Do zombies just auto attack built walls?

[Procrasturbator]

Zombies will not attack building walls, so i was curious if they will attack your wall for just being there, or only if they suspect your inside?

cause if not, is there a mod where they wont attack the walls unless they hear noise on the other side? like its fine if they attack my doors, thats to be expected and i expect they would try to knock a wall down if they can hear something on the other side but i find it dumb if they would attack for no reason.

they dont attack walls in buildings no matter what so i feel like it makes no sense for them to attack it for no reason just cause "well thats not there based on RNG" etc.

[Greb]

Zombies like to randomly attack stuff the player has messed with just because they can. It's cute / funny in its own way, annoying in other ways. Like a pre-placed dumpster in the middle of the street will never be attacked by zombies, but if you picked it up and then placed it back down, and zombies pathed through, they'd randomly decide to unerringly path towards it and start beating on it until it breaks.

I've had times before when I've built a rain water barrel in the back garden and gone to sleep, only to wake up with a zombie pressing against it, hitting it, for no reason other than the fact it can tell a human has touched it recently and thus it must die.

They do the same with any (most?) player built structures too. They just know, somehow, that this thing right here is owned and placed by their mortal enemy, the human player character, and so it must be destroyed. It must be.

Don't know if you've noticed before but zombies also love to destroy windows, sometimes over attacking the player. I've witnessed zombies smashing windows of buildings such as Gigamart trying to reach the player on the other side, only for them to not bother climbing into the building and instead just moves one tile and begins smashing another window. Zombies are strange!

Generally they won't just spot it from across the street and go "Ahhh, something to do at last!" and shuffle right on over, they have to be drawn to it, either through sound or just random general migration, but it seriously seems like when they get close enough for it to be potentially pathed into during random movement they will magnetise towards it and start harassing it for no reason, lol.

I don't know of any mod that modifies zombie behaviour like that, though. Not sure if you'd be able to be "surgical" enough to make a zombie avoid attacking player stuff unless they were actively hostile or something, or if it would just completely prevent zombies from breaking your stuff.

At least walls have a threshold value (I think) where a single zombie won't be able to damage them, it takes multiple zombies attacking the same wall to break it down, so a stray zombie harassing your base won't do any damage. I think.

[Ocular]

They don't gravitate towards player built walls just because you built them. They'll only attack them if they get fetched up on them while hearing a sound or seeing a player. There's also the setting in sandbox settings "environmental attacks" which allows zombies to attacks random barricades, as seen in the 6 months later preset.

Put it this way, you clear out an area and build things, zombies won't usually end up attacking them unless you're shooting off guns in your base or something. Building walls is very helpful.

[Shurenai]

Specifically, Zombies don't really know there are walls at all. The game doesn't really adjust their pathing calculations to account for any modifications you've made. But their AI will still trigger appropriately... The result is, you build a log wall around your perimeter, a zombie wanders path, it picks a pathing node inside your wall randomly(because as far as the pathing is concerned, there is no obstruction), and tries to get there- It runs into your wall, and the AI takes over and says "Thats destructible, break it."

They do the same thing with external window barricades. If they're just wandering along the side of a house and there's an added barricade, they reach the tile with the barricade and the AI takes over and says "That's destructible, break it"; you can resolve this by only barricading on the interior- Then they won't 'catch' on your barricades.

[stevasaur]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Specifically, Zombies don't really know there are walls at all. The game doesn't really adjust their pathing calculations to account for any modifications you've made. But their AI will still trigger appropriately... The result is, you build a log wall around your perimeter, a zombie wanders path, it picks a pathing node inside your wall randomly(because as far as the pathing is concerned, there is no obstruction), and tries to get there- It runs into your wall, and the AI takes over and says "Thats destructible, break it."

They do the same thing with external window barricades. If they're just wandering along the side of a house and there's an added barricade, they reach the tile with the barricade and the AI takes over and says "That's destructible, break it"; you can resolve this by only barricading on the interior- Then they won't 'catch' on your barricades.

I don't think this is entirely true.

On my most recent run I've fully encased the run-down strip mall south of West Point (the one with the Pizza Whirled) with Log Walls. And sometimes I will find zombies actually sitting against the walls of my compound the same way they would any pre-placed wall. Small groups of zombies will also occasionally gather around the outside of the wall, but will only start attacking it once I've made noise on the opposite side (farming, for example).

My running theory is that zombies which encounter an obstacle once they've been "alerted" (either by observing the player or by random noise event) will attack the obstacle if it's destructible and will continue to attack it until it is destroyed, at which point their pathfinding resets. But if they haven't been "alerted" by anything, they won't attempt to destroy objects they encounter.

Because I have also witnessed zombies see me on the other side of a window, break the window, and then spend a second or two just standing around stupid until they finally "notice" my character is still there and climb through the (now broken) window.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by stevasaur:

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Specifically, Zombies don't really know there are walls at all. The game doesn't really adjust their pathing calculations to account for any modifications you've made. But their AI will still trigger appropriately... The result is, you build a log wall around your perimeter, a zombie wanders path, it picks a pathing node inside your wall randomly(because as far as the pathing is concerned, there is no obstruction), and tries to get there- It runs into your wall, and the AI takes over and says "Thats destructible, break it."

They do the same thing with external window barricades. If they're just wandering along the side of a house and there's an added barricade, they reach the tile with the barricade and the AI takes over and says "That's destructible, break it"; you can resolve this by only barricading on the interior- Then they won't 'catch' on your barricades.

I don't think this is entirely true.

On my most recent run I've fully encased the run-down strip mall south of West Point (the one with the Pizza Whirled) with Log Walls. And sometimes I will find zombies actually sitting against the walls of my compound the same way they would any pre-placed wall. Small groups of zombies will also occasionally gather around the outside of the wall, but will only start attacking it once I've made noise on the opposite side (farming, for example).

My running theory is that zombies which encounter an obstacle once they've been "alerted" (either by observing the player or by random noise event) will attack the obstacle if it's destructible and will continue to attack it until it is destroyed, at which point their pathfinding resets. But if they haven't been "alerted" by anything, they won't attempt to destroy objects they encounter.

Because I have also witnessed zombies see me on the other side of a window, break the window, and then spend a second or two just standing around stupid until they finally "notice" my character is still there and climb through the (now broken) window.

Zombies placed sitting/leaning against the walllike that are ones that have been re-spread throughout the cell. The game does this from time to time, averaging out the zombie population cell wide so there's no 'dead' areas. The game itself still knows there's a wall there- It's the pathing system specifically that doesn't really know they're there.

They don't need to know you're there or to have been alerted at all by anything you've ever done. They'll just randomly wander around, intersect a player wall between where they are and where they want to go, and attack it.

As for the window thing you mention, I've never seen that personally. It does sound like their pathfinding is resetting in those instances, Or maybe they lost sight of you because you're in a dark room, and it takes them a second or two to re-acquire after breaking the window. (Edit: To be clear here, Once a zombie begins beating on something while pursuing the player, even if they lose track of the player they'll continue to beat on it till it breaks. So, it's highly likely that they pursued you, or perhaps some noise you made, but lost track of you/forgot the noise, finished breaking the window, and then stood there dumb since there was nothing left 'to do'; Then you were just standing there in plain view for them to spot you, and it began pursuing.)