PC Rad Remover Worth It?

OneManStanding

Active member
I know the radioactive zombies heal and the rad remover mod prevents that, but do you really need it? At the point where you're battling radioactives you generally have shotguns and assault rifles if not auto-shotguns and machine guns, and I don't generally stop killing a zombie until it is good and dead. Does a greenie heal so fast it's actually costing you additional ammo to kill them whilst it's standing there? I'm wondering if someone out there might have done the numbers on it and might know how fast they actually heal.

 
I haven't done actual testing of it, but depending on what damage you're doing, it might sometimes require an extra hit to kill without using the rad remover mod.  I think it has more of an impact on horde night when you might not be always killing everything immediately.  Being able to shoot a radiated zombie once or twice to prevent healing and letting your defenses deal with it can be helpful.  But it really comes down to whether or not a different mod is more useful for you.  Every installed mod increases your damage, so you always want to full mod your weapons (and most tools), so if you have an extra spot where no other mod would be better, using the rad remover is worth it.  Personally, I'd choose that over the hunter mod since you aren't killing animals as often as you're killing the radiated zombies later in the game.  And regular food animals like deer and chickens that you might be killing somewhat often are one shot kills even with a weak weapon anyhow, so hardly require the hunting mod.  The other animals where the hunting mod would be of use aren't usually killed anywhere near as often as radiated zombies later in the game.

It will be interesting to see if the rad remover has any impact on the two new zombie tiers.  If they also heal and it prevents them from healing, it would have even more impact.  If not, then it will probably be less useful as you'll have more zombies that don't heal that it doesn't do anything to.

 
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F1, dm, F6, spawn a radiant, count the shots killing it with rad remover mod on, F6, spawn radiant, count the shots killing it without rad remover mod on.

Or need a spoon?

 
I didn't do proper testing but everytime I ran into a pile of rads it it felt like I was dealing a lot better with them when I used the mod on bows and spears than before I had it. For guns I realy can't tell the difference since my aim just sux.

 
I've done enough testing to wing this one a bit.

Does a greenie heal so fast it's actually costing you additional ammo to kill them whilst it's standing there?
Yes. If you're able to focus it down in one go, not significantly, but still probably an extra round or two. However; in any case where you have to retreat for a moment, or switch targets, basically ALL the damage you've done that far will be negated. If that doesn't happen to you, increase the zed run speeds .. ;)

 
Most rad zombies only heal like 2-3 health per second, the healing is so small it might as well not even exist to be honest. Only exception is radiated vultures, for some reason those heal more hp per tick than anything else does and can be annoying to kill with melee as they tend to hit and run, and by the time they come back they will have regened the dmg you did, pretty much need to use guns for them to kill them quick. But I mean whats 1 or 2 more rounds when it already takes a stupid amount as it is? They have way to much health as it is.

 
Did a couple magdumps for a worst case scenario:

Rad Biker, 9mm pistol modded with laser sight vs rad remover. Body shots until it dies. Without rad remover 69 rounds, with it 60. Difference of 15%, if you care about getting a mod slot for the damage boost, you might want to care about a rad remover.

But that's a worst case (with perfect uptime but only body shots, your accuracy and headshot amount will change things of course). Safe to say, early on it's probably useful, but once you have proper firepower, it's not important (but what else are you going to use anyway..)

The biker was healing 9 hp/s, also checked a vulture due @Scyris's comment; seemed to be gaining 4/s.

 
I go Agility so I use pistols a lot.  And I tend to get the perk book that cripples the zombie if you get leg shots.  A lot of my kitting involves crippling hordes of zombies so that I can always outrun them.  Rad remover to stop the healing factor of radiated zombies is a boon in that situation where I have a lot of radiated zombies in the horde.

 
The biker was healing 9 hp/s, also checked a vulture due @Scyris's comment; seemed to be gaining 4/s.


Information like this is very useful - the rads heal but I was never sure how much even as an indication. Does it heal even when it's knocked down and stunned, and is there a time before the healing kicks in, or is it instantly on the moment it gets hurt? I'm considering that if my gun does ~100 damage per bullet then that healing isn't much, but in other instances that healing could be very effective like when I send it flying with a heavy attack and it's already healing before it hits the ground.   

 
Does it heal even when it's knocked down and stunned, and is there a time before the healing kicks in, or is it instantly on the moment it gets hurt?
Since my old assumptions may be wrong, I'll reply only based on that quick test:

It looked like they

- heal reactively after any hit, for a couple seconds.

- heal constantly whenever under something like 80-90% health.

Knockdowns had no effect.

 
I used to think it wasn't that important until I had a couple of them below me on horde night. I couldn't pin point a specific one in the frey and they just chewed on my base way too long.

Now I typically have Rad remover on my Horde night weapons. When I am scavenging I use mods focused on damage/capacity/scopes, last would be rad if I run out of slots.

 
Radiated healing mostly  is a non issue for me outside of horde night tbh (again something that comes from way to less zombies in the world)  and i usually use guns only in emergencies. And even on horde night it depends on your base. If you have a hord base where they loop around quite a long way, you better have a rad remover.

 
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I generally use bows for pulling. Given that you're generally not going to need the Stamina mod for the bow, that leaves a choice between the Hunter Mod and the Rad Remover for the 4th slot. If you're deliberately hunting animals (bears and dire wolves) you may want that Hunter mod, but most of the time you're avoiding these (or surprised by them in melee range) so I tend to go with the Rad Remover. Anything I pull won't regenerate, which is helpful when you need to retreat/kite when playing on the higher difficulties.

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

 
I think it depends on how many zombies there are. I use it b/c I don't need it if it's one zombie but if it's a horde or an ambush, I may not be able to focus fire on one zombie at a time. Also like them on shotguns b/c you hit so many different zombies with each shot that you may not be focusing on any of them. 

 
This morning I got jumped by a green glowing screamer and I did not have any room to maneuver around it. Luckily for me I had the rad emover on my 9mm. It went from 22 to only nine rounds left.

 
A lot of weapons restrict which mods you can use to the point where Rad Remover just beats anything else you could put in that 3rd or 4th slot anyway.

(incidentally, why the hell did they make The Hunter and Rad Remover MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE??? Oh yeah, so OP???)

 
I know the radioactive zombies heal and the rad remover mod prevents that, but do you really need it? At the point where you're battling radioactives you generally have shotguns and assault rifles if not auto-shotguns and machine guns, and I don't generally stop killing a zombie until it is good and dead. Does a greenie heal so fast it's actually costing you additional ammo to kill them whilst it's standing there? I'm wondering if someone out there might have done the numbers on it and might know how fast they actually heal.
It's going to depend on a lot of factors - mostly player level, the player's build, and the difficulty settings.

My sister loves running around with fists ( full endurance build ), so the 5 -6 level steel knuckles with the rad remover/bleed mod/ergo mod is more than enough for her to kill them ( I build everything ).

I prefer the knives/bow/shotgun/pistol and build everything on our server ( agi/str trees ) , and have no problem with  a compound bow or shotgun ( auto ).

Sure, I'm using the remover mod before getting the good stuff - and in some servers I just obtain them - but that mod will always be useful.

 
I always wondered if the rad remover was worth it as well. I just figured another way of removing rads was to you know ... kill the zombie. So I usually put mods on my weapons that add extra ammo or make aiming easier and never really had much of a problem. On junk turrets (or whatever they are being called now days), since they don't do massive damage I'd usually give them a drum mod and rad remover so they'd still be useful.

But I've been on a year long break and there have been many changes, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

 
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