PC Easy late game horde strat, with pictures

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PS: Don't take that post too seriously.

Just poking a little fun.

Here's a kitten to make you feel better.

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Could be. I tried some feral versions with the dev tool, but all of them went down pretty quick. But this one on your pic ... never seen it again. And thats good ... damn, its ugly and scaring.
Back before A16, these guys used to be added to the spawn pool after Day 27. At that point screamers could potentially spawn several of them at once, which means it was a VERY bad idea to keep those forges running unless your base was well defended. They were also only one of 2 zombies that could run during the day, but you rarely ran into the football team zombies outside of a blood moon back then.

 
For my 7th night I made a tower (5 blocks high from upgraded cobblestone ) next to my POI base with acces to the top from there.

Apparently since there was no door to slam they just wandered around hitting random blocks.

Some attacked the POI at random locations and some even started punching tree's and the wall around my entire area.

0 hits to the tower for some reason.

 
Some interesting opinions on what's "late game".
Day 28 and level 90/300 = late game?

So what's day 100 and level 300 considered? Ascendance?

Let's see how these tactics work on a day 77 horde.

If they still hold up then great! I'll consider adjusting.

Until then...
Well, it's not end game, but as far as I can tell I had the strongest possible zombie types show up and they got absolutely trashed as well. So unless there are new zombies I'm not aware of, or late game hordes suddenly spawn way more zombies at once, I seriously doubt this tactic will ever fail.

And it's not like it wouldn't be trivially easy to simply add more blade traps to their path, or a few turrets, dart traps, whatever. Only challenge left is hoarding materials during the rest of the week.

Quite frankly, I'm only continuing this playthrough because I still haven't found/tried most modifications, and because the POIs sometimes give you one hell of a fight all of a sudden. I might try new worlds with higher difficulty, but I don't really like bullet sponges tbh.

 
Welp, for the day 35 horde I just put in two electric fences (poles encased in reinforced concrete to protect them) and it was even easier than before, since the fences don't break like the barbed wire and thus give easy headshot opportunities all night long, instead of just during the first few waves.

Going to wait for next experimental for another playthrough on slightly harder difficulty and maybe more zombies during blood moons, see how that goes..

As it stands, I still think the current hordes are too easily exploited.

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Welp, for the day 35 horde I just put in two electric fences (poles encased in reinforced concrete to protect them) and it was even easier than before, since the fences don't break like the barbed wire and thus give easy headshot opportunities all night long, instead of just during the first few waves.
Going to wait for next experimental for another playthrough on slightly harder difficulty and maybe more zombies during blood moons, see how that goes..

As it stands, I still think the current hordes are too easily exploited.

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Fascinating.

Day 35 is a pretty decent horde.

Think I'll have to try out your method.

 
Yup. Smart zombies = exploitable zombies. I tried this kind of choke point defense for the past 2 alphas. Never worked. Now once people figure it out seems the horde nights are gonna be more boring than ever. Seems the poor fun pimps cant win lol.

 
Well I imagine/hope the AI can still be diversified, so that not all zombies behave exactly the same. One thing that could make this strategy much less effective would be to change the AI of block damaging zombies so they are more likely to go through walls, carving out new paths for the other zombies in the process. It would be way more challenging for players if they had to keep an eye on their walls and occasionally move away from their kill zone to dispatch miner zombies while the rest continues to run in through the choke.

 
Well I imagine/hope the AI can still be diversified, so that not all zombies behave exactly the same. One thing that could make this strategy much less effective would be to change the AI of block damaging zombies so they are more likely to go through walls, carving out new paths for the other zombies in the process. It would be way more challenging for players if they had to keep an eye on their walls and occasionally move away from their kill zone to dispatch miner zombies while the rest continues to run in through the choke.
I'm hearing people say not only was the AI improved but the zombies block damage also got a huge boost. Now I dont know if this is true but if it is they should lower it to alpha 16 levels. There was no need to give the zombies higher block damage after the ai improvements.

