PC A17 Pointless base building

Was this built entirely in creative mode?
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No that was built in play mode.

I have recipes for things like Riveted Bridge metal. [it's a slightly modded server.]

I did, however, mine and forage all those materials and build that thing.

It works now but I have made several upgrades.

Vedui did a lot of testing for electric fences, blade traps and other things and using his knowledge I've adjusted the design to be much more efficient.

Again... let me just say that I'm nowhere near maximum horde yet and this design could be a complete failure.

I'm willing to admit that.

So far, however, it's working great!

 
No that was built in play mode.I have recipes for things like Riveted Bridge metal. [it's a slightly modded server.]

I did, however, mine and forage all those materials and build that thing.

It works now but I have made several upgrades.

Vedui did a lot of testing for electric fences, blade traps and other things and using his knowledge I've adjusted the design to be much more efficient.

Again... let me just say that I'm nowhere near maximum horde yet and this design could be a complete failure.

I'm willing to admit that.

So far, however, it's working great!
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I'm curious if you played solo and what your difficulty setting is. Also, you said it couldn't be ready for day 7 but do you think a cobblestone version might be possible?

I'll admit, with the nerf to underground bunkers and fall traps, I considered revisiting a stilt base but I'm unsure how to protect the pillars when the zombies go into destructive mode. I wondered if I could add something that would keep them moving rather than focusing on my supports or somehow using their new ai to my advantage. I'm not that smart though lol

 
I strongly suspect it's a common misconception that zombies are attracted to doors, more likely the pathfinding algorithm doesn't give doors a cost and so they path through them preferably (as opposed to smashing down a wall). I would guess traps do have a cost, which is what makes them largely ineffective now. I was never a fan of huge fields of spikes but FFS, the only point for them now seems to be to put around your support pillars.

Also the "digging through the floor in POIs" are they really doing that or are they falling through the same broken floorboards that we do when we aren't careful? There seem to be no shortage of them.

I'm thinking maybe a maze lined with barb wire flooring and the ladder to you at the end and you have regular points you can shoot down from? The name of the game now seems to be about slowing them down and killing them yourself, which I am totally fine with, just seems very hard to do.

MP we fortified a 2 story cabin POI best we could, ripped out stairs, put frames around outside to shoot down from, put a ring of spikes around walls inside and out. 4 man crew. We survived, they took out an entire corner and the center support pillar, base held, but this was only the 7th day horde.

Debating if we should keep fortifying and continue to fight there or do a dedicated horde base. I'm thinking maybe an apartment building POI would be the way to go where you could keep falling back to higher and higher floors.

No that was built in play mode.I have recipes for things like Riveted Bridge metal. [it's a slightly modded server.]

I did, however, mine and forage all those materials and build that thing.

It works now but I have made several upgrades.

Vedui did a lot of testing for electric fences, blade traps and other things and using his knowledge I've adjusted the design to be much more efficient.

Again... let me just say that I'm nowhere near maximum horde yet and this design could be a complete failure.

I'm willing to admit that.

So far, however, it's working great!
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By yourself on day 27 with no creative mode? I kinda want to call BS, but maybe my time management skills just suck.

Most of these great designs I see people come up with don't seem very practical to actually build and use, not for SP at least.

 
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My experiences so far - Navezgane, nomad difficulty, solo. Defending with a bow and arrows, mostly.
Zombies smash through early walls pretty quickly (a little too quickly, I feel), and spikes don't last long (iron or wood).

I figured doors would be a magnet and would focus the power of the horde too much. So I built a solid 5 X 5 X 5 tower of wood/iron for Day 7, with a parapet. This spread them around a bit more and diluted the damage, especially if I kite them around the perimeter from above.

It's accessed by two short elevated runs with trapdoors as 'mini-drawbridges' and wooden doors to discourage any Z's trying to jump the gaps. I've found that they don't try to gain access by the elevated walkways - maybe they don't recognise it as an entrance or maybe the ladder, doors and two jumps required aren't as attractive as going straight for the base.

Instead, they go straight for the tower and go into area-destruction mode. I had 3 layers of spikes around the tower on day 7, and that became 5 layers of iron spikes, wood spikes, and barbed wire on day 14.

