Spotlights and zombies.

[hyperion]

Not meaning to bring up something that has already been discussed, but I am a little confused by this.

I thought that lights do not attract hordes and I've never had an issue with sitting up torches or candles. But last night I sat up a spotlight and a couple hours later around 11pm a horde of zombies came straight for it, there were around 20 of them in all. They tore out the side of my house where the light was, and even destroyed the light.

I put it up there so that I could see zombies from a balcony I have and be able to pick them off at range when they come. But now, I'm afraid to put out anymore spotlights. Has anyone else had this experience? I mean it had to be the light, they went straight for it and I've never had zombies go at that side of the house before.

[Ragequit Inc.]

No, zombies don't give 2 ♥♥♥♥♥ about any lightsources. They were "aiming" for you, not the light.

[LunarMorph]

I have 6 Spotlights surrounding one of my Bases,...does not have any effect attracting Zombies

[SlowSteadySqueeze]

Zombies aren't attracted to light sources. You can place pillars with lights on them and they will just walk right past them. It just happened the "random" hordes that always come right at you (yes they are in fact guided right at or really close to a player's home and not random at all) hit your light while they were roaming.

[Tokfan]

Zombies still don't give a hoot about light.
Go into creative, spam lights down -torches, candles, spotlights, street lamps you name it.
Wait a bit and note how zombies totally ignores the lights.
Can we please kill this misinformation already?

The ONLY time light had ANY effect on zombies was A8-9 when every night was feral night and lights SLOWED zombies down. Lights didn't attract them then and sure as heck don't attract them now.
Later there was a bug when zombies climbed up a torch then couldn't path down making them spin in place at 260 mph. They weren't attracted by the torch, they just happend to pass by and got stuck.

Smell? Yes.
Proximity? Yes.
Sight? Yes.
Forced spawn route? Yes.
Light? No.

[hyperion]

Well's that's really strange, I've been in that base 26 days and never had anything like that happen and they went straight for the light. I was sitting upstairs as always, no forges on, no campfire, no meat on me, completely silent. Very strange. I will try it again and see what happens.

[Dluxe]

You could try putting the light outside your base in some way. But so you can still see them coming.

[hyperion]

Originally posted by DluxE:

You could try putting the light outside your base in some way. But so you can still see them coming.

I'm going to experiment. Everyone seems confident that the light didn't cause the horde attack, so it was likely just a huge coincidence, which is a relief because I really want to light up my base so I can snipe at them from my lookout platforms.

[SlowSteadySqueeze]

Place the light up higher (at least 3-4 blocks off the level where the zombies stand) so zombies cannot attack it, the light will spread downwards fairly well so you don't have to worry about it not casting light near the ground. Problem solved. It won't attract zombies only the things Tokfan mentioned do that.

[hyperion]

Originally posted by SlowSteadySqueeze:

Place the light up higher (at least 3-4 blocks off the level where the zombies stand) so zombies cannot attack it, the light will spread downwards fairly well so you don't have to worry about it not casting light near the ground. Problem solved. It won't attract zombies only the things Tokfan mentioned do that.

Thanks, I'll give that a try, now that I finally found another car battery.

[Spider]

I can clear this up. No, zombies are not attracted to light but they can see you better in light. So you can hide in the dark from a zombie and they will walk right by you. If you have light shining on you then the zombies can see you. So it’s not the light it’s you being seen in the light.

[Honor's Bastion]

Originally posted by Spider:

I can clear this up. No, zombies are not attracted to light but they can see you better in light. So you can hide in the dark from a zombie and they will walk right by you. If you have light shining on you then the zombies can see you. So it’s not the light it’s you being seen in the light.

You don't even have to be seen in the light for the zombies to act in a manner as the OP described. It's down to the basic mechanics related to how a wandering horde spawns, moves, and reacts to obstacles.

Basically, whenever a wandering horde is set to spawn, it will select one player and spawn a wandering horde (size dependent on what day it is in game) a certain distance away from the chosen player, let's say 100 blocks away. The horde then moves in a as straight as possible line towards the last known location of that player at the time that it spawned. If you move away from the location by the time that the horde arrives, it will keep moving forward in a straight path until it meets another target or the horde reaches a point where it despawns.

If you were at your base when the horde spawns, it will run directly into it and can start to attack your base even if you were not detected. The reason is, the horde is programmed to move in a straight path and if there is an obstacle in its way, the horde may destroy it instead of moving around it. A player's base almost always gets attacked instead of the zombies just moving around it, explaining why you weren't detected but they still attacked.

[hyperion]

Originally posted by Spider:

I can clear this up. No, zombies are not attracted to light but they can see you better in light. So you can hide in the dark from a zombie and they will walk right by you. If you have light shining on you then the zombies can see you. So it’s not the light it’s you being seen in the light.

They couldn't see me from that light. I was upstairs in my base, 2nd floor, out of sight. The light was on the ground outside by a corner of my base shining outwards towards my ditches and spikes. They went directly at it. If they were coming for me, I was on the opposite side of the base.

[hyperion]

Originally posted by Honor's Bastion:

Originally posted by Spider:

I can clear this up. No, zombies are not attracted to light but they can see you better in light. So you can hide in the dark from a zombie and they will walk right by you. If you have light shining on you then the zombies can see you. So it’s not the light it’s you being seen in the light.

Basically, whenever a wandering horde is set to spawn, it will select one player and spawn a wandering horde (size dependent on what day it is in game) a certain distance away from the chosen player, let's say 100 blocks away. The horde then moves in a as straight as possible line towards the last known location of that player at the time that it spawned. If you move away from the location by the time that the horde arrives, it will keep moving forward in a straight path until it meets another target or the horde reaches a point where it despawns.

If you were at your base when the horde spawns, it will run directly into it and can start to attack your base even if you were not detected. The reason is, the horde is programmed to move in a straight path and if there is an obstacle in its way, the horde may destroy it instead of moving around it. A player's base almost always gets attacked instead of the zombies just moving around it, explaining why you weren't detected but they still attacked.

That makes sense if the horde spawned on that side of my base. I guess it's a coincidence, but they went right at that light like they would a door. 26 days in that base and it's the first time I saw a horde that large and agressive, besides the 3rd night when I was stupid enough to have raw meat on me. But that time, they came directly at the side of the base I always stay on where my sleeping bag and storage chests are.