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When in the field many use a pillar style of combat keep regular square blocks ready on hot-bar place one down jump on top jump while placing a second upgrade the block to wood while standing on top you can attack zombies while they cannot reach you. When multiple zombies stack they may jump onto each other so set up 2-3 in a group ready to jump to another if needed.
When fighting indoors always have hatches ready and prepare a retreat route. If having a problem of zombies crouching behind hatches and swinging through them use hatches on top instead place a block down in a doorway break a block above and replace with a hatch place a plate block down in middle so zombies cannot crawl through the gap
Rails are a better shape than bars you can repair and interact though rails while you cannot with bars placing one rail in a vertical position on bottom layer one rail horizontal on second layer and a hatch on top layer makes super cheap super strong 1x3 fighting spot that you can fire through
Good to know. Will give it a try. thank you!
Search for and read books and magazines as quick as possible. That's the way to get better tools and weapons as quick as possible. Doing the trader missions is the best way to gain xp which opens up more skill points to put toward buffs to up your combat abilities.
Measure is the range of distance within which an attack can hit. AKA reach in some modern contexts.
In 7DTD, the player's measure with melee weapons tends to be longer than many new players expect.
An efficient way to familiarise yourself with 7DTD's implementation of measure for the player is to spawn in a zombie or zombies with their AI off and beat on them until you get used to how close you have to be to land a hit. Ideally, you want to remain that close and no closer.
If you go toe to toe with zombies in the early days, it's unlikely to work out well for you. You've got two main routes for dealing with that.
The first main route is to use environment and blocks to hold zombies at a distance that is within your measure but outside theirs. That way, you can hit them and they can't hit you. Crimzn's post, above, covers that well. A spear can be useful in that scenario because it can hit zombies further away than any other melee weapon. I wouldn't suggest a spear as the main melee weapon for a new player, but it might be beneficial to carry a spear in addition to your main melee weapon. For example, you might be in a situation where there's a large boulder or free-standing wall section next to you. You could drop a block or two and jump up onto the boulder or wall, taking you out of range of the attacking zombie. But also leaving the attacking zombie out of range of your main melee weapon. Bring out your spear and stab them from a position of safety.
The second main route is mobility, moving into your measure to attack and moving out of the zombie's measure when they attack. With practice, you can predict the zombie's attack pretty well because they're very predictable.
The mobility route is faster but riskier and generally requires more experience with the game. The block route is slower but safer and easier to implement. On higher difficulty levels (and/or with faster zombies) you might need to use both methods.
Another important factor is that where you hit matters. In most cases, hitting the zombie's head is much more effective. You mention rarely slowing the zombie down when you hit it. Hitting it in the head will be much more effective at slowing it down. Or staggering it. Or knocking it down.
Weapon choice is another important factor. There are advocates for all the melee weapons and they all have sound reasons. I would recommend clubs for a new player as they're a good balance and can be used effectively from day 1 to endgame. Knife and club is a viable option that can have benefits in the early game. You're quite likely to be carrying a knife anyway, for butchering animals more efficiently. Stab zombie to start damage over time (from bleeding), switch to club to bash zombie.
Weapon mods make a lot of difference. Any weapon mod will increase the damage the weapon does, so if you find a mod and it fits put it on even if the stated effect isn't useful. For example, you might find a mod that increases damage done to stone. Obviously that's best suited to a pickaxe and sounds useless for a weapon because none of the zombies are made of stone, but it will increase the damage done by your weapon (if it fits, which it does on some melee weapons). Some mods are much more useful, e.g. a weighted head mod increases the chance of staggering or knocking down a zombie.
I would place blocks in a door way, or in front of it. It keeps you from getting rushed by groups of zombies. You can hit them behind the blocks, or shoot them.
In some cases, I would build a row of blocks across a hallway, and another row on the ceiling, leaving just a 1 block high slit to shoot or hit through. In some situations, zombies can squeeze into the one block high gap, but they have to crawl on all fours to do it, and you can hit them before they get through.
Go for weapons that reliably stun or stagger enemies. Club and sledgehammer are best for that. Sledgehammer is super slow and to be effective against large groups you will need a bunch of supporting perks (faster attack, etc). The club is a good medium weapon to use. Faster then the sledgehammer and still stuns them.
