. Those fence poles look very exposed on your screenshot. Don´t they get destroyed by cop puke?

Sometimes, but they are more just to delay than anything critical only time they get hit really is if a cop reallllly screws his aim lol. I finish most horde nights with the poles intact, but disabled from their self damage for shocking thing.

You guys try way too hard to defend against zombies, which in the end just leaves you vulnerable for a long time until you finally get set up, which leaves you committed, and what if it doesn't work out in the end?

I've been sticking with my simple 5x5 tower base with 7+ layers of metal spikes and 1 or 2 layers of barbed wire since around Alpha 1-ish and it has yet to fail me. I also run electrical fencing around it mainly for the spider zombies that manage to jump over the spikes. Even those suicide bomber zombies can't penetrate my defenses, yet it costs so little to create. I have the base raised by 2 blocks before the floor and it's completely solid concrete, so even if by chance the zombies break through the wall, they still can't get inside the base and it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. 

I've said it before and the devs kept telling me my base design would only work for so long... but they're wrong because I'm still able to use it and feel like it's the most efficient base to build.





I was considering putting a draw bridge instead of a jump gap, but that's far too ugly and expensive for nothing. And yes, I do plan on putting more blade traps near the stairs... but it already works great as is, so I'm in no hurry at all to make improvements.

Something I have yet to try out is waiting out the blood moon in a gyrocopter. Just fly around until it's over. Or if you're a jerk... fly over top of someone's base and have your zombies attack them.

Honestly though vanilla horde nights are kinda a joke you don't need much to win them. The only real threat to bases ever is demolishers, the rest honestly won't do much in a well built base.

The mod I play has radiated zombies coming at you on the day 7 horde on 90 min days on nomad, and if its not radiated its feral minimum. Day 14  or the 21 horde I had a few demolishers come in the waves. They aren't that hard to handle just don't use turrets and have good aim, or detonate them away from base if u can.

For the first 2 vanilla hordes I don't even build a base, I just find a poi where its at least cobble stone, and block off 3 of the 4 blocks of the entrance, which has the zombies focus on the one with the empty space, and I just melee the zombies to death while repairing that single block thats seperating me from them. I've never gotten super far in vanilla though, because quite frankly the game bores me by day 7 or 14, there just is not enough to do in the game thats actually intersting. I've experienced high lv vanilla horde nights thru the mod I play, as its day 14 horde is like a day 70-100+ horde in vanilla. Once your established in vanilla there is literally nothing else to keep playing for. Compared to darkness falls, where there is 2 weapon tiers (Titanium and sci-fi) above the normal and a whole titanium tier for blocks and armor etc, Plus the stat system was tossed in the trash where it belongs and he has a class system with each class having special recipes, and they have a mastery too which u can loot, buy off a special trader, or do enough quests to gain 30 trader reputation then he'll offer to sell it to you. Gives endgame goals, something vanilla sorely lacks.

I'm just getting tired of TFP removing choice from the player, every alpha takes something away and add's nothing back, First was digging zombies, then the vultures and swimming zombies, and in A20 they are going to screw with vehicle offroading (was supposed to be in a19 but was pushed back to A20+), removing yet more choice from the player.

 

[Crater Creator]

I've said it before and the devs kept telling me my base design would only work for so long... but they're wrong because I'm still able to use it and feel like it's the most efficient base to build.

Hmm.  'On paper', it looks like you'd have difficulties with that defense.

1. Don't the first zombies destroy a spike somewhere early on, and then all the rest of them move to that area where the path in is shorter?  In other words, this looks like a layout where the chain is only as strong as its weakest link.  In fact the more I think about it, having to cover all 360°, with the number of spikes required going up with the square of your protection depth, doesn't seem efficient at all.
   
2. Isn't it a pain (literally ) to maintain that huge spike field?  It's too deep to reach every spike in the middle that need repairs, like if they get spat on or a spider jumps on them.  Maybe you can just lay a row of wooden frames over the spikes for access - I haven't seen if you can build on top of spikes.
   

 

[Ezed]

Don't have too many screenshots but this worked good for me.  Hope you can make out the principle.  

Rather than building up, I dig down...keeps the zombies always at ground level so even if I miss, there's a good chance I'm hitting something behind.  Outer walls prevent cops from spitting until they appear in the doorway, and my sights.  Ditches around all the walls prevent zombies from beating on them and instead they path to the doorways, and into my sights.

