Day 8 and we've seen zero wandering zombies.

[Sjustus548]

So we are on day 8 and we have yet to see any zombies wandering out in the woods or in towns.  The only zombies we have encountered have been in buildings, from the one wandering horde we've had, and from the blood moon.  Is this a new change for A19 or could something have possibly screwed up when the map was created?  Not sure what could be causing this distinct lack of zombies.  

[Boidster]

There is something wrong with your installation. The default biome spawns are the same in A19 except with more frequent respawning. If you're not seeing any, something's up with your game. Or you are unlucky in the extreme.

 

Do you see the normal chickens & rabbits? They come from the same biome spawner as zombies.

[Sjustus548]

Nope no wild life at all besides 4 wolves we figure probably came from a random spawning horde.

 

[Kyonshi]

Wandering hordes are tied with specific game stages and game stages evolve with a combinaison of your own level and how many days you've been alive. So, lets say someone is playing with XP leveling at a very low setting and they've been alive for a long time. Their game stage will probably remain the same for a long period, therefore the next wandering horde wont trigger.

 

Perhaps this is something that's happening to you?

[Sjustus548]

We were using default XP leveling and we were at level 8 at the time.  The wandering hordes showed up properly it was the zombies that you met just shuffling around the woods or in towns that never showed up, also no random animals ever showed up either.  I took Boidster's advice and reinstalled the server, also restored a backup so I could get my world back.  This seemed to fix whatever issue was happening so I'm guessing something screwed up during the install on the dedicated server.  We have zombies again so hopefully they stay around because it was getting pretty lonely lol.

[Boidster]

For even less loneliness, in your spawning.xml, change this:

 

<spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="2.9" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" />

 

to this:

 

<spawn maxcount="4" respawndelay="2.9" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" />

 

And then adjust as needed (and as your server and clients can handle it). That line appears under each of these:

 

<biome name="pine_forest">
<biome name="burnt_forest">
<biome name="desert">
<biome name="wasteland">
<biome name="snow">

 

Play with the respawndelay attribute also (it's measured in game days) if you want them to respawn more often. You can also change the "Night" zombie spawns of course. And the friendly/enemy animals also. It's all there under those <biome..> tags.

 

We play at 4x spawns and 1-day respawn so we are rarely lonely. Using a gun to kill a zombie will usually result in 6-10 more wandering in from the surrounding area. It's a PITA when we just want to loot this POI in peace dammit! We like it.

[ElCabong]

I have run into several of them. The last one was full of soldiers.

 

I've seen a lot of them after I've exited a mission location and they're all spread out. I think they're spawning while I'm in there and not coming in after me. They used to do that

[Slaasher]

That's truly weird. I have been thinking that they upped the amount of wandering day hordes with the final release of A19 because I am getting a lot of them. A  friend playing on a different game has stated the same thing. Random single zombies are everywhere!!

We are both playing on a RWG so maybe that's causing it but I am having a totally different experience than the OP.

[BubbaJoe]

@Boidster thanks for sharing that information. My friend and I pretty much enjoy being slaughtered in this game and I always appreciate learning more ways to make it even crazier. 😁

[Boidster]

3 hours ago, Slaasher said:

I have been thinking that they upped the amount of wandering day hordes with the final release of A19 because I am getting a lot of them. A  friend playing on a different game has stated the same thing. Random single zombies are everywhere!!

Need to separate "hordes" from "biome spawns". Once per day (I think) you will get a "horde" - a group of several zombies in close proximity - which will wander generally in the direction you were in when they spawned. This horde does not GPS to you, but of course if it sees you (it spawns quite a ways away) then they'll swarm to attack.

 

Also every 2.9 days (by default and this is much more frequent than it was in A18) every chunk has a chance to spawn one zombie of an appropriate type (most normal zombies in forest, only lumberjacks in snow, etc.). These are the one-at-a-time zombies you see just milling around as you travel cross-country. If RNG is being nice (or mean, depending on your POV) you'll get several chunks around you all spawning a zombie successfully. Other times, not many spawns will happen and it'll seem empty.

