How do you fight early Giant Zombies waves WITHOUT Electricity?

[Twitch.tv/KAEN_SG]

Every Video or guide on the internet uses electric traps/MRL etc. I don't really want to believe the devs have forced the players into such a narrow creative option by having to rush Electricity.

I played on 3012%, bit harder than legend and these are the things I've tried:

1. 50 Cutter Traps (each only triggers once per Giant, too inefficient, takes forever)
2. Pushers do not seem to push them far enough to make them fall off to restart the maze
3. Trap Doors do not work, the Giants are too large to fall into the holes
4. 350+ Arrows can kill a Giant but it just takes forever
5. Melee/Smash (It does 5% of Giants health per hit) risky, have to wait till rest of wave are cleared before trying so it requires kiting or a specialized Giant path
6. Trebuchets use 300+ ammo to kill a Giant zombie, not remotely sustainable. They also cannot be told to shoot only Giants, so most ammo is just wasted...

If anyone has any suggestions for early game Giant waves do let me know.
I would prefer not to use any unsustainable methods (Ammo) or have to fight them manually. Someone must have some tricks I might have overlooked! :P

Yes Yes I know you can rush electricity on day 1...

[benjamin.a.oliver]

Um. You do kind of need electricity to make it sustainable. That's the rush to get electricity. The giants are a wake-up-call wave. It's just not workable otherwise. A bazillion ballistae? Perhaps that could work. You can theoretically spend much more effort to do the iron age approach to taking down such titans, but the path of least resistance is to follow the questline and upgrade. I'm on day 4 on survival and am hurrying to get the control station so I can get my guns ready for the giants to come on day 6. It's a call to urgency, like getting your base upgraded to bricks and concrete by the night of day 3 or the whole thing burns down.

[Pestilence]

find a vital stinger sword and youre gtg

[evilbollweevil]

Yea what benjamin said is so true: You're playing on a "Nightmare" mode, so you simply MUST rush that Victor showdown and tech.
I've also taken down those early giants with a field of spiked traps. It's a government cheese solution, certainly. I like to make two HUGE triangular-shaped areas of spiked traps, then run the horde through them, including the giants. Running in a circle around these spiked areas means they're constantly taking dmg.
(Back in the early NoD days, you made spiked traps early for wolves/bears, not just the zombies. An early bear was like a death sentence and believe it or not, hearing the wolf call was scary, hah.)
The green glowing giants though...well, put on your running shoes lol

[Twitch.tv/KAEN_SG]

Yeah I guess electricity is the only way... sadly. :(
No way to loop the giants without those electric rollers...
and if you don't loop them, you need bigger DPS (MRL, rails etc).

[poe]

It's the sixth day since the giant's attack. No power on the sixth day?
The question should be:
"How to get electricity and traps before the sixth day"

Return question
Use native buildings to easily trap giants and deal with them

[Twitch.tv/KAEN_SG]

Since no one has a damned clue and is just repeating stuff without any actual knowledge, I will share my own new discoveries.

1. Basic wooden Guillotines work well and deal massive damage to all types of giants. BUT to use them you have to raise their height using half walls before placing them or the giants will be too tall to enter it. 60+ hits will kill each regular giant and 250+ hits will kill glowy green giants on legend difficulty, just build a row of them and build a separate pathway to reload the traps without being seen/hit.

2. Mallet/Hammer traps will push giants off the path. A single one is not guaranteed to push them off but if you use at least 6 of them in series, it works 99% of the time. Mallets swing clockwise only and cannot be inverted to swing the other way so you should plan the giant path to eventually make a left turn because the giants will hug the left side of the path and be easier to push off with clockwise mallets. Turn off snapping if you want to be more optimal since you can pack the mallets closer together for greater efficiency.

3. Build a longer path specifically for giants with no height obstructions (Giants needs 2.5 foundations of height clearance) and 1 foundation in width. This is to reserve all your trap charges to be used only for giants and not be wasted on regular zombies. Later when you upgrade to electricity this will no longer be a concern so the strategy scales well into the late game.


This works on Legend+/4000% difficulty. Tested up to day 19 in my current save.
Recommended to have at least 10 guillotines and 10 mallets for the first giant wave but more is obviously better. Don't put any mallets directly under the guillotines as it might push them off too early and waste your guillotine charges.

Enjoy!