 
I'm hearing people say not only was the AI improved but the zombies block damage also got a huge boost. Now I dont know if this is true but if it is they should lower it to alpha 16 levels. There was no need to give the zombies higher block damage after the ai improvements.
Got to say Kage, and I follow/watch your content on YouTube (thanks for that, buddy!), but you've already seen the damage zombies can do in your "let's play" stuff. IMO, and from my experience, it's not all that much more on a horde night. Get yourself up onto the top of (solid) buildings, remove the stairs/ladder to the floor and the horde night now is as manageable as an A16 horde night. Sure, the damage is more and yes the AI is better, but they aren't some sort of "Ů€bermensch".

It's not the hardness of the zombies that kill you, it's the complete lack of frames (and I'm not talking the wooden ones either) that does it!

 
Got to say Kage, and I follow/watch your content on YouTube (thanks for that, buddy!), but you've already seen the damage zombies can do in your "let's play" stuff. IMO, and from my experience, it's not all that much more on a horde night. Get yourself up onto the top of (solid) buildings, remove the stairs/ladder to the floor and the horde night now is as manageable as an A16 horde night. Sure, the damage is more and yes the AI is better, but they aren't some sort of "Ů€bermensch".
It's not the hardness of the zombies that kill you, it's the complete lack of frames (and I'm not talking the wooden ones either) that does it!
The issue people might be having is they are behind poles on the ground floor. I have been watching YouTube videos of people up on walls and they seem ok. So I would conclude if people behind poles are getting wrecked but people on walls are not then the ai has not been fixed. I'm thinking zombies below are not attacking the walls holding you up like they should. Furthermore if they were no base would be safe.

This is all second hand knowlage though. I'll find out soon enough, recording my first horde night today.

 
I'm hearing people say not only was the AI improved but the zombies block damage also got a huge boost. Now I dont know if this is true but if it is they should lower it to alpha 16 levels. There was no need to give the zombies higher block damage after the ai improvements.
2 mechanics are causing this super block damage....

1) Zombies get a stacking damage bonus if they are trying to hit the same block as other zombies.

2) Zombies take the "path of least damage" to get to the player. ie. they go for the weakest block if there are multiple blocks/paths between them and the player.

This means as soon as a block is damaged and thus weaker than its neighbours, all the zombies go for it. The damage bonus means this block is destroyed very very quickly. And it snowballs from there. This is why all the exploits so far involve making the zombies not want to hit your blocks at all - if they think they can reach you they will path to you, so it's just a matter of making that path a loop.

As in this example: https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?96592-Working-anti-horde-structure-for-A17E&p=884978

 
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I'm hearing people say not only was the AI improved but the zombies block damage also got a huge boost. Now I dont know if this is true but if it is they should lower it to alpha 16 levels. There was no need to give the zombies higher block damage after the ai improvements.
They need you to "die" Kage! It's "part of the FUN"! smh

The other parts of the game (building, looting, ect.) other than the 7 Day Horde carry this game, no need to make people die a lot to never hear them say that the game is too easy.

 
I've always been a horde night base builder in this game, now I just prep existing buildings for horde night. Feels odd, haven't died on one yet, except when the game lagged and I blew myself up with a pipe bomb lmao. Just seems like horde night is no big deal now. I've used the motel roof, the parking garage (taking out the ramps), the apartment building (the AI just made the zeds run up the stairs then take fall damage while I shot them with arrows), and have used the mega Pass n Gas building for the late stage horde nights... it's actually pretty simple now since the AI is so exploitable.

EDIT: Exploitable AI is not a good thing imo... predictability is kind of boring

 
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This is all second hand knowlage though. I'll find out soon enough, recording my first horde night today.
Be interesting to see how it goes for you. If you are streaming on Twitch I'll maybe catch you there, if not I'm sure it will pop up on YT soon enough.

I'm going to be honest, I found it a little disappointing as I expected them to be rock hard but they aren't. The improved AI is certainly fun to observe, as too many times in A16 you found yourself just waiting for them to sort themselves out. That's not the case now, and unlike A16 I'm not sure if you'd manage to survive dropping onto a horde on horde night (falling off a ledge or whatever) as you get swamped by the A17 horde now rather than them running around in insane little circles.

 
Be interesting to see how it goes for you. If you are streaming on Twitch I'll maybe catch you there, if not I'm sure it will pop up on YT soon enough.