Inside. each of the four sides are the same...catwalks leading to the cage with hatches to control which way they come at me.  Has sustained (once upgraded to steel) 3 demo's exploding (my bad and also the penetrator perk  ) at which time I closed that route and opened another one.  Electric fence wire runs vertical to freeze them next to the bars for easy headshots.  If they fall off, blades gives them a chop before they climb the hill to come back at me. 

Other than the 4 blades and 4 electric fences, I have a couple junk turrets on the roof for Vulture defense.  No spikes or anything...too much maintenance which is minimal anyway as it takes very little damage unless I mess up and trip a demo. 

 

[Liesel Weppen]

I wonder how OP is doing the bloodmoons? Do you even fight the zombies or just hope the base does for you?

We played up to day ~80 and just used the prison poi.

Just put some bars on the outside of the walls to walk on so you can shoot directly down at the Zs.

We also have two rows of spikes around it, but that is just a little help (manly not even for the bloodmoon, but for screamers and wandering hordes), because as soon as some spikes broke, zombies will focus on these points and the remaining spikes will not help anymore.

We of course actively fight the bloodmoons. Everybody should use weapons he has skilled into. On day 120 with level ~60 everybody should have skills for at least one weapon maxed. E.g my mate uses automatic rifles to shoot at zombies in distanze, i use a shotgun to shoot at Zs that came up to our walls. Both use junk turrets as assist, even if we didn't skill for them.

Then use different layers of defence, we have another circle of barbed wires and also a circle of electric fences. Both slow the zombies down and makes them easier to shoot.

Demolisher are high alert. Everybody has a M60 with AP amunition for the demolishers. Try to shoot them in the back to not trigger them. If triggerd accidentially: Bulletspam with M60 usually takes them down before they explode.

Also assist killing with pipe bombs and molotow. Once irradiated zombies come up, put rad remover mods into your main weapon. Best is an automatic rifle, then spray groups to take out their auto-healing.

Of course we need a lot of amunition for each bloodmoon, but with your levels and server time you should have set up amunition production a long time ago anyway.

And for general base design, there should be now way zombies could reach your position. Use jump gaps as an entrance, later you can use draw bridges or similar. I there is just a door between you and the Zs, they will go for the door heavily. In our prison the only way to get up on the walls is a ladder, which is two blocks above the ground. Zombies can not access it (until they stack up) but you can. So even once they made their way into our prison yard, they can still not reach us.

If you're using a bigger base (like the prison), once damage gets to high on single points, you can also kite the zombies away from there.

Use backups. We have some 2x2 concrete pillars around our base also with ladders placed 2 blocks above the ground. So if you need to escape or enhanced kite zombies you can jump out, kite them and escape up to those pillars. They are not absolutely safe, they won't last a whole bloodmoon if you stay there, but it gives enough time to e.g. use a first aid kit, reload weapons, etc.

 

[Crater Creator]

It seems that my base design is most similar to meganoth’s.  It relies on giving the zombies no choice but to take a long, winding path to get to me, during which they’re exposed to me shooting at them the entire time.  The primary purpose of my base is not to kill the zombies, or to have more block hit points than they can damage in a night, but to slow them down as much as possible.  I never leave to chance what path the zombies will take to me, as I’d be doing if I camped out on a POI rooftop.

This base isn't totally finished, but it's far enough along to share.



I access the base via the wooden frames (it will be a drawbridge eventually), which of course I pull up before horde night.  With the frames removed and me in the tower, the only way the zombies can approach is to jump down into the pit.  There are ladders out of the pit, but they go extra high so that zombies can't use them to go down and avoid taking fall damage (yes, that's what they did before I fixed it).  The pit is made deep enough that 'normal' zombies lose a third of their health to fall damage.  I want my zombies weakened, so I can get the kills and XP myself.

Then the zombies have a path to me in the tower, not by beating on any walls but by climbing the staircase.  It's made of full blocks instead of staircase shapes, because zombies take longer to jump up on blocks.  So do I, which is one reason I don't think my design is cheesy.  They jump up six blocks, and then run across the flat portion to the next six block staircase.  Across each of these flat segments is an electric wire and campfire.  I could've made the base without the flat segments, but I opted for this design in order to have room to expand and try different traps (I used barbed wire pre-electricity), and so my sight lines from the tower wouldn't be too steep.

Speaking of which...



This is what horde night looks like for me in first person.  I stand in the mostly-enclosed cage just next to the steel vault door that the zombies are ultimately trying to reach.  I can shoot them as they run around the edge of the pit deciding where to jump in, and I can shoot the ones that have fallen in and are slowly making their way up.  The open switchback design works even better than I'd hoped, because sometimes they overshoot the last jump of six and fall to the bottom again.  Meanwhile I'm killing most of them before they get close.  One corner of the cage is open so I can throw down molotovs, my explosive of choice because it doesn't do block damage.  I've also recently installed an SMG turret on the outer wall, connected to a switch to shoot them in the back (hopefully not detonating demolishers) if things get hairy.