[CheckYourSix]

Want to know how to deal with Giants? Giants can walk over half buried platforms but normal zombies early on cannot. Giants also get stuck on windmill poles. They see there is a path through them, but just stand there unable to path through a handful of them though. so they spin in place doing nothing. Video link I made demonstrating this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkeNUfcNx-M

I have a separate path for giants to come into my base. They climb up a raised platform, use stairs over a wall, and back down the other side into my base. I have zero traps in the way. I just put windmill polls spaced at the bottom of the stairs. The giants stand there doing absolutely nothing the entire night while I deal with the rest of the horde. Then in my leisure I can pick them off with any range attack I have in my base.

[Twitch.tv/KAEN_SG]

The question was WITHOUT Electricity.... if you are building windmills to use as an exploit... that doesn't address the question. I have also soloed giants with arrows but nobody has time for that...

[poe]

You can of course stick to using wooden traps to deal with the giant, or you can rely on your combat skills to crush it with your fists

The tutorials on shadow run you mentioned are all included.

[Dom79]

Use Ballistas , and a beam protection , to prevent them to come close. still took a while and costs a bunch of ballista bolts, but due to the fact that there are really cheap, it doenst really matter much. OF course it just again uses to only block them. Anything else is more complicated. Not sure if the meat mallets still have enough knock back power, but a few patches before u was generally be able to lure even Giants in a MEat Mallet Trap area where there fall in via an Fall hatchet trap and than get permanently crushed and stunned by the meat mallets. It will still took some time and its always a littlbe bid risky due to reload and possible repair, without having energy stuff.

[FeLoNiouS]

Originally posted by Twitch.tv/KAEN_SG:

The question was WITHOUT Electricity.... if you are building windmills to use as an exploit... that doesn't address the question. I have also soloed giants with arrows but nobody has time for that...

Great question as Giants are the real game once you get beyond Day 50 or so. I've tested this quite extensively and you got it pretty much. The rollers.....those don't come with electricity, those are the next boss so just getting electricity doesn't solve the loop. Pretty much, like you said, the way to go is meat mallets. I've built my path with many curves/corners with mallets and it's pretty much a lock that one will knock them off before they reach me. Unfortunately, getting electricity doesn't help a whole lot except reloading traps. The rollers are your best guarantee of knocking them down, so that's the real goal in terms of Giants.

The real question I've found is....what's your long term plan for Giants? Up to Day 20 isn't bad (I'm playing 4,000%). If you spend tons of your precious resources on a path full of traps and upgrades, you can't go shooting MRL's at it later. Are you trying for a high Day count? If not, then no prob,. If you are, then looking at Day 50 traffic, can your path handle that? I'm trying to set my path up to do at least 50% of the dmg to the giants, while having ranged weapons focused on a spot where the Giants get knocked off from the path to. Long term, I'm trying to dramatically reduce resource cost of MRL/Rail Gun ammo (1k shells every other night down the road is just stupid) with as much damage from my path as possible while also keeping the Giants moving in a loop rather than destroying something.

[CheckYourSix]

The game doesn't give you giants until night 5/day 6 which is the 7th horde. That is plenty of time to beat the first boss and start with some basic electricity even on Legend difficulty which is basically already max zombie difficulty. Even if you don't rush killing Viktor by Day 1 or 2, it isn't hard to farm some gear with shredders to reassemble them up unto T4+ gear to fight Victor with easy. Really 180-210 ammo with a +3 German sub machine gun is all it takes to beat down Victor without any other gear. You can buy ammo from the kiosk before Viktor for 38 per 5. So getting 50+ coins before day 5 is certainly doable even for the slowest of players. I really don't feel it is a rush at all to have electricity running before the first wave with Giants at the end hit.

Even if you don't there is still other ways to deal with giants. If you look at where I am setup, it is within the huge walls of the Rec Center which is completely closed off. There is only 1 entrance to that place through the front gates. If you make a maze where only regular zombies can fit through then giants will ignore that maze. They will head straight to where you are at. If that happens to be by your traps they go there and start pounding away. If you stand somewhere else though like against a side wall away from the entrance then the giants just patiently wait over there at the wall lumbering back and forth trying to figure out a path to you. They can't because the wall is indestructible. So they just literally sit there. You can make a perch of you want next to that side wall and literally shoot down at them or wait until the rest of the wave is dead and then head out to deal with them. All done without electricity. Of course at that point you need a LOT of traps because you won't be able to wind up traps that have been all used up. Doable, but I feel is worse than "rushing" electricity.

Someone mentioned columns/beams working the same way as Windmills for Giant pathing. If that is the case then you can do the same thing I did but with Columns instead. Make them climb up a set of stairs they want to path through away from the base and back down another set into some spaced out columns. Watch them spin around endlessly while you deal with the rest of the wave.

