What factors make the different biomes harder?

[ElDudorino]

So I know you get a decent loot score bonus for going to the desert, a better one for the snow, and then the wasteland is the largest bonus.  The wasteland is obviously way harder than other biomes because it's packed with zombie vultures, zombie dogs, and zombie bears, plus the enemy respawn time is instant at night and enemies may have feral sense(?) so if you make noise at night you basically get a blood moon scenario any night of your choosing.  These things, to me, justify the loot bonus.

 

But what about the snow?  There are more bears and cougars but I feel like they can be avoided for the most part without difficulty.  There are more lumberjacks but they aren't that much tougher than regular zombies.  There's the cold mechanic which is visually annoying but in practical terms affects you very little.  Then on the positive side visibility is better than the pine forest so hunting is way easier, traveling at night is way easier, you can spot nests and stumps anywhere, water is essentially infinite (not that it's usually a concern anyway), and digging is way easier if you need to lay a foundation.  So really it seems easier than the pine forest or at least equivalently easy as long as you know not to charge headfirst into a cougar.

 

Is there more going on behind-the-scenes that makes the snow a harder biome?  Are enemy spawn rates faster/higher, detection higher, chance of feral/irradiated/tougher zombies higher?  Because at a glance it seems like it's not much tougher than the pine forest and just gives better loot.

[Boidster]

Downtown snow zombies are harder than downtown pine forest zombies (more ferals, dire wolves, and so on). That + cold + occasional blizzard + enemy animals I guess. 

[canadianbluebeer]

By the time you're geared to handle the snow temps, said wildlife is nothing more than meat delivery systems.

 

driving to the trader, it's easy to come out with almost a thousand meat for the cost of some bullets.

(or if a cheapskate, drink a beer and punchypunch) 

 

(I've got over 3k meat stashed from the various runs into that zone.  heh)

 

Haven't gotten to the wasteland yet.   Did Dishong in the desert though.

 

Note: if someone spawns the 100 rabbits from mischiefmaker, it shuts off the zeds spawning in there. (maxalive limit)

Peaceful bunnies are one thing, when they morph into jackalopes though... um....  chaos!

😛

 

[ElDudorino]

12 hours ago, Boidster said:

Downtown snow zombies are harder than downtown pine forest zombies (more ferals, dire wolves, and so on). That + cold + occasional blizzard + enemy animals I guess. 

I haven't really noticed this. It took over a week to encounter my first feral in the snow. I am using the Dangerous Cities modlet to make cities less empty and easy, so maybe that affects things, but my expectation was that if the biome were to have more ferals it just means they would appear more in the modded crowds.

[Boidster]

Depends on what the mod does. Vanilla downtown snow ferals are 5x more likely to appear than forest downtown forest ferals.

 

    <entitygroup name="ZombiesForestDowntown">
        <entity name="zombieSpider" prob="1"/>
        <entity name="zombieSpiderFeral" prob=".1"/>

 

    <entitygroup name="ZombiesDowntown">  <-- snow biome uses this group
        <entity name="zombieSpider" prob="1"/>
        <entity name="zombieSpiderFeral" prob=".5"/>

[ElDudorino]

Hmm, I think I get it. Once you reach a high enough gamestage that ferals are regular spawns, the snow probably has way more of them than the forest. But before that point, the snow is basically a free loot stage bonus.

 

As far as you know, does "downtown" refer to every part of a town? Like are the outskirts of rural towns with a lot of farms considered "downtown" or something else? They do have higher spawns than the wilderness.

[Boidster]

4 minutes ago, ElDudorino said:

Hmm, I think I get it. Once you reach a high enough gamestage that ferals are regular spawns, the snow probably has way more of them than the forest. But before that point, the snow is basically a free loot stage bonus.

 

As far as you know, does "downtown" refer to every part of a town? Like are the outskirts of rural towns with a lot of farms considered "downtown" or something else? They do have higher spawns than the wilderness.