I'm also a big fan of robotic turrets. They don't unlock until high skill levels, so you have to wait later in the gameplay loop to get access to them.. But if you invest into intelligence, it pays off in the long run. Two sledgehammer turrets facing a doorway can stop entire packs of zombies, punching them backwards and knocking them down. You can put the burning shaft mod on the sledgehammers, and it will set zombies on fire causing damage over time.
Two of the shooting turrets will just annihilate stuff. They automatically do headshots, and you get a huge bonus on damage and dismemberment for high int attribute. That means it decaps their heads, popping them like zits. I save the robot shooting turrets for really dangerous places like the treasure rooms at the ends of big POI's. You will often get swarmed by zombies, and in the current version of the game, it can sometimes spawn them out of thin air when you hit trigger points. I set turrets up, trigger them all to spawn, and run back through the turrets. They all die.
very good info here!
It's okay to carry and use other weapons, just to take advantage of ammo you find for them (or make). I always carry a bow/crossbow and use it to snipe headshots on zombies. As long as I'm safe somewhere (usually up high). I don't even make good arrows/bolts, just use the stone ones. I won't have a single level of perk in archery. The stealth damage bonus makes up for lack of skill (any at all). I do the same for other weapons I have no perk levels in (pistol, hunting rifle, etc) just to use up the ammo.
But if something seriously goes wrong, I switch to a weapon I have a bunch of perk levels in, and get the 240% damage boost.
Power attack headshots with batons, clubs, and sledgehammers stand a good chance of staggering Zs or knocking them prone, giving you some breathing room.
Once you get to Level 3/5 with most of the melee weapon perks, you start getting stamina refunded when you kill things. That, in tandem with the above, should help you fight your ass off easier.
When in doubt, never underestimate what kneecapping can do for you. Dismembering a leg is great, but even if you never roll the % to have it happen on one particular enemy, the animation of them stumbling and grabbing their leg is also an opportunity to gain distance.
And finally, if you see a massive dog with a skull for a head? Do not try to fight it. Dire Wolves are some of the hardest-hitting, fastest, and tankiest enemies in the game right now. It may be outright preferable to smash a window, down some glass, and go to Fiddler's Green early-game rather than fight them.
I would never really recommend the glass option. Instead a new player in the early stages probably should just avoid the dire wolf if possible and try to fight it if there's no choice in the matter. Dying while fighting isn't any different than dying by using glass, and if you fight you might win if you play your cards right.
Should a new player who is still in the earlier days of a playthrough choose to fight a dire wolf or be in a position where they have to fight one then they should make the attempt from an elevated position that it can't reach. If possible pick something made of tough materials as your platform for the fight, something large enough that it won't collapse after a couple blocks of it get destroyed.
It's good to keep a few building blocks on the hotbar so you can quickly place a few and jump up on things the wolf can't reach. I did this in a recent game and had no trouble taking out the dire wolf - but it took a while because they're really tough. Keeping wood spike traps on the hotbar is also a good idea as you can drop them in choke points like a doorway to slow and damage enemies. Quickly placing traps or blocks in a choke point to stop enemies can give a player some breathing room.
I recommend making use of Molotovs against tough enemies if you have any as they will do burning damage over time while you are also shooting the enemy. Doing this will cut down on how long the dire wolf will survive. It can be worth the effort to kill them not only for the fairly high XP reward and the resources you can harvest from it but also for the high tier loot bag it will apparently always drop when they die.
Just a few things to keep in mind.
* When using melee combat while indoors, be mindful of your surroundings. Make sure you're not backing yourself into a corner with no escape.
* Any time you hit a zombie there is a chance you can aggro them into a fury mode - this is when you'll notice they move a lot faster when they're coming at you.
* I'm not a fan of the current bow/arrow design, I don't feel it's as good as it was a few iterations ago. However, it still works good in houses you're clearing if you are sneaking and you can snipe a zombie in the head that isn't aware of you. You get that really nice sneak damage and pairing it with a head shot usually means you can drop the early game zombies in one shot - not always, but most of the time.
* Magazines/books - search every bookshelf, mailbox outside of houses or postal mailboxes, any newspaper box and anything that resembles a book that you might find on a bedroom floor, a desk, a table and so on. Read, read, read!
* The more noise you make, the more zombies you can attract. If you're out there tossing pipe bombs and shooting guns, there is a good chance you'll get the attention of a screamer and she can make a small group of zombies turn into a large group if you can't kill her fast.
Learn as you go and have fun.