Advice for Higher Level Blood Moons - Base/Defense? Alpha 19 (b180)

[Tohskrad]

Hello everyone,

 

4 friends from another game and I decided to start playing 7D2D on our own server and are absolutely loving it.  We've been playing a few weeks now in Alpha 19 and are on ~Day 120, between lvls 40-60.  (~100-150 game stage per person)   We've pretty much gotten comfortable with most of the game mechanics, looting, salvaging, farming.. but one area we've been having a lot of issues with are the blood moons.  We are beginning to update everything to concrete now that we finally got a few accessible mixers.  

 

Previously, we'd been using a church bell tower and silo from the Sham factory and it worked very well for the first several, but began to just get overrun/foundation destroyed and also the horde would spawn into one person's nearby base walls due to proximity.   Close to the Day 70 blood moon, we built a new base out of cobblestone blocks away from everything, 3 layers thick, turrets, mini bunker, a LOT of spikes, barbed wire about 6-8 layers thick.  It was on this night we ran into a LOT of radiated ferals and the 1st sight of the Demolisher.   We survived, but by the end of the night the base was severely damaged.  (A demolisher managed to explode and took out the entire upper and East wall.

 

The next bloodmoon, the base was still not repaired and decided to just try and run for it.  We all had minibikes and a truck.   We were all continuously overrun with vultures, stopping meant the horde spawned immediately and there were always at least 5 vultures while on a vehicle.  

 

Recently, We tried a cage/pillbox method, several layers of iron bars, concrete (we finally got a mixer), a few spikes, shotgun turrets, all of us with our guns of choice grade 5/6 rifles/pistols/SMGs/AKs/Auto shotguns, ect.  We got flooded with demolishers and had at least 15 throughout the night, not including all the cops and ferals.  Everyone but 1 person died and only because he jumped on a pillar of some kind and ran around.

 

 

In Summary/TLDR of Blood Moon Defense:

1)  Layered Base w. Lot of Firepower/Spikes  -  Failed, ~50% destroyed after 1 blood moon around Day 70.  Largely due to Radiated Ferals pummeling the walls into the base and Demolisher taking out large sections.

2)  Minibikes/Truck  -  Failed, Constantly spawning vultures that outrun the vehicles.

3)  Cage/Pillbox  -  Failed,  90% destroyed due to constant onslaught of demolishers ~Day 110ish.

4)  Cage over Pit  -  Failed,  one person tried this and they took out all the supporting pillars.

 

 

What other methods of blood moon defense would you recommend using/trying besides reducing server settings since these Zombies seem to have degrees in Structural Engineering?  I was initially working on a bedrock bunker, but people have said that now the zombies dig like they have augers and it won't be usable for very long.  We had hoped to use one person's steel/concrete/cobble base as defense, but fear it would just completely ruin everything he's worked for.  The Demolisher has just thrown a complicated wrench into the horde nights, since they're so tanky, fast and immensely destructive since so many things trigger the detonation.  If we were skimping on firepower, that would be one thing.. but we are armed/geared about as much as we can be in grade 5-6 steel and advanced weapons.

 

Thanks!  Any help or advice you can give would be greatly appreciated.

Edited August 31, 2020 by Tohskrad (see edit history)

[Roland]

Heed the words of @RipClaw as his goal every alpha is to seek that base design that does the majority of the work for you with minimal damage to have to clean up. I have summoned him for you in case he has solved the newest challenges in A19.

[katarynna]

Dart traps and blade traps do not set off the demolishers, so a kill corridor utilizing those could work. I haven't reached the demolisher stage yet in a19.

 

You can look up Grand Spartan's youtube video of his a19 base (I think it was called the blender base) that utilized darts and blades extremely successfully against demos. Or vedui probably has bases that work with a19. Jawoodle also.

 

While i watch a lot of youtube, i do tend to just use it for ideas to come up with my own design. Knowing what actually works for other people means you can either copy their successful strategy or use that knowledge to come up with your own.

[RipClaw]

58 minutes ago, katarynna said:

You can look up Grand Spartan's youtube video of his a19 base (I think it was called the blender base) that utilized darts and blades extremely successfully against demos. Or vedui probably has bases that work with a19. Jawoodle also.

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.

 

Edited August 31, 2020 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[katarynna]

5 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

I currently use the design of Grand Spartan, which he calls the processor,

Thanks! I knew it was some sort of kitchen appliance name, lol.

[Kandrathe]

1 hour ago, Tohskrad said:

Hello everyone,

 

3-4 few friends from another game and I decided to start playing 7D2D on our own server and are ...

 

Thanks!  Any help or advice you can give would be greatly appreciated.

