7 days

[Vllad]

Well...

The 2nd purge was a disaster. I was on the roof, Slamz had turrets out front, Crice had them out back. We could see pretty well. 

Then. 

I got attacked by 7 birds on the roof plus some green dudes that spit from the ground up top. I died pretty quickly. Slamz and Crice followed shortly. 

Then like round 1, we ran around being chased for 30 minutes. The building was wrecked. They got in every room. 

After two Purges. 

Rule number 1. Never defend where you craft and spawn. 

Rule number 2. Build a place set up just to kill them. You start there so they come but if you die you spawn back at a crafting local. 

We burned every bit of ammo to fight it. It didn't help that they were inside so once you run out of gear there is no making more.

[Vllad]

For five or six people keeping everyone supplied in better food is a full time job. If you guys get meats etc, please bring it back. If I can keep up with Eggs we can now be supplied in Bacon and Egg meals. That will sustain in the long run.

If you see those nest please bring the eggs back. All food is important so we raise our max stats up to 200 if we can.

[Slamz]

Yeah that was pretty fun. I should have spent more time making bullets. (The bottleneck was actually the time it takes to make the casings.) Surprises were that I ran out of bullets and that my AK-47 broke (I had repaired it to full before the fight, too). We had a nice little kill zone on the front porch at first, with junk turrets being just good enough to cover you while you reload, but once that turret ran out of ammo things started to go downhill.

We need a better fighting position than a random house, though. Maybe claim a structure to get started and then work on building a fort next door? After dying or running out of ammo it was hard to get back into the house to get anything without dying.

It wasn't hard to get 1000s of all required materials for ammo, though. I turned into a miner. Any time you find a node above ground, dig under it and the node should keep going. I suggest marking your holes with a vertical column outside and/or a waypoint if it seems to keep going after you're ready to stop digging for the day. You'll want a metal pick and any sort of shovel (and plenty of food and water). If XP is turned up we could consider turning it back down because once you find an activity to get into, you can really wrack up the XP fast and someone was saying zombie difficulty is based on your level.

[Slamz]

Oh, and definitely look at upgrades for structures. Right-click bang on a wood structure with a stone axe to upgrade it to better wood. Bang on it some more and it will say you lack the material and show you a picture of what you're missing (which is not as helpful as just telling us what it is... you have to figure out what that's a picture of...) Next up from wood is cobblestone which is just clay and stones, which you will get tons of while digging out a large underground node. It's a huge HP jump up from wood. After that I think is concrete and I think you need a mixer for that.

I wonder if there's a case for each of us laying foundation blocks and having our own "houses". I assume similar to Conan, the zombie purge will pick one structure to focus on so maybe multiple structures is the way to go. Keep the structures somewhat together (like across the street) and figure out who's going to get it? Might be a bit tough to shift position once the purge starts, though.

I was actually surprised the zombies didn't do more damage. They seem easily distracted by players. They didn't blow up our bedrolls or really target storage or anything. I think what they blew up was incidental to trying to get to us.

[Crice]

Craft at our current place and find another place to meet at during the blood moon. We have some really tall structures down the street but of course that won't stop the horde. It seems like just getting naked and running until it's over is the only way. HA

[Vllad]

We built some towers at the army base. The idea is to use the mines there to help us kill as many as possible. Basically create a kill zone. It is a good distance from the supplies and house but an easy run back.

I think you are on to something about the multiple houses.

I found 2 bigger cities south of us with a big park in-between them. Maybe we build our kill zones in this huge park area and we can live in either city.

[Slamz]

We logged off with about 1-1.5 days until the next Purge. I got some more lead so there should be some ammo to be made. My small metal fort is complete too. Might want to take a minute to look around it if you decide to try it. Mainly wanted to see how it held up. There's a ladder on the inside that goes to a trapdoor ceiling. The catwalk outside will let you shoot zombies hitting the walls though I'd say that's a bit dangerous. You can get on the roof but that's probably not a great idea either. I think next time I'll try to build a control tower looking design with murder holes -- you can shoot through those bars but also stand on them.

[Vllad]

Brass is going to be an issue. No Copper and Zinc so... no brass.

Radiators are the best source other than trophies door nobs and etc.

One hidden source is light fixtures and sinks with brass fixtures. You can't wrench the plumbing that is brass. Have to bang on it. So far Glue and Brass are the two most used resources. At least with Glue we can make it.

[Slamz]

And we found that you get more brass melting it down than you do scrapping it. Maybe high tiers of the scrapper skill gives you the same or more but until then, bring the brass stuff back for melting in the forge (you just drop it until the input bin of the forge while it's turned on and it will convert it into forge material which can then be used on whatever, or extracted back out as "brass").

[Vllad]

In absolute emergencies you can melt down trader coin for brass

[Arsilon]

Some of the treasure quests can give pretty good coins.

[Arsilon]

Key perks to know about...given premium on things like food, brass and ammunition overall, I went through and noted some of the perks that we should be aware of who has and who doesn't so when we have a choice, let whoever has the perk harvest/loot/craft on your behalf.

