PC Melee

[chaosterone]

For one or two zeds, wound them with bow shots, then melee. You'll live a bit longer and use far less stamina killing them.

 

[Auger]

Yea it's horrible. Took me a whole 15-20 zombie kills to adjust to the new timing! Sprint is not needed in combat at all, back away and in works just fine. Slow down, aim the power hit, watch your stamina......win. Taking out a wandering horde melee is no harder than in A16, it just takes a bit longer and I know that will go away as I unlock more perks.

Pretty much my experience. It takes a few minutes to get the timing down but after that you'll never get hit by the daytime normal zombies. It actually feels more natural to me, more like boxing. Do a jab or two and back up a couple steps repeat. Have extra stamina throw in a power attack.

I managed to kill a wandering horde at 33 stamina plus encumbered. Took a while of kiting but they all eventually died.

I'm not even bothering with arrows atm having fun just beating them all down with my wooden club.

First time I played I beat a dog up with a torch. Speaking of torches I haven't set any zed on fire yet from torch did they remove that?. Was always fun to light up zeds and watch them burn.

 

[Draz]

I like the new melee, I only wish the hit didn't completely miss if the cursor is not over the zombie. It looks and feels very strange and makes it very very hard to fight on uneven terrain.

That, and the weird queueing of attacks (if you press attack again before the earlier attack animation finishes, it'll later do another one) are the only issues I have with it. Both I think you can get used to, but it's not exactly ideal.

I do like the heavy-hitting, slow two-handers but I have to wonder about their viability in endgame (vs. later gamestage 7 day hordes, for instance) because unlike the ranged builds, with melee you're not only more vulnerable because of having to get to melee range, you will always only be able to attack one target at once - compared to someone with an AK/rifle who can do series of headshots in rapid succession. Some kind of sweep attack might be in order.

Edit: From the new build notes:

Fixes

-Melee attacks spamming when clicking while animation is playing

Yay! :excitement:

 

[Mezameru]

Use right click it solves most problems in A17 related to clicking.

 

[Drunkwolf]

Melee is so much better now than it was. once i got the sledge hammer it was like i beat the game.

 

[Angelyotov]

Mele is fine for me having no problem killing a day time horde one by one

 

[Zourin]

A wooden/Iron reinforced club can smash down a zombie in 3-4 power swings without perks. Mind your six, backpedal, and take pot-shots between their swings. Even without melee perks, an iron axe can drop a normal in two swings, usually sending the bugger flying six feet on the first hit.

Melee is substantially better, even unupgraded, than ranged by a massive margin. Ranged combat is a tedious and horrible resource sink unless you heavily invest into ranged perks. If you liked getting one-shot and stealth kills in A16, you just as well retire now, because you need both Perception and Agility for the headshot and sneak attack multipliers, because bows/crossbows get NOTHING else.

Take your time, mind your six, and mind the time of day. If you're cutting below 40 stamina, turn around, run away a short distance, and recover stamina before continuing. Wandering hordes are massive XP pinatas now because of the disproportion of xp towards combat. Clean up EVERY zombie you see unless you're tripping for a trader or iron ore. A dead zombie is now worth more than all the empty trashcans in the game, so get cozy with that kite range.

 

[gcomerfo]

Melee feels like I am playing Octo-Dad.... remember that game?

In fact so does using the stone axe - the click-swing is literally not letting you swing a second blow right away.

 

[ubai]

I find the new combat easier. Power attack makes killing regular zeds pretty reasonable, and I can even kill the occasional dog or two in melee if I don't get swarmed.