My wife and I are in about the same place.  Day 21 was brutal but we survived, although the base was damaged more than I had expected.   We’ve decided and built a new bug out tower that is built from reinforced concrete.  Our salvation was in our individual peccadilloes... she buys novel materials we haven’t seen from the trader, and I salvage everything I can if not to just clear the roads.   Our domicile in defended with layers as you described sufficient to handle the random wandering screamer scout.   It will be indefensible on blood moons.
 

My wife had gathered a few hundred rebar From converting dukes into materials, and I had the tech from salvage.  Our new bug out blood moon survival space is a 7x7 Iron bared cage elevated about 15 blocks up with legs that are widespread to discourage them from attacking and toppling it.  Then we dug a 7x7 pit below the front of our cage about 10 blocks deep.  I realized in my earlier defenses that they needed a rational pathway to me.  From the pit we built a ramp out in a winding death zone in our lines of fire that present no physical obstacles, as well as a ramp up to our level 10 blocks away on the other side of the pit.  Crossing the pit from their ramp up are two very thin balance beams they see as a pathway to us.  This is in our clear line of fire and our final defense of electric fences they must walk into to cross the balance beams.  On day 28 we had less terror, but more terrifying hordes.  We learned more on how to slow them and keep them busy while in our fire lanes, trying to get to us, without succeeding.  We still had a few crazy zombies attacking the pillars, but thankfully the distribution and redundancy was enough to prevent toppling our cage.  My goal is to keep them moving, and not smashing things.

[saltychipmunk]

Sounds like You fellas need a kill chamber.   What is a kill chamber, well in short its a hall way with a pit to trap zombies that is made out of layers of the most durable material you have.

 

So in the case of my base with two friends it is made out of steel reinforce concrete.  We have a rather simple not really exploity base. Which is essentially a 19x19 cylinder with this 7x7 kill chamber attached to a side (acting as an entrance).

 

The cylinder itself is a single 1 layer thick of concrete with a inner ring of cobble for aesthetics.  It has never been substantially damaged.

 

The zombies just love to funnel into the chamber. 

 

The big idea is that you have 1 person in the kill chamber (usually hiding behind iron bars on either side of the door into your base) to mulch lesser infected as they run into the hall way.  everyone else should be on the roof of the house killing as many special infected at distance as possible.  One of my friends actually started triggering demolishers  as early as possible  to cause detonations away from the house  the lawn looks like a lunar hellscape but the house is looking fine. 

 

But there is a good chance that some demolishers will make it into the kill chamber. Try not to shoot them in the chest if that happens. however it is not the end of the world. 

If you make the chamber durable enough it can survive several demolishes explosions. 

 

Another suggestion is that your friends start to min max.  You are going to want someone who is maxing out int especially simply because getting vendor secret stashes unlocked can get you early access to crucibles. 

[Ttocs]

Make the zombies run a gauntlet of traps, i have a raised pillbox base where the z have to run up some stairs and along a  split platform to reach the pillbox, its now littered with blade traps. Set up blade traps so they slice as they run past and put electric fences in the same place to maximise dmg. I have sledge turrets to knock them down so they have to re path back up and now i have blade trap pit at the bottom too. Make sure the path back to you is easy, my fall pit makes it so that they pretty much never go after foundations. I put iron spikes on the roof and dont even see vulturse during hordes now. Next step for me would be auto turrets and dart traps but they are more expensive to utilise than blade traps and electric fence.

 

I also save stuff like recog for horde nights and once they build up zombies that make it to my pillbox opening i drink it and push them back by expending losts of ammo with my best weapon. Explosives work really well if you can force them to group, if i carried on with that game i would of build some sort of side corridor on that i could go along and shoot some explosive arrows.  Motolovs great for grouped up z's but once its a horde of radiated you need to assist the burn dmg because its not enough.

 

Also when it comes to placing spikes around make sure you dig one block down around the walls like a spike moat kinda, otherwise once one spike is broken the rest are redundant because they will just path into the space where the broken one was.

 

Another tip is keeping a repair tool in your belt so that once a block looks fairly dmged just switch to it repair and youre safe again ^.^

 

Good Luck !

 

TDLR: Well placed traps and more of them, Utilise choke points, Reinforce hotspots or places you know they hit, Use consumables, Anti Rad mod is a good help too.

Edited August 31, 2020 by Ttocs (see edit history)

[HungryZombie]

This video shows a good example of a kill box. Basically dig a trench around 3 sides of your base so all the zombies attack the front side. Use whatever traps you desiere. The video shows a really good setup.

 

 

[RipClaw]

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

 

 

 

[Kattla]

6 hours ago, Tohskrad said:

 

The next bloodmoon, the base was still not repaired and decided to just try and run for it.  We all had minibikes and a truck.   We were all continuously overrun with vultures, stopping meant the horde spawned immediately and there were always at least 5 vultures while on a vehicle.  