The design is symmetrical, with the same staircase etc. on the east and west sides.  Each side has a steel vault door, and outside of that an iron hatch.  I can raise the hatch at any time to redirect the zombies to the other side.  This way, even if something catastrophic happens, e.g. a demolisher blows up and takes out a staircase, I can shift the zombies to the other side.  They still have a planned path up, so they still don't attack the bottom of the tower, and hopefully that gets me through until morning when I can repair the damaged side.  The base is on 8 pillars of reinforced concrete, 4 of which go down to bedrock, and I intend to eventually fill it in to be a solid core of steel.  But that's a just in case thing.  This base is more finesse than brute force.

I wanted this base to prove a few things.  I wanted to show that you can have a 'real', plausible base that doesn't rely on some cheesy one-off shape that the AI can't navigate and will probably be patched out later.  I wanted a base that offered protection, without doing all the killing for me.  I wanted to show that you don't have to have a horde base separate from where you live, or sacrifice a POI every week.  You can have one base that you both live in and fight in.  The floors below the top floor of the tower have all my stations, supplies, and my bed.  I even went with the ill-advised rooftop garden, to drive home that you can have everything at a single site.

Because of this, I am not stranded on horde night.  I am one with my base.  If I need to go downstairs for a moment and get some pills to cure that concussion, I can.  I can stay safe for a long time inside (the zombies have never even reached the vault door).  But at the same time, it's not an AFK base, either.  The base doesn't kill hardly anything, unless I hit the panic button and turn on the turret(s).  It's up to me to get the kills.

The pitfalls (ha!) of this base have been:

1. Lots of digging up front.  At least it was a lot for me, but then again people dig down to bedrock.  I planned out exactly how to create the pit with the optimal amount of dynamite.  If you do the edges first to create a moat, then you have something to withstand a horde night or two while the base is under construction.  That is, you can stand in the middle island of land that you'll eventually remove anyway, and let the Blood Moon zombies do some of the work for you!
   
2. There's no scenic view from the inside.  I chose a base site with a nice view and put in lots of windows but, even though the pit is big enough you don't feel like you're in a cave, you spend your in-base time looking out at the concrete walls of the pit and stairs instead of whatever view you'd have.
   
3. It's not a good design for close ranged weapons.  I planned on specializing in shotguns since I've been doing a strength build, but it turns out the range on shotguns sucks.  Like, if a zombie is just ten meters away, I'm using a full clip of pump shotgun rounds to kill it because the damage falloff is crazy.  You can let them get closer, but then you're wasting the valuable space and time the design gives you when they're tied up in the traps farther down.  You have less buffer.
   
4. It doesn't fail very gracefully, with the single exit point.  If zombies were to breach a door, it'd be difficult to get past them to the drawbridge, very difficult when the drawbridge is still a row of wooden frames, and very difficult & painful if neither is an option and I'm forced to get down in the pit to one of the ladders.  I should probably do some sort of fire escape to get to the surface without letting the zombies jump in the same way.
   

I laugh when people say there's only one way to play, now or ever.  This is the first time I’ve used this particular design, and the third different base I’ve constructed during this long A19 playthrough.  I’ve also tried running away on a vehicle, out of necessity.  And while it’s not easy street, it’s not "forbidden" either, and neither are underground bases "no longer an option."  If TFP really wanted to forbid these things, they'd have listened to the suggestions of some, and made vehicles not work on horde night, or turned stone into bedrock.  But they didn't do that.  They didn't remove gameplay, they added gameplay in the forms of vehicle-chasing vultures and digging zombies.  Not because some horde night strategies were 'wrong,' but because the difficulty wasn't comparable to other strategies whose designs are more developed.

 

[Vampirenostra]

im actually using a 5*5 bunker base with 3 layers of spikes and barbed wires around it and the walls are covered in spikes, meanwhile they crouch by the bunker windows I just shoot them with my shotgun, vultures I kill after the night ends. on a regular basis I have to restore some spikes and barbed wires, usually around 10 of each, the door to the bunker stays open all night long, but clocked by barbed wires or spikes and I have a robotics sledge inside to keep these fellas away if they break the entrance fencing until I add new ones.

and yep, I forgot how nice it was before with pits... got to try it again.