PC Insane Difficulty?

C

cyrostormz

New member
So me and my friend have played this game quite extensively two years ago.

Recently, we've been playing alpha 18 for a couple weeks on nomad, but the difficulty is like nothing we've ever experienced.

At this point I'm wondering if this is some kind of bug because it doesn't even make sense anymore, can somebody tell me whether this is just normal or if it actually isn't supposed to happen.

Here's a list of the insane things that have happened:

1. On day 3, running zombies spawn right behind us on multiple occasions, both as singles and hordes.

2. On night 3, approximately 20-30 zombie dogs pile into our base and kill us.

3. After we die on night 3, we both get instantly spawn-killed 2-3 times by zombie bears that we spawn standing next to.

4. On the first horde night, we already start seeing maybe 10-20% of zombies being irradiated.

5. On the second horde night, roughly 50% of zombies are irradiated.

6. On the third horde night, almost exclusively irradiated zombies are spawning. Our reinforced concrete walls get broken through by midnight. Zombies seem to need multiple pipe bombs to kill.

7. And not to mention on each horde night there are at least 20 zombies attacking at any given point in time.

8. During the day, we've had hordes of irradiated zombies attack our base throughout the half the day, preventing us from going outside and eventually killing us.

 
Sounds like a fun game, but indeed, not exactly the default settings... :)

Then again 1-3 doesn't sound like the same game

1 ferals don't spawn "right behind us" if you're not in a high level POI and doing something wrong.

2 I've never seen a dog horde of more than 10 dogs..

3 stupidly unlucky getting spawned in wasteland over and over again? I use a bedroll so I don't end up in random bear feeding situations...

4-6 Your gamestage is off the charts. 2 man makes it somewhat quick, but ..

7 sounds about normal for a 2man.

8. screamers. with your gamestage, they can get a bit interesting ... :)

 
Sounds like a fun game, but indeed, not exactly the default settings... :)
Then again 1-3 doesn't sound like the same game

1 ferals don't spawn "right behind us" if you're not in a high level POI and doing something wrong.

2 I've never seen a dog horde of more than 10 dogs..

3 stupidly unlucky getting spawned in wasteland over and over again? I use a bedroll so I don't end up in random bear feeding situations...

4-6 Your gamestage is off the charts. 2 man makes it somewhat quick, but ..

7 sounds about normal for a 2man.

8. screamers. with your gamestage, they can get a bit interesting ... :)
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1. That's what I used to think, but I swear during day 3 I was in a backyard, and as soon as I walked over a trash pile that made some noise at least 5 running soldier zombies spawn in each of my blind spots (like behind fences), within 10m. Unless they were just walking slowly towards me the whole time and just heard me then. But even then running soldier zombie hordes shouldn't be spawning so early.

2. I've got the screenshot to prove it: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1967313249. I count 13 in the photo but there were a lot more out of view. The dogs started off as just one or two which we killed, but they kept spawning throughout the whole night and eventually built up into a solid horde.

3. Just remembered I think it was mountain lions and wolves not zombie bears. But the odd thing is as soon as we got spawned in they were literally standing 2m next to us. This just can't be right.

I just don't understand how our gamestage increases so quickly. I'll take the other poster's advice and check the xp thing once I can, but the only setting we changed was to make your items disappear on death.

 
I got the suspicion that someone with admin rights is trolling you and spawning them in via debug console.

 
Nothing described sounds anything like Nomad on mostly default settings. Nomad in co-op is almost too easy for experienced players, at least based on my experience (on my own co-op server). Something is definitely going wonky with your game (not at all accusing you of lying, btw).

Any chance you started this world in 18.0 and have carried it through? I know some point upgrades - maybe it was 18.0 to 18.1? - would cause dogs and bears to spawn in where other zombies were supposed to be (sleeper volumes, IIRC).

Without significant changes to default settings, the player experience on non-horde days and nights - outside of a POI - ought to be the occasional zombie or two, maybe a wandering horde once a day, but otherwise very manageable. Screamers every now and again if you're doing base-building or have a running forge, etc. My co-op partner and I (players since about A14) played Nomad for the first 14 days and started to feel a bit un-challenged so we're on Warrior now. Still pretty manageable, really, if the dumba-- (me) doesn't Leeroy Jenkins into a room full of bikers and big mamas.

 
wow, seems interesting, I would love to have continuous flow of zeds running at my base and spawning all around, sometimes I feel quite lonely in this world... or as an option set Bloodmoon to come over every night and let them come in waves so I have some time like half an hour between waves to do some reparation and restock ammo and let em come all night long!