 

Because of reasons, outrunning the horde with a vehicle is strictly forbidden, frowned upon, called cheating etc.

But outrunning the horde on foot however is perfectly fine, at least for the moment.

 

With this toolbar, you can survive any horde night if you run (and actually use the buffs they provide).

 

Don't need megacrush, but it is the easiest way to avoid the horde. Coffee and other stamina refreshment buffs also works if you make

a little obstacle course. Running shoes helps a bit too i think.

 

Megacrush is most often found in these containers, in public food-serving places.

[pApA^LeGBa]

We have a corridor build, with a hole where they can fall down, we do stand behind quarter poles. Corridor has an electric fence hidden behind 2 blocks (plates on the outside so the whole base doesn´t get to wide). They get stuck nicely in the fence. For Demolishers i have gone full into demolition using contact grenades and rocketlauncher. Still no one hit kill even with atom junkies, full demo skill and frag rockets tough. (On warrior difficulty)

Edited August 31, 2020 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[Noctoras]

Don't build at all. Take all your 7.62 ammo and some bandages and just stay around in an open field. Works fine, no repairs needed. 

 

Demos are overpowered and since the 5,000 damage was MMs idea, it's probably not gonna be adjusted. 

 

Alternatively, there is some cheese (door stilts...) and semi cheese (kill corridor) designs. Unfortunately regular bases are pretty much pointless... 

[eXSe]

I simply make them come a certain way to me by walling off (4-5 high wall) a square of real estate (size is of your choice but a bunker in the middle should be a must) and leaving a corridor 2 wide and some 10-15 blocks long for them to come and have a go... if they think they're hard enough

 

Then employ imagination to murder them... blades work fine for me (inbeded into the wall at floor level on each side of the corridor, so that they can mince doggos and spider monkeys), but you can couple them with anything that may fit your design. Remember, though, there is no overkill

 

 

[Tohskrad]

Thanks for all your help and advice!  It looks like most of the options are fairly technologically advanced and I'm not sure that we have all the schematics learned, but hopefully these will maintain base longevity instead of a complete rebuild every bloodmoon.

 

If all else fails, it seems that the horde disappears once everyone dies during a bloodmoon, regardless of time... so that may be a less desirable option if these don't work out.

 

I'll give these all a try and hopefully some work.  Will be odd having an almost entirely open, attack heavy base as opposed to a more natural (for me) defense heavy base.

 

Thanks again!

Edited August 31, 2020 by Tohskrad (see edit history)

[RipClaw]

11 hours ago, Tohskrad said:

Thanks for all your help and advice!  It looks like most of the options are fairly technologically advanced and I'm not sure that we have all the schematics learned, but hopefully these will maintain base longevity instead of a complete rebuild every bloodmoon.

Do none of you have points in Advanced Engineering ? All schematics needed for base building can be found under this one skill.

12 hours ago, Tohskrad said:

If all else fails, it seems that the horde disappears once everyone dies during a bloodmoon, regardless of time... so that may be a less desirable option if these don't work out.

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.

12 hours ago, Tohskrad said:

I'll give these all a try and hopefully some work.  Will be odd having an almost entirely open, attack heavy base as opposed to a more natural (for me) defense heavy base.

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.
 

[Kalen]

19 hours ago, Noctoras said:

semi cheese (kill corridor) designs

semi cheese?   I don't think so.... I'd argue that the kill corridor is actually the intended way of fighting the blood moon horde.   Kill corridors are almost the definition of tower defense.   Not saying I like it, but I'd hardly call it semi cheese.

[Teacyn]

Yeah IMO base design kind of falls apart at super high stages in this game. A huge chunk of it is the fact demolishers can delete half your base instantly, but even without them zombies do so much block damage and there's so many of them that it's pretty much impossible to design "traditional" bases that won't get obliterated. Turning to cheese bases, meat grinders, and kill corridors are basically your only option outside of just reinforcing throwaway POIs and waiting the night out.

[meganoth]

20 minutes ago, Teacyn said:

Yeah IMO base design kind of falls apart at super high stages in this game. A huge chunk of it is the fact demolishers can delete half your base instantly, but even without them zombies do so much block damage and there's so many of them that it's pretty much impossible to design "traditional" bases that won't get obliterated. Turning to cheese bases, meat grinders, and kill corridors are basically your only option outside of just reinforcing throwaway POIs and waiting the night out.

By the time demos come in masses you already should be able to upgrade important points to steel. Steel needs a few demo explosions before it is gone.

 

The best advice I can give is simple redundancy. If some kill korridor lasts only half a horde night, make two of them and make sure you can switch between them (easiest way, have two seperate baseparts connected with bridges for example. If that kill korridor only last 1/3 of a night, build three.

