Dead Frontier

[Pinky]

I posted about this in the like/hate superthread, but this deserves it's own thread :O

Dead Frontier. Resident Evil rip-off MMO. Registration is a snap, but I had to search the forum (labeled Meeting Hall on the village screen) to find the controls.

Movement: WASD
Sprinting: hold shift
Switch Weapon: spacebar, or 1/2/3 number keys
Manual Reoad: R
Search Corpse/Cars/etc: F
Inventory: I (cannot perform when zombies are around)
Map: M (opens new tab, will pause game in single-player)
Multiplayer Chat: Tab
Pause: P
Place Barricade: B (hold next to door/window)
Outpost Mode: O

There are 19 character classes, divided into the type of roles they have in the game. Farmers and scientists can produce goods; doctors, chefs, and engineers that provide services; combat/survival-enhanced classes; and role-play classes that get bonus %XP. I chose the cop since he starts with both a knife weapon (1damage/hit) and handgun (2damage/shot), plus melee/handgun/shotgun skill bonuses. According to the wiki, the best beginner's class is the firefighter since it starts with an axe weapon (5damage/hit) that has a knockback effect, but the soldier is the most popular class despite -20%XP since it starts with +10 to all stats, machinegun skill, and a light machinegun.

Stats and skills are two totally different things. Stats are the character's ability to perform various functions in combat, while skills allow the character to use better weaponry. The Barretta Tomcat handgun requires 5 Handgun skill, but having 20 Handgun skill won't make you any better with it. Strength stat allows you to wear heavier armor and use heavier weapons; Endurance is for HP; Agility makes you run faster/farther; Accuracy, Critical Hit (x5), and Reloading stats are self-explanatory. Also, clicking directly on a target will make the attack more accurate, and being closer will also improve accuracy.

Hunger is sort of important. You lose 1% from your Hunger gauge every hour, and 1% for every two minutes spent in the city. When the character is in "Nourished" status (>74%) they get double XP, "Fine" status (74-50%) gets normal XP, but when they begin to get "Hungry" (49-25%) they only get half XP. At "Starving" (<25%) the character loses 1% HP every hour. Food recovers a displayed amount of the Hunger gauge, but works according to the character's level in relation to the food's nutrition level: a lvl 11-20 character that eats a lvl 10 nutrition food will only recover 1/3 of the displayed Hunger value, and being of a higher level will result in a third of the already reduced value.

Health is displayed as "Healthy" (>74%), "Injured" (74-50%), "Serious" (49-25%), and "Critical" (<25%). At Serious you lose 25% of your stats, and at Critical you lose 50% stats. Health does not recover naturally, it has to be recovered in one of several ways. First, medicinal items have a healing level that works exactly like food's nutrition level: the higher the character's level, the less effective lower-level medical items will be. Second, every time you return to the Outpost you will automatically go to the level-up screen to distribute your bonus stats, and doing so will recover all lost HP. Third, buy the service of a doctor to use your medicinal items.

Death is pretty harsh. You lose all cash that is on the character, and 50% of the XP you've gained during that particular journey into the city. Plus, there's a waiting timer with a length that is based on your character's level: the higher the level you are the longer it will take.

The Outpost- the main screen for the game, where you click on different zones to go to different places.
Meeting Hall: the forum.
Storage: the game's bank where you can safely hoard your money.
Records: top player records
Notice Board: a list of "missions" you can perform for $/XP
The Yard: spend money to upgrade weapons/armors or scrap items for small amounts of fast cash.

Then there are the two most important places

The Marketplace: player-operated market. all items in the game can be found here. there's a search function so you can find specific items, and a list function so you can search items by type (armor, handguns, rifle ammo, medical items). all ammo, medical supplies, barricade items, and food are much more popular (and cheaper) than weapons and armor. All money you gain from selling items is automatically transferred into your bank account.

Services provided by the doctor, chef and engineer are accessed in the Market. Take a relevant item