I miss Bloodmoon's with a defined horde population vs all night long

[Roland]

I think it’s perfectly reasonable and immersive for there to be so many zombies that they never stop until the blood moon sets. To me, the endless horde reduces counting and tallying. You aren’t racing to kill the zombies as fast as you can to get every single one in the pool before morning. Instead you’re just surviving until morning. It’s more horrifying and the fact that since the change has happened we’ve had to deal with more breaches than we ever did before is refreshing.

Hopefully they will make this an option for those who want it but I disagree that one way is more or less arcadey or that there is only one viable horde base layout because of the change. Like I said, I stopped counting kills or keeping track of waves after the change because it was pointless to do so since I knew that no matter what they would be coming until dawn. That’s less math.

 

[Vaeliorin]

Hopefully they will make this an option for those who want it but I disagree that one way is more or less arcadey or that there is only one viable horde base layout because of the change. Like I said, I stopped counting kills or keeping track of waves after the change because it was pointless to do so since I knew that no matter what they would be coming until dawn. That’s less math.

I never counted. But like I said, I find the endless horde week 1 & 2 a bit tedious, because I have less options to kill them. I don't mind it once I've got a decent loadout of weapons and whatnot.

 

[Dark Sun]

I like to play on 2hr days when I play solo to give me enough time for base building, but the 30min of straight enemies is just like you said tedious and feel like such a grind.

60min is just not enough time to really make a proper horde base unless you dedicate a full day to gather resources and close to a full day of building. It cuts your questing down drastically. What I run into is maxing out my loot stage because of biome restrictions, so I don't want to stay any longer than 7 days per biome.

It's because of this that nowadays I go for an incredibly resource efficient base for my first couple of blood moons. Think a ladder on the side of a building with a cage near the top, and I'm meleeing though it. It works a treat and it allows me to focus on questing and all-around looting and levelling up until I can craft decent enough tools to want to consider mining.

I will admit that my 'tolerance' for mining long-term has waned in recent years though, even with a podcast or some music in the background.

Post automatically merged: Thursday at 12:08 AM

I never counted. But like I said, I find the endless horde week 1 & 2 a bit tedious, because I have less options to kill them. I don't mind it once I've got a decent loadout of weapons and whatnot.

It's for this reason I've abandoned horde every night as a concept, again not because it's impossible or I don't like challenge, it's just tedious for some time.

 

[MiTHMoN]

I am really not a fan of the full night cycle wave after wave of zombies.

The main reason it it requires a base design that needs to withstand a full nights onslaught every session.
I'd much rather know I can exhaust a horde quickly with a bare bones base and still survive.
That to me feel like a lot more freedom and creativity in base design.
Now we get stuck with multi layered sideways catwalk doorway metas. It feel like base design is pretty much bottlenecked into something like that.

It would be cool if I COULD just build a 100 meter long hallway lined with cobble stone and line it with wood spikes killing the entire horde as they tried to get to me that way. Sure it's not exciting, but it's the freedom to build a base without resulting to the meta tropes we all know now.

Right now I am modding back big random wandering hordes, because to me that feels a lot more organic than a timed stream of unlimited zombies until dawn.

How do you keep hordes/bloodmoon's interesting?
Do you move your base to each new biome?
Do you stick to one horde base and build upon it for each Bloodmoon?

The part that is really dragging down the fun is the time investment in a horde base. I don't want to keep recreating it because of the time/resource investment once I move to a new biome, but I also don't want to nerf my loot bags because of the biome restricting game stage.
What to do?

It sounds like you should just disable blood moons or change how often they occur. If they're not fun for you, don't do them?

Why are you even building horde bases if you don't enjoy the designs you use?

Nothing is forcing you to build a custom horde base. There are plenty of POIs to use as horde bases, or you can just go on foot out in the open. Drink Megacrush if you think you need the movement speed boost. Stand on top of a skyscraper if you don't want to interact with it (and find out if they break the foundations or not?).

 

[warmer]

It sounds like you should just disable blood moons or change how often they occur. If they're not fun for you, don't do them?

Why are you even building horde bases if you don't enjoy the designs you use?.

I have been playing sonce A6. The way the bloodmoon horde used to be is not as it is now. This is the crux of my annoyance. I liked it a lot more when it wasn't 6hrs of a constant stream that is very unbalanced. Now you can easily manipulate the difficulty based on how fast you kill them. before you could not do that. Much bigger fan of a wandering horde with X number of zombies vs. 8 at a time until the timer runs out.

