PC Underground Threats & More

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

What about toxic gas? If you dig too deep it knocks you out and kills your, or it causes an underground explosion if you dig with an auger or place a candle?

I go full viet kong in my 7 days to die games, and other similar games, and tunneling seems to be a super effective strategy. There are hardly any threats to you if you tunnel down to the bed rock.

Another thought would be underground water sources and oil deposits.... That would be a great way to ruin a tunnel by hitting an underground lake, and having your base flood. It is one of the options mentioned on the survey. Maybe even throw in crude oil or tar?

The big problem with digging mobs, is that they tend to destroy maps, Minecraft had this problem when they implemented the endermen, they then had to nerf them. Now, i love the thought of a random horde that just digs in one direction undermining entire pois and bases, but i can also see this destroying servers with lag....

 

[Crater Creator]

The thing about pockets of gas, water, oil etc. is that they are passive. They only matter when the player is mining or expanding their base. I think they could be cool, but active threats are what would really make a difference whenever players are underground. Hence I'm rooting for active threats to take priority.

 

[SenpaiThatIngnoresYou]

The thing about pockets of gas, water, oil etc. is that they are passive. They only matter when the player is mining or expanding their base. I think they could be cool, but active threats are what would really make a difference whenever players are underground. Hence I'm rooting for active threats to take priority.

I'd like to see auger bandits and demolition bandits. Maybe even have the bandits make runner zombies which have no arms and jaws but lots of tnt strapped to them that charge your base to blow holes into the walls. I know in some of my earlier tunnel experiments i had a dobermen horde tunnel into one of my shallow tunnels. The spot that they tunneled into was also in the middle of a river, so i had a flood AND a dog attack all at once. Hence why i now tunnel to bedrock.

The down side to active digging mobs is that over a long period of time they can really mess up how the world looks, and may potentially lag servers. Minecraft had some issues with the endermen when they first showed up, in simulations they could destroy an entire minecraft world on a server in a few weeks.

The big hurdle i see is how do you tell a mob to dig vs not to dig? Are they digging toward a heat source, or toward a player? Will the zombies figure out how to dig around a pit so that they can walk down to you instead of falling to their deaths? I am an entirely underground guy. At the moment i am completely safe from almost every threat but my own incompetence. I am at the point where i can run forges and fires and have no worries about mobs. I even have a death pit that i stand next to to collect loot for when they fall to their 2nd deaths attempting to investigate.

 

[Zvex]

Well the new pathing only allows zombies to dig when
A) They are in attack mode and

B) They detect you right below them.

Building your topside base in the day with a screamer bringing in a horde will not result in any diggers unless YOU go underground into your basement.

Even zombies that go down into tunnels and are underground already will not dig or destroy blocks horizontally if they are not in attack mode. When the timer counts down and they stop aggroing, they will stand idly or wander always pathing around obstacles and not breaking blocks. That is the intention and if it gets bugged then faatal will be working to fix such things.

Faatal did say mostly. Plus he’s devious. He was a fan of the game itself and longtime player before he was hired. He knows what players are likely to do and he’ll be keeping that in mind as he works on AI.
Most of what he’s done so far is just pathing. The first exciting actual AI bits he’s shared are that 66% chance to ignore their revenge target and whatever chance it is to attack while moving. Just that amount of randomness to what used to be behaviors that were 100% predictable is going to be huge. I can’t wait until other randomized behavior “choices” are added in.

Sounds nice!

That is exactly what I wanted to see and suggested to implement for years in this forum, I guess.

The randomness in behaviour will close many gaps in AI exploiting, because some of zombies will allways break the rules that you wanted to exploit.

As for digging, there are many ways to make zombies dig and don't make swiss cheese. So when players argue that digging will turn the world to cheese - I never agree with them, because it strongly depends on the implementation of that feature.