RipClaw

Actually, I expect zombies in a horde to come after me and not run away to beat up a tree. Zombies randomly attacking blocks works well for players standing on a roof or tower shooting down at the zombies. It does not work if you use electric traps or have a melee base. You have to rely on the zombies behaving in a somewhat predictable way.

Apart from the aesthetic aspects, there is also the problem that zombies do 600% damage to poles when the AI thinks the zombie is stuck. This happens quite often with vertical poles, which are often used in melee bases. One hit of a demolisher with 600% damage would completely destroy a steel pole with 2500HP.

But the easy roads are sometimes not an option because they end somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Then you have to drive cross-country, whether you want to or not. I hope that the road network outside the cities has also been improved in random gen in A20.

Recently, a truck was added to the game "The Infected." You can flip it when it lands on the roof and if it gets lost or is stuck you can teleport it back to the garage.

If it was a horror game then we would have a recipe for Haggis. 😉

It can be useful if you use it properly. I know a Twitch streamer who usually plays on Insane difficulty with nightmare speed and permadeath. His favourite tactic in the early game is to run towards a zombie, stab him 2-3 times with the bone knife or hunting knife and then run away. The inflicted wounds stack up and the zombie bleeds out.

It is certainly not nice to see something you have just built destroyed. The grinding itself is not the frustrating part. I used to listen to podcasts or music while mining. I spent days in the mine and even created whole tunnel systems under the map. Now that's no longer possible because of the digging zombies and the screamers that spawn every 2-3 minutes. I then have to interrupt and fight the screamer horde, and that's the really frustrating part. It's getting harder and harder to maintain a semi-peaceful play style. Everything is now about killing zombies. Even with all the traps, you are not completely safe. One explosion and all the traps in one area are destroyed. Then there are the radioactive cops who can destroy the blade traps very easily with their spit. The only traps that remain are the dart traps and they consume huge amounts of iron. The frustrating thing is that you don't need a base. I have also run around on the street and fought the zombies on foot. It was easier than building a base and that's the frustrating thing. A base should give you an advantage. Since the demolishers have been in the game unchanged for a while, I doubt that any changes will be made. This is certainly a convenient way to play but it is also the least creative way. You're basically playing the game like a loot shooter and throwing the part of the game I love out the window. Good for you but not for people like me.

For me the most interesting gameplay would be to build a fully automatic zombie killing base and then on horde night I sit in front of the monitor armed with a bowl of popcorn and enjoy the show.

This doesn't always work. You can not wake up anything that is not yet spawned. For example, the zombies in the trap room in the apartment building only spawn when the player is very close.

I did not test it in A19 but the command was spawnwanderinghorde in previous version.

A steel bar cost 20 iron and 10 clay. Upgrading a concrete block to steel costs 10 steel. With 60k iron you can upgrade 300 blocks. What you have to keep in mind when producing steel is that it is a slow process. Therefore it is preferable to spread the load over several forges. I usually reserve 3 forges for steel production when I build a base.

There is another option. Build a 5x5 or better 7x7 tower completely out of steel. This should also withstand demolishers until the morning. But you need to have a decent steel production to build and maintain something like this.

Do none of you have points in Advanced Engineering ? All schematics needed for base building can be found under this one skill. If you don't like the bloodmoon horde, you can deactivate it or you can take over a big stable POI and destroy all paths that could lead to you. Then it does not matter if the zombies destroy the building or not, since you can simply find a new POI or reset it during a quest. You could reduce the block damage of the zombies. Then a old fashioned bunker is also possible. With the default block damage the zombies break through a thick wall much too fast. But you can also make the bunker to be the last retreat and build a more open base with choke points around the bunker. A design element of old castles is that weak points are intentionally built at strategic points. This way you get the enemy to go where you can fight him effectively.

Here are two base designs for multiplayer from Hitbox Gaming. Maybe this gives you some ideas.

I currently use the design of Grand Spartan, which he calls the processor, with a few small adjustments that make it easier for me to repair the blade traps. Works fine but when a demolisher explodes all the blade traps are gone. That's why there are still dart traps and I can still use the firearms. If you don't want to use cheese tactics then you have to invest a lot of resources. That means there has to be at least one miner in the group. If you prefer guns you should not try to block the zombies but use choke points. Then you can focus your fire on this one point. A nice detail I saw the other day is a catwalk made of quarter blocks over a pit. Along the walls of the pit are electric fences in case the zombies go into destruction mode when they fall down. And since no two zombies fit next to each other on the catwalk you have all zombies in a row.

The invulnerability is in a certain radius around the trader. In some cases, this then also affects the walls of nearby buildings. For example, I have a trader next to whom there is a small scrap yard. The fence surrounding the scrap yard is made of wood and therefore very weak. If I would replace the unprotected walls with concrete then the zombies would try to break through the wooden fence but it is protected by the trader. But I would have to turn off the sound if I wanted to fight the horde there because the sound of protected blocks would really annoy me.

I agree. It should be at least a level two blunderbuss and a sharp rock. 😉 I have read that the developers are working on assigning a gamestage to certain POIs. So you get better loot from this POIs. But this also means that you can't go to a factory on day 1 and only see slow zombies. Instead, you will at least see feral zombies.

By the time you get to the level 2 quests you usually have a means of transport. That's why it is less noticeable. You have to do 10 level 1 quests to get to level 2. With one or two quests a day you reach level 2 in the second week. By this time most players should have at least a bicycle. Since there are traders on the edges of towns, they should take advantage of this and offer quests nearby if possible.

I love that you don't get swamped with guns from the start. Apart from the Blunderbuss, my first firearm was a Q1 toilet gun on day 5. I fought my first Bloodmoon horde with a stone sledgehammer, two Blunderbusses and a pistol for emergencies. That reminded me of A15/A16 when I fought my first horde with a bow. I also think it's great that the bow and crossbow have more sneak damage. That makes them a perfect weapon for stealth gameplay. That the traders are now on the outskirts of towns is great. However, the level 1 quests are often far away. That costs a lot of time if don't have a means of transport. Fortunately I found the college jacket and the high performance running shoes in a POI early on. With these I am at least as fast as with a bicycle.

That depends on which zombie is chasing you. Different zombies have different base speeds. A cop zombie you can outrun even at nightmare speed because he is rather slow. But a biker zombie is just as fast as you on sprint speed. And on nightmare speed the biker is even faster than you.