Guns and Helicopters help

[WetAndKushy]

Are guns useful? I'm fairly new to this game at this point and realized guns aren't that useful as the accuracy is really bad and it makes a lot of noise. Also on all my play throughs ive always died whenever a helicopter sound plays near me, drawing in a ton of zombies. How do I survive against it/the hoard that follows it????

[Pablo]

1. Guns could be used as your last resort, but never use it unless you know what you're doing.

2. That's a meta event that occures in day 6-9, usually, people find cars and stock that up and go to a temporary safehouse they made before the heli came. But in your case, the event already happened, a ♥♥♥♥ ton of zombies are at your door step, consider yourself screwed if you have no food or car to hide somewhere away from the zombies, but you can always run away, and ditch your base (if you do have one and it happened when you were in your base) but don't ditch it if you think you can save it by luring the zombies away.

[WetAndKushy]

I heard the heli land somewhere pretty far after posting this with no hoardes around me, there were a few packs of them scattered around tho. I was gonna kill a bunch of them when i heard automatic gunfire in the distance followed by screaming, is there loot there now?

[WetAndKushy]

Better question does the heli land? What was the gunfire i heard after it went away?

[Pablo]

Originally posted by WetAndKushy:

Better question does the heli land? What was the gunfire i heard after it went away?

1. The heli doesn't land, in lore it's just a news heli.

2. just another meta event

[hardy_conrad]

I've seen helicopter wreckage, but of course that was from a mod. As for guns, they kind of drive me up the wall. I'm pretty sure the hit box is waaaay off target from the actual graphics of the zombie, and yes I know all about the green outline and no panic and standing still. Not impossible that it's an issue on my end, but looking around plenty of people find targetting a nightmare.

[Calico-Jack]

Originally posted by WetAndKushy:

Are guns useful? I'm fairly new to this game at this point and realized guns aren't that useful as the accuracy is really bad and it makes a lot of noise. Also on all my play throughs ive always died whenever a helicopter sound plays near me, drawing in a ton of zombies. How do I survive against it/the hoard that follows it????

Guns have their place, but they are not an elite end game item. Spears are more widely available and do slightly better mass damage than the shotgun, Both items have their quirks and require a bit of planning.

To get critical hits consistently with guns, which are they only hits that will stop a zombie, you need to stand still before aiming and firing, the proximity of zombies to you will vary depending on the range of the weapon, the closer they are the more likely you are to panic which reduces accuracy. The weight you are carrying, and ammo is heavy, will cause fatigue to rise, resulting in tiredness which affects sprint time. Sprinting to reposition to have aim and fire time, clear jams or reload, raises fatigue. You don't want to end up at only having walking speed with 40 zombies breathing down your neck and trying to use a gun.

The sound of firing travels quite far and will attract way more zombies than you will have ammo for (unless you've been hoarding or raiding survivor houses), so guns are much more useful as a way to attract and kite huge numbers of zombies around the the map, but not the best way. Planning where you're going to lose the hoard, and remembering where you left them so you don't walk into a self created ambush becomes quite important.

So, essentially panic and fatigue management is something you need to worry about the most, then ammo count.

Simply grabbing a gun and trying to rambo your way into the middle of a hoard to get at the resources they surround usually ends up with an irate post here about how broken and unrealistic guns are compared to CoD.

The game gives you other options if you really need to deal with large numbers.
Any car diving at 10kph (press SHIFT + W twice) whilst parping the horn will displace way more zombies than any gun attack, with the advantage of doubling back at speed to lose the hoard you're kiting.

Getting more creative, a well placed emergency vehicle with a few fires built around with the siren on will clearcut an area, with much lower personal risk.

There is also the engineer class that can build improvised bombs which can be fun.

For the helecopter - it usually comes around day 7 or so. You can get some advanced warning if you have a radio tuned to the automatic emergency broadcast, it'll mention something about activity in the air.

The best solution I've found so far to the heli is to have a fully fuelled vehicle, stocked with some food on the passenger seat and just go for a drive until around midnight. It can be a good chance to get tools like jacks, cross spanners, tyre pumps and police gear from road blocks, all gear usually require getting into structures with hoards outside to obtain.

Be wary on going back to the area you were in as the zombie pop will have increased. If you have a base, visible player structures like barricaded windows and doors attract zombies, and the heli makes them congregate on your base if you were inside it when the heli arrived., so expect a fight to get back in to your base.

You can get around this issue by building barricades on the inside, they are just as effective, but less visible to zombies especially if the window glass was intact before you started.

Another tip for barricading - choose potential bases with 2 stories and run multiple escape ropes out the upper floor windows as zombies can snag them if they're the most visible player structure, leaving you looked out of your base if you'd barricaded the ground floor.

[Shenji]

Shotgun is easiest for beginner. Easy to aim, no need for magazines, robust and does huge area damage. It's very good for cleaning key positions quickly, like fuel stations(big hord always spawned there), just need a lot of shells. Other guns like rifles, are great/miserable for PVP games.
Helicopter activity can be reported by emergency broadcast system('Air activity detected').

[Pablo]

Originally posted by Shenji:

Shotgun is easiest for beginner. Easy to aim, no need for magazines, robust and does huge area damage. It's very good for cleaning key positions quickly, like fuel stations(big hord always spawned there), just need a lot of shells. Other guns like rifles, are great/miserable for PVP games.
Helicopter activity can be reported by emergency broadcast system('Air activity detected').

and something to add, the announcement happens a day before the event