Potential Horde Night Fix

[Baudox]

      After playing the game for hundreds of hours on both Xbox and PC, a universal issue with the game has caught my attention.  On horde night, there is nothing stopping you and your group from going to the top of some factory and waiting out the horde night, just to return to your base that has not been touched by any zombies during the night and continue playing the game as usual.  Most people will respond to this and say "Well, it is your choice on whether you want to play the game correctly or cheese the game... etc."  Just a heads up, no game should present the ability to manipulate the in-game mechanics to provide a significant advantage for yourself.  The option to hide on top of a large structure is just too good to pass on horde night.  I mean, take this for example, to make an efficient cement base, you need to have six or seven cement mixers operating everyday for seven days until horde night while you constantly upgrade your building to cement status.  While you have been non stop working on setting up your base, the first horde comes and shreds the base apart.  After this, you spend the next seven days working on brutally expensive repairs, only to repeat the process and never really see significant base growth.  By playing like this, looting becomes inconvenient because the time spent looting is the time you should be spending repairing or upgrading your base for the next horde.  I can guarantee that a large portion of people follow similar strategies to the one listed above to keep their valuables safe and progress at a rate that is faster than normal.

      That is why I present some potential fixes that could easily be added as a customization option into the game.  First of all, the recipe for making cement could either have the speed significantly buffed or have a perk that assists in the process.  As of right now, making a full cement base and defending it each horde night is unpractical.  This fix would help encourage players to work on a fortified base that can actively scale with the difficulty of the zombies, thus making it more enjoyable to defend a base that can actually withstand the overwhelming number of zombies.  Even if the base is absolutely ravaged, the buffed crafting recipe makes the rebuild process less tedious and more enjoyable for the player.  They are rushing to fix it, but it would still give time for looting and preparing, rather than only preparing for the seven day horde.

     Another potential fix that could accompany the last one would be to provide an option that allows the land claim block to have a level of protection against zombies.  Let me explain.  Let's say that a group of friends decides to go on top of Shamway Foods factory for the horde night.  Their base is safe because no zombies will attack it and they will get to go back in the morning.  However, let's say that the Blood Moon results in the zombies doing a certain percentage of their base damage(let's say 1000%) to ANY structures outside of the land-claim block area on that night only.  As the group sits on top of the factory, the zombies easily over power it and cause it to collapse, thus killing the group and having another mechanic force them to respawn at their base/sleeping bag.  By this time, they are punished for trying to evade the horde night by losing their items and they are now forced to defend their base from the oncoming horde at a major disadvantage.  Not only does this two-part solution prevent people from hiding on top of a factory, but it also punishes them for it if they think they can cheese the game.  This would STRONGLY encourage people to stay inside their base for the horde night.  However, this would have to be combined with the cement recipe buff or else the game would become unenjoyable as the initial problem arises once again: The group loses their base and they are led to repair it for the rest of the seven days and the cycle continues. 

     I really enjoy this game, but I really wish it had a way to prevent this cheese because I even find myself doing it in every game because it is impractical to defend a rushed or weak base.  I really hope people consider these features as a customizable feature, rather than a built-in and forced part of the game.  I am not trying to force people to play this way, but for those who want the cheese to be prevented, this would be a great fix.  If you got this far without skimming, thank you.  Hopefully you guys consider these ideas.

 

[Gouki]

      After playing the game for hundreds of hours on both Xbox and PC, a universal issue with the game has caught my attention.  On horde night, there is nothing stopping you and your group from going to the top of some factory and waiting out the horde night, just to return to your base that has not been touched by any zombies during the night and continue playing the game as usual.  Most people will respond to this and say "Well, it is your choice on whether you want to play the game correctly or cheese the game... etc."  Just a heads up, no game should present the ability to manipulate the in-game mechanics to provide a significant advantage for yourself.  The option to hide on top of a large structure is just too good to pass on horde night.  I mean, take this for example, to make an efficient cement base, you need to have six or seven cement mixers operating everyday for seven days until horde night while you constantly upgrade your building to cement status.  While you have been non stop working on setting up your base, the first horde comes and shreds the base apart.  After this, you spend the next seven days working on brutally expensive repairs, only to repeat the process and never really see significant base growth.  By playing like this, looting becomes inconvenient because the time spent looting is the time you should be spending repairing or upgrading your base for the next horde.  I can guarantee that a large portion of people follow similar strategies to the one listed above to keep their valuables safe and progress at a rate that is faster than normal.