 
Just checked our gamestage; we're on about 250 gamestage on day 25, and this is after repeatedly dying on more than one occasion. Does anyone know if this is a reasonable number?

We've got combined 450 + 350 = 800 kills; so maybe we're killing too many zombies?

 
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Now that's a good delivery of farm plots, and you're all ready to take them apart with the two shivs it'll take... :)

250.. is that the combined one, or one of you? Sounds quite high either way tbh. For a reference, Skippy0330 plays on mostly default settings afaik, on day 105 he was at 235.. level 98 solo. 5k kills, soo, it's not that ;)

"In a backyard" .. of what? The missile silo? :) Sounds like the current sleepers. They're supposed to spawn in all the possible and impossible hiding places and wake up/activate when they hear/see you.. They'll also occasionally miss their que to spawn 'early enough', especially if you don't follow the Proper Path* through a POI, so they can spawn on your face - that's what I meant by "doing something wrong." With a high enough gamestage and a decent POI they'll be tough; ferals, rads.

They should spawn hidden from your sight if you Are following the Proper Path - behind every kitchen counter and whatnot.. start from the end and go through the other way and most of them are in plain sight ... ambushing you at the wrong door etc. :)

The "spawning next to an animal" is most likely just terrible luck.. to be a bug it'd have to be a feature first, can't see a reason for it. The cats have been pretty aggressive, on top of all that other crap, sure, would get annoyed myself :)

*What the f is the Proper Path? Most buildings aren't houses, they're .. dungeons. They start from a point and are designed to have a path through them. Along that path things roughly work as intended. Going through walls and barricaded doors will cause a little more weirdness.

 
Just checked our gamestage; we're on about 250 gamestage on day 25, and this is after repeatedly dying on more than one occasion. Does anyone know if this is a reasonable number?
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No it isn't unless you are level 75 on day 25, and playing on Insane. No way you should be on level 75 by day 25 unless you're on 300% EXP gain. [To compare I am level 80 on day 60 on 150% EXP gain]

GS = (days alive + level) x 2.5 (for Insane)

250 = (25 + 75) x 2.5

This is assuming no deaths. Every death would subtract 2 from 'days alive'. So if you died 13 times, you'd need level 100 for GS 250.

Insane and 300% EXP is about as hard as the game could possibly be. Even at that I've been on higher GS than that on Insane and do not get the type of enemy activity you describe in the OP during normal days. 20 to 30 Zombie dogs can't occur under any circumstances I can think of. The biggest possible dog horde is 12.

Is this a public server? In which case sounds like your admin has had a wee play with the XML files. That is the only way you could possibly see what you are seeing at GS 250.

 
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No it isn't unless you are level 75 on day 25, and playing on Insane. No way you should be on level 75 by day 25 unless you're on 300% EXP gain. [To compare I am level 80 on day 60 on 150% EXP gain]
GS = (days alive + level) x 2.5 (for Insane)

250 = (25 + 75) x 2.5

This is assuming no deaths. Every death would subtract 2 from 'days alive'. So if you died 13 times, you'd need level 100 for GS 250.

Insane and 300% EXP is about as hard as the game could possibly be. Even at that I've been on higher GS than that on Insane and do not get the type of enemy activity you describe in the OP during normal days. 20 to 30 Zombie dogs can't occur under any circumstances I can think of. The biggest possible dog horde is 12.

Is this a public server? In which case sounds like your admin has had a wee play with the XML files. That is the only way you could possibly see what you are seeing at GS 250.
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Then I have no idea what's happening. Here's a screenshot of the player statuses on day 28: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1968486819

We're not playing with anyone else, the server is pass-worded, and the only settings we've changed are:

1. 40 min days

2. 6 hour nights

3. Delete items on death

4. Persistent profiles

Exp gain is 100%.

We used the Navezgane map.

I don't see how any of those could make the gamestage increase so rapidly.

Something else strange we noticed is that the players stats page on both our screens don't match up, on mine it shows about 10-20 higher gamestage.

 
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This is what we get when DEVELOPERS listen to their hardcore players that the game tooooo easy, make it harder.

P.S. This game too easy, please make it harder ? Kappa

 
Then I have no idea what's happening. Here's a screenshot of the player statuses on day 28: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1968486819
We're not playing with anyone else, the server is pass-worded, and the only settings we've changed are:

1. 40 min days

2. 6 hour nights

3. Delete items on death

4. Persistent profiles

Exp gain is 100%.

We used the Navezgane map.
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Holy crap, you mean this is not a public hosted server, but just your own with you and your friend??? Even more mysterious.