I lost half the tower on day 7, but the upper platform survived. On day 14 the lower layers had been upgraded to near max scrap iron and it survived a lot better. Then again, I had 3 cops turn up on day 14 (which seemed a bit early) and I died because they destroyed the wood frame parapet and I didn't notice before I was falling :) Not sure what my game stage was before but after that death it was 60. Also I had to do a quick relog because of something that spammed constant error logs in the console - happens at 05:55 ish in the Day 14 video below.

So I survived Day 7 without a scratch and died once on Day 14 but was otherwise quite comfortable. The base survived both nights.

Thinking about my experiences and the OP's, I think I'll stick to not having any sort of single entrance that the Z's can recognise.

Evidence - sorry, they are a bit choppy:

Day 7 -




Day 14 -



On another note - underground digging seems to be completely dead. In previous Alphas I've always had some sort of underground base, though I never stayed down there on a horde night. I just tried digging down 30 blocks below ground level to build an item store. But on the last night I played, a wandering horde ran up to the edge of my tower and burrowed straight down to me. So if they can 'see' me through the ground even when it's not a horde night, there's no point digging down anymore. But I did learn something positive - they don't seem so good at going up again - the buggers are still down there :)
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I am impressed with anyone who keeps 250 arrows in their toolbar.

 
By yourself on day 27 with no creative mode? I kinda want to call BS, but maybe my time management skills just suck.

Most of these great designs I see people come up with don't seem very practical to actually build and use, not for SP at least.
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Yeah day 26 on a modded server with longer days.

More like 60 actually. Time is set to speed 1 on that server.

It's a server for people with anxiety [no kidding].

It's not nearly as complicated as it looks.

That design without all the fancy stuff can easily be made by day 35 in A16.

[Even with regular time.]

Not in A17 obviously.

Right now my base looks very simple and has no electricity or anything.

 
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Molotovs + spike-loaded pitfall trap at a wall gap = massacre. Interesting.
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My first experience with that, I got over 4k exp. :)

Now oil and all things that make oil are the real currency of survival! Molotovs are THE zombie horde counter with getting them to clump up.

 
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My first experience with that, I got over 4k exp. :)
Now oil and all things that make oil are the real currency of survival! Molotovs are THE zombie horde counter with getting them to clump up.
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They are EXPENSIVE with the trader. A bottle of oil runs 300 Dukes a peice. I don't even think steel is that pricey.

You'd need to have found a working chem station, get lucky on a shale mine, and have at least a bicycle for the commute.. that's a big ask solo when you need a LOT of time for other high priority jobs. I didn't get a bicycle until my third week, hopped down to the desert, dug a hole and came up with nothing.. so horde night is a wash. I spent all my dukes renting a vending machine so I could sell all the guns he wouldn't buy.

 
Considering the zombies can go through things that we can't (ex: 50% pillars side by side), jump higher than we can at lower levels, and either bad luck, or when I had a 3 pilarx3pilar base, zombies attacked all pillars at once to take it down. A single non-horde zombie can go through reinforced concrete in a bit over a minute.--but a base with "too many spikes" causes the zombies to run in place/crash/lag server (funny to watch... but still)...

To say nothing of having 2-3 mini hordes a day, every day (talking "let's get things for ammo!" followed by "and now I have less ammo than I started"), with another mini horde at night... every night (unless you just watch tv/read a book until night's over lol)....

I don't even attempt to make a base. I run/take hits for deaths/use a vehicle and run non-stop on horde nights. Day 35... and my "base" was a road... with nothing on it. Seriously, I can kill a bear with fewer arrows than some of the zombies--and that's even with headshots of the zombies. And you know, you need food too, can't spend the entire game trying to get ammo and building a base solo--you'd starve lol

 
I spent the pretty much all of the first 3 days looting and killing zombies before I picked up a place to settle down and then I spent the rest of the week until the BM building my base, I was on nomad difficulty with 90 minutes days and I usually afked at night and by the blood moon I was only level 19 and only rarely used a forge in a poi next to me. The base I made held up extremely well and I used the same base for the second horde night where I was level 45 and had irradiated spider zombies and cops and a bunch of normal soldiers. The only damage they did was break maybe a quarter of the iron spikes I had put in after the first horde and 4 of the ugraded cobblestone blocks in my pillars. All I used was a couple rounds with a hunting rifle for the big guys and then a compound bow.