 

The second advice: You have to make the paths they have to run to get to you always as long and timeconsuming as possible. Electric fence posts, barbed wire, 1 meter high blocks in their path, paths they are pushed from, all waste their time which they can't use to destroy your blocks.

 

For example our current base has two narrow access paths to our first floor, both with bridges we can take away (simple wood frames to remove in emergencies or doors laid flat) and doors or open hatches as a last block (don't ask, one of us watches streamers and then uses all that semi-exploity stuff).

 

On one we have lots of pushy turrets throwing the zombies down into a pit with concrete walls so they get some fall damage. and an exit path with electric fences so they can get back to try the access path again. 

 

The other access path is simply a path with a block every three meters, so they have to jump on the block and jump down again, jump up, jump down again, instead of run through. Add barbed wire to slow them down, use molotovs when lots of them are together in one spot.

 

If those two are not enough we can always add another and another path to the base. Each such path is built by two people in one day, but makes the base hold up at least two weeks longer. Just don't forget to always repair the damage before the next horde night.

 

 

[RipClaw]

8 minutes ago, Teacyn said:

Turning to cheese bases, meat grinders, and kill corridors are basically your only option outside of just reinforcing throwaway POIs and waiting the night out.

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.
 

[HungryZombie]

22 hours ago, Noctoras said:

Don't build at all. Take all your 7.62 ammo and some bandages and just stay around in an open field. Works fine, no repairs needed. 

 

Demos are overpowered and since the 5,000 damage was MMs idea, it's probably not gonna be adjusted. 

 

Alternatively, there is some cheese (door stilts...) and semi cheese (kill corridor) designs. Unfortunately regular bases are pretty much pointless... 

You can but that's no fun. I like building a defense and daring the zombies to 'come get me' 

[Teacyn]

3 hours ago, RipClaw said:

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.

This does also work but uses so much steel that from my experience, by the time you can make this kind of structure semi-reliably you're probably just about out of things to do in the game.

[Tohskrad]

22 hours ago, RipClaw said:

Do none of you have points in Advanced Engineering ? All schematics needed for base building can be found under this one skill.

 

It looks like at least 1 person has it maxed and a few other are putting points in it now. Early on the focus was on vehicles more so than base defense, since we thought we could fortify ourselves in and survive.   (My character is more of a resource gatherer/survivor *Mostly Strength/Some Health build* to minimize food/water use, farm fast and built for sledgehammers/shotguns usage.  Early on we were desperately struggling for food, so this made the most sense to get our farm and materials in order.)    We're going to start working on some of the kill bases, although it sounds like one of our older bases (silo) may be usable again as the zombie AI and current mapping causes them to be confused.  We are only just now beginning to use some of the steel recipes (Day 140 or so), materials are always in short supply and take awhile to farm.  

Edited September 2, 2020 by Tohskrad (see edit history)

[Hellsmoke]

I've had horde night turned off since early Alpha 18. Jail doors have been removed, spikes have been removed, polished steel has been removed, under ground is no longer an option and the super strength zombies chew pretty much through everything else within seconds. Toothy and similar bases are pointless now. Solar panels are not obtainable unless you get the highest barter skill and even if you manage to pay the ridiculous price for them, the vultures will tear them down in no time so if you go the electronics route, be prepared to grind for gas and tons of parts for repairs.

 

Later at higher game stages the vultures with exploding puke will ensure you have to repair EVERY SINGLE BLOCK on your base after every horde night, even blocks that are hidden 2-3 blocks BEHIND others where you'll never get to in order to repair them. That was a bit frustrating to say the least..at which point I thought "you win" and turned off the horde all together.

 

All creativity has been stripped  from building now, it's cheese or suffer. I thought about just making a cheese base back then but I later figured I might as well turn off horde all together. This might be another reason I choose not even to try alpha 19 and am waiting on improvements.

 

Hope some of these methods help you, I am a "veteran player" and I don't understand them lol but maybe you will.

[meganoth]

6 hours ago, Tohskrad said:

It looks like at least 1 person has it maxed and a few other are putting points in it now. Early on the focus was on vehicles more so than base defense, since we thought we could fortify ourselves in and survive.   (My character is more of a resource gatherer/survivor *Mostly Strength/Some Health build* to minimize food/water use, farm fast and built for sledgehammers/shotguns usage.  Early on we were desperately struggling for food, so this made the most sense to get our farm and materials in order.)    We're going to start working on some of the kill bases, although it sounds like one of our older bases (silo) may be usable again as the zombie AI and current mapping causes them to be confused.  We are only just now beginning to use some of the steel recipes (Day 140 or so), materials are always in short supply and take awhile to farm.  

I assume as STR resource gatherer you have motherlode maxed out and mine in some nights? One never has enough naturally, but a few nights of mining in an iron mine should provide heaps of steel, even if only one in your group is mining.