Issue with the Black Heart Curveball

[Saboxxi]

I'm currently on a dread playthrough where the only plague heart left to kill is the Black Heart. I know the recommended strategy is to complete the optional portion for collecting the plague samples, but my quest is glitched.

It's telling me to find a character who didn't spawn in, and their name is just displaying as a file link to what it should be if someone is there. The plague samples also immediately despawn in my inventory after doing anything with them, so it's impossible to do this.

I'm not sure if this may have bugged my whole mission. I know it's already very difficult to destroy (and even reach it's position due to the zombies and fuel loss), but I've hit it with about three or four full inventories worth of Bloater Bombs, C4, frag grenades, and other stuff and I'm not getting even any voice lines about it being damaged.

Is there any info about how much health it may have or if this glitch may have made it invulnerable? I'm not sure if it's even worth it to try since I lost a survivor and barely make it out each run since I'm getting attacked by 20-30 zombies a few seconds after damaging it. I'm pretty sure I've fought one before and it was very difficult, but this feels impossible.

UPDATE: It did finally die after additionally using artillery and three more full inventories worth of explosives. Using scentblocker made it easier to get in and just spam explosives.

[Amogus]

According to a video I saw recently, it's somewhere between 7-8 times stronger than a normal plague heart

With that in mind, if a plague heart would require 10 fuel bombs to kill (not definite, just example), then a black plague heart would take 70-80 provided fire isn't its weakness. I can't speak for items like bloater bombs or C4 since I've never had the opportunity to use them in-game yet, but it really sounds like a potentially bugged plague heart or it could just be a normal black plague heart mechanic.

[Blood Flowers]

It'll depend on it's weakness: Black Plague Heart has 7x resistance to non-weaknesses and 2x resistance to its weakness.
On Dread, if it is weak to either Fire or Explosives you can try to kill a BPH by igniting 2x bloater cloud grenades (will cover both Fire & Explosive weakness). If it's not weak to Fire or Explosives, you would need ~14.

Assuming it's not invulnerable and judging from what you've already tried, I'd assume your heart is weak to either Ranged damage or Melee damage. Side note: I've generally noticed that the fuel-drain only BPHs tend to be weak to range or melee while the health-drain only BPHs tend to be weak to fire or explosives. I've only had 6 BPHs spawn though so I can't say that is always true.

You could try dumping a full clip from custom/prepper AK into the heart (should at least trigger the voice lines saying that it's been damaged if it's a ranged weakness) & hitting it with ~10 heavy weapon swings. If neither of those trigger the voice line I'd say your BPH might just be bugged & invulnerable.

As for getting close to it, just drive to the edge and then run over with either Scentblock (best results) or some Stimulants (so you can just run and ignore the zombies chasing you). If uncomfortable with melee, bring some smoke grenades and throw one close to the heart. Then stand in the smoke (completely undetectable to all zombies while inside smoke) and whack the heart until a gas phase. Run around for a bit until the gas is gone then repeat until the heart is dead.

[biomike]

Last i checked zombait still makes it so it takes more damage so mix that with a scent blocker and it should be relatively easy to take out

[Tax evasion]

Originally posted by biomike:

Last i checked zombait still makes it so it takes more damage so mix that with a scent blocker and it should be relatively easy to take out

Killing black heart/regular hearts with zombait is a bug exploit. It shouldn't be used to measure whether black heart is easy or hard. You shouldn't be using exploit to begin with.

[Tax evasion]

i had encountered the same bug in my previous playthroughs, it doesn't make it invulnerable and it will still have weakness. To compensate for the bug, you have to bring everything it can be vulnerable/weak to to trigger your survivor dialog indicating its weakness, that includes:
1. Explosives/Fire (bloater cloud grenades if ignited count as both explosive and fire, bloater cloud grenades when ignited is the strongest explosives/fire throwables in the game).
3. Melees (heavy melee weapons work best)
4. Firearms (bring a gun that have high ammo capacity, fast rate of fire and equip it with the best brakes attachment you currently have to increase your gun damage outputs, the best brakes attachment is of the advanced variant, also bring some extra ammo).

You should use brakes instead of supressor because you will always be noticed by the zombies inside black heart territory regardless, not even scentblock can prevent you from getting attacked if they get too close to you.

Edit: the strongest non-fire explosive comes from drone strike, it deals ridiculous amount of damage even to black heart. You can even kill non-lethal zone regular heart with just one drone strike, so you use it to your advantage when the black heart is weak to explosive and even when it's not weak to explosive.

[biomike]

Originally posted by Tax evasion:

Originally posted by biomike:

Last i checked zombait still makes it so it takes more damage so mix that with a scent blocker and it should be relatively easy to take out

Killing black heart/regular hearts with zombait is a bug exploit. It shouldn't be used to measure whether black heart is easy or hard. You shouldn't be using exploit to begin with.

I am recommending it as they are dealing with a bug that makes it much harder for them to fight it
If the quest to find the weakness didnt bug out then i wouldnt say to use it

[Anewbous]

Originally posted by Tax evasion:

Originally posted by biomike:

Last i checked zombait still makes it so it takes more damage so mix that with a scent blocker and it should be relatively easy to take out

Killing black heart/regular hearts with zombait is a bug exploit. It shouldn't be used to measure whether black heart is easy or hard. You shouldn't be using exploit to begin with.

Lol a lecture coming from a person named Tax Evasion. God I love the interwebs.

[Soy Mutant]

Download the mod "Plague Hearts Health Gauge" - it lets you see PH's health in real time.
This should be a feature in vanilla game, really.

Weapons in this game are pretty weak - higher calibers and explosives barely deal more damage than lower counterparts.

You can fix this by downloading a separate modled of my Beyond Lethal Ovehaul mod - it rebalanced weapons, giving higher calibers a much bigger punch - with these you can desroy this plague heart.

The reason the weapons are made more powerful is to compete with increasing PH health from Growing Threat mod, which raises thier healths up to 1500-2500 in the late game, so you don't need to worry if the weapons would be effective enough to deal with your problem.

[bunny de fluff]

Originally posted by Anewbous:

Originally posted by Tax evasion:

Killing black heart/regular hearts with zombait is a bug exploit. It shouldn't be used to measure whether black heart is easy or hard. You shouldn't be using exploit to begin with.

Lol a lecture coming from a person named Tax Evasion. God I love the interwebs.

This tax evasion guy is arguably the most knowledgeable on this forum about this game imo 😅

Another trust worthy guy has a kind of reptile head as avatar.

[billy_blue69]

My Black Plague Heart still says "ACTIVE" however it is a normal RED PLAGUE heart. Reported to UL. Waiting on feedback. I guess I am the only one in the world with my black plague heart bugged. lol Only one plague heart on map. It also made all my black plague samples vanish and changed my group that I was supposed to take them to into someone else. So mine is baked.

[stmac571]

however i think the weak point is random, my first is on explosive , and my second is on fire. so i guess it is random, not a constant hint. so it is still needed to know or do the optional quest. or it is depending on the map?? i forget about it but i do faced two different hint