How zombies choose their path during blood moon?

[ShadowLL]

So I m trying to figure out
We have small base in the center, then walls all around and 5x5 hole in one place, covered by a bridge

When attack happened - Zeds went basically to the closest wall and started to destroy it
And when there was an opening - they prioritized that place
BUT
Some still tried to break another wall tho

So my question is
If we have 4 walls with an opening to us, but they would have to go through a path of traps-spikes-etc. - Are they forced to take this path of like 100+ blocks rather than just destroy one-two blocks of wall directly?

It's a hustle to re-do the base, so would like to know before I start and make changes

[steventirey]

Zombies have a maximum distance they will travel to get to you. If the clear path to you is longer than that, they will instead start breaking things to make a shorter path to you.

They will still go after the wall, even if the next square over would put them in range to walk around.

[Shurenai]

TL;DR: Time-to-reach-you. It's all how long it takes to reach you. How long it takes to block, how long it takes to walk a path, how long it takes to ascend/descend as needed. Doors count as half HP (To represent the potential to be open or closed).

Shortest route, in time taken, is king. But if a zombie approaches from another direction it may decide beating through the wall there is faster than walking around to whatever opening some other zombies made; It may take them 20 seconds to walk around, but only 18 to beat through the wall and come from that direction.

For this reason, mazes of most types arent really feasible; they'll just choose to bash through. It's possible to use a maze like structure but it requires great care and player positioning to guide them through.

As for traps, Zombies do not recognize them as traps; They recognize them as blocks in the world to be navigated or destroyed. This includes spikes- If you build a 2 tall pile of spikes, they'll treat it as a wall. If you build it 1 tall, they will try to jump onto it, if you recess it into the ground, they'll try to walk on it. Never obstruct your intended path fully with spikes because of this.

[Astasia]

If they have a path to you that is short enough they will usually try to take it, if they think they can make another path to you they will sometimes start bashing on things. They also sometimes enter "rage mode" and start attacking random blocks. There's a lot of complexity to the system, years of the devs trying to fight against creative players to counter some of the old more effective base designs. If you want a solid understanding of all the rules and which shapes to use and what to avoid, it's probably best to look for some 1.0 specific videos on youtube about horde base design.

But ya for the most part, if you give them an open path to reach you that isn't too long, they will mostly try to use that path.

[ShadowLL]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

As for traps, Zombies do not recognize them as traps; They recognize them as blocks in the world to be navigated or destroyed. This includes spikes- If you build a 2 tall pile of spikes, they'll treat it as a wall. If you build it 1 tall, they will try to jump onto it, if you recess it into the ground, they'll try to walk on it. Never obstruct your intended path fully with spikes because of this.

Wow, so having this in mind, if I have straight path (no walls on sides) between me and zombie and
1. 1 tall spikes path
2. 1 tall spikes path but in the ground

In first case they will go aroun, but in the second they just fall into this hole of spikes because they just try to walk on them as a block?

[Kryzx]

Also keep in mind, if you have a very long path that's outside of your current cell/chunk for them to enter from, they will also ignore it. We're talking over ~60 blocks away from your current fighting position, so if your pathway for them to enter from is beyond that amount, they're just going to find the next best path, which is usually the walls/supports near you.

There is an actual limit to the "pathing" distance too in order to reach the player, but it's quite large that it shouldn't be an issue for most players unless you're just testing/debugging builds. If I remember right based on CautiousPancake's findings, it's like ~2048 blocks (or nodes as its called in the console).