The bonus to both speed and crafting cost makes a big difference in maximizing what we get out of our materials and how much time it takes to craft (and also as a result how much time we need to spend gathering/scavenging too);  Optimizing brass in particular seems to be of high import -- so make sure you have maxed out Advanced Engineering for instance before you click out any casings!  Similar to any other craft recipe, leverage someone who has maxed out the appropriate perk if you can before crafting it yourself.

I've put in parenthesis who I think has some of these, will update accordingly (or will build a tracking sheet *sigh*).  Note:  I didn't list the armor and weapons crafting perks in here as we seem to have been able to rely on what we scavenge up to now.

Perception:
Animal Tracker (?) -- tracked animals on your map
Lucky Looter (Arsilon) -- better loot when you open containers and treasure map location narrowed
Salvage Operation (Dophus) -- Wrench recipe unlocks and more yield with wrenches

Strength:
Master Chef (Vllad) -- Cooking recipe unlocks
Miner 69'er (Slamz) -- Tools recipe unlocks
Mother Lode (Slamz) -- Harvest (trees/ore/dirt) yield

Fortitude:
The Huntsman (Vllad) -- Harvest (animals) yield
Living off the Land (Vllad) -- Harvest (seeds) yield and seed recipe unlocks

Agility:
None (see note on armor/weapons perk above)

Intellect:
Better Barter (Arsilon) -- Improved trader prices and rare item availability
Advanced Engineering (Arsilon) -- Craft 'bench' speed bonus (forge, bench, saw, mixer, etc);  Craft bench and Electrical item recipe unlocks;  Forge/Electrical recipe cost reduction
Grease Monkey (Dophus) -- Vehicle parts recipe unlocks (and craft cost reduction)
Yeah, Science! (Arsilon) -- Chemistry station recipe unlocks (medical supplies, gunpowder, glue, etc.);  Chemistry station craft speed and cost reduction

[AnneWildcat]

I also have lucky looter, I believe. Later I’ll look and see what other perks I may have.

[Slamz]

Yeah I have 5/5 miner and mother lode. And I got that auger in the last zombie purge, which is amazing (but goes through a lot of gas). Keep your eyes out for oil shale (the kinda rainbow-shiny rocks).

I also have 4/5 in shotguns so I can make good shotguns. Shotgun parts can't be made and only come from breaking down other shotguns. So if you get any level 1-3 shotguns, I would just salvage them on the spot. Really true for any guns -- salvage the low tier ones and we can use the parts to make high tier ones, once someone gets the perk for it. Actually do the same for junk turrets. I can make level 5 ones. I would just break down any level 1-3 ones. I'm not sure if junk turrets are worth much if you don't pick up the perk yourself, since the perk also improves how good your junk turrets are, but it's hard to go wrong with a turret that shoots ammo you can make yourself in the field with nothing but scrap iron.

Also bring back any books you don't need or want yourself. I can only make double barrel shotguns because pump action needs a recipe.



During that last purge I sat in the top of Moria and killed everything that came at me. Had to refill my turret several times but the iron construction and especially iron spikes kept me safe. They're gonna need bigger zombies to get me out of there. The iron spikes take care of any zombies that aren't elite and they do a ton of damage before they break. If you're making a fort, those iron bars can be a pain to place but you can stand on them and shoot through them. Zombie spitters can shoot through them too, though, so I wouldn't stand there in a small cage with no cover.

[Arsilon]

I just discovered I can make Augors. Also discovered I can make both shotgun and machine gun turrets. Since shotgun shells don't require brass, that might be another option for point defense. SMG turrets are supposed to be really good but I can't even imagine how much ammo they must burn through.

[Vllad]

I will be going down the Heavy Armor past next in Fortitude. That means making better armors.

I don't think we should build turrets that require brass ammo. Slamz and I went over the plan for tomorrow nights purge. It requires a minimum of 4 people, 5 is better.

To me the best point defense is blades. They should be inside the spikes until they stop working. Turrets up top.


I guess now we know just how difficult the purges are when we are all on-line not playing rodeo clown.

[Arsilon]

We need to ratchet up our metals collection and salvaging for the parts need to mass produce blade traps...if we keep them to just the final inner ring of defense that probably is still manageable. One or two trips with higher level wrenchs should yield enough electrical/mechanical parts.

We can pull the generator to run them. We have enough spare engines to increase the power output to sustain. Based on what the wiki says, the generator as it currently exists can drive 5 traps. We have room to add more engines to multiply that 6 times at the expense of fuel consumption -- hopefully with that many engines its more efficient than the chain saw is. (to the point I question whether cainsaws are even worth the amount of fuel they burn -- perhaps we just need higher level ones if they even exist).

Regarding chainsaws, perhaps we use them as weapons when it gets down to the end and we're fighting close quarters?

Also, since we'll need power anyway for the blade traps, would we want electric fences too? Depending on how many traps we end up with we might not have the power to spare without a 2nd generator or perhaps using the battery pack as well?

