Trader's Gambit - 7D2D Challenge

[MechanicalLens]

Just another challenge idea I thought I'd share.

 

This challenge combines two previously existing ones - the Nomad challenge and horde night every night - and puts a spin on it. You don't get to decide where you hold down the horde - the traders do. Every day, assuming you survived the previous blood moon, you must return to your trader, select a quest (not buried supplies or restore power for obvious reasons), and whichever POI the trader sends you to (provided you haven't been there before), that is where you must hold down the horde. You are allowed to loot other POI's before the blood moon rises, but because this is Nomad, inventory management is key.

 

How long can you survive?

 

 

EDITS

 

1) If the trader sends you to the same place twice, you can choose to either cancel the quest and choose something new, or you can choose to use it again. However, you must activate the quest marker if the previous defenses and destruction are present. It would be cheap to reuse the same modified base.

 

2) The "inventory" side of the Nomad challenge is optional.

 

3) Optionally, but recommended, this is a permadeath challenge.

 

4) As mentioned by Roland, it could be considered cheap to just knock out all the staircases and cower away for the night. If you want an extra challenge, you can bar yourself from doing this.

 

5) However, what is non-negotiable is you cannot build a structure around the POI that isn't supposed by its structural integrity, and you especially cannot defend from that location. (Ex. A wall, a steel cube, a tower, etc.) Otherwise that would defeat the entire purpose of holding down said POI.

[Kyonshi]

This is a great idea. I'm gonna give it a try, but without the Nomad part. I prefer having my stuff in a permanent hideout.

[Roland]

Ooh, I like this one as well. I'll give it a try. The best part is that I can get the quest and wait to activate it until after the bloodmoon. Instant repairs.

[theFlu]

That's a pretty entertaining way to go; did a variation for a bit in A19, daily hordes, do the quest, defend there.. ended up keeping one of my bases before long, as I wanted to test a few improvements there.

 

41 minutes ago, Roland said:

Instant repairs.

... of a POI you won't be using for the next horde?

[Roland]

33 minutes ago, theFlu said:

... of a POI you won't be using for the next horde?

 

I've gotten sent to the same place again before. But even if not it would be cool to see the decimated post blood moon POI get instantly fixed. As a side note you should have to fortify the POI so that you start on the ground floor and only retreat upstairs/roof top if necessary. Since this is supposed to be a challenge it would be kind of cheesy to simply break out the stairs of every POI you go to from the very start.

[MechanicalLens]

2 hours ago, Kyonshi said:

This is a great idea. I'm gonna give it a try, but without the Nomad part. I prefer having my stuff in a permanent hideout.

 

All that matters is the essence of the challenge remains intact and that you have fun.  Go for it!

 

Edit: I'll probably go without the storage part of the Nomad challenge as well, come to think of it.

2 hours ago, Roland said:

Ooh, I like this one as well. I'll give it a try. The best part is that I can get the quest and wait to activate it until after the bloodmoon. Instant repairs.

 

This sounds pretty cool. It'll also be a double edged sword since activating the quest in the morning means you either have to complete it (and get double loot and XP... heh-heh) but it eats into your day time you could be spending fortifying your next base, or you cancel the quest and not get anything out of it, trader reward wise. From T1 to even T3 POI's this wouldn't be much of an issue (time sink wise), but once you get to T4 and especially T5's...

[MechanicalLens]

I'll be starting up this challenge as well. To anyone who will be participating in your own games, feel free to share stats (such as when you died if you play this as permadeath), what POI's the trader sends you too, etc.  I'll definitely be doing the latter, but I'll be placing the screenshots on here in a spoiler tag.

[MechanicalLens]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

 

I've gotten sent to the same place again before. But even if not it would be cool to see the decimated post blood moon POI get instantly fixed. As a side note you should have to fortify the POI so that you start on the ground floor and only retreat upstairs/roof top if necessary. Since this is supposed to be a challenge it would be kind of cheesy to simply break out the stairs of every POI you go to from the very start.

 

To add to this, while you can add traps in and around the POI, double thick walls if you want, add bars around the outside or inside, whatever, you can't just build a tower next to the POI or have a wall surrounding it and face the horde from there. That would defeat the whole purpose of the challenge, at least for that particular night.

