I want a 7day horde total spawn counter please - No longer a fan of all nighter hordes as a solo player

[warmer]

After playing through a dozen or so day 7/14/21 nights as a solo player, I have to say I am not a fan of the way it works anymore.

There are several reasons why all night long hordes are strategic conundrums with no clear "best answer"

I can kill them quickly, but they come all night, and I will need stacks of repair kits and ammo to make it through the night 

I can build dozens of layers of defenses and let them die as slow as possible and conserve all of my ammo and focus on repairing my base

In a solo player game, I find you are much better off killing them as slow as possible on horde night otherwise you level way to fast to keep up with the next 7 day horde. 

Is there a way to go back to a spawn count? I am all about high numbers, I just find it frustrating you can't be as precise in your strategy due to never "knowing" the size of the horde. It's infinite until the sun comes up. The last day 7 horde I did I killed well over 100 zeds. That is just silly. Maybe 25 is appropriate for day 7, but I was 1 shotting them with spear headshots and them just STREAMED in like mad. Because of this, the spawn # on horde night as a total active becomes somewhat irrelevant when you are killing them as fast as they are reaching your base.

What are some of your strategies to make it feel more like a HORDE on horde night versus the conveyor belt we have now. I want a big wave vs trickles for 5 hours. Mods?

 

[theFlu]

In a solo player game, I find you are much better off killing them as slow as possible on horde night otherwise you level way to fast to keep up with the next 7 day horde. 

This true, but only up to a point, as the scaling is a little funky. My levels are usually at least 50% above the day, (so day 20, level 30) - which makes the gamestage day-capped and any extra levels I get are just free power-ups in that sense. But I kinda agree, blowing thru the ammo to kill a d7 horde isn't really worth it, that's why I tend to get a lot of mollies (from quests) and build something to force some groups, just to get that juicy XP..

Otherwise on a d7 I might not even make a proper base, trying to kill them all isn't really of much use, so just surviving is enough. For that there's, well, parkour and mega crush

I haven't tried changing the trickle, I think it's fine; if it's over early, there's really no opportunity to make any mistakes. I see short nights as just "more stable"; and there's some fun in the instability. But I think there isn't really much you can do atm, outside of modding; the gamestage-limited max alive is too small compared to the total to actually clear them all fast enough to make a difference. No idea how easy that would be to change, can't remember how it's defined...

EDIT: ok, popped in to check, seems it might all be defined in gamestages.xml, for example:

<gamestage stage="10">
<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS7" num="15" maxAlive="6" duration="1" interval="5"/>
<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS10" num="15" maxAlive="6" duration="1" interval="5"/>
<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS10" num="10" maxAlive="2" duration="1" interval="5"/>
<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS10" num="15" maxAlive="5" duration="1" interval="10"/>
<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS10" num="10" maxAlive="2" duration="1" interval="5"/>
<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS10" num="15" maxAlive="3" duration="1" interval="20"/>
<spawn group="feralHordeStageGS10" num="100" maxAlive="2"/>
</gamestage>



Although, Editing all of that sounds like a proper chore, learn to script before attempting ...

 

[warmer]

I think something contributing to my frustration is I play on 2hr days. I can't effectively get my base ready by day 7 on 60min days, and 90min days I am barely cutting it.
With a 2hr day/night cycle horde is a hell of a lot more intense and GRUELLING than a 60min day/night cycle horde by virtue of the longer nights.

 

[theFlu]

Yeh, that sounds a little rough.. is the time crunch just the size of the base you want, "can't gather enough cobble" - kinda deal? Or just slow to kill, making things take time due to danger? If the latter, I can see a 30 min horde night being absolutely annoying; I hate playing on the two higher difficulties as everything takes ages to kill - if you have 30 mins of endless things that takes ages to kill, well, that ain't fun. If that's feels familiar, maybe drop the difficulty down a notch for the hordes, at least they might be more entertaining to kill en mass that way?  

 

[warmer]

Yeh, that sounds a little rough.. is the time crunch just the size of the base you want, "can't gather enough cobble" - kinda deal? Or just slow to kill, making things take time due to danger?

I like to make a proper base I construct on my own. I don't ever take over POI, and I make it a rule to always use real world bases, ie no cheese blocks, so the time to gather/construct and do some quests is pretty accounted for. I try to get a bicycle by day 7 via quests and have a proper base, so I can go to the next biome starting on day 8.

That has been my default way of playing since bicycles were a quest reward. If I didn't quest at all, I could probably make it happen on 30min days, but usually day 1 I try to do the top row of quests for the skill points, and make it to the trader for the first dig quest and then build something elevated before night.

In 60min that is nearly impossible. In 2hrs, that is pretty doable. It would really take an entirely different approach to how I time manage and when I have tried to do it on 60min days previously, I never had fun, it was always a PRESS to get ready and no time for anything experimental or without a direct purpose.

 

[theFlu]

on 60min days previously, I never had fun, it was always a PRESS to get ready

Yeh, a proper self-made horde base and enough quests for a bike, that's a bit of a grind in 7 hours. If you end up in the low pop trickle states and just want those out, it seems rather easy; from that example I used earlier, just cutting out the last line with 'num="100"' from each low gamestage (a lot of deletes still, but doable).