You have to actively defend your base. ACTIVELY. If you sit and wait out the night your base will get wrecked. Zombies get a buff when several group together to do even more damage. If you do not thin them out by killing them then they will destroy your base. A17 requires rethinking base design and base defense. If you don't want to adapt and want to do A16 strategies then you will need to return to A16 for them to be effective. If you want to be successful with A17 then experiment and be active in defending. Or wait until people who do figure things out post their strategies and then copy them.
Even armed with an SMG and a rocket launcher, you can't even 'thin' the first horde before they've had their way with the base. The only thing that stopped by base from collapsing completely was an interesting tether distance where they couldn't decide whether they wanted to path at me or attack the next block, and the miraculous structural properties of flagstone. Had they not drifted ever so infrequently back into my line of fire, they would have levelled the POI LONG before any 'active' defense could have worked.
The argument is amazing, only in theory. In practice, trying to hit a dozen coked up death-rockets that destroy EVERY block it touches every six seconds for about ten minutes, is currently extremely implausible (and based on current observations from literally every veteran 7DTD content creator who's tried, impossible). Zombies move too fast for a solo player 'actively defending', and 'walls' don't work period and haven't for several versions because TFP has been overbalancing against extreme base setups and players who had quality iron tools by day 2, not a damn primitive with a pile of sticks, a rock, and an idea of what's coming. Once they chew through that poi wall, or any wall, good luck.
Zombies and horde sizes need to be toned down for 'active defense' to even come close to a competitive strategy. You have 0 (zero) seconds before a breach will occur with any material you can scrounge up with a stone axe. You can't defend against that. I've even heard stories of cops and irradiated in that first horde night. For someone with a mere 8 shotgun rounds, that's the point where survival stops being an achievable obstacle.
By the time they had chewed that far, I'd killed all but six of them, but there would be no way I could engage them (I laugh and spit in your face good sir if you think I'm going down there and WIN with a stick and a grass skirt). If they pathed farther in for more supports, the building would be done, and my base, and my multi-year experience with this game. Mind you, I had a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rocket launcher (with 3 flak rockets) and an SMG with 100 rounds (compliments of an air drop), and STILL had to blow through 200 arrows just to kneecap those half dozen through the gaps while they had a pathing conniption. This building was effectively solid flagstone (500hp blocks), and getting it to brick was out of the question.
I chose it specifically because it was the only building with a perimeter small enough, which wasn't made of toilet paper, that I could confidently even TRY to defend with anything I could gather with a god damn rock on a stick. It also has a fair resemblance to the size and durability of what a player could POSSIBLY manage in A16 if a perimeter wall could be put up fast enough. Stone wall, bunch of spike traps, and an overlook. I've done it often enough, but then the construction worker zombies showed up and I knew that it didn't matter what kind of setup I had, it was going to get trashed IMMEDIATELY.
I have seen only ONE instance where someone survived the first horde night, and that was because Grumbul had a second damn base within sprinting distance after his first collapsed entirely. Everyone else is getting completely trashed. This screenshot doesn't count as a second, on account of a flak rocket blast.
The 'Best' current solution to the 7-day feral hordes is to strip buck fk'in naked and stand out in a field for the night and just eat the death penalty for what the effort is worth. It's better to watch a youtube Cat Compliation Video while respawning, then pay off the 1 hour in the 'Time out chair", than ruin 5-7 hours of work that wasn't meant to be defended in the first place. Repeat until you get a bicycle or motorcycle and then just drive off 'till dawn. InB4 these 'magically' stop working on blood moon horde nights.
1. Zombies' block damage needs to be toned down. Trunk tips are gone, dude, let it go. Let. It. Go. Make Wood great again, at least for that first horde. Let people free-build again. No more special damage bonuses. Let it go. You can relax, you gave us an electric slap chop for Christmas and it's great when the irradiates show up. You don't need to coke up your party regulars anymore, they're fine being normal posthumus humans. Let it go. Those thirty-block deep layers of steel trunk tips in the first week can't hurt you anymore.
2. Zombies run/animation speed needs to be turned down slightly. You can't hit them for sh*t even when they stand 'still'. It also looks cheap and wierd, like I left a stream on 1.5x speed.
