Dealing with Infected Mutants

[Arreghas]

In Survival Games, pretty much on every map, when I lose it's because I pulled in a Mutant before I was ready to kill him and got overrun.

On Nightmare levels of Infected, there are so many of them that expanding your base is a very difficult task. So far, every game I tried to play with Soldiers (who are good at fast clearing) have ended in defeat since I would always pull a Mutant, even when it's a whole third of the minimap away in another direction. This leaves me with expanding via Rangers, which is very slow. I'm also dubious about investing in more than 16 of them, since their power falls off very quickly and they tie up resources and manpower.

I've pretty much banned Soldiers from my roster at this level due to aggro. Setting up traps with 5-6 Ballistas is costly and slows my colony down, so it's not helpful. Pushing outward slowly makes my Colony evolves slowly and it's difficult to speed up the process when you have to carefully tippy-toe around the Mutants.

Should I just pop 30 Snipers ASAP and engage them head on instead of trying to be stealthy ? The best way I had of winning against them so far is to build 5 towers with 20 Snipers with walls and draw him in, where he dies rather quickly and the other Infected are manageable.

The real challenge is reaching that first milestone where you know you have killing power and then proceed to move from one Mutant to the next, but it's challenging me on Nightmare when there's 3 to 6 of them roaming around and being pulled by noise far away.

Thanks for any help !

[Andrewbh2003]

yeah exacly

you want to be able to clear mutants out as early as possible its possible to kill a mutant as early as day 10 "yes even on nightmare" if you have the right setup and a bit of generous RNG

mutants are the only thing holding you back early on "besides maybe a VOD" from snowballing so the sooner you kill em the sooner the headache goes away and the faster you can begin heavy clearing and snowballing

dont try to stealth around em "Unless you know you cant take them on" because due to there huge noise detection area and sensitivity to said noise you are sooner or later gonna pull them anyway regardless of if on purpose or not so better deal with em sooner rather than later

[Arreghas]

Day 10 you say ? Wow... I'm definitely not there yet. I'm assuming you do this with Ballistas ?

Would you mind telling me your early build order then ?

I am finding I really hate those Mutants. Just played a game where I set up 40 Snipers in towers in close proximity to one Mutant to draw him in and nothing happened. Then 9 Rangers from twice as far pulled a Mutant. Luckily it was recoverable, but I just don't get how they sometimes react and clearing them out feels paramount.

Any help would be appreciated. I truly find Mutants to be the make-or-break aspect of Survival. Even the Giants are non-issues, since you can clear around them until you are ready to pull them and they die rather well, even if it's stressful. Mutants can just GG you.

[Andrewbh2003]

Originally posted by Arreghas:

Day 10 you say ? Wow... I'm definitely not there yet. I'm assuming you do this with Ballistas ?

Would you mind telling me your early build order then ?

I am finding I really hate those Mutants. Just played a game where I set up 40 Snipers in towers in close proximity to one Mutant to draw him in and nothing happened. Then 9 Rangers from twice as far pulled a Mutant. Luckily it was recoverable, but I just don't get how they sometimes react and clearing them out feels paramount.

Any help would be appreciated. I truly find Mutants to be the make-or-break aspect of Survival. Even the Giants are non-issues, since you can clear around them until you are ready to pull them and they die rather well, even if it's stressful. Mutants can just GG you.

well how fast you can/want to clear mutants will depend a lot on RNG as ultimately map layout is what will determine your exact order of priorities

but regardless a few balistas and effective kiting with rangers for the horde can deal with mutants very effectively if supported

basically your first 5 days are gonna be a deciding factor as if you get a head-start somehow "whether it be a random food/energy crate a lucky mayor or gold drop" you can skyrocket your econ very quickly

once you get the 2nd mayor at 200 pop around days 7-11 "again depends" you should have the economy necessary to take down a mutant if you crank out a few balistas soldiers/snipers and rangers

for an in-depth look to save myself from writing a wall of text of elaborate details heres a link to what the community considers to be one of the best players doing a run on 900% maybe it can help you learn what to do "also this may have even be recorded before the mutant nerf"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhwSdcoR-gU

i also want to preface that due to the way mutants are implemented even the best player can get caught by one if the game decides to screw you over

[MockCongler]

Ok I guess I'm just a casual gamer here. I've loved this game since I got it in 2018. I used to regularly beat survival mode at around 220% and that was fun for me. But now there's these mutants, and suddenly, I can hardly even get past the the first wave. I've probably made about 10 attempts now, and decreased multiplier to about 150%. Still the same outcome. If I expand a little bit, mutant. If I get 3 noisy units together, mutant. This is simply unfair. The game is not fun anymore. The mutants do not make the game more fun, and if the answer is to change my strategy to somehow tiptoe around these enemies is simply unrealistic and not fun. I want my older version back. Am I never going to get to my old high scores ever again?

[Police man]

Yea I get what you're saying, you basically have to tiptoe around them until your get your army ready to take them out. At least the giants can't hear and they go strictly by sight. But its even worse on the desert map, they come running when a group of 10 soldiers are firing half way across the map near the command center, That has been my main issue is with that map with them