PC How to keep zombies out of your base is a17?

[flamewolf393]

Now that they can jump, and tear through blocks like wet tissue paper, how do you make an effective base? Especially for the early game?

 

[Perramas]

Best way is to exploit the new AI and the new jumping ability of the Zombies. Look here for details https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?96592-Working-anti-horde-structure-for-A17E

 

[Pico]

Make a pole, 4 or more metres high. Sit on top of it in a crouch for the entire night. Make no movement, make no sound, cast no light, do absolutely nothing, and you might fluke getting through the night, but if you try to use the time in a productive manner, you risk a raging horde.

Welcome to the new boring!

 

[Zourin]

First, have a perimeter wall. This is mostly to harmlessly deflect wandering hordes as long as you can remain undetected.

If it's horde night, you're going to have zombies up in your ♥♥♥♥ one way or another. Don't give them easy or direct access to the upper levels you reside on.

Secondly, Understand the zombies are now easily herded to 'preferential' killzones. You no longer need a full 360 defense, and that's damn good because you can't resource one by yourself. Initially, this is going to be spikes, but once you can get dart or blade traps, this becomes less tedious to maintain. Just ensure that zombies have a "clear" path, and they'll bee-line to it.

To stop 'jumpers', line the upper portion of your wall with barbed wire. The snare field will more or less stop that in its tracks as long as it's not destroyed.



Here's what mine looks like, and it's worked fairly well so far. The spike pits are the "clear path" until they fall in and destroy the spikes. Once a pit is 'spent', newcomers path to the next pit, because its "level". They avoid doing anything funky at the walls because "Dude, EZ path". I added barbed wire around it to further hold back speedy zombies and ferals, and it saved my bacon on a screamer horde with an irradiated feral spider zombie and irradiated feral cop.

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

Make a pole, 4 or more metres high. Sit on top of it in a crouch for the entire night. Make no movement, make no sound, cast no light, do absolutely nothing, and you might fluke getting through the night, but if you try to use the time in a productive manner, you risk a raging horde.
Welcome to the new boring!

Now tell us how you really feel.

 

[Hanzberger]

It's and interesting question I think a lot of us have. My first base I used a POI in the woods that had 3 floors. Made it so they could not access the second floor and had the 3rd floor as a back up. Ripped up the second floor, only a 8x8 section filled the lower floor with barbed wire/wood, its the second option for barbed wire sorry don't remember and it worked. That was day 7 and it probably would work for 14 but unsure, I have paused at day 10, no deaths and fairly high levels.

The reason I paused in playing was due to time but also what was my next move? I have moved to a city and setup on top of a laundry mat next to a working stiffs. My original plan was to build a platform between the 2 buildings and line the floor with some barbed just to slow them down to shoot. However what I did notice on day 7 BM is they did get creative and start to "build stairs". So they started knocking out the walls in order to get to the next level of block. So take out a couple of blocks, jump and continue to make their way up. At least this is what I observed. Sorry this is long. So based on this, and I haven't done creative or mods, I really wanted to just try it myself, anyway I'm thinking of building just a pillar platform and hopefully iron bars for a floor. (cops can show up now early esp if your levels are up) In fact I just read a post where someone mentioned a similar idea. They mentioned a checkerboard design, which is what I was thinking. Many pillars, so if they knock them down you won't fall down.

Having said all that, the problem is I feel this game is stacked against the solo player because of the time to get resources. I'm kinda playing dead is dead. And mining right now with auger zeds is too risky. I still think I can pull this off however in time for day 14. But I'm only one silent dog horde away from death......

 

[grieferbastard]

Honestly the new best trick to defending your base quit trying to make a 100% always perfectly safe base you can do whatever in and know the zombies will never get to you until you decide to go out and fight. That's more or less what we used to be able to do. You could make a 100% totally always safe base and just camp inside and craft and mine and whatever and when you wanted to fight you went out and killed zombies.

The only way I've found to get a safe base is building UP. Top floor of apartment buildings. Build spike traps around the corners and the door, fill the first floor with flagstone/concrete when you can. expect to repair a lot. I have 3 different entrances, one is a parkour jump to a platform that jumps to a ladder. You put the jumping platforms at an angle to one another, never had them cross it. The other is ladders that go around a corner. You can go up a ladder and go around a corner to another ladder to finish the climb, zombies won't do that.

For day 7 hordes have a place other than your base to go to. You want a lot of open area. Construction sites are ideal - fill the ground with spikes and put railings on the 2nd floor parts. Move around and drag them through the spikes while you shoot bolts at them. Don't waste bullets, arrows or crossbow bolts. Have a place you can crouch and swing a fireaxe (IMO best weapon now, iron or steel when you can, superior to sledge with faster swing) to hit heads when they're trying to get to you.

