Are iron spike traps any better than wooden ones ?

[KafarPL]

I'm playing with setting that blood moon is every 14 days to have more free time and I just died miserably at first one

I had my house surrounded with 3 layers (+4th on half) of wooden spike traps. I've used all my arrows (had around 50 iron and like 30 stone), used all durability on pipe MG that I've found and in the end died at like 1am running away from my home that I basically had to jump down from when they flooded upstairs and I was no longer able to hold them away with spear. Which I have been doing for a bit, alternating between shooting bow at those who are trying to enter and spearing those who already went upstairs, but when like 6-7 of them got upstairs once it was over

I tried at one point replace the broken doors but surprise surprise, couldnt do it because there was a body lying in the doorway -_-. That being said it doesnt even seem that repairing is a viable thing, there was so many zombies and no break moment that even if I could repair walls, another one would be broken few seconds later and repairing means not attacking so...

Anyway, my issue is that all these layers of the spikes look quite pointless because it seems that the zombie behaviour and spawning makes them run into 1/2 lines straight into your house and it ends up them stacking at those 1-2, maybe 3 points around the house and then pounding on the walls. The iron doors went down quickly, the wooden walls even quicker. And in the end, massive amount of those spikes I've layed were not used at all because there were only those 3 spots where zombies actually ran through and only at these spots the spikes did anything

And TBH they did very little, like they go down in 3 hits but 3 in a row barely stopped 2 zombies -_-

So, is the iron version any better and if not, how I should actually set up defenses for the blood moon ? It's really crappy that the AI is made in such a way that they stack on few points, completly ignoring everything else once they get to these points. Basically 80% of the defenses laid around the house are not doing anything because they are ignored once there is a path to a wall or a path inside the building

I have a feeling that 28th day horde will massacre me so hard that I wont even survive 1 hour -_- (tho then again not like it matters, it seems that the horde stops once you die and since you lose basically nothing on death on default diff....yea. That also kinda makes infection system pointless unless you play on permadeath I guess)

[Shurenai]

Without seeing screenshots, this is based purely on your description of the situation:

Zombies treat everything in their environment like floors and walls. If it's a floor, they try to walk on it, if it's a wall, they view it as an obstruction to their path and calculate the best path to the player through said obstructions. If they can jump over it, they will. However, if they can't just walk on or jump over it(or just walk around), they'll treat it like a wall and try to break it, once it's broken the remaining zombies will just path through the opening.

From what you describe, The way you're laying out your spikes is making the AI treat them like they're walls- Like obstructions to their path, So once they breach your spikes in one place, they all funnel through that spot since there is no obstruction. What you need to do is lay your spikes out like it's a walkable floor, or something they can jump on instead.

Here's some screenshots with explanations for example:
https://imgur.com/a/AH5teE6

In short, This is a Tower Defense game- You want to place your traps, defenses, and walls in such a way to ensure the zombies will actually engage with your traps. With spikes, that means recessing them into the floor and/or otherwise ensuring the zombies do not ever see your spikes as a 'wall' between them and you. You also want to design in such a way that you maximize their time spent involved with your traps.


To answer your question though, yes, iron spikes are better.

[SuperMeatBag]

I feel it's worth adding that a longer interval between blood moons isn't always easier - sure you have more time to prepare, but your gamestage also has more time to rise so the horde will be larger/stronger/etc. Make your base walls as strong as possible to mitigate the traps being destroyed - they will never in my experience last a whole horde night. So probably concrete walls but steel if you can make them.

[Brevan]

One thing to consider (once you're getting a feeling for how the Zs will behave) when you know where the Zs will pile up (like at doors or intentionally weak areas in your walls) is that you can hit a lot of zombies with a Molotov, and they're super effective early game. Molotovs lose their awesomeness once Cops become common, since they explode at low life before they burn.

One method of preventing Zs from piling up is to create a taller structure and path for them to follow. They always spawn on the ground, so if you make a path for them to follow where it takes them 30 seconds to reach you from the ground, then you can buy yourself a lot of time. Kill them all at once and you've got 30 seconds to repair before the next "wave". Kill them one at a time and you've got about 4 seconds per zombie before the next arrives (assuming the default 8 zombies appear at a time; 30sec /8Z ~ 4sec/Z).

