I managed to kill a black plague heart!

[Master Gnocco]

I'm celebrating because I'm rather incompetent. I found a good shooting spot and offed the damn thing through a window, thanks to a massive supply of .50 bullets. Luckily it wasn't in a warehouse like last time!

[Protectron]

What was its weakness?

Basically, you did what I always do with Hearts, Black or otherwise. Not the shooting per se, but finding a vantage point where I'm safe and then kill it with Fuel Bombs, Drone Strikes or whatnot. Anything works as long as you don't actually fight the spawned-in zombies and freaks.

[jamesglen7]

The author is too modest to invoke bragging rights and is a skilled marksman with complimentary core skills. Your master strategy is interchangeable on the target of your choice on any good shooting spot.

You never forget to break glass so your ordinance doesn't bounce back and ruin your day.
Your bolt action rifle never jambs or breaks and backed with weapon handling.
If you can see your target it's in range with a .50 caliber.

Your screenshot is missing or perhaps it's classified info.

[Master Gnocco]

Originally posted by Protectron:

What was its weakness?

Wait, they actually have different weaknesses? I thought it always was melee, I never got another one (I've only met 3 or 4 thus far). Which confirms my theory about me being an unlucky bastard.

I usually go into the building and quickly chuck a mixed lot of incendiary and explosive things at the pile of yuckiness, but the mutated ones were just too tough (which has something to do with their weakness always being melee). This time I planned in advance and crafted all the .50 rounds my chosen sniper could carry (some guy with good shooting and no community skills)

[miikhei]

Good enough, some might say. But:
1) you can learn what the weakness is by providing samples to the enclave of researchers that will show up when the black heart appears. Black hearts are hugely more resistant to damage if you are not exploiting the weakness
2) if you use exlosives or fire against plague hearts, use them one at a time and wait until the fire dies down before the next one, because the effects of multiple incendiaries or explosives at the same time do not stack
3) 50 cal is super cost inefficient against hearts. You need around three times as much resources to craft the necessary ammo compared to weapons that use pistol caliber or magnum ammunition. 50 cal weapons are not especially fast, either. Use small caliber / long barrel weapons if shooting from a safe position and high capacity, full auto weapons if shooting on the ground.

[Letterit]

For me it's been broken twice:
- I gave researcher enough black hearts but a zombie interrupted the dialog, then the researcher fled, then I didn't get anything else.
- Later, probably after a game restart, the black heart just disappeared. Frankly a good bug because I didn't care have to bother with the thing.

[Master Gnocco]

Originally posted by miikhei:

Good enough, some might say. But:
1) you can learn what the weakness is by providing samples to the enclave of researchers that will show up when the black heart appears. Black hearts are hugely more resistant to damage if you are not exploiting the weakness
2) if you use exlosives or fire against plague hearts, use them one at a time and wait until the fire dies down before the next one, because the effects of multiple incendiaries or explosives at the same time do not stack
3) 50 cal is super cost inefficient against hearts. You need around three times as much resources to craft the necessary ammo compared to weapons that use pistol caliber or magnum ammunition. 50 cal weapons are not especially fast, either. Use small caliber / long barrel weapons if shooting from a safe position and high capacity, full auto weapons if shooting on the ground.

Interesting. I just went for the biggest gun around mainly because it seemed cool, and the range and accuracy were really good. As for the weakness, I assumed it was always melee after four mutated hearts in a row had melee, it seemed a bit too much for being random. When I throw grenades at the things I usually use fire, two or three explosives and maybe fire again as I start running away from the red bastards.

[Protectron]

Originally posted by Master Gnocco:

Originally posted by miikhei:

Good enough, some might say. But:
1) you can learn what the weakness is by providing samples to the enclave of researchers that will show up when the black heart appears. Black hearts are hugely more resistant to damage if you are not exploiting the weakness
2) if you use exlosives or fire against plague hearts, use them one at a time and wait until the fire dies down before the next one, because the effects of multiple incendiaries or explosives at the same time do not stack
3) 50 cal is super cost inefficient against hearts. You need around three times as much resources to craft the necessary ammo compared to weapons that use pistol caliber or magnum ammunition. 50 cal weapons are not especially fast, either. Use small caliber / long barrel weapons if shooting from a safe position and high capacity, full auto weapons if shooting on the ground.

Interesting. I just went for the biggest gun around mainly because it seemed cool, and the range and accuracy were really good. As for the weakness, I assumed it was always melee after four mutated hearts in a row had melee, it seemed a bit too much for being random. When I throw grenades at the things I usually use fire, two or three explosives and maybe fire again as I start running away from the red bastards.

Yes .50 cal is very expensive, but very convenient if you can find a safe spot some distance away from the Heart and kill it with all the time in the world.

On Lethal, a regular Plague Heart is killed with:

15 .50 cal rounds/12 40mm grenades (iirc)
11 Fuel Bombs/15 Molotovs
3 C4
3 ignited Bloater Gas Grenades
1 Drone Strike + 2 Pipe Bombs

I think that unless you target its weakness, Black Plague Heart's resistance equals 8x damage (7.68 to be precise). So unless you fired ~120 shots with your .50 cal (on Lethal), you were targeting its weakness (then it's only 1.92x a regular Plague Heart in that difficulty).

You can calculate how much health a PH has got with this chart:

Lethal: 100%
Nightmare: 50%
Dread: 44,15%
Standard: 37,5%
Green: 30%

[Master Gnocco]

Just to wrap it up, I checked the weakness just for the hell of it even if I already "knew" it was melee. Ok, now I know it could have been something else, but it was melee anyway. I'm not even looking at nightmare or worse difficulty because life already has its share of trouble, games are meant to be enjoyable.