Expect to have to fight. You WANT to fight - that's how you level.

 

[SoberSean]

Make a nerd pole, put a long, long, very long ladder up it and little buzzard-proof platform for you stand on with walls/grates a roof at the top and aim down the ladder. Stock up on ammo and a repair kit or spare auto that's all. Shoot down the pole all night. The AI makes them funnel up the ladder and they fall after taking enough damage threshold and the start climbing back up again, it's all very safe

 

[babspsol]

Now that they can jump, and tear through blocks like wet tissue paper, how do you make an effective base? Especially for the early game?

If you were not cheesing and were actively defending during bloodmoon in A16 then you can use the same base design. I am still using my design without issue.

I also saw an active thread yesterday discussing passive defence base designs by exploiting the new AI if that's your thing.

Base design isn't the problem in A17, power levelling gets punished quite severely if you don't have the time to apply the unlocked items to your base and that's where the problem lies for many. If you power level to 40 and then spend horde night in a cobblestone base surrounded by wood spikes, you are going to have a bad night.

 

[Akrux]

Some tips for night 21+ in a player built elevated fort

- metal traps are pretty good, deploy 100+, cost is 4 forged iron so not too bad even for 150 or 200

- zombies can jump a gap of 2 but not 3 so remove wood frames to make a big gap for horde night

- you can jump a gap of 3 sometimes but not worth the risk over traps

- you need protection from vultures so enclosed, roof, eaves etc

- supporting 2x2 columns need to be concrete, clad in upgraded sheet metal surrounded by metal traps minimum 2 deep

- no room for cladding at ground level as traps are too close

- your base needs to be elevated about 5 blocks (maybe 4 will work but I used 5)

- centered iron bars laid flat make a good surround to stand on and shoot down

- make sure you can see all four sides of every support column as a Z can stand and pummel your column after the trap is gone

- I build 4 2x2 columms with a shooting hole 3 x 3 in the center of the 11 x 11 elevated concrete platform

- the 11 x 11 is edged with 2 centered iron bars laid flat so total size is 15 x 15

- this leaves space underneath for hundreds of iron traps at ground level

- don't waste wood or metal by building wood frame -> metal -> concrete

- build flagstone -> better flagstone -> concrete -> better concrete

- you need to farm hundreds of boulders for the metal for traps, iron bars and sheet metal

- as a bonus you have tons of concrete and lead and eventually gun powder

- if you are short of metal then use wood frames instead of iron bars to stand on and shoot down

- I know you are eager to do quests and explore but build your base first

 

[Zourin]

This is where I'm at currently as the horde comes down on day 28.



They can only really attack from those two pit traps, and one more a little off to my right. I don't need to cover the other side of the building, as there are no pit traps baiting their path. I took the time on day 25 to do some mining in the desert for oil shale to make molotovs, and I'm glad I did. I'd love to see how it ends, but the horde tripped the console crash and I'm trying to restore the game >.> WIth the standard 8 zombies at a time, the molotov is actually less efficient than the 25-swarm used in testing, so they tend to wear out my supply.

Whole lot of cops/irradiated cops, and it's stripping the metal roof off the barn, but I still have a lot of roof left to work with. Leather armor is doing a good job stopping some of the hits i'm taking.

 

[grieferbastard]

Leather armor is doing a good job stopping some of the hits i'm taking.

Excellent concept for a base by the way. I built something kinda like that for horde night but it's just a little fortified area with 2 pit traps like that but longer and narrower. I have a jump over and run exit out the back if I need to. I dislike fighting hordes at my base. I didn't realize they pathed like they do, I just expected to have to kite them back through it but no they have been very willing to just take the route I prepared.

As to leather armor, that's what I've found. In fact I haven't found heavy armor to be worth it at all. A good suit of leather (I have a military helmet and vest now at level 113 or so, day 41 and a couple nice mods) gives me almost as much protection for a very minimal loss of mobility.

I made a suit of iron armor but a tiny bit more protection (relative to the damage you take) just isn't worth not being able to get away fast enough or the increased stamina loss. Anyone have any good advice on heavy armor? Maybe I'm doing it wrong?

 

[Zourin]

Excellent concept for a base by the way. I built something kinda like that for horde night but it's just a little fortified area with 2 pit traps like that but longer and narrower. I have a jump over and run exit out the back if I need to. I dislike fighting hordes at my base. I didn't realize they pathed like they do, I just expected to have to kite them back through it but no they have been very willing to just take the route I prepared.
As to leather armor, that's what I've found. In fact I haven't found heavy armor to be worth it at all. A good suit of leather (I have a military helmet and vest now at level 113 or so, day 41 and a couple nice mods) gives me almost as much protection for a very minimal loss of mobility.