      That is why I present some potential fixes that could easily be added as a customization option into the game.  First of all, the recipe for making cement could either have the speed significantly buffed or have a perk that assists in the process.  As of right now, making a full cement base and defending it each horde night is unpractical.  This fix would help encourage players to work on a fortified base that can actively scale with the difficulty of the zombies, thus making it more enjoyable to defend a base that can actually withstand the overwhelming number of zombies.  Even if the base is absolutely ravaged, the buffed crafting recipe makes the rebuild process less tedious and more enjoyable for the player.  They are rushing to fix it, but it would still give time for looting and preparing, rather than only preparing for the seven day horde.

     Another potential fix that could accompany the last one would be to provide an option that allows the land claim block to have a level of protection against zombies.  Let me explain.  Let's say that a group of friends decides to go on top of Shamway Foods factory for the horde night.  Their base is safe because no zombies will attack it and they will get to go back in the morning.  However, let's say that the Blood Moon results in the zombies doing a certain percentage of their base damage(let's say 1000%) to ANY structures outside of the land-claim block area on that night only.  As the group sits on top of the factory, the zombies easily over power it and cause it to collapse, thus killing the group and having another mechanic force them to respawn at their base/sleeping bag.  By this time, they are punished for trying to evade the horde night by losing their items and they are now forced to defend their base from the oncoming horde at a major disadvantage.  Not only does this two-part solution prevent people from hiding on top of a factory, but it also punishes them for it if they think they can cheese the game.  This would STRONGLY encourage people to stay inside their base for the horde night.  However, this would have to be combined with the cement recipe buff or else the game would become unenjoyable as the initial problem arises once again: The group loses their base and they are led to repair it for the rest of the seven days and the cycle continues. 

     I really enjoy this game, but I really wish it had a way to prevent this cheese because I even find myself doing it in every game because it is impractical to defend a rushed or weak base.  I really hope people consider these features as a customizable feature, rather than a built-in and forced part of the game.  I am not trying to force people to play this way, but for those who want the cheese to be prevented, this would be a great fix.  If you got this far without skimming, thank you.  Hopefully you guys consider these ideas.

Hi Baudox

What I added to my game was limestone to make cement in the cement mixer and it does it fast, the only bad part is that you have to make concrete mix and it takes time to make it, it's just a matter of making a mod and changing the value For the concrete mix to do it fast, another thing would be to change the first bloodmoon to day 14.

 

[Baudox]

Hi Baudox

What I added to my game was limestone to make cement in the cement mixer and it does it fast, the only bad part is that you have to make concrete mix and it takes time to make it, it's just a matter of making a mod and changing the value For the concrete mix to do it fast, another thing would be to change the first bloodmoon to day 14.

Hmmm, that's interesting.  I'll keep that in mind for the next time I decide to play the game.  Would be nice to see if that is a good fix to my problem.

 

[meganoth]

So you build your first horde base to concrete for the day 7 horde night ?

That is total utter overkill. On default or nomad settings a single player can easily survive the first two horde nights in a wood shack. Like this one:

View attachment 12401

This is the derelict building I used for day 7 and day 14 horde in the condition I left it after the day 14 horde. I upgraded some blocks to cobblestone just to be safe, but you can see there is no serious damage to any of the load-bearing walls, not even to the ones I kept as wood.

In MP you might need a little more effort but you also have more hands to get cobblestone. And you might just take a better POI than this one for your first horde base.

If you want to build this yourself instead of using an existing POI, you can. The POI above isn't a massive building. Just get lots of wood and some cobblestone and make sure you can shoot the zombies from a secure place. Throw molotovs  (you often get them as a quest reward) if they crowd together and give them lots of blocks to chew on.

 

[Baudox]

So you build your first horde base to concrete for the day 7 horde night ?

That is total utter overkill. On default or nomad settings a single player can easily survive the first two horde nights in a wood shack. Like this one:

View attachment 12401

This is the derelict building I used for day 7 and day 14 horde in the condition I left it after the day 14 horde. I upgraded some blocks to cobblestone just to be safe, but you can see there is no serious damage to any of the load-bearing walls, not even to the ones I kept as wood.