 

[MiTHMoN]

I have been playing sonce A6. The way the bloodmoon horde used to be is not as it is now. This is the crux of my annoyance. I liked it a lot more when it wasn't 6hrs of a constant stream that is very unbalanced. Now you can easily manipulate the difficulty based on how fast you kill them. before you could not do that. Much bigger fan of a wandering horde with X number of zombies vs. 8 at a time until the timer runs out.

You used to have to leave and rejoin, sometimes multiple times during each blood moon night, just to get more zombies to spawn.
Maybe when 3.0 comes out, it'll be a setting, but personally it sucked when the game "ran out" of zombies to kill in a blood moon.

Re-read your original post. It reads like you're burnt out and upset about a lot of unrelated and irrelevant things. If you want the blood moon to not last as long, edit your xml files and make night length shorter.

It honestly used to feel like the game was broken or unfinished when the blood moon red sky and music would persist, but there'd be no zombies left. It felt entirely janky, and entirely antithetical to the whole concept of blood moons. If that's the way you actually prefer the game to be, ask yourself why.

Now you can easily manipulate the difficulty based on how fast you kill them. before you could not do that.

I'm not understanding why this matters to you. Are you saying you don't like that other players can kill more zombies in a blood moon than you can?

 

[warmer]

I'm not understanding why this matters to you. Are you saying you don't like that other players can kill more zombies in a blood moon than you can?

I think you are making assumptions about why I am making statements. It has nothing to do with other players killing more zombies lol

It has everything to do with the concept itself. There used to be a difficulty based on gamestage/game day.

now that ONLY influences the types of zombie that spawns. My point is, if you kill more zombies, you make the game more difficult. the more/faster you kill them, the more zeds you have to deal with ie increased difficulty.

have 100 total is a finite difficulty you cant cheese or manipulate. You have to deal with them regardless of what time of day it is. That is a much better/accurate implmentation of diffuclty.

the endless stream of having 8 zeds spawn at a time all night is a very easy to manipulate difficulty. you can just ride a bike around all night and never kill any zombies, or you can kill them so fast you end up kill 300.

the difference between 8 and 300 is a gigantic gap. how do you even balance game play accurately? you simply can't

Having a finite bloodmoon is a reliable way to test game balance based on gamestage/day.

 

[MiTHMoN]

There used to be a difficulty based on gamestage/game day.

I guess you just fundamentally see blood moons differently than I do. To me, you're either prepared to take on the blood moon, or you're not.

As long as you can repair your weapon, and have enough food/water, and other resources you choose to spend, blood moon is about farming kills and exp and loot.

The game, as far as I know, has never been balanced for accurate "difficulty" for blood moons. One playthrough you can have a zombie dog spawn next to you when you are just starting, and another playthrough you don't encounter a zombie for tens of minutes. One playthrough I had multiple dire wolves attack on the first (day 7) blood moon, while other times I haven't seen a blood moon dire wolf until day 14 or 21 or 28.

The game isn't really giving you a fair fight, it's mostly just luck. And you have to plan ahead in case the game decides to screw you over. Too many times have I had a pack of zombie dogs roll up on me on day 2.

the endless stream of having 8 zeds spawn at a time all night is a very easy to manipulate difficulty. you can just ride a bike around all night and never kill any zombies, or you can kill them so fast you end up kill 300.

Clearly your words mean something different to you than they do to me, because you're using your term "manipulate difficulty" to seemingly mean "level up at your own pace". To me, playing the game differently will change the outcome. That's how sandbox games work.

If you level up, you get skill points to spend, your loot stage goes up so you can loot better stuff, and "stronger" zombies spawn. That's how the progression works. It's intended to be like that.

What about this is "manipulating difficulty"? Why are you using such a weird and biased term? Is chopping a tree "manipulating difficulty" to you? Is looting a POI "manipulating difficulty"? Is building "manipulating difficulty"?

 

[MiTHMoN]

The main reason it it requires a base design that needs to withstand a full nights onslaught every session.

Not true. Nothing about the game forces you to build a base. You can use a POI, or you can fight out in the open.

I'd much rather know I can exhaust a horde quickly with a bare bones base and still survive.

Then turn down night length so you can survive more easily, or turn of blood moons if you're struggling too much.