I made a suit of iron armor but a tiny bit more protection (relative to the damage you take) just isn't worth not being able to get away fast enough or the increased stamina loss. Anyone have any good advice on heavy armor? Maybe I'm doing it wrong?

Heavy armor is MUCH better than light armor, but to get the most use out of it, you need to be melee spec'ed enough to throw down with irradiated cops. You have to dish out some pretty solid damage to make the most out of that survivability. Combined with high level Fast Healing, Immunity, and Pain Tolerance, you're very hard to kill.

Light armor is enough to save your bacon from stray hits, and works OK for agility/perception builds with skills like Run and Gun and Ninja Movement. These latter two skills are clutch, because you can't OHK ferals/irradiated, and Ninja is a 'GTFO' skill for getting distance when you have none.

The base, however, has never kept the horde completely at bay. It has, however, served excellently as a safe and massive xp farm (molotovs) and a complete dump of all my ammo. Eventually, the pits 'burn out' and they breach through. I recovered nearly all the structural damage within a few minutes, and it'll probably take the week to replace the spike traps. This horde's cops knocked out the stray section of the wall (nothing to cause a breach) before the traps expired, then they breached in through the rear door which hadn't been doubled. They then breached the back door (also single), then ran around like chickens while I watched until dawn 'cause I was out of ammo.

I got a TON of xp from that night, plus the wandering horde of military zombies that came that morning to check up on the damage. I should be pretty damn close to having powered defenses, though. I just don't have any engines (I have one, and that's going into a motorcycle)

I'm having a hard time deciding how to convert the chokes for blades/darts. The whole trap operates on the idea that the spikes 'fill' the pit up to ground level, then sink the zombies as they path over. I could sink some electric fencing down there pretty easily, though. Would prevent them from attacking the spikes, but the damage is ♥♥♥♥. Trap doors work, but there's a high chance they can run over it without falling.

 

[Kalarro]

wow, the answers to this topic show how big of a letdown this part of a17 is. Even more bc they are real solutions, not complains about it.

Best way is to exploit the new AI

Make a pole, 4 or more metres high. Sit on top of it in a crouch for the entire night.

You no longer need a full 360 defense

Honestly the new best trick to defending your base quit trying to make a 100% always perfectly safe base

Make a nerd pole, put a long, long, very long ladder up it and little buzzard-proof platform for you stand on with walls/grates a roof at the top and aim down the ladder. Stock up on ammo and a repair kit or spare auto that's all. Shoot down the pole all night. The AI makes them funnel up the ladder and they fall after taking enough damage threshold and the start climbing back up again, it's all very safe

I also saw an active thread yesterday discussing passive defence base designs by exploiting the new AI

This makes me so sad. I want to build a frikin good base in a game where the best feature is its building.

And no, even in a16 and 15 I also had to actively defend, so I dont want to just have never to worry about it. I needed to build a good base with a good design, I needed to defend actively, I needed to repair it all the time, and I needed to upgrade to better and more defenses each horde. I wasnt just hiding inside with nothing to do.

Good at the end there are 2 posts at least which give some building ideas that halfly work. Altho they also kind of exploit the AI pathing,

 

[Scyris]

I find it funny how little people use the barbed wire fences. Those spike pits someone posted? I'd do the same thing but with barbed wire fences instead. Slows them to a crawl and easy head shots I just kill them myself, 1 wood spike on nomad diffculty, usually won't even kill the weakest zombies. The barbed wire fence however, while it only does 1 dmg/tick it: makes them go into their pain animation which means less swings taken, it stops them from jumping, and the best part: they only take damage if zombies hit them, so they can last virtually forever, I've defended bases many times with just these, I usually sit on top of a open room, with the bottom full of barbed wire fences, zombies can't swing much and they are bascally target pratice, and they leave my walls alone. Only real issue is the puker's as they can attack you due tot heir ranged attack.

in a16 and below wood spikes were king, in a17e? its barbed wire fences, unsure if just the barbed wire is as good or not.

Sadly you have to exploit that Ai in b199 a17e because the block damage they did was just so stupidly high if you didn't exploit them, they'd just level your base no matter what its made out of. Some zombies still have 80-200 block damage (Worker zombies, cops)

 

[Pizzalicious]

walls with a door or 1 opening wide, create instant choke point. Put in what defense after that, win. Players 1 New ai 0

 

[Khulkhuum]

I agree that using any type of choke point is crucial for making your base/fort remain after the invasion. I figure you can go with only two options possible:

1. Any type of door. - Not really barring the entryway (even with vault doors) as the Zs will walk/run towards the doors and not simply hit on walls. If they have at least 1 door, it's an entrance that could bypass walls (if there aren't any other ways in).

2. Open entryway. - Less resistant than using a door, but the principle stands. Zs will storm an open way rather than hit walls.