[KafarPL]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Without seeing screenshots, this is based purely on your description of the situation:

Zombies treat everything in their environment like floors and walls. If it's a floor, they try to walk on it, if it's a wall, they view it as an obstruction to their path and calculate the best path to the player through said obstructions. If they can jump over it, they will. However, if they can't just walk on or jump over it(or just walk around), they'll treat it like a wall and try to break it, once it's broken the remaining zombies will just path through the opening.

From what you describe, The way you're laying out your spikes is making the AI treat them like they're walls- Like obstructions to their path, So once they breach your spikes in one place, they all funnel through that spot since there is no obstruction. What you need to do is lay your spikes out like it's a walkable floor, or something they can jump on instead.

Here's some screenshots with explanations for example:
https://imgur.com/a/AH5teE6

In short, This is a Tower Defense game- You want to place your traps, defenses, and walls in such a way to ensure the zombies will actually engage with your traps. With spikes, that means recessing them into the floor and/or otherwise ensuring the zombies do not ever see your spikes as a 'wall' between them and you. You also want to design in such a way that you maximize their time spent involved with your traps.


To answer your question though, yes, iron spikes are better.

OOOOH. I get it. So instead of laying the spikes all around like an extra block, I should dig the ground and lay them on a ground-level block. That way they wont ignore all the other spikes around as soon as there is a breach in the spikes that I've laid around and instead they should rush any bit of wall, stepping on all spikes avalivable all around. That's good. I was thinking about digging the trench eventually but had no time for that so I just did 3 layers of spikes above the ground level

Originally posted by SuperMeatBag:

I feel it's worth adding that a longer interval between blood moons isn't always easier - sure you have more time to prepare, but your gamestage also has more time to rise so the horde will be larger/stronger/etc. Make your base walls as strong as possible to mitigate the traps being destroyed - they will never in my experience last a whole horde night. So probably concrete walls but steel if you can make them.

Yea, I was aware that would be a thing. I've spent most time building a tower xd. I have a cobblestone laid all around but that's just 1 block high "perimeter" + 2 more blocks in some spots that I've made to outline future walls

Originally posted by Brevan:

One thing to consider (once you're getting a feeling for how the Zs will behave) when you know where the Zs will pile up (like at doors or intentionally weak areas in your walls) is that you can hit a lot of zombies with a Molotov, and they're super effective early game. Molotovs lose their awesomeness once Cops become common, since they explode at low life before they burn.

One method of preventing Zs from piling up is to create a taller structure and path for them to follow. They always spawn on the ground, so if you make a path for them to follow where it takes them 30 seconds to reach you from the ground, then you can buy yourself a lot of time. Kill them all at once and you've got 30 seconds to repair before the next "wave". Kill them one at a time and you've got about 4 seconds per zombie before the next arrives (assuming the default 8 zombies appear at a time; 30sec /8Z ~ 4sec/Z).

Yea all I had was a bow and machine gun but that wasn't enough. Anyway, do molotovs, grenades and all that stuff damage my own placed blocks ? Or they dont so I can just freely spam them at zombies piled near the walls ?

[KafarPL]

BTW guys, why suddenly I got 3 skill points on level up ? Hit level 22 and got 3 instead of 1. I thought you only get 3 from the initial "tutorial" quest ?

[seven]

Maybe you had 2 you hadn't spent yet? The message will say you leveled up and the total number of points available.

And to be more exact, unless you're playing some mod you only get more than 1 skill point with the initial survival quest.

[KafarPL]

Originally posted by seven:

Maybe you had 2 you hadn't spent yet? The message will say you leveled up and the total number of points available.

And to be more exact, unless you're playing some mod you only get more than 1 skill point with the initial survival quest.

I dont recall having 2 unspent points but well...I dont have mods so I guess that must have been it. Thanks

[Brevan]

Explosives (probably Molotovs too) damage your blocks (with an explosive selected in the inventory screen look at the stats window in the upper-right. The Block Damage line shows how much damage it'll do to building blocks), but keep in mind that Zombies damage your blocks quite a bit more (most trash zombies hit for about 8 damage, but Construction Workers, Fat Tourists, and a few other zombies hit for more like 100-150; Zombie Cop explosions do about 500), so the faster you can bring them down the better.

That aside, one issue with setting up a long path for the Zs to climb from the ground to where you're defending is that sometimes zombies will randomly attack a block (I notice this less when using ramps and notice it more when zombies are made to jump up a block), or maybe a Cop gets wounded and knocked to the ground and then explodes. If they break the path from the ground up to you, then you're going to have a bad night, so make the path very sturdy (Concrete should do).