I'm going to be honest, I found it a little disappointing as I expected them to be rock hard but they aren't. The improved AI is certainly fun to observe, as too many times in A16 you found yourself just waiting for them to sort themselves out. That's not the case now, and unlike A16 I'm not sure if you'd manage to survive dropping onto a horde on horde night (falling off a ledge or whatever) as you get swamped by the A17 horde now rather than them running around in insane little circles.
I found this to be the opposite, the one time I died on horde night from lag with a pipe bomb I had my bedroll on the building next to the pass and gas we were using. I was able to wait for a minute on that roof when I respawned, go over to the pass n gas, grab some frames that were still stacked, pole back up to the first roof, then the second roof. I literally walked by zombies because they were so focused on getting the other players on the roof. It is all in my twitch vod from the weekend if you want to see it. I was shocked how little they cared about me when their focus was already set.

 
I found this to be the opposite, the one time I died on horde night from lag with a pipe bomb I had my bedroll on the building next to the pass and gas we were using. I was able to wait for a minute on that roof when I respawned, go over to the pass n gas, grab some frames that were still stacked, pole back up to the first roof, then the second roof. I literally walked by zombies because they were so focused on getting the other players on the roof. It is all in my twitch vod from the weekend if you want to see it. I was shocked how little they cared about me when their focus was already set.
That is a different case scenerio then solo. Interesting that they lock onto specific players though.

My experience so far as a solo player is very different. You fall down you die, unless by some miracle you don't get stun/bled locked long enough to make it back up. The cops were more then happy to take pot shots at me on the upper floor before they got too close and lost firing angle. The occasional vulture made sure you weren't to comfortable up there. Unfortunately I'd have to agree with the overall consensus here. The AI is still vulnerable to the same climb up stairs fall down loop as A16. I think I'd rather they lower block damage so I could attempt to tough it out rather then needing to exploit their pathing.

 
That is a different case scenerio then solo. Interesting that they lock onto specific players though.My experience so far as a solo player is very different. You fall down you die, unless by some miracle you don't get stun/bled locked long enough to make it back up. The cops were more then happy to take pot shots at me on the upper floor before they got too close and lost firing angle. The occasional vulture made sure you weren't to comfortable up there. Unfortunately I'd have to agree with the overall consensus here. The AI is still vulnerable to the same climb up stairs fall down loop as A16. I think I'd rather they lower block damage so I could attempt to tough it out rather then needing to exploit their pathing.
That's fair, I have not fell in solo. Thinking about it, I play on Nomad, all standard settings aside from went to 16 on horde night. I've only died from zombies when I had a screamer bring a horde into my mine while I was using an auger lmao.... and while I was in the Shotgun Factory, F that place lol

 
I found this to be the opposite, the one time I died on horde night from lag with a pipe bomb I had my bedroll on the building next to the pass and gas we were using. I was able to wait for a minute on that roof when I respawned, go over to the pass n gas, grab some frames that were still stacked, pole back up to the first roof, then the second roof. I literally walked by zombies because they were so focused on getting the other players on the roof. It is all in my twitch vod from the weekend if you want to see it. I was shocked how little they cared about me when their focus was already set.
I've not fallen into a blood moon horde, it was more a guess based on what hitting a bunch of "unlocked" ferals do when you hit a "dungeon house" PoI. During horde night the zombies certainly seemed to know where I was and how to get to me, so I just put 2 and 2 together. I'm a bit surprised you were able to get out of it (fairly) easily.

One caveat is I only play solo, so I'm guessing that in those cases I would be the sole interest to the zombies thus their pathing would be all about getting to me.

I think we can all agree on one thing though. No matter how good or bad a player you are, the lag is far more likely to kill you on horde night than the zombies are!

 
I think we can all agree on one thing though. No matter how good or bad a player you are, the lag is far more likely to kill you on horde night than the zombies are!
This 100%, I have BM set at 16 and almost every single horde night the zombies will end up stuck in place, along with other players. I can literally get down and start bonking them at that point. Also, cops will still be spitting and you'll see random spit curve balls coming at you from nothing lmao. Definitely needs fixing.

 
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