 

If you kill one, that chunk will wait 2.9 days to try again. Changes to the biomes in spawning.xml can both increase the # of possible zombies spawned per chunk and reduce the respawn delay after zombies are killed.

 

Other changes to gamestages.xml could affect the little wandering hordes, but from what I can tell you could only change the makeup of the hordes, not their frequency. There is some overlap with spawning.xml that I suspect is old XML that needs to be cleaned out. As far as I know, gamestages.xml governs the wandering horde spawners, not spawning.xml. Haven't really played with it though.

[bobrpggamer]

There is a few zombies in the forest, but man when I need to enter the snow area, they are everywhere and at night is is really dangerous, they are at every block in the city, along with bears, wolves and wildcats.

 

I have a nitrogen map without burnt forest and wasteland, I like the wasteland but I live in California near a lot of the latest wildfires so I choose to not have that area and there is no option to have the wasteland without the forest, because I would love to see how dangerous the wasteland is compared to the snow biome.

[seagas]

I've seen plenty of wonder zeds, wandering hoards, fricking vultures, dogs, lions, bears, coyotes and wolves. As far as game animals, I've see plenty of chickens and rabbits but I finally saw my first deer on game day 41 at 90 minute day and zero wild hogs.

[bobrpggamer]

53 minutes ago, seagas said:

I've seen plenty of wonder zeds, wandering hoards, fricking vultures, dogs, lions, bears, coyotes and wolves. As far as game animals, I've see plenty of chickens and rabbits but I finally saw my first deer on game day 41 at 90 minute day and zero wild hogs.

All you have to do to  get some action is travel to the snow biome and you will be swarmed with animals and zeds. I have been attacked by up to 3 lumberjacks in the same area. You also no longer have to search forever for bears when you need raw meat, just put on some cold weather clothes or have coffee or forti bites and travel to the snow biome and everywhere you look you will find bears, along with mountain lions and dire wolves. The bummer with the snow biome is not really the cold weather, its the low visibility, I hate driving my gyrocopter through the snow because I cannot see 20' in front of me and I seem to run into buildings when going to traders based in the city area, I have also driven my motorcycle into lakes and rivers there.

[myrkana]

On 9/1/2020 at 12:07 PM, Boidster said:

For even less loneliness, in your spawning.xml, change this:

 

<spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="2.9" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" />

 

to this:

 

<spawn maxcount="4" respawndelay="2.9" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" />

 

And then adjust as needed (and as your server and clients can handle it). That line appears under each of these:

 

<biome name="pine_forest">
<biome name="burnt_forest">
<biome name="desert">
<biome name="wasteland">
<biome name="snow">

 

Play with the respawndelay attribute also (it's measured in game days) if you want them to respawn more often. You can also change the "Night" zombie spawns of course. And the friendly/enemy animals also. It's all there under those <biome..> tags.

 

We play at 4x spawns and 1-day respawn so we are rarely lonely. Using a gun to kill a zombie will usually result in 6-10 more wandering in from the surrounding area. It's a PITA when we just want to loot this POI in peace dammit! We like it.

can this be done on a current world or is a restart needed?

[BubbaJoe]

1 minute ago, myrkana said:

can this be done on a current world or is a restart needed?

My friend and I tested this out tonight and noticed an immediate difference with no restart needed. In my (admittedly limited) experience a lot of spawn-related XML changes don't require full  world restarts, but I am by no means an expert there.

[Boidster]

BubbaJoe is correct. In fact almost no XML changes require restarting a new world. Want to harvest bones from dead zombies? Want to find AK-47s in bird nests? Sure, go edit entityclasses.xml and loot.xml and start up your world; don't even need to leave the main menu. The game loads up the configuration fresh every time you start playing a world.

 

The big exception to the "don't need to create a new world" rule that I know of is rwgmixer.xml, since it's used to generate the world.