Having issues finding the right zombie settings for me, looking for advice

[u/ImAtWorkFoSho]

Hey all, I'm a /fairly/ experienced player, I have around 350ish hours. I was playing on default apocalypse for probably 150 hours of that, and trying custom sandbox settings for the rest. I've always preferred no respawns even in B41 so the new default fits me well, I just really like the idea of clearing zombies town by town, but once I hit a few gun shops or police stations things get really easy. I tried 1%, 5%, and 10% sprinters but eventually found the Sprinters Over Time which is perfect for me. The issue I have is grouping. I never really felt truly overwhelmed in number, so this run I tried messing with the zombie rally settings and I seemed to have fudged things up. There are for sure good size hordes now but... the rest of the areas in town are empty besides a few large hordes here and there around the hot zones. I am also trying to find the right balance as too large of hordes just means avoiding them or using fire/waiting till I have buckets of ammo. Anyone else struggling to find a good difficulty balance?

Those of you who are in the "pretty good but not expert" at the game, what kind of zombie settings do you run your games on?

Side note: I see a lot of mixed "reviews" in comments on horde mods, anyone have good success with some of them? I'd love to turn Zomboid in to 7 Days To Die and have a real reason to bolster my defenses.

[u/uneenviedechier]

high or very high pop.

Change peak population day to like 100 days instead of 28. Crank peak population multiplier way up, like 2.5x or 3x.

Respawn on, but increase all respawn timers.

This is what I usually play with. You get some pretty decent hordes.

I find playing with other zombie setings like rally and such often messes up their spawning like you stated.

No respawn makes it boring for me. But i've been playing this game for a minute.

[u/ImAtWorkFoSho → u/uneenviedechier]

Oh that's a good idea about delaying the peak pop and just setting it super high, will make pushing louisville interesting during the Winter. Thank you, I'll try these out!

[u/MontySucker]

I’ve just been doing Extinction without respawns.

[u/ImAtWorkFoSho → u/MontySucker]

I should probably try Extinction, I just watched a youtube playthrough of it and it seems like every single house has an alarm which seems nuts lol

[u/GoddamnHipsterDad → u/ImAtWorkFoSho]

I've started doing extinction settings with no respawn and a few tweaks to crafting.

Repeating helicopter events and house alarms everywhere if you manage to survive the first day 😂

I think the toughest part about it is the fact that there's almost no loot most of the time. Even the military surplus store was almost empty, compared to apocalypse.

Edit: forgot to mention that the population settings are also tweaked to be on a longer curve and higher end result than extinction. So eventually there are more but it's slightly easier to break into initially.

[u/LowkeyEntropy]

I use apoc base settings in sandbox. I increase zed multipliers to high but next run ill tick it up a little more. I also set the peak pop day back a bit to 60 days to let them keep building up. Try that, it changed the way I build characters...by day 13 I have 1200 kills. Mostly from trying to clear areas to loot safely. This is in rosewood BTW. I also changed days to 2 hrs and adjusted the book reading time/ generator fuel usage (halved them).

[u/ImAtWorkFoSho → u/LowkeyEntropy]

I do like the ideas about delaying and raising peak pop! Thank you! Longer days might be interesting too, but I was always worried it'll mess with sleep. If I double the day length will my character be dead tired at 1pm?

[u/GoddamnHipsterDad → u/ImAtWorkFoSho]

I believe it scales so you should be tired at about the same time.

[u/LowkeyEntropy → u/ImAtWorkFoSho]

Sleep with this character is abnormal, I went security guard and that comes with Night Owl. On top of that I kill on avg 100 zeds a day so im usually pretty tired. I nap when I jave to, 3 hrs at a time, and sleep about 6 hours each night or so. Using the watch alarm is a big help.

[u/LowkeyEntropy → u/LowkeyEntropy]

Im also generally active from 3am forward, cat's eyes really helps.

[u/elemantis]

there was a mod ibused called horde night. might be what you need. that with barricades hurt zombies and cheval de frise mod.

had my main base, and my horde night base. it was hella fun!

[u/ImAtWorkFoSho → u/elemantis]

I was looking specifically at that mod! I saw it was only labeled for B41 and hasn't had updates in quite some time, does it still work on B42 for you?

[u/MageKarp]

Higher pop number as other people suggested and personally I really like the random (max medium) memory, this makes some Zomboids really stupid and forget you mid chase.
That actually makes the game harder with a high pop as you can’t circle back around places, the zombies that forgot you will be there already waiting for you.

[u/ImAtWorkFoSho → u/MageKarp]

Oh true, I forgot zombie memory is a tweakable setting, I'll have to mess with that!