[theFlu]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

I've gotten sent to the same place again before.

I think you missed the "and whichever POI the trader sends you to (provided you haven't been there before)" in the OP.

 

But OK, I can see some appeal to hiding the evidence; although I prefer leaving my marks on the world .. this type of challenge is great for that

1 hour ago, Roland said:

As a side note you should have to fortify the POI so that you start on the ground floor and only retreat upstairs/roof top if necessary.

That's how I would play it anyway; can't melee from the second floor .. melee saves ammo, most POIs can be turned into good choke points pretty easily. Depending a little on the settings of course, below 30-40 minutes / horde you might 'have' to cheese it a bit at points. It's a lot easier to make the choke point in the second floor.

 

A simpler variation I've enjoyed in the past is to just nomad it "house by house" .. find a town, start fortifying the first POI. Move to the next one down the road for the next night/horde.

[MechanicalLens]

1 minute ago, theFlu said:

I think you missed the "and whichever POI the trader sends you to (provided you haven't been there before)" in the OP.

 

But OK, I can see some appeal to hiding the evidence; although I prefer leaving my marks on the world .. this type of challenge is great for that

 

Okay, how about this. If you want to use the same place twice (if the trader happens to send you there again), that's totally up to you. But the rule is you must activate the quest marker before the horde, otherwise you'll be using previously constructed defenses.

[theFlu]

10 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

Okay, how about this. If you want to use the same place twice (if the trader happens to send you there again), that's totally up to you. But the rule is you must activate the quest marker before the horde, otherwise you'll be using previously constructed defenses.

Sounds fine to me; if you end up doing that, maybe try to get the "main defense" into another part of the POI each night - mostly to avoid it feeling repetitive.

[MechanicalLens]

1 minute ago, theFlu said:

Sounds fine to me; if you end up doing that, maybe try to get the "main defense" into another part of the POI each night - mostly to avoid it feeling repetitive.

 

Sounds fair. Also, to avoid repetition, you can make a habit to write down the label each POI has so you don't end up doing the same place twice. (i.e. if the trader sends you to another house_old_gambriel_05 in the same town, then you'd know.)

Note: If you happen to get all buried supplies or what have you, remember that you can log out of the game and come back in, and the trader will offer you an entirely different selection of quests. I don't see this being an issue past the first tier of quests though. That's another great feature in A20: being able to select previous tiers of quests.

[Banginurz]

This sounds..... NASTY!  I'm not good enough to try it yet, but when/if I get there, I'll have this page bookmarked!  Thanks for the awesome idea!

[The-Walking-Dad]

I liked the neighbourhood idea, but I love this one. Might record it with my son for YouTube.

[canadianbluebeer]

If you activate the quest after the horde, then all defences/damage are wiped.

(so if you get sent back, there's nothing there but the POI)

 

T5 though... some of those, horde AND the nasties in it.... heh.

 

 

[theFlu]

22 minutes ago, canadianbluebeer said:

T5 though... some of those, horde AND the nasties in it.... heh.

They're surprisingly good for hordes.. not even that surprising though; they've been designed to have plenty of places with no easy access from the ground, to keep players away. The same design keeps the zeds away, just as well if not better.

The enemies inside may be a tad harder than what's in the horde, but they're very limited in numbers in comparison. And you don't have to clear the whole joint unless you're planning to use the whole thing.

[Roland]

47 minutes ago, theFlu said:

They're surprisingly good for hordes.. not even that surprising though; they've been designed to have plenty of places with no easy access from the ground, to keep players away. The same design keeps the zeds away, just as well if not better.

The enemies inside may be a tad harder than what's in the horde, but they're very limited in numbers in comparison. And you don't have to clear the whole joint unless you're planning to use the whole thing.

 

lol...spend all day clearing the whole thing just to have horde night start minutes later.

[theFlu]

13 minutes ago, Roland said:

lol...spend all day clearing the whole thing just to have horde night start minutes later.

Sounds like a good time to me?