[Vllad]

Having run into a fence myself, I was not impressed.

[Slamz]

Yeah I'm still kind of experimenting with building forms. Those "cages" made entirely of bars are a pain to snap correctly. It's far easier if you make the corners, at least, be the solid blocks, but that limits line of sight. The bars are relatively expensive, too.

There should also probably be an outer wall and an inner keep... maybe make the outer wall out of stone with the idea being that as they breach it, the breaches become kill zones with fire from the inner keep, and it won't be costly to make the wall out of cobblestone. I was going for:
Big enough that the boomers won't blow up too much of the structure too easily
Less "cage" and more "box with windows" to lower the cost and make it easier to build
Tall enough that someone standing on an upper floor hopefully won't die or lose their floor to boomers

Also have to figure out the strength vs cost aspects of some of these building materials. You can build metal and then upgrade it to concrete but I think you can also just make the iron rebar blocks and put the concrete on that and I think it's the same end result? Might be a big waste of time and resources doing iron blocks, especially if you're going to upgrade them to concrete (although iron is easier to mass build).

Also really need large flat areas to build on. In some future build it might actually be worth just knocking down an existing building and taking over that flat spot. I guess you could use the cement mixer to create gravel blocks or whatever to make a flat area but I'd bet demolition is faster. You could use an auger and probably chop any normal structure down in a few minutes just by going around the base and blowing up all the supports.


I also think everyone should carry shotguns as a reserve weapon, at least. Seems like we can produce a lot of that and in a sloppy fire environment they are pretty ammo efficient.

I think we came close to winning that last purge. As far as I could tell, the boomer that killed Dophuz and I was the last one.

[AnneWildcat]

I’ve had a horrid cold since Wednesday so haven’t been in game this weekend. How have the 7 day purge’s been?

[Slamz]

If you guys use my fort for the next purge, the thinking is basically this:

Start out on the walls. When you need to, get down and fight in the courtyard. Zombie breach points can become kill zones. If you fight in the shadow of the shotgun turrets, they can help you out. Any turret users stay in the top part of the inner cage and just manage turrets and look for boomers to target. (I think the M-60 might be a good choice for this. Get the bipod and laser sight and it's pretty accurate if you aim and burst fire. Put the ammo drum mod on it too if you have one.)

Towers are for temporary hiding if you need to heal or fix your weapons or need to otherwise try and get a handle on a situation. Generally stay mobile in the courtyard and keep the junk turrets going.

[Slamz]

P.S. I made a few grenades and played with them. Quite destructive to buildings but might be useful in clearing some of the harder areas.

Right click: pull pin.
Left click: hold and throw. More hold = harder throw.
Not clear: if you're still holding the lever after you pull the pin. Does the timer start when you throw it or when you pull the pin? You should definitely pull the pin and then stand there and see what happens and then tell us all about it.

You can also practice with them by left-click throwing them and NOT pulling the pin. It will just throw the grenade and then you can go pick it up, no worse for wear.

Did not try: throwing them through bars. Probably not advisable to use them during purges since you'd just end up damaging our own structures.

[Vllad]

Having tried to throw Molotov's through the bars I can confirm that won't work.

[Vllad]

We seem to be rounding into form as far as handling the Purges and general destruction.

Don't forget, we are playing with the training wheels on. We can take them off any time someone feels like the game gets easy.

[Slamz]

I was just coming here to post about that. I do think it's too easy now that we know what we're doing. I'm not sure how flexible the game is. The in-game server options didn't look all that extensive but maybe there's more you can do with ini files or mods.

My perfect world:

- Less XP
- Less loot
- Daytime zombies more frequent and more of a threat (faster, meaner, more numerous)
- Zombies more sensitive to noise in general. Shooting a gun in a fresh area should create problems.
- Mini-purges every night. Major purge every 7th night.
- Night time zombies cannot be outrun on foot.
I bet there's no setting for a "mini purge" though. I wonder what it would be like to set the purge down to 4 zombies per person but it happens every single night (maybe minus the blood moon effect, if possible), and increase zombie run speed. Basically when night comes, if you're out looting or whatever, you'd better find a strong structure to stand in and blow up all the ways the zombies can reach you because even 4 zombies nonstop is going to be a problem when they keep coming.

With a setting like that we might have to rely a lot more on melee and medicine because you just won't have the ammo to win every night by blasting shotguns in faces. In our current setup, the medicine cabinet is stuffed because we so rarely need to use it. Maybe 8 is actually bad because it's either "you're winning handily or you're dead".


I made my own server to dick around on one time when everyone logged early and the early game is brutal solo. I wouldn't mind starting over at some point but definitely needs to be 3+ of us on for that because it sucks going back to stone tools and no perks!


I wonder if there's a setting where if you die, everything on you is gone.

That alone might really spice things up. We're getting lazy because we never lose anything. We got boxes full of shit we have no use for because you're never going to lose your tier 6 fully modded M-60.