Zombie tracking and vehicles

[Spagurdi Cat]

First time i ever write on these community things.

Lets just head into the things i get really botherd by.

1. The Zombie tracking system is not really working in my opinion. If you have a base in concrete that is in total silence and you are totally still and without windows and just a door, they find you anyway and destroys everything. Ruining my gameplay really bad, all the things you build get torn apart in matter of a minute or two every night. Real buzzkill.

2. The vechicles "hitbox" is a little bit to far down on the vechicles, like you cant drive over a bridge without hitting it and get damage on the vehicle it self or the ground/object you are going over with your vehicle.

3. One more thing is this skill level system is backfiring after your "great" updates. You want to plant plants and seeds to get food? Get to lvl 10 first without dying by hunger to be able to skill up your "living off the land" perk so that you can plant plants and seeds.

Fix this and this game could get a little bit better.

[Sinbad]

If you want to voice your opinions or suggestions the dev's read their official forums often.

For your base, if you are standing still & crouched a zombie wont see you - especially through a wall. They may see you if you have a head lamp/ weapon flash light on or if standing in a very bright room. If your base is also only 3-4 blocks high zombies are more than likely going to smell you. I for one usually live in those large apartments - on the top floor. I am very active running around and have never encountered a zombie banging at the door 10 floors down.

I agree with the vehicles. With them having powered drawbridges implemented I have hope they fix this going forward. I can imagine we will still see some big changes eventually.

It takes a while to get familiar with the new game version and the skill system. The farming perks aren't meant for day 1. If they let you farm in the first afternoon then there is no real challenge to this survival game right? Your actions are solely the cause for starvation. Running around, mining, being a lumberjack, neglecting your hydration will all make you starve quicker.

Prioritise looting restaurants + kitchens over banks (etc) will help keep you full. The trader almost always has food for sale, and the vending machine outside restocks every day (you can potentially live strictly off this vending machine depending on daily activities).

You can try increasing loot and work your way back down. I play perm death and I wouldn't bother with this game either if I couldn't get past day 10 without starving.

[MjoelnirHH]

1. Can't confirm.
The path finding of the Zed's changed a lot in A18 and they are always going for the door if there is one. If no door is there they try to brake blocks or are beginning to dig, if you've an underground base.

If you don't attract them with noise etc. they won't find you.

Also, remember that, as example, torches and forges raise the heatmap of the chunk you're in which will lead to Screamers coming to you, and if I'm not mistaken they always know where you are.

If you want a "undestroyable" base, use steep wedges and a hight of about 5 or more blocks.
They can't go up these wedges but you can.


2. Yeah the vehicle still suck.

3. Yeah, in some cases they really need to adjust the perks heavily in my opinion but dying of starving is almost impossible.
You can find so much canned food, in all my games I just lived from them.


I'll give you the advise to try some mods.
The modding community of this game is great (I'm part of it and modding myself) and they are making the game so much better.

[Cipher88101]

Screamers are just like any other enemy, they only automatically know where you are if it's horde night. Even then, they have to be already spawned nearby by 2200, from what I can tell. Small hordes/packs of dogs will spawn on a collision course with where you were standing when they spawn, so if you are in your base, they come right for it. They can be avoided as well with stealth, often easier than wandering single zombies, but will destroy a path through some buildings sitting in their way. Including player built blocks. Be aware of your armor (check how much noise it makes - such as scrap armor), light near you, movements you make, the crafting you do, containers you open, machines you use, and be sure to crouch to avoid detection. Essentially, when you are brand new and vulnerable, just crouch for the night in the total dark and stay still, don't open containers. It's boring but it works great for when you have limited options or gear.

As an example: Wearing grass fiber clothing on night 1, I was able to crouch inside a dark garage in the rafters all night, while multiple zombies wandered all around the outside of the garage. I alt-tabbed and watched YT videos until 0400 in the morning. Not a single one detected me until morning when I moved out at around 0500. Then they started attacking the garage. Hope this is helpful to you.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by Cipher88101:

Screamers are just like any other enemy, they only automatically know where you are if it's horde night. Even then, they have to be already spawned nearby by 2200, from what I can tell. Small hordes/packs of dogs will spawn on a collision course with where you were standing when they spawn, so if you are in your base, they come right for it. They can be avoided as well with stealth, often easier than wandering single zombies, but will destroy a path through some buildings sitting in their way. Including player built blocks. Be aware of your armor (check how much noise it makes - such as scrap armor), light near you, movements you make, the crafting you do, containers you open, machines you use, and be sure to crouch to avoid detection. Essentially, when you are brand new and vulnerable, just crouch for the night in the total dark and stay still, don't open containers. It's boring but it works great for when you have limited options or gear.