Fortify as you progress with the clear, keep the settings to where you can barely manage (120 min vs 20 min days makes a bit of a difference, etc)

[MechanicalLens]

Sage's Trader's Gambit Playthrough - POI / Horde Base List

 

Day 1: Gas Station

 

Spoiler

Spoiler

Day 1 was a smashing success. After spending my morning gathering resources from the local environment, I made my way to the trader (Jen) and selected a clear quest for the gas station POI featured above. I found a wrench pretty early on and I was quick to disassemble the workbench and chem station inside along with two other workbenches I found along my journey. After I was done with the Pass-N-Gas, I cleared a nearby house and found a healthy amount of glue - I used this along with some short iron pipes and other materials to craft a level 1 pipe machine gun, of which I have 20 rounds for. Not wanting to get too crazy with the levelling, I chopped down some trees and looted some garbages until sunset. A plowed field bestowed upon me plenty of fresh meat from three sleeping boars. I heard no thunder at all this night, so I thought the hordes were broken, but luckily that did not turn out to be the case. The horde offered no opposition, as to be expected - I only got 3 zombies. With my stun baton I could have easily taken them all out on foot, but not wanting to risk injury I engage in melee with two of them at the front "door" (a hatch I had placed down). The third proved to have an IQ below room temperature and I had to go chasing out after him after he refused to stop beating on the sign out front.

 

Notable looted items today: Drone schematic, steel sledgehammer schematic (I'm going clubs though), three wrenches, quality level 1 stun baton, hobo stew

 

Oh and a dire wolf attacked just as soon as the horde was over.

 

Spoiler

 

 

Day 2: Farmhouse.

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

Day 2 was fairly eventful, but nothing crazy happened. I got a grave digger mod from the trader and with some stuff I sold to her I bought myself a cigar and three molotovs for later use. (I ended up looting double that amount later.) I cleared out the farm house, set up two hatches, confining myself to a small room, and I looted for the rest of the day. A farm and a house fell prey to my loot goblin-ing ways today, granting me both a quality level 2 and then a quality level 3 pipe machine gun; I scrapped the level 1 I had. I also looted a couple books, some more food, supplies, a quality level 3 primitive bow, and a quality level 3 iron shovel, which was nice. A pair of +3 lucky goggles finished off today's looting spree.

 

The horde went better than I had anticipated due to the zombies getting stuck on a chain link fence outside. I took some cheap shots before they quickly broke through and subsequently died to my hands. There were 9 zombies total.

 

Level: 7

Gamestage: 9

Zombie kills: 101

 

 

Day 3: Gas Station

 

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

Another productive day in the apocalypse. Trader Jen rewarded me with 60 shotgun shells for her efforts this morning. I grabbed another job from her and it took me to a Pass-N-Gas. Upon looting an ATM, clearing the POI, and selling everything back to Jen, I bought myself a helmet light mod, a bunch of grenades and molotovs, and cobblestone. Later on I found a level 1 purse pistol, which was sweet.

 

The horde night went well. Again, I made use of hatches but I'm getting the feeling those won't prove to be as effective as a defense for much longer. I got 9 zombies on night 2, but tonight I saw 38.

 

Level: 10

Gamestage: 14

Zombie kills: 185

 

[Loboling]

20 hours ago, Roland said:

 

I've gotten sent to the same place again before. But even if not it would be cool to see the decimated post blood moon POI get instantly fixed. As a side note you should have to fortify the POI so that you start on the ground floor and only retreat upstairs/roof top if necessary. Since this is supposed to be a challenge it would be kind of cheesy to simply break out the stairs of every POI you go to from the very start.

I've done it before, it feels great. It was actually during one of my Running Men playthroughs. Where all zombies 1 shot blocks, so the "book house" poi as some people call it was absolutely decimated. We reset it for the quest the next morning and it was glorious! Although I always felt a bit sad in that playthrough when passing the poi, as it no longer held the story of our adventure that night. So I don't really recommend it for multiplayer playthroughs with friends. I prefer to see the world gradually be transformed. Tempted to run a no trader multiplayer server to that end. -_-

PS: I have a new server running a modified running man challenge up now called Running Men. Only specific zombies 1 shot blocks and steel has added resistance to resist a few hits.