Are dart traps effective on bloodmoon?

[bobrpggamer]

Here is cut down clip from bloodmoon 36 or something like that (I started using bloodmoon every 2 days after bloodmoon 34)

I of course also have 2 shotgun turrets, 3 sets of electric fences and 3 SMG turrets in the same area of the dart traps, but you can see that the dart traps are really working.

I have 8 sets of 16 dart traps and it took me a week to make all the darts along with 3 trips to mine iron.

I would say they are helpful, and I believe you can make them earlier in game, before you can make turrets anyway.

As you can tell I sniped the cops, because I did not want them exploding and making a mess of the base. One of them exploded anyway ate the end.

 

[theFlu]

Well, they're doing a ton of work there - they can be useful, very much so. Just needs trip wires going along the path of the darts to not waste ammo Those trigger plates work fine too ofc, but they can be triggered from a position where the darts won't hit.

 

[8_Hussars]

I find my problem with dart traps is the grind for crafting dart ammo, as you cant loot it anywhere and the resources are better used for Iron and steel.

FWIW, It appeared to me that the Dart Trap that lost its trigger plate continued to fire with no target.

 

[bobrpggamer]

I find my problem with dart traps is the grind for crafting dart ammo, as you cant loot it anywhere and the resources are better used for Iron and steel.

FWIW, It appeared to me that the Dart Trap that lost its trigger plate continued to fire with no target.

You are right about that. It took close to a week on 120 minute days to make all the darts. But that was for 128 dart traps and I had them all full with 1500 darts, so 192,000 darts. Most people would not try this until later in the game. You could get by with 16 dart traps and 500 locked in instead of the 1500 I put in each dart trap, that would be 8000 darts total, not too hard to come up with that. I had this on my temp base, just 16 dart traps and 500 darts in them and they don't really use much in early game bloodmoon.

I turn off all my traps at about 4:10 after bloodmoon, so it probably wasted no more than 100 darts out of 1500.

To be honest I will not have to make more darts for 10 bloodmoons. I have a supply of about 3000 in a gun safe. They really don't lose much ammo like SMG turrets do. My SMG turrets use the full 900, 9mm bullets really, really fast. I have to make boatloads of 9mm ammo after each bloodmoon. And it is not easy to come up with brass, radiators are usually where I get my brass from, and this takes wrenching vehicles over and over just to get a good supply of radiators and them scrap all of them, feed the forge, make the bullet casings and then make the 9mm, then do it over again.

 

[vylmen]

I use dart traps mostly for guarding garage doors on non-blood moon bases. I find that they trigger the cop explosions and I don't really have a setup where I can snipe them effectively. But it's one of my goals to find a good setup where dart traps would be effective before you can use turrets on a horde base.

 

[Adam the Waster]

Waste of iron

 

[bobrpggamer]

I use dart traps mostly for guarding garage doors on non-blood moon bases. I find that they trigger the cop explosions and I don't really have a setup where I can snipe them effectively. But it's one of my goals to find a good setup where dart traps would be effective before you can use turrets on a horde base.

Yeah the cops do explode. I have noticed they explode anywhere and anytime, does not matter if they are near a electronic trap. I cut 3/4 of the video with the start of bloodmoon and I have decided to snipe the cops when I see them so I got most until the last one exploded on the pressure plates. They are worse than a demo, not in damage but they just explode for the heck of it and tear up a base. The exploding cop also triggers the demo's so I take them out if I see them.

This dart trap thing was a test to see how they work and I think if used properly they can be effective. This is all end game for me really, but it was fun to make the dart traps for my base. I have been level 300 for a while now, so I have no real goals to make, so I am just fooling around on bloodmoons seeing how far they can get to breaching the base. If I was fighting with my M60 and Rocket Launcher like I was doing a while back they would not get anywhere near the dart traps. The wall between the outer base and the inner base is 2 concrete blocks thick.

 

[vylmen]

Yeah the cops do explode. I have noticed they explode anywhere and anytime, does not matter if they are near a electronic trap.

From my experience they explode below a certain amount of HP (no access to mods on PS5, so no range/pct i could come up with) and since Dart traps are not heavy damage, they indirectly trigger the cop explosions, because they get them below the threshold HP and give them enough time to explode.

