Need help deciding on heavy/light armor, stealth/no stealth perks.

[Nani Sore]

Hello,

When I raid POIs I tend to break down anything that gives a resource like chairs, un-lootable appliances, beds, lights that don't work, AC units, etc. Because of this when I am in a large city I end up attracting trains of zombies over time and it can turn into a fairly serious situation in the wastelands.

I am still learning the POIs so every once in a while the game will still catch me off guard and drop me 50 feet into a room of death and when those moments happen I am thankful to have on heavy armor.

The problem I have is that I am conflicted between taking "From the Shadows" and using "Advanced Muffled Connector" mods along with heavy armor which negates a lot of the stealth, rather than taking a more Synergistic approach.

The efforts I have taken to reduce noise seems to help with not attracting too much attention to where it gets out of hand. No matter what I do I still attract some zombies when I start smacking on stuff with my wrench so it is not 100% effective but it does feel like it helps a bit and I don't seem to get the large trains of zombies sprinting at me when I am speced this way but I could just be imagining this.

I am trying to decide if I should instead go for light armor and full stealth, or give up on stealth all together since I am always breaking down stuff and keep heavy armor, or keep mixing in stealth boosters with heavy armor despite the fact that my armor negates some of the stealth and despite the fact that I always anger stuff breaking down items.

I think I am mostly trying to figure out how people who like to break down items in POIs keep from attracting the whole map especially in cities, and if I am banging on stuff with my wrench does light armor even help in that situation or would it be just the same as when I use heavy armor. I am so conflicted!

I know heavy/light armor is a hotly debated topic based on forum searching but I am curious what is working for people like me who cannot keep from breaking down stuff.

Thanks!

[Khissi]

I exclusively use light armor/stealth and have for many thousands of hours. I also love to break down equipment. However, I am careful about where and when I choose to break everything in a POI. Cities are NOT a place where I'd choose to do a full POI breakdown. Unless you just have to have certain items, it's silly to do something that will call so much attention to yourself.

Conversely, certain mods require large numbers of certain items (DF needs a ton of electrical parts) so though I NEED those parts, I am also very aware of the awful mess screamers can create, especially at higher game stages. Being aware means you break down a bit as you go... a bit here, a bit there, silent weapons/melee and let the heat/noise dissipate before continuing. Get greedy with it, lose your silence, and you will have consequences. Sometimes, that can be fun in itself, but, unless you have a certain sure escape route, or tons and tons of ammo, it can get overwhelming.

Mostly, experience will show you which/when/where and that just comes with doing it! You're on a good path, just learn to regulate what you choose to break and how much nasty you're willing to call to you. Do you REALLY need all those pipes?? Mostly, have fun!

[Nani Sore]

Originally posted by Khissi:

I exclusively use light armor/stealth and have for many thousands of hours. I also love to break down equipment. However, I am careful about where and when I choose to break everything in a POI. Cities are NOT a place where I'd choose to do a full POI breakdown. Unless you just have to have certain items, it's silly to do something that will call so much attention to yourself.

Conversely, certain mods require large numbers of certain items (DF needs a ton of electrical parts) so though I NEED those parts, I am also very aware of the awful mess screamers can create, especially at higher game stages. Being aware means you break down a bit as you go... a bit here, a bit there, silent weapons/melee and let the heat/noise dissipate before continuing. Get greedy with it, lose your silence, and you will have consequences. Sometimes, that can be fun in itself, but, unless you have a certain sure escape route, or tons and tons of ammo, it can get overwhelming.

Mostly, experience will show you which/when/where and that just comes with doing it! You're on a good path, just learn to regulate what you choose to break and how much nasty you're willing to call to you. Do you REALLY need all those pipes?? Mostly, have fun!

I may be guilty of harvesting the pipes =] I like your advice, I think I am going to try to go stealth light armor and be smarter in cities!

[Mardoin69]

If you want to be 'sneaky' then you'll want to stick with Light Armor....along with those muffled connectors. Heavy armor just has too much noise penalty. Khissi's pretty much covered it all but, IF you want to salvage things, you'll need to do a little bit, wait, do a little more, wait....rinse / repeat. In sneak mode, you can see your noise meter basically by watching how your 'detection' meter goes up n down. Anytime it jumps up, you'd have to stop...wait...let it go down...then continue. But, if a zed comes near, if it jumps back up again, you can bet they're onto you. It's why I don't like playing stealth.....just takes too long to progress. I usually only do it at beginning of game till I can beef up my character and get some good equipment.

[Crater Creator]

A small matter of protocol. Questions & Answers is for knowledge base, ‘how does the game work’ type questions, while advice/opinion type questions with no objective answer should stay in General Discussions. I’ll move this thread.

[ElDudorino]

Do you play with Feral Sense on? I don't, so I don't know how it is in that mode. But in non-Feral Sense mode I find stealth fairly useless. In PoIs, 'stealth' has very little to do with sound and you can still stealth-kill a lot of sleepers even while decked out in heavy armor and opening doors with a shotgun. There are sometimes outdoor zombies who come in but you've already observed that they still come in when you're wrenching regardless of how you're built. Outside at night, zombies can't see you so even if you make noise you can still be pretty 'sneaky.' So what's left? Sneaking up on outdoor zombies during the day? I just don't see the benefit in speccing into stealth.

[Tahnval]

Stealth seems quite arbitrary in this game. There are trigger points that alert zombies regardless of stealth and zombies that stay asleep regardless of lack of stealth. Also, creeping about in the dark isn't much fun for me anyway, but some people might like playing a game when they can't see the game they're playing.