So basically you could build a labyrinth, watching them navigate the premises and get killed by the traps. Also, the mentioned choke points would need addition of traps to perform their duties correctly - slowing down or killing the Zs.

 

[Oddux]

Do not try to keep zombies out in A17. Even if block HP were doubled, the zombies would still effortlessly tunnel through your base since TFP gave them AI that makes them group up on one segment AND buffed them when they group up AND increased their base damage to blocks. Any one of those changes alone would have drastically reduced the effectiveness of walls and doors.

They only attack however if they do not sense an 'unobstructed' path to the player. Since they don't see spikes and barbed wire as obstructions, they'll run through any path you give them straight through all the spikes. So use walls and doors just to funnel them, not to keep them out. If you path them right, they won't even break down a wood wall. Half the challenge of creating a base in A16 and earlier was defending from all directions and funneling the zombies so they did the least damage, now they all funnel themselves and you can effortlessly focus them all into a single strongpoint and they won't even attack anything if they can see a path.

Here's how to survive horde night. Its actually really easy. Its not concrete or even electricity. You can survive even day 45 hordes with just wood.

1)Take a crappy POI as a sacrificial horde night base. Make sure you have plenty of arrows and a gun in case of cops.

2)Clean out the ground floor and wall up all but the furthest entrance. Put down some walls to make the layout of the ground floor one long winding single path to a ladder reaching up to you.

3)Replace the floor upstairs with the new wood bars so you can shoot down through the floor. Fill the lower floor with spikes or barbed wire layed flat (I prefer barbed wire since it lasts longer, slows more, and does less damage so I can kill them for the XP).

4)Enter the second floor through a window using frames then take the frames out so they can't use it at all and the only route they sense to you is through the ground floor.

5)Shoot down on them as they run through the long path of spikes. You should be able to kill them all before they make it to the ladder.

6)If they do make it to the ladder, then bust it out so they can't come up. Sure they'll freak out since there's no more path to you and start taking out walls if you bust the ladder, but it should be late enough and you've already killed enough that they won't have time to bring the whole house down.

I miss building cool bases. That was my favorite part of the game. But its just not interesting or worth it in A17 to build anything new when you can just take over a sacrificial POI and not waste hours gathering for no gain. There's no XP in it and no satisfaction in it. If you try to do the sensible and intuitive thing when something is trying to kill you and try to keep them out, they destroy your base in seconds. If you accept that you can't keep them out and just build a death hallway using the new AI where they just funnel themselves into traps if they think its the least obstructed path to you without attacking anything at all, then its too easy.

Building and gathering gives very little XP when you can just go kill a couple zombies and get far more. Resource gathering is a chore now since gathering stone is so much slower; a stone voxel that took one hit to harvest in A16 when you fully specialized and got a full quality steel pick now takes five power attacks and half your stamina.

Just put the pickaxe down and forget the miner/custom-base-builder playstyle was a thing; we're all full time scavengers now. Just convert a POI into a hasty base and go loot all day.

 

[Zourin]

I find it funny how little people use the barbed wire fences. Those spike pits someone posted? I'd do the same thing but with barbed wire fences instead. Slows them to a crawl and easy head shots I just kill them myself, 1 wood spike on nomad diffculty, usually won't even kill the weakest zombies. The barbed wire fence however, while it only does 1 dmg/tick it: makes them go into their pain animation which means less swings taken, it stops them from jumping, and the best part: they only take damage if zombies hit them, so they can last virtually forever, I've defended bases many times with just these, I usually sit on top of a open room, with the bottom full of barbed wire fences, zombies can't swing much and they are bascally target pratice, and they leave my walls alone. Only real issue is the puker's as they can attack you due tot heir ranged attack.
in a16 and below wood spikes were king, in a17e? its barbed wire fences, unsure if just the barbed wire is as good or not.

Sadly you have to exploit that Ai in b199 a17e because the block damage they did was just so stupidly high if you didn't exploit them, they'd just level your base no matter what its made out of. Some zombies still have 80-200 block damage (Worker zombies, cops)

I use barbed wire defenses to support the pit traps. I use them on the outside of the trap to help bunch them up for molotovs, and on the inside to catch jumpers trying to come out of the pits with SMG or shotgun fire.

I also use normal barbed wire along the top of the perimeter wall to neuter spider jumpers, although tbh, they either fall in the pits with everyone else or jump the pit entirely and usually get snagged in the barbed wire.

This is vastly superior to simply using barbed wire because of ammo consumption. With barbed wire, you have to do ALL the damage, where with the traps, they do a lions share of the work in tandem with mollies. I've never walked out of a horde night with ammo, so.. that's a thing to take into consideration.

 

[JCrook1028]

- build flagstone -> better flagstone -> concrete -> better concrete

Just curious - why do you say that? I can see it if you have to build that way but once you can do rebar it's so much faster.