Is it good to have torches in my Base?

[Spada]

What is the best way to have light in my base without spawning every darn minute a screamer zombie?

[Jolly]

candles at first

[Spada]

What do you mean candles at first?
What about lights with electricity?

[Jolly]

Originally posted by Spada:

What do you mean candles at first?
What about lights with electricity?

Isn't that answering your OP then?
You said Torches
Torches are "at first" or early game, so are Candles but they are safer when it comes to Screamers.
Lights are mid to late game when you find books for them, unless you put points into advanced engineering in early game.

[JErosion]

This is why i set up in POIs that still have working lights, The Firehouse, PB paper, JD Shipping

[StormSpiritGB]

all lights cause heat best bet is to limit how many you place genarators cause heat by running

really best to carry handle held flash light or get your self a head lamp even night vision is good if you can find some

[CunkFeatures]

Originally posted by Spada:

What is the best way to have light in my base without spawning every darn minute a screamer zombie?

https://7daystodie.fandom.com/wiki/Heatmap

See HeatMaps ^

[ElDudorino]

Use torches and put as many as you want. It won't attract screamers.

My first game, after several weeks of never having seen a screamer, I ended up placing maybe 20 torches and just leaving my forge and campfire running. Still didn't see my first screamer until a couple weeks later. In subsequent games I've gone to day 50+ placing as many torches as I want and never having seen a screamer, with exception to one game where I had a little mini-war in downtown snow biome and the gunfire was apparently extensive enough to draw one.

The only consistent way to get a screamer at your base is to place a bunch of campfires or forges and run all of them at once.

[mathaniel]

@JErosion, excellent good point. IIRC existing lights will not attract anything. I like to camp/base in a well lighted place if I happen on one as I`m going along. Saves a lot of trouble, Much better whiter cleaner light. I have just bunker-ed down right at a couple convenient light poles that threw considerable light enough for my base. I always base here and fight there. And if you base like in the Firehouse and use it all, place torches strategically to lead you to and from your workspace and trap or block the path just in case. I never build much. One base (cut it too close at horde night;-) was frame jump up by a tree to the foliage spread for flyers, what was it then bees? maybe, frames all around it to stand on and lots of arrows hehehe. Oh and torches. Cheers

[briancourt2]

I edit the blocks.xml and made the lantern something you can pickup at POIs. I can then place them back at my base. That way I can take working lights from POIs and use them. If you search the file you will see a parameter can pickup, to set to true. They don't generate heat, as neither do electric lights.

If you hit f1, type DMON, then exit and hit F8 twice you can see the heat.

There are a few reasons why the number of torches matter or not depending on your base. First is luck of chunks. Heat is a chunk property not a "base property". If you move around you can see where your base might be in several chunks. Each of these generates "events" as have a tick time to add, and a tick time to subtract. It is very possible to have a few torches in different chunks and not enough in one to get the heat high enough. If you got out looting the chunk will likely cool off when you are not there. if you have 50 torches in one chunk and stay there you will get screamers. If you place your base on the corner of 4 chunks you can really get you forges in different chunks to really cut down on the issue. I also observed that a forge at bedrock will call a screamer but they give up cause they don't see it. You can see this in the F1 debug menu.

There are many activities that generate heat. The one i hate the most is metal on metal contact. I often lower this, as I usually build my base next to a rock so that my mine is close by and turrets kill the screamers. But it is like a few percent per block. After 20 blocks you get a screamer which is ridiculous annoying. You can often also run into a problem if you have turrets at the end of hoard night if by morning you still have zombies coming in. All that gun fire will often call in a screamer. In darkness falls, that often means you have an insane hoard coming right when you are grabbing yellow bags. I also edit the despawn of those bags as I think it is silly to lose more than half of them cause of 10 minutes. I made them despawn after 30.

[ElDudorino]

Originally posted by .♥~*°("_")°*~♥.:

Originally posted by ElDudorino:

Use torches and put as many as you want. It won't attract screamers.

Completely wrong, they do... Torch have heatmap like forge&others but just a lower in time... If you just have one or two, oky, but if you set "one million" in the same place & add with this all others heatmap you will do, then screamers will come...

If not to the inital question of this thread, that must no use MANY torch because they will cause lag performance/fps issue...

It's not wrong at all. Have you played the same game as me? You don't get screamers at your base on accident. You have to go out of your way to do it. I literally tried to get screamers with a bunch of torches plus a full-time forge and campfire and it still took weeks before I saw one.

Now when I play I put torches everywhere so both the interior and immediate surroundings of my base are lit up and it doesn't attract screamers. Maybe in the code it technically raises heat but it doesn't do it enough to cause screamers.

[mathaniel]

Torches attract Z`s and roving hordes I do believe. Could be wrong. I have played a while so don`t take my word for it. Put as many as you want and it doesn`t attract them? Well, I don`t believe that for a "hot" second;-)

[ElDudorino]

Originally posted by mathaniel:

Torches attract Z`s and roving hordes I do believe. Could be wrong. I have played a while so don`t take my word for it. Put as many as you want and it doesn`t attract them? Well, I don`t believe that for a "hot" second;-)

Well, 4 interior torches, 8 exterior wall torches, and like 8-10 torches placed immediately around the base to light up the nearby area won't do it. Maybe if you doubled or tripled that number. The point is there's no reason to huddle in the dark with a single piddly candle. Torches are not screamer-magnets.

I have at least a hundred hours spent on-base across a handful of games with torches all over and no screamers. Like I said, I have gone out of my way to get screamers and *still* struggled with it. The people getting screamers are the ones lighting up a bunch of forges/campfires at once, *not* the people laying down torches.

I do get wandering hordes rarely but I don't think heat has anything to do with that. They are coded to spawn at intervals regardless of heat I believe. At any rate, they're rare enough that I started using mod eventually to increase how often they appear.

[mathaniel]

I have 9 thousand hours and 8 years. But sure. Let`s go with that;-) CunkFeatures above even sent a link to the Official 7DTD page on heat map. Perhaps you checked that out? Or not? Just sayin. RNG isn`t just for map generation. Could be wrong again.

[comet_65cali]

Burning barrels > Torches > Candles > Lanterns > Electric lights.

Granted I feel Lanterns are OP.

[Kauldric]

I must say that in the last couple of alphas I find torches don’t attract screamers as they used to.

I can have like 6-8 torches plus a forge going 24x7 and..no screamer.

If I upgrade or build a bunch of blocks quickly then a screamer might come.

If I have like 3+ forges perhaps also then