OK whichever of you runs the server, open your gamestage.xml and look at the very first dozen lines of actual data (you need to skip past a load of comments) which should look like this:

<gamestages>


<config


daysAliveChangeWhenKilled="2"

 


scavengerGameDifficultyBonus="1.0"


adventurerGameDifficultyBonus="1.2"


nomadGameDifficultyBonus="1.5"


warriorGameDifficultyBonus="1.7"


survivalistGameDifficultyBonus="2.0"


insaneGameDifficultyBonus="2.5"

 


startingWeight ="1"


diminishingReturns ="0.2"

Those numbers are the difficulty multipliers. You'd have to considerably increase one or more of those to see the GS you are seeing at level 27, day 25. You died 7 times and said you were on Nomad, so your gamestage should be as follows:

(level + (days alive - (num deaths x 2)) x 1.5 (nomad)

(27 + (25 - 14)) x 1.5 = 57

Your gamestage should be 57. Assuming your friend's is about the same, your scaled multiplayer GS should be:

57 + (0.8 x 57) = 103

In fact from your screenshot, your GS's appear to be 297 and 275 which gives a scaled multiplayer GS of:

297 + (0.8 x 275) = 517

I don't see how any of those could make the gamestage increase so rapidly.
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They couldn't. Check the file carefully to see if any of the numbers in it are different from the bit in italics above. I am still puzzled though. Even at GS 517 - I have been there on co-op many times - you still would not see half the stuff you mentioned in your OP. Let's go over each of them one at a time and see if gamestage > 500 could explain them...

1. On day 3, running zombies spawn right behind us on multiple occasions, both as singles and hordes.
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Yeah you will see running zombies all over the place at high GS, irradiated as well, it's the "spawn right behind us" bit that sounds like a bug to me.

2. On night 3, approximately 20-30 zombie dogs pile into our base and kill us.
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I don't know of anyway that this many dogs can spawn at once. Higher GS will make your wandering hordes bigger, true, but this is waaaay bigger than any Dog horde I've ever seen (12 is the biggest). And you cannot get multiple wandering hordes at once to my knowledge.

3. After we die on night 3, we both get instantly spawn-killed 2-3 times by zombie bears that we spawn standing next to.
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Bizarre RNG?

4. On the first horde night, we already start seeing maybe 10-20% of zombies being irradiated.
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Completely expected with high gamestage.

5. On the second horde night, roughly 50% of zombies are irradiated.
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Completely expected with high gamestage.

6. On the third horde night, almost exclusively irradiated zombies are spawning. Our reinforced concrete walls get broken through by midnight. Zombies seem to need multiple pipe bombs to kill.
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Completely expected with high gamestage. However Zombies being difficult to kill like that suggests Insane difficuly, not Nomad. Zombies remain easy to kill on Nomad no matter how far you take your gamestage.

7. And not to mention on each horde night there are at least 20 zombies attacking at any given point in time
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This is normal. The game has a setting called maxAlive which is the maximum number of zombies that can be alive at any one time. It defaults to 12 I think, but this number is per player, so you'd have 24 at a time by default unless you changed that setting (most people increase it if their rigs can handle it!).

8. During the day, we've had hordes of irradiated zombies attack our base throughout the half the day, preventing us from going outside and eventually killing us.
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Completely expected with high gamestage IF those zombies are being spawned by Screamers. That's the only time I've ever seen irradiated zombies attack my base. Ever. Even then a Screamer will only bring 3 or 4 irradiated max; for there to be "hordes" of them, you'd need to be attracting a heck of a lot of Screamers, which has nothing to do with GS and everything to do with how much heat you are generating. Sounds like a bug though.

 
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2. On night 3, approximately 20-30 zombie dogs pile into our base and kill us.
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You do have a mod installed. Maybe not intentionally but you do.

At no point does this happen in the vanilla game.

 
I think we figured it out. We had an alpha 16 version of the game on an hdd, but alpha 18 on an ssd.

Turns out steam was using the files from the older one, but somehow still in alpha 18. Maybe just the settings were being used from the older one.

We've done a fresh install and it seems alright now.

 
That actually makes sense. lol. I was actually thinking it might be something to do with A16 because gamestage scaling changed after that alpha. In A16, GS went to 6000 and increased MUCH faster than it does in A17 and later, so GS 200+ would be normal on week 1 back then and equivalent to GS 30 or 40 in today's money.

Glad you figured it out.

Your 20 to 30 Dogs remains a mystery though, as that couldn't happen in A16 either. ;P

 
Your 20 to 30 Dogs remains a mystery though, as that couldn't happen in A16 either. ;P
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There was that weird bug a few versions back which spawned dogs and bears all over the place, including inside of POIs. It was caused by using an old world under the new patch. Maybe related?

 
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