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They are EXPENSIVE with the trader. A bottle of oil runs 300 Dukes a peice. I don't even think steel is that pricey.
You'd need to have found a working chem station, get lucky on a shale mine, and have at least a bicycle for the commute.. that's a big ask solo when you need a LOT of time for other high priority jobs. I didn't get a bicycle until my third week, hopped down to the desert, dug a hole and came up with nothing.. so horde night is a wash. I spent all my dukes renting a vending machine so I could sell all the guns he wouldn't buy.
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Get the oil from random loot or use all the wrenches you typically find in POIs and use them on cars, you'll have enough oil to make a fair amount of molotovs with that.

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Considering the zombies can go through things that we can't (ex: 50% pillars side by side), jump higher than we can at lower levels, and either bad luck, or when I had a 3 pilarx3pilar base, zombies attacked all pillars at once to take it down. A single non-horde zombie can go through reinforced concrete in a bit over a minute.--but a base with "too many spikes" causes the zombies to run in place/crash/lag server (funny to watch... but still)...
To say nothing of having 2-3 mini hordes a day, every day (talking "let's get things for ammo!" followed by "and now I have less ammo than I started"), with another mini horde at night... every night (unless you just watch tv/read a book until night's over lol)....

I don't even attempt to make a base. I run/take hits for deaths/use a vehicle and run non-stop on horde nights. Day 35... and my "base" was a road... with nothing on it. Seriously, I can kill a bear with fewer arrows than some of the zombies--and that's even with headshots of the zombies. And you know, you need food too, can't spend the entire game trying to get ammo and building a base solo--you'd starve lol
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You get a lot of meat from animals now if you use a bone shiv or hunting knife and you should always be getting birds nests so bacon and eggs is a simple yet effective solution to hunger, and if you can kite decently and have a half decent melee weapon/get lucky and find a good one/craft a sledge or machete then you can easily kill any zombie with a couple power swings and take out wandering hordes no problem.

20181130232753_1.jpg

 
Welp!
After all this scary talk about Zeds preventing us from building bases.....

... I'm not so sure.

I used the same tactics I have been using since A15 and they still work.

Yes some adjusting was needed but very little.
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I feel the same way.

I am also using the same design as previous alpha builds with a little tweaking so I can defend a bit more actively.

I strongly believe that a lot of the complaints are from people who were using completely passive defense bases or cheesing in previous builds and the particular design they used no longer works so they simply cannot be bothered or are incapable of tweaking their design to adapt.

I expect this discussion will fade over time as I am already seeing posts on how to exploit the AI so no doubt the easy road will be taken by many soon enough.

 
So I had an underground base, was very deep and up until the 14th night, they only dug a little way and it wasn't above the absolute bottom. I had 2 perks in stealth showing 1 when stealthy (no light sources etc.) and they dug directly down and killed me twice. Stealth is pointless right now, don't waste your points on it.

 
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Solo, default settings. This is one of the main cookie cutter base designs from pre A17, I've been using this for horde night for as long as I can remember.

Look at the little amount of damage the horde did on day 21, barely scratched my cobblestone and iron bars and some people are trying to tell you that it's impossible to defend your base in A17. I wonder how hard some people are trying to beat this horde.

7d2d 21days.jpg

 
Just for the record now I am day 28....I have built the exact same bases that I always do, and they have stood up just fine in A17. They take more damage than usual and the horde nights are more of a struggle, but I welcome that.

 
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Solo, default settings. This is one of the main cookie cutter base designs from pre A17, I've been using this for horde night for as long as I can remember.
Look at the little amount of damage the horde did on day 21, barely scratched my cobblestone and iron bars and some people are trying to tell you that it's impossible to defend your base in A17. I wonder how hard some people are trying to beat this horde.

View attachment 25941
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I've been doing ok with something similar, though the bottom part of my base is solid reinforced concrete and I have a catwalk mostly shielded from the sides and above (vultures) . I just did Day 28 and got away without dying, but the vultures & cops make it interesting.

The most interesting thing was this: I've just started adding a perimeter wall, and the half-built version of that slowed them down and distracted them - early on, a lot of them were just attacking the outer wall from the inside while I was shooting at them. And they attacked it in several places, instead of just one, so that 'diluted' the horde, I think.

It's a very active defence, though - it needed constant arrow spam to stop them breaking the lower part of the base too badly, especially later on.