As an example: Wearing grass fiber clothing on night 1, I was able to crouch inside a dark garage in the rafters all night, while multiple zombies wandered all around the outside of the garage. I alt-tabbed and watched YT videos until 0400 in the morning. Not a single one detected me until morning when I moved out at around 0500. Then they started attacking the garage. Hope this is helpful to you.

Close on the 'spawning on a collision course' thing but not quite.

Wandering hordes spawn in a good 50-100~ blocks away and aim in your general direction, something like up to + or - 30 degrees left or right of your position at the time of their spawn. So they can end up missing your location by quite a ways most of the time..Though they will still rarely get pointed right at you.

Originally posted by Spagurdi Cat:

First time i ever write on these community things.

Lets just head into the things i get really botherd by.

1. The Zombie tracking system is not really working in my opinion. If you have a base in concrete that is in total silence and you are totally still and without windows and just a door, they find you anyway and destroys everything. Ruining my gameplay really bad, all the things you build get torn apart in matter of a minute or two every night. Real buzzkill.

2. The vechicles "hitbox" is a little bit to far down on the vechicles, like you cant drive over a bridge without hitting it and get damage on the vehicle it self or the ground/object you are going over with your vehicle.

3. One more thing is this skill level system is backfiring after your "great" updates. You want to plant plants and seeds to get food? Get to lvl 10 first without dying by hunger to be able to skill up your "living off the land" perk so that you can plant plants and seeds.

Fix this and this game could get a little bit better.

1: It actually works quite well. Do you have windows nearby they could be seeing you through? It doesn't matter if you're absolutely silent if you're letting them see you through a window. Likewise, Screamers will come for the area of your base with the most activity, but will only summon zombies if she actively sees you the player.

2: This is less about the hitbox being too far down and more about the tracking of the vehicle at speed.. By the time the game registers that you've hit an incline, the hitbox is halfway through the block. If the incline is too sharp (Like say, a ramp instead of wedge and wedgetip) it will strike the block when it registers the collision while at the same time adjusting the angle of the vehicle. Being perfectly honest here......This makes perfect sense in it's own way. I'd love to see you drive a vehicle over a 3 foot tall (1 meter, the height of a block) hump with a 45 degree angled flat surface without just bumping into it with your bumper. 'Cause that's what would happen.

3: Living off the land only requires 0 points in it for you to survive without starving; You can learn the recipes elsewhere. With that said, you can live perfectly fine with rank 1 or rank 2; Which only requires 1 point spend and 3 extra points spent respectively. You could literally buy this day one with the 4 freebie points you get from the tutorial. At level 1. If you want to plant vegetables as well, it's 3 extra points, for 7 total, or level 4 at most assuming tutorial points are spent on it.

Overall it's a pretty fair and balanced skill tree. It prevents you from having everything you need before the day 7 horde. You should not have everything by day 7. Even now, though, you can get most things by day 21 which is still pretty early in the scheme of things given that most people play until day 50+ in their saves, if not further.

[Crater Creator]

First, welcome to the forum! Glad to have you with us.

1. If zombies are really coming after you every night while you are silent and concealed, then either

• Your game is set for a Blood Moon every night (unlikely).
  
• You are making a lot of 'heat' and screamers are the culprit.
  
• You ran into your base with zombies already in hot pursuit.
  
• You are experiencing a bug, and it would be helpful to fill out a bug report.

2. Yes, vehicle collision could be improved.

3. Farming is, not surprisingly, meant as a long term source of food. It takes plants 3 days to grow, which is already quite generous in my humble opinion. You don't need to spend any skill points to start farming, though. You only need the materials for the farm plots, and the seeds. You can acquire seeds through looting and trading, instead of Living Off the Land. You can also acquire the schematics to make seeds through looting and trading. But I stress, there are much easier ways to acquire food to survive your first days than waiting on crops to grow.