For the OP, stealth is even less relevant because breaking down everything will cause far more noise than moving in armour.

I used to use heavy armour and just bull through. Now I use light armour solely because I can move faster in it. Once I get to military armour I can still just bull through the same as if I was wearing heavy armour. I'm only stealthy in the early days of a new game, when you're genuinely vulnerable.

That's for vanilla. Mods can change the situation. I got slaughtered playing vanilla style in Darkness Falls. It's much harder than vanilla.

[onewhofound]

Originally posted by Tahnval:

Stealth seems quite arbitrary in this game. There are trigger points that alert zombies regardless of stealth and zombies that stay asleep regardless of lack of stealth. Also, creeping about in the dark isn't much fun for me anyway, but some people might like playing a game when they can't see the game they're playing.

For the OP, stealth is even less relevant because breaking down everything will cause far more noise than moving in armour.

I used to use heavy armour and just bull through. Now I use light armour solely because I can move faster in it. Once I get to military armour I can still just bull through the same as if I was wearing heavy armour. I'm only stealthy in the early days of a new game, when you're genuinely vulnerable.

That's for vanilla. Mods can change the situation. I got slaughtered playing vanilla style in Darkness Falls. It's much harder than vanilla.

You make a very good point. The massive ambushes that happen arbitrarily during missions (and sometimes just in normal POI exploration) make it very hard to run a stealth build. I get why they are there, but I wish there was a another way to 'do it' - which is to say make the game challenging.

[Nani Sore]

The main reason I want stealth is because I get annoyed when I have a zombie constantly smacking the outside walls of the building I am in and in the cities it is constantly an issue. I agree though it seems like stealth is alot of skill points for something that is basically negated by hard coded events.

I guess one other benefit of "From the Shadows" is that they forget about you sooner.

[Hodas]

Originally posted by Chillax:

The main reason I want stealth is because I get annoyed when I have a zombie constantly smacking the outside walls of the building I am in and in the cities it is constantly an issue. I agree though it seems like stealth is alot of skill points for something that is basically negated by hard coded events.

I guess one other benefit of "From the Shadows" is that they forget about you sooner.

Stealth works in open world but if you are doing missions stealth becomes useless since most areas at higher tier are like when you enter room, they are on to you regardless if you sneak or run guns blazing.

Otherwise I don't ever go in to stealth again unless it actually gets revamped so at certain depth in that perk aggressive sleepers would become rather passive and only get alarmed if you indeed make a sound

[♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥]

Stealth is really not that useful in this game, aside from role playing flavor. Takes a lot of skill points and armor mod slots to make it work, and even then you're only using it to kill zombies before they can attack you, which is also easily done with a decent club/hammer. And the run & club strategy takes about half the amount of time for the same result...

- There's no point in sneaking past zombies to get to loot, since forcing the container open will probably wake them up anyways.
- Sneaking past zombies without killing them also means missing out on tons of XP
- Picking off zombies one by one to avoid being overwhelmed sounds cool, but most spawn volumes (no. of zombies in a room) are too small to really be overwhelming in the first place (especially with decent armor and melee weapon), and the few times where there's actually enough zombies to make picking them off a good idea, they usually get triggered regardless of stealth...

The stealth system is a prime example of TFP development: it's there because other games have stealth as well, but there seems to be little thought on how it interacts with the game's other systems.

[Nani Sore]

Just wanted to say thanks everyone for all of your perspectives and thoughts on this topic. I appreciate all of you!

[onewhofound]

Interdasting.

So it seems like stealth could be made viable relatively easily:
1. Need to be able to not set off 'POI ambush' nodes
2. Need to be able to open containers quietly

Perhaps magazines that give the ability to sneak across ambush triggers and/or open sealed containers with less noise?

[Chan]

Originally posted by onewhofound:

Interdasting.

So it seems like stealth could be made viable relatively easily:
1. Need to be able to not set off 'POI ambush' nodes
2. Need to be able to open containers quietly

Perhaps magazines that give the ability to sneak across ambush triggers and/or open sealed containers with less noise?

I'm sure they'll get these stealth changes in with all the other good stuff in alpha 34!

[ElDudorino]

There's a problem with letting the player stealth past the PoI 'ambush nodes.' Trader quests that involve killing all the zombies in a PoI would be impossible if these don't trigger since most PoIs include special zombie cubbies that are built into the walls, ceiling, or other spots and you wouldn't know where the zombies are if they don't burst through the fake walls for a cheap jump scare.

Granted I don't do quests anymore in vanilla because I don't like the effects they have on the gameplay but I'm sure I'm in the minority on that and making quests unavailable to stealthers isn't going to make stealth feel any more viable!

[Hodas]

Originally posted by ElDudorino:

There's a problem with letting the player stealth past the PoI 'ambush nodes.' Trader quests that involve killing all the zombies in a PoI would be impossible if these don't trigger since most PoIs include special zombie cubbies that are built into the walls, ceiling, or other spots and you wouldn't know where the zombies are if they don't burst through the fake walls for a cheap jump scare.

Granted I don't do quests anymore in vanilla because I don't like the effects they have on the gameplay but I'm sure I'm in the minority on that and making quests unavailable to stealthers isn't going to make stealth feel any more viable!

I mean not really, you can see they are there since when they spawn they are marked with red dot so it's up to you to choose how to pull them