How Bleeding Work?

[D.A.R.K.]

I'm going to start to play with my friends, and I'm going to focus on Agility, thus I'm going to use Knife to deal damage. I know that Knife is good to apply bleed status effect on zombies, we can't see the bleeding effect, but it seems every hit applies it, or have a high chance to apply. I know there's a MOD that shows when a zombie is bleeding, and I intended to use it, but since there's no intel on how bleeding work, I have multiple questions about it:

01. Do knives have 100% chance of causing bleed on heavy attack?
02. How many damage the bleeding deal per hit?
03. For how the bleeding status stays on?
04. If I hit multiple times with bleeding, it will increase the damage?
05. If I hit multiple times with bleeding, it will increase the period?
06. If I hit multiple times with bleeding, it will reset the time duration?

[Edwin]

01 yes, 02 not sure, but it is significant if you give it time 03 several seconds, maybe 5. 04 yes, governed by the deep cuts skill. 05/06 resets the timer I think.

The only warning is that you don't always seem to get your XP from death by bleeding. Not entirely sure if it's just time related or something else.

[D.A.R.K.]

Originally posted by Edwin:

01 yes, 02 not sure, but it is significant if you give it time 03 several seconds, maybe 5. 04 yes, governed by the deep cuts skill. 05/06 resets the timer I think.

The only warning is that you don't always seem to get your XP from death by bleeding. Not entirely sure if it's just time related or something else.

Really? This seems a big fail to deal with, the idea is to hit hard on bleeding and then avoid the zombie until it dies. If I'm going to keep hitting, better go with Club or Sledgehammer instead =/

[Edwin]

Well, for me it has been rare. But I step back to recover stamina and hit again. And most bleed kills were fine, I've only noticed a couple in the hundred or so that I killed with the bone knife that gave me nothing. Curious to hear about other experiences with that though.

[decrevi]

On the question of not getting experience on a bleed death, I think I did not get experience once (although it's possible I just missed it). It does seem to give the experience at least a 99% of the time, from my experience.

[Amanoob105]

Originally posted by Edwin:

Well, for me it has been rare. But I step back to recover stamina and hit again. And most bleed kills were fine, I've only noticed a couple in the hundred or so that I killed with the bone knife that gave me nothing. Curious to hear about other experiences with that though.

This is due to a fairly simple game mechanic.

After you hit an enemy with an attack there's a second or two where if it does you still get the exp for it. But if it dies of something after that limit is up you get nothing.
The fun bit is that this time limit lasts for a shorter duration than the duration for how long the bleeding effect can last. So if the target dies of bleeding damage after that limit has expired, you get nothing.

The same is true of any other status effect that can deal damage, like setting a target on fire.

[D.A.R.K.]

Originally posted by Amanoob105:

Originally posted by Edwin:

Well, for me it has been rare. But I step back to recover stamina and hit again. And most bleed kills were fine, I've only noticed a couple in the hundred or so that I killed with the bone knife that gave me nothing. Curious to hear about other experiences with that though.

This is due to a fairly simple game mechanic.

After you hit an enemy with an attack there's a second or two where if it does you still get the exp for it. But if it dies of something after that limit is up you get nothing.
The fun bit is that this time limit lasts for a shorter duration than the duration for how long the bleeding effect can last. So if the target dies of bleeding damage after that limit has expired, you get nothing.

The same is true of any other status effect that can deal damage, like setting a target on fire.

So... The problem here is this timer, the timer to get the XP should be more than the timer to the bleeding effect ends. Doing the math isn't hard, you just need to check the bleeding damage, how long it takes to run out, and match the remaining health.

For example, let's say bleeding does 1 damage per second, for 5 seconds. The longest time the bleed can last is 5 seconds, AKA, 5 remaining health for the zombie. It could be even easier, the XP timer resets every time bleed does a tick.

[Brevan]

Originally posted by D.A.R.K.:

01. Do knives have 100% chance of causing bleed on heavy attack?
02. How many damage the bleeding deal per hit?
03. For how the bleeding status stays on?
04. If I hit multiple times with bleeding, it will increase the damage?
05. If I hit multiple times with bleeding, it will increase the period?
06. If I hit multiple times with bleeding, it will reset the time duration?

01. Yes
02. 1 damage per second per bleed
03. 20 seconds
04. Yes, capped by whatever it says in your Knife perk level description
05. No
06. Yes

That aside, I agree that the odds of no-XP is quite small. It's so small that I can't figure out a cause-effect relationship, but the last rumor I remember is that if the last attack was a power-attack then you'll get XP (this aligns with the theory of an XP time limit, since Zs would die quite a bit faster after a power attack (less HP to lose and lose it faster)). I've also seen things not yield XP via burns. I've no idea what amount of time the XP time limit thing would be.

I've tried Knifers in A18 to A20, they were fine. Different melee style, a bit more challenging indoors (unless you plant blocks to jump onto often, or aren't afraid to stab something and then close a door).