 

Biome spawns are not tied to gamestage at all (yet?). Level 1 player will get the same mix as level 100 player. It's a sort of built-in disincentive (or incentive?) for lower-level players to venture into harder biome cities. Gamestage-scaled groups look like this (notice how zombiePartyGirlFeral's probability moves from 0 in the GS1 group to 0.2 in the GS100 group):

 

<entitygroup name="ZombieNightClubGroupGS1">
        <entity name="zombiePartyGirl" prob="0.95"/><entity name="zombiePartyGirlFeral" prob="0"/>
        <entity name="zombieBusinessMan" prob="0.45"/><entity name="zombieBusinessManFeral" prob="0.1"/></entitygroup>
    <entitygroup name="ZombieNightClubGroupGS50">
        <entity name="zombiePartyGirl" prob="0.85"/><entity name="zombiePartyGirlFeral" prob="0.1"/>
        <entity name="zombieBusinessMan" prob="0.75"/><entity name="zombieBusinessManFeral" prob="0.1"/></entitygroup>
    <entitygroup name="ZombieNightClubGroupGS100">
        <entity name="zombiePartyGirl" prob="0.7"/><entity name="zombiePartyGirlFeral" prob="0.2"/>
        <entity name="zombieBusinessMan" prob="0.6"/><entity name="zombieBusinessManFeral" prob="0.2"/></entitygroup>

 

As far as I know, downtown refers to a true downtown. City center, tall buildings, etc. I don't think the smaller towns have a "downtown".

[OneManStanding]

There's nothing especially challenging about the biomes yet - warm clothes and insulation mods negates the cold in the snow, and I regard the abundance of bears, cougars and dire wolves as free meat: Just ram them off the road with your motorbike and quickly double barrel them whilst they're stunned. Cool clothing will stop the thirst in the desert. The wasteland doesn't require protective clothing, but spawns a lot of zombie bears, dogs, vultures and mutants - good if you want a lot of rotten meat very quickly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[ElDudorino]

11 minutes ago, Boidster said:

Biome spawns are not tied to gamestage at all (yet?).

Huh. Well then.

 

Do you know if the snow has higher feral spawns outside of downtown?

[Boidster]

7 minutes ago, ElDudorino said:

Do you know if the snow has higher feral spawns outside of downtown?

 

I do, and the answer is no, it uses the same spawn groups. The only places where the snow biome uses different groups is in the wilderness (lumberjacks only), downtown, and enemy animals. You can see this in spawning.xml. I highlighted the differences in the snow biome. Respawn delay is in game days, not real time.

 

If you're running a mod which purports to increase general zombie numbers, it likely changes this.

 

    <biome name="snow">
        <spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="2.6" time="Any" entitygroup="SnowZombies" notags="downtown" />
        <spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="1.7" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesNight" notags="commercial,industrial,downtown" />

        <spawn maxcount="4" respawndelay="0.09" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" tags="commercial,industrial" notags="downtown" />
        <spawn maxcount="4" respawndelay="0.06" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesNight" tags="commercial,industrial" notags="downtown" />

        <spawn maxcount="4" respawndelay="0.07" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesDowntown" tags="downtown" />
        <spawn maxcount="4" respawndelay="0.04" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesDowntown" tags="downtown" />

        <spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="1" time="Any" entitygroup="WildGameForest" spawnDeadChance="0" />
        <spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="3.1" time="Any" entitygroup="EnemyAnimalsSnow" spawnDeadChance="0" />
    </biome>

 

    <biome name="pine_forest">
        <spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="2.9" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" notags="commercial,industrial,downtown" />
        <spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="3.3" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesNight" notags="commercial,industrial,downtown" />

        <spawn maxcount="2" respawndelay="0.3" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" tags="commercial,industrial" notags="downtown" />
        <spawn maxcount="3" respawndelay="0.15" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesNight" tags="commercial,industrial" notags="downtown" />

        <spawn maxcount="3" respawndelay="0.3" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesForestDowntown" tags="downtown" />
        <spawn maxcount="3" respawndelay="0.1" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesForestDowntownNight" tags="downtown" />

        <spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="1" time="Any" entitygroup="WildGameForest" spawnDeadChance="0" />
        <spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="1.1" time="Night" entitygroup="EnemyAnimalsForest" spawnDeadChance="0" />
    </biome>

Edited February 14, 2022 by Boidster (see edit history)

[ElDudorino]

Thanks! It looks like there are a fair number of differences after all. I think the loot stage increase may be a little out of proportion with the difference in difficulty but I at least see the rationale now.