 

[Roland]

There's a great Madmole story where he unthinkingly parked his gyrocopter in the line of fire of his dart traps when they first were implemented and had to watch in horror as it exploded part way through the horde night. Be careful with your dart traps!

"Get to the choppah!!!"

 

[Jost Amman]

to get a good supply of radiators and them scrap all of them, feed the forge

Do you know that you're wasting 25% of the brass that way?
You should put the radiators directly in the forge to smelt!

 

[bobrpggamer]

Do you know that you're wasting 25% of the brass that way?
You should put the radiators directly in the forge to smelt!

Yeah I know but I can scrap 4 stacks of 5 radiators on like 6 - 8 workbenches and do other things. I know I tried doing it the forge at least once and just decided to get the 75% and save time to do other things. I am a couch potato in my house my 55" LED TV is hooked up to my PC and I use my keyboard and mouse on the couch with a very long USB cable. In game however I do not waste time, I plan things out and make sure I get them done. It kind of weird really. When I was building my main base I was never idle for a minute. So I just accepted the 75% reduction.

Maybe I will try it again if I have time before bloodmoon, I notice that about 16:00 to 22:00 a lot of the time I am just waiting around. Do you know how many radiators you can put in a slot forge. Obviously the workbench has 4, so I put a stack of 5 in each slot. I have the 3 slot forge mod so I guess I can put a stack of 5 in the tree slots. If I have to add 1 radiator at a time I am not going to bother.

 

[bobrpggamer]

There's a great Madmole story where he unthinkingly parked his gyrocopter in the line of fire of his dart traps when they first were implemented and had to watch in horror as it exploded part way through the horde night. Be careful with your dart traps!

The best way to see if your dart trap trigger plate works is to stand on it or them. The best way to see if your electric wire taps work is to walk into it. If you have a lot of them you will need a medkit.

At least with turrets you can check the camera to see if it is on and works.

 

[theFlu]

I have the 3 slot forge mod so I guess I can put a stack of 5 in the tree slots. If I have to add 1 radiator at a time I am not going to bother.

Yup, one stack per forge slot; that makes for quite a bit of babysitting, you'll have to feed them way more often. Compared to dropping in full stacks of brass, ofc.

 

[bobrpggamer]

Yup, one stack per forge slot; that makes for quite a bit of babysitting, you'll have to feed them way more often. Compared to dropping in full stacks of brass, ofc.

Now I remember now why took the easier route. Still though a good score from wrenching cars can make up to like 2 stacks of 6000 brass. the other problem with brass, is that you can go through a boatload of brass in a forge and seems to never fill up very fast. Lead burns slow but 3 stacks of 6000 of lead and you get a full 30000 from that. Sometimes I think that if you have 0 brass not even 3 stacks of 6000 will fill it to 30000 brass.

Now for 9mm, you also need bullet tips and gunpowder as well. Gunpowder takes forever in a chemistry station. Its easy to mine coal and nitrate but still takes longer than any other item to craft. Burning a lot of wood too, in contrast darts need iron.

 

[theFlu]

Lead burns slow but 3 stacks of 6000 of lead and you get a full 30000 from that. Sometimes I think that if you have 0 brass not even 3 stacks of 6000 will fill it to 30000 brass.

Can't say I've observed lead in a long while, but I thought all the metals are in "forge units" now? 6000 iron, lead or brass = 6000 in the forge. Stone, sand and clay giving 4 (or 5?) forge units per "inventory unit"?

 

[bobrpggamer]

Can't say I've observed lead in a long while, but I thought all the metals are in "forge units" now? 6000 iron, lead or brass = 6000 in the forge. Stone, sand and clay giving 4 (or 5?) forge units per "inventory unit"?

I could be wrong of course, but I swear it takes more brass to fill a forge to the max resource of 30000. It also seems to melt way faster than any other resource. It also seems Lead and Clay melt way slower than others and takes forever to go through 6000 stacks of resource as well.

This is just an observant or feeling I get, it is probably as you say.

 

[theFlu]

This is just an observant or feeling I get, it is probably as you say.

If you're curious, easy enough to check. My understanding is: every "forge unit" of any of the materials takes one second to smelt. Bellows will change the time, but equally for everything.

So, drop in 10 lead, 10 brass and 2 clay and just watch for 10 seconds Or, 100 of each and one piece of food for 50 secs of fuel.