Stealth is trash and not worth pointing any points to achieve. Only spend points on skills/abilities that are going to help you on horde night. Spending points in anything else is a waste and is going to hurt you on horde nights.
You act like vanilla horde nights are even a remote challenge. Literal ONLY threat is demolishers, nothing else does enough block damage to destroy anything faster than u could fix it. Hell my first few horde nights in vanilla literally have me standing behind a single upgraded cobblestone block/plate, in a corridor while I melee them to death don't even need traps, but if I set a dart trap up, the dart trap could prob handle a vanilla horde night all on its own till high GS, don't even need a gun till the radiateds come out.
Try Darkness Falls mod, horde night runs from 22:00 till 4am, the zombies do not stop coming unless you can kill 24 waves, which is really hard to do. It also has mutant zombies that buff others, as well as various other special zombies, these things can rip thru a concrete base easly if its not designed well, and this is on the 1st horde of the game the 7th day, it just gets more crazy after that. Eventually you have demons, behemoths, and other stuff coming at you. It also has a new tier of titanium stuff which is above steel, including blocks. As well as Coil guns and then Sci-fi weapons like laser rifles etc. It also has learn by doing, done actually properly compared to how TFP did it in a16 (No need to spam craft in it, action skills are mostly for weapon use and mining tools). A recent update to the mod removes the need to smelt stuff in the forge, it just takes it out right out of inventory and makes what you want like a camp fire or workbench. I wish vanilla would get this, saves alot of time. Forge in a15 worked with molds, as the iron smelted down it'd fill the mold and once full it'd create a forged iron. No need to smelt it down first then queue it up, which is essentally the same thing darkness falls does, just removes the smelting entirely.
As for the stealth thing, I agree with the OP, the devs seem to do anything they can to screw over stealth builds in the game. I've been saying the same things since a17. You have the garbage in front of every intended path, the alarm rooms (Instant aggro), zombies that can hear you opening a container from 30 blocks outside the poi with maxxed stealth and crouched. Then you have the positioning of the sleepers, which in A19 if you noticed, most sleepers do not have a clear shot, you have to get close, and sometimes remove a block (usually a cobblestone or cement pallet) to get a clear shot. Its deliberate design to screw stealth builds as thats the ONLY build this stuff hurts. Then again TFP loves to take away choice from the player I been noticing, starts with the digging zombies, now we got swimming zombies, vultures with rocket boosters that can annoy you on any vehicle. I'd not mind the digging/swimming zombies so much if the devs would ya know, do what most games do, and have a option when you go to start or load a game to turn that on/off. This way the player still gets to have a choice. Also before you say it, just because the game is modable is not an excuse for the devs to get lazy and not include the option to toggle stuff like that on/off.
Then there is the fact stealth is just broken, zombies are far to sensitive to sounds, I can get close and shine a mining light in its face and not wake it up, but if I loot a cabinet a room away the same zombie will wake up somehow. IMO you should be able to get sneak attacks on zombies till they are activly chasing you, which means when they first go to look for where the sound came from, they should still be sneak attackable for the bonus, as they are looking for the source of the noise but have not actually found it yet. Kinda like how fallout 3 and up does it. When in caution which is when enemies are looking for you, you can still get sneak attacks on them until it switches to Danger, which means one has actually spotted you, you then lose the sneak attack bonus damage.
I see a lot of problems arguing that. First being, that RNGesus devils needs no advocate. If you're just unlucky, then you're just unlucky. I wouldn't blame the dev's if you're that unlucky. Secondly, at a gamestage when pistols are rare, trying to 100% stealth even a small POI seems like a dubious prospect at best.
Meh they should just go back to a18 loot it was far better and much more fun than this linear garbage they are using now.