 
Solo, default settings. This is one of the main cookie cutter base designs from pre A17, I've been using this for horde night for as long as I can remember.
Look at the little amount of damage the horde did on day 21, barely scratched my cobblestone and iron bars and some people are trying to tell you that it's impossible to defend your base in A17. I wonder how hard some people are trying to beat this horde.

View attachment 25941
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I had a similar design (but spikes all around) and it locked/crashed the zombie pathing (meaning they were running in place, spinning around in place, doing animations of attacks to nothing like 20-30 blocks from anything--but damaging blocks they were "supposed to be at"). Even so though, the zombies were "running in place in the distance" they were destroying spikes around. After a day 7 horde? there were under 5% of the spikes left (I took out the remaining 20 spikes, out of between 200-400 of them I placed), and the tower was virtually destroyed. Did it with cobblestone--and all that was left was debris. Did it with reinforced concrete (creative'd in) and it only had a few pieces left.

Even with 8 zombies per person, default quantities of zombies/animals. I have between 300-600 zombie kills by the day 7 horde (that's how many the game throws at me... by day 7--the horde, zombie quantity wise, is a drop in the bucket). I've even gone days without seeing a single animal (shy of the many, many.... "why the hell are there 6-10 vultures in the sky or visible at all times?!?"). My character normally survives on boiled eggs and canned foods--because I go through 200-400 arrows a day, and I search a lot of birds nests. Use melee? sometimes, but the 3-4 daily mini hordes have 20-40 zombies each, and they bunch up which makes it dangerous when you have 4-5 zombies (sometimes with a feral--because apparently "it wasn't hard enough" according to the game).

 
Honestly my issue with base building in the current iteration is two fold.

1: block strength

it seams to have taken a dive as now the zombies more focus key parts of the base in order to break through as quick as possible. this means that, cobblestone just tears apart as quick as wood does, perhaps buying you a few seconds of time. the strength of materials needs to be upped a bit, not much but a bit. perhaps make it so the fatter zombies hit alot harder then the skinny ones, because right now they all deal the same block damage i think.

2: trap utility.

as people have mentioned, spikes both metal and normal are substantially worse, yet no one is mentioning barbed wire. my god they nerfed the hell out of good old wire. honestly its barely worth using now as they pass over it in seconds. i understand it may have been too good as it was, but find a middle ground, cos right now barbed wire is useless to use with how fast it breaks and how little it effects there movement. i would love to go toe to toe with the horde but right now i got time to take a swing and thats it.

 
Well im playing solo on warrior diff with aprox 8 zombies at once during a horde and while they can be somewhat troublesome i havent had even one situation when they overrun me....

Basically i found a ruin - ive made my home on the first floor - and fortified the ground floor - there are two layers of cobb walls + some initial concrete ones - this with 2 layers of spikes (and ive filled the inside of the ground level with spikes inside the structure just in case) and an access ramp.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1578241322

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1578285979

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1579959021

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1579959075

in my case ive made it so zeds are running to the ramp - they try to jump over - they smah onto the doors with their ugly faces (maybe once in a while they accidentaly hit the door while trying to hit me when im too close), they fall take some damage - eat a bolt when in flight and try to get over the wall where they fall on the outer spikes - then they get to ramp - maybe bash it a bit - then go over try to jump again and so on. So in my case they spend a lot of their time either running or bashing the ramp and maybe some other blocks - so far the only threat are cops since they can whack a lot of spikes with their blasts. Cops are the main danger since they can vomit with amazing acuracy and if triple blast hits you it can end you in one burst (with leather armor and full 130 health) Luckily ive placed some bariers so their puke usually hits those and not me. And if so i try to repair the damage before its gets too bad.

Ive got also arrow slits as floor - so i can shoot below - but thats tricky since its easy to miss nowadays and the hole is quite small :/

usually after each horde i have to replace a lot of psikes and repair outer wall + some blocks on the main base). Nowadays ive made the botom level and the area facing the ramp from reinforced concrete and that made it even sturdier.

 
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It looks like the Devs have decided how the game should be played.

You will wander around and fight zombies, you will hold down a temporary base on a blood moon, you will follow their desired methods.

One of the things I had liked about this game was the ability to choose a play style. I tired of base maintenance, so went deep underground. I fought hordes, I built, I explored, I tunneled, and I had a load of fun.

The game, in its current evolution, holds no interest for me. I will review new releases but can't be bothered with the current incarnation.

For those of you who enjoy it, have fun. I'm off to other games.

 
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