Looters! Thread - Survivalist

Looters are giving me headache. When I first took mission to clear looter camp game did not gave me any warning how difficult it will be. And I actually avoided that type of mission and attempted to level up a little bit by doing all other missions before taking it. I took my first looter mission only when there were no other missions left (and I needed money for insulin). I had 3 initial characters with weapon proficiency at 2 (one at 3 with skill book) plus NPC who gave me mission. We had 2 assault rifles and 2 pistols against 4 looters with one shotgun and 3 pistols. We got completely owned. I redid that mission couple of times but always got at last one character killed, no matter what I did.

Then I restarted game and equipped my characters (same group as above) with ballistic vests. Still got owned!

Then I stationed my characters and NPC who game me mission at some distance and lured looters out of the camp with my main character to the them. That finally did the trick but only to get us run it to roving band of other looters who picked my trail. There were 6 of them armed with pistols and no armour while my guys were at that time equipped with one assault rifle, two pistols and shotgun. All had vests. One of my characters got killed.

Any tips fighting these guys?

Which mission was this btw?

The looter mission given by Sarah Slaughter is a good one to start with as it only has 3 looters.

Apart from that, yeah I'd say you pretty much covered it. Get bullet-resistant vests, try to stay away from watchtowers, run behind upturned cars etc for cover. I think you had quite bad luck the third time running into more looters! Usually luring them away from their base results in zombies attacking them (or you) which can give you an opportunity to attack.

Thanks for reply It was mission given by Charlie Cashman.

What weapons would you recommend to bring to these missions? Does shotgun have some advantages over pistol given it loose power at the larger distance? Also is there any advantage of pistols over assault rifles? What about molotovs, are they any good against living targets?

Also would you recommend to recruit more members before starting these missions?

Excellent game by the way, very good job

Edited by: hruza

I thought it might be the Charlie Cashman mission, that one always seemed to me a bit hard for newbies. Maybe because it's on a hill and they have a watchtower or something. I may tweak it a bit sometime.

Shotgun's the same as most games (but not real life I suspect), i.e. powerful but short range and wide spread. Pistol is faster to aim so easier for characters with low firearms skill to use. Molotovs will make them run away and panic for a bit.

Have you figured out how to do headshots and legshots? Legshots will make them fall over, or fall out of watchtowers. Headshots will kill them faster. Either way will avoid their bullet-resistant vests, which you can then take off their corpses. Legshots require Firearms level 1 and headshots require level 3.

Yes I did figure to target different parts. I believe there is also tooltip for that. I did not know that I can knock them off the watchtower however, thanks for that.

As for Cashman mission, there is small road to their camp from other side which avoids watchtower. Using it made the mission bit easier. Perhaps it would be enough to make Cashman suggest to player to use it. Would give that mission bit more flavour, teach player to avoid watchtowers and would cost you just few lines of text in code.

You would want to elaborate it bit more, you could make some kind of area trigger in front of the camp which would make Cashman approach player and suggest him to approach cam from the other side. Something like "Watchtower is dangerous, I know secret path to the camp from the back which avoids watchtower" or something along those lines.

Also these missions, where you join somebody to attack looters should have suggestion somewhere in the dialogue to bring more members along. Those who play the game for the first time does not know how difficult these missions can be and when NPC recruits them to join his attack, they expect him to "know" that two people alone are de facto suicide. Since game splits party apart after returning back to bunker, it is very likely that first time player speaks with these NPCs, he is alone. When NPC ask him to come and clear looter camp together, player is tempted to think, OK, he must know what he is doing.

Yeah you're right I should give people a bit more guidance. I'll add it to my TODO list.

As far as I can tell from playing a couple of hours, looters who spawn on the map to attack your bunker often follow and chase your characters even if they are far away. It was early game, I had no military vests and just pistols. I immediately ran of to a Fort and they followed me even though they have never "detected" me. I was then protected there from the locals.

A wooden wall was burnt down in the fight with the looters at the Fort. Do locals repair damage after some time automatically?

Do looters actualy steal stuff from the bunker or was I just lucky?

If build a wired fence around the bunker, just a square right around with a gate and everyone inside the bunker, do they wander off or will they surround me waiting?

Damage doesn't get repaired, unfortunately (it's on my wishlist).

Looters can't steal stuff from the bunker.

If you hide inside the bunker I think they will surround you and wait.

This is correct Spawned Roaming Looters will just wait outside the bunker for you to come out. But here is some tips for dealing with the Roaming Looters and Zombies.

Tip # 1: Save Often Like every 5 to 10 minutes or less.

Tip # 2: The Roaming group thats spawns in, is randomized, so if you don't want to face a roaming looter group, Load the saved game befor they spawned in. This time around it may spawn a roaming zombie group instead, which can be easier to deal with.

Tip # 3: The spawned in roaming group tend to fallow the members they spawned in closest to at the start, but as your community grows tend to always head twards where ever you have the highest consentration of people. So for example, if you have 3 in your traveling group but 4 at HQ, the group tends to head for your HQ.

Tip # 4: Wait them out. None of the Roaming groups can get past wire gates and fences so replace the wood ones with wire A.S.A.P., and these groups are on a time limit until the next group spawns in. When the next group spawns in, the previous one will simply vanish. So if you dont want to fight them or cant get around and avoid them, simply wait til they vanish.

Tip # 5: Avoidance: Have a large wired gate and fence base, with multiple gates spaced far enough apart. The roaming groups will tend to continue going back and forth from one point and back to another when your totaly fenced in, so If they are on your south west side, you can enter and exit through a gate on the north or east side without ever alerting them or haveing to deal with them at all. If they are on the north side simply enter and exit through the south. No fus, no mus.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Always check the map befor you save. I have noticed that the game does not always inform the player that one of these groups has spawned in, so if you save befor checking to see if one is currently present on the map already, you may end up saveing the game after the spawn has already occured.

Edited by: tgbowman