Does it get harder as the days progress?

[Sweeney47]

Hi Everyone.

Me and my friend grabbed this in the sale and have had a little go at it. As we didn't have a clue what we're doing we did put the settings reasonably low and gave ourself a nice long day to get things sorted and learn the crafting/game mechanics.

We got to our first night (with nothing more than a slight tower with spike traps at the base for protection) but the only hard thing about it was not jumping and shooting eachother when we made a noise... We had no zombies turning up at all. So we quit and put the settings up to really high and did it again... We had 1 zombie head our way, we had to actually go off in the distance to find something to attack! - Is there an early day(s) grace period thing in effect?

We had cut down loads of trees in the area, cooked loads of food, shot a few guns off etc.

So basically my question is two-fold. What is essentially enough "heat" to aggro spider zombies and potential hordes? & Does it get harder as does go by (more, frequent zombie attacks)?

Many Thanks in advance.

[WarWise]

It gets harder. The first 7 days barely have any zombies in it. Then a wave comes and they start apearing everywhere. Every 7 days you can also get a horde, which is a period where normal and special zombies spawn near you in large numbers, and where your defenses really start to pay off.
The hordes doesnt come every 7 days, they can come one or two days earlier or latter, but its mostly one time/week. You can manage to avoid them if you hide well enough, and in my case the first one I faced was by day 22. Before that I used to hide in an attic and didnt had a proper manufactured home, so maybe that is why.
Also AFAIK the hordes gets harder until week 7, so until you reach that the game gets more dificult by the week. Im about at day 29 I think and the game is still becoming more dificult.
Btw, diferent areas of the game have diferent spawning numbers and rates. Places of Interest (POI) like houses, cities and stores have way more zombies than the wilderness.

About the heat, AFAIK using anything with fire by night is a bad idea, unless you are deep underground. Even in the day that sometimes atract zombies, a lot of zombies. That is why I dont cook or forge in my main base, specially at night. Spider zombies start appearing in my game near day 20, sometimes on days, sometimes on night. They dont always find you.

[Hoxer]

Imma say it gets easier as you accumulate stuff. Early game is most difficult, but of course the feral hordes will bring you down eventually :D

[Sweeney47]

Thanks for your replies guys. We have quite a high 24 hours setting so the days progress quite slowly so maybe we should restart and reduce this now that we have a rough idea what we're doing, thus reaching the harder days sooner.

We built up just on the outskirts of a small town but we had cleared the majority of it during the day so maybe this was part of the problem.

Just a matter of tweaking the server settings I guess, until we find a difficulty that suits us, not too hard to get a footing but hard enough that it remains a matter of survival.

[Enzane]

Yes keep playing, I just had a random horde (not feral) and it spawned 250 zeds. Only reason Iknow how many is can check the files while in game with `key.

[WarWise]

Originally posted by Sweeney47:

Thanks for your replies guys. We have quite a high 24 hours setting so the days progress quite slowly so maybe we should restart and reduce this now that we have a rough idea what we're doing, thus reaching the harder days sooner.

We built up just on the outskirts of a small town but we had cleared the majority of it during the day so maybe this was part of the problem.

Just a matter of tweaking the server settings I guess, until we find a difficulty that suits us, not too hard to get a footing but hard enough that it remains a matter of survival.

40 minute days are good for me, there is enough time to do a lot by days and not a lot of waiting by night. The 35% night time also seems ideal for me.
And zombies respawn almost all days I think, but there are times when there are more, others less.

Im a noob at this game, but I´ve been playing for 25 games, and I find Nomad dificult to be enjoyable (Im not a powergamer btw, which makes all games easy IMHO).

BTW I was also thinking the game was easy until I battled a horde. Then I started working hard on my base ASAP.

[Ragequit Inc.]

It does get harder, in that both the wandering hordes and the weekly hordes get bigger and badder, up until day 49, afterwhich the 'cycle' resets, or *should* reset atleast. It can also get *massively* harder, if your game bugs out like mine has, where you end up getting 2 weekly hordes each time. Day 49/50 I had 2 hordes of 300 zeds, adding up to 600 total. If I didn't play with short nights, I probably wouldn't have gotten out of my base to start killing them before they'd have wrecked it.