As far as needing 350 shoots with a bow to kill a giant, you could make a crossbow and deal head shots to their eyeball instead and use 40 shots or less instead. A T4 crossbow isn't that hard to make before the first giant wave. Again, you also use a German sub machine gun with about 100 ammo per giant with head shots to take it down. T3 German sub even easier to make. Another option hit up the T2 zone giant and sewer spawns looking for a red bow T3 the Ragehunter headshot bow to drop. All of them are viable choices and I've done them all at this point. Clearing sewers is seriously a piece of cake in this game. Stick a shredder trap in front of the sewer pipe entrance blocking it off. Then hop over the shredder or crouch under. Go into the sewer and round up everything inside. Rush back out of the sewer and stand on the other side of the shredder. Just rewind and repair it as needed with branches. This can clear T1 and T2 sewers easy enough even on a Day 0 character with no gear. I do it all the time on maxed out zombie difficulty settings.

[Dom79]

Originally posted by CheckYourSix:

The game doesn't give you giants until night 5/day 6 which is the 7th horde. That is plenty of time to beat the first boss and start with some basic electricity even on Legend difficulty which is basically already max zombie difficulty. Even if you don't rush killing Viktor by Day 1 or 2, it isn't hard to farm some gear with shredders to reassemble them up unto T4+ gear to fight Victor with easy. Really 180-210 ammo with a +3 German sub machine gun is all it takes to beat down Victor without any other gear. You can buy ammo from the kiosk before Viktor for 38 per 5. So getting 50+ coins before day 5 is certainly doable even for the slowest of players. I really don't feel it is a rush at all to have electricity running before the first wave with Giants at the end hit.

Even if you don't there is still other ways to deal with giants. If you look at where I am setup, it is within the huge walls of the Rec Center which is completely closed off. There is only 1 entrance to that place through the front gates. If you make a maze where only regular zombies can fit through then giants will ignore that maze. They will head straight to where you are at. If that happens to be by your traps they go there and start pounding away. If you stand somewhere else though like against a side wall away from the entrance then the giants just patiently wait over there at the wall lumbering back and forth trying to figure out a path to you. They can't because the wall is indestructible. So they just literally sit there. You can make a perch of you want next to that side wall and literally shoot down at them or wait until the rest of the wave is dead and then head out to deal with them. All done without electricity. Of course at that point you need a LOT of traps because you won't be able to wind up traps that have been all used up. Doable, but I feel is worse than "rushing" electricity.

Someone mentioned columns/beams working the same way as Windmills for Giant pathing. If that is the case then you can do the same thing I did but with Columns instead. Make them climb up a set of stairs they want to path through away from the base and back down another set into some spaced out columns. Watch them spin around endlessly while you deal with the rest of the wave.

As far as needing 350 shoots with a bow to kill a giant, you could make a crossbow and deal head shots to their eyeball instead and use 40 shots or less instead. A T4 crossbow isn't that hard to make before the first giant wave. Again, you also use a German sub machine gun with about 100 ammo per giant with head shots to take it down. T3 German sub even easier to make. Another option hit up the T2 zone giant and sewer spawns looking for a red bow T3 the Ragehunter headshot bow to drop. All of them are viable choices and I've done them all at this point. Clearing sewers is seriously a piece of cake in this game. Stick a shredder trap in front of the sewer pipe entrance blocking it off. Then hop over the shredder or crouch under. Go into the sewer and round up everything inside. Rush back out of the sewer and stand on the other side of the shredder. Just rewind and repair it as needed with branches. This can clear T1 and T2 sewers easy enough even on a Day 0 character with no gear. I do it all the time on maxed out zombie difficulty settings.

Thats all correct, except that u need a bunch of more arrows with X Bow , with max difficult for Zombies for a Giant. I personally just run and buy a x bow at the kiosk, that u can shoot down first boss with X Bow first and when the half HP is lost and he rapidly shoots, u switch to the Submachinegun, So u need only around 100 Ammo .

And all the scenarios are kind of "Special" he is talking about, of course there are a bunch of stuff u can do in generally, but if someone wanna play a game and dont wanna make any electricity, than it is like it is. I personally have in mind, playing a Game with max difficult, without any respawn of resources /Snythetics etc. and without Resource MAchines. Just by "HAnd collecting" and kiosk. But i am still unsure, because u need so much Gasoline , hard to handle it for a longer Time, except for ending up, running all the time by urself. Which is really boring over time.

[evilbollweevil]

Threads like this show why the NoD community is so healthy and responsive to all levels of players. And KAEN_SG gets a sub from me :)