In MP you might need a little more effort but you also have more hands to get cobblestone. And you might just take a better POI than this one for your first horde base.

If you want to build this yourself instead of using an existing POI, you can. The POI above isn't a massive building. Just get lots of wood and some cobblestone and make sure you can shoot the zombies from a secure place. Throw molotovs  (you often get them as a quest reward) if they crowd together and give them lots of blocks to chew on.

I should have worded my initial post better with more details.  So on the first or second horde night, I find myself advancing my game stage so fast that I am met with high-tier zombies that shred simple buildings.  The first horde night is not awful, but the second one demolishes any base I have that is not concrete.  Do you have any potential solution for that?

 

[meganoth]

Still not enough detail. Are you playing a mod, are you using 300% XP, 32 zombies per player or insane difficulty? What gamestage do you reach on the second horde night?

Generally if you want to save on concrete you need to occupy the zombies with other activities than hitting on your structures:

1) Barbed wire is excellent to slow them down but you need to make the level with the ground (i.e. dig one or more one block deep trenches around your base and put barbed wire into it. Once the barbed wire in a hole is gone the zombies will prefer the level ground of the barbed wire beside this now empty hole and get slowed down again. Even if not, jumping down into a hole and jumping out again slows down too.

2) There are lots of design possibilities where you just give the zombies a rather long way to you, maybe behind some door. On the way to you there could be lots of barbed wire and personal turrets (a very effective new method is if for example a melee turret throws zombies down from a walkway). You could have a melee cage behind two blocks of concrete (yes, for a melee cage you need a few blocks of concrete relatively early).

You could also try to get them together into one place to throw lots of explosives and molotovs at them but you need to have good timing to not allow large groups to exist for long in one place.

You could put your base directly beside a POI and that POI is a natural obstacle for the zombies, lots of them will destroy it instead of the horde base itself.

I always use existing POIs as my starting horde base. Why should I ignore what saves me so much time to get some structure up. Special care has to be taken to not overlook ways for the zombies to circumvent your protective measures, but well, it saves a lot of time.

 

[Baudox]

Still not enough detail. Are you playing a mod, are you using 300% XP, 32 zombies per player or insane difficulty? What gamestage do you reach on the second horde night?

Generally if you want to save on concrete you need to occupy the zombies with other activities than hitting on your structures:

1) Barbed wire is excellent to slow them down but you need to make the level with the ground (i.e. dig one or more one block deep trenches around your base and put barbed wire into it. Once the barbed wire in a hole is gone the zombies will prefer the level ground of the barbed wire beside this now empty hole and get slowed down again. Even if not, jumping down into a hole and jumping out again slows down too.

2) There are lots of design possibilities where you just give the zombies a rather long way to you, maybe behind some door. On the way to you there could be lots of barbed wire and personal turrets (a very effective new method is if for example a melee turret throws zombies down from a walkway). You could have a melee cage behind two blocks of concrete (yes, for a melee cage you need a few blocks of concrete relatively early).

You could also try to get them together into one place to throw lots of explosives and molotovs at them but you need to have good timing to not allow large groups to exist for long in one place.

You could put your base directly beside a POI and that POI is a natural obstacle for the zombies, lots of them will destroy it instead of the horde base itself.

I always use existing POIs as my starting horde base. Why should I ignore what saves me so much time to get some structure up. Special care has to be taken to not overlook ways for the zombies to circumvent your protective measures, but well, it saves a lot of time.

Hmm, really interesting stuff!  I think I will try these strategies on my next play-through of the game because they seem like they will work pretty well.  And to answer the first question, I play around 150-200% XP on Survivalist difficulty and 64 zombies on horde night, so that may be the reason for the insanely difficult horde nights.  That's my own fault lmao.  I think my main issue was that I didn't have any strategies to fend off the horde night on a high difficulty, but these seem like pretty good ideas.  Thanks for the help.

 

[bdubyah]

Yeah, 2x XP on regular length days is basically halving the time for more dangerous stuff to show up. Maybe try 90 minute days if you are intent on keeping the higher XP gain.

And molotovs. Lots and lots of molotovs. Grenades work too, but also damage your structures more. Buy up any you can find.