That to me feel like a lot more freedom and creativity in base design.
Now we get stuck with multi layered sideways catwalk doorway metas. It feel like base design is pretty much bottlenecked into something like that.

Not true. Nothing about this game forces you to make horde bases like that. It's just an option if you enjoy that kind of base.

It would be cool if I COULD just build a 100 meter long hallway lined with cobble stone and line it with wood spikes killing the entire horde as they tried to get to me that way. Sure it's not exciting, but it's the freedom to build a base without resulting to the meta tropes we all know now.

If you think it's cool, then do it. Nobody is stopping you.

How do you keep hordes/bloodmoon's interesting?
Do you move your base to each new biome?
Do you stick to one horde base and build upon it for each Bloodmoon?

I just do whatever feels fun at the time, and a lot of the time that is just picking a POI at the last minute to fight in. Other times I build a dedicated horde base in the biome I want to fight in (usually either forest or wasteland, depending on how I'm feeling). Sometimes I just fight out in the open on foot.

The part that is really dragging down the fun is the time investment in a horde base. I don't want to keep recreating it because of the time/resource investment once I move to a new biome,

Then don't rebuild a horde base if it's not enjoyable. Do what is enjoyable for you. Only you know what that is. Other people can give suggestions, such as "turn off blood moon", or "use a POI", or "fight on foot", or "go back to your original horde base", or "just build a new horde base", or whatever, but ultimately it's up to you to decide what's enjoyable for you.

If you build something with enough layers, and your max horde is set to 8 for single player, 60min days, you can easily just sit inside a cube of cobble stone and wait until morning and then go out and kill the only 8 that spawned. My last horde night on day 14 my base was about to be destroyed at 2:30am and I bailed and hopped onto my bike and realized I can out run them without sprinting and cheesed it all the way until morning (default game settings)

If you're going to not engage with blood moon, why even enable it? You could just as easily turn it off.

The potential damage to your base goes up drastically if you are dealing with exploding enemies or enemies that can vomit/destroy blocks at range. This is a totally different type of horde experience that is dictated by speed to kill. Killing enemies quickly is actually increasing the total difficulty when it should diminish your potential damage/difficulty.

If you find the game too difficult, and you're not enjoying it, turn the difficulty down, or disable blood moons. You have permission. It's literally a game for enjoying. Do what you enjoy.

You can't cheese that if your horde is set for x total.
You can't sit in a shell of cobble stone until morning. You can't ride your bike until dawn and kill a single wave because that total is coming until exhausted.

You've got it totally backwards. By "sitting out" horde night and not engaging with it, you're essentially playing as if you've got blood moons disabled, but you're still wasting 15 minutes of sitting afk in your base. That isn't what I'd call "cheesing", that's you choosing to waste 15 minutes of your life for no reason. Literally the opposite of cheesing, if I'm honest. Cheesing is abusing a mechanic to advantage yourself, but in your example you're not giving yourself any advantage.

I like to play on 2hr days when I play solo to give me enough time for base building, but the 30min of straight enemies is just like you said tedious and feel like such a grind.

60min is just not enough time to really make a proper horde base unless you dedicate a full day to gather resources and close to a full day of building. It cuts your questing down drastically.

If that's how you feel, simply set your day length to 60 mins and blood moon every 14 days, or set day length to 120 mins and night to 21 hours. Simple math.

Ya, the Bloodmoon is great. I love the concept. The way that you make it harder for yourself by killing zombies quickly is a bad implementation of difficulty based on your gamestage. That is what frustrates me the most as a solo player.

I think maybe you misunderstand how the game works. You don't just "progress blood moon difficulty" by killing enemies during blood moon. You progress difficulty by leveling up. What you're describing is that, you purposefully want to level up as slowly as you can, so your blood moons are as easy as possible... That means less looting, less building, less crafting, less killing, less quests, less trading... Because these things give you exp... And exp leads to levels... So to min-max your strategy of staying low-level, just... Afk and don't play the game... That's essentially what you're leaning towards.

When you look at those two examples, the difficulty increases the better you are doing. You are better off building slow to destroy bases than fast kill bases early on. It's a better implementation of resources until you have a ton of traps.

Not true. The "difficulty" doesn't increase the "better you are doing", it's just that killing zombies allows more to spawn. Your reward for killing zombies faster, is that you have more zombies to kill. Blood moon is like a bonus level, and you get a limited amount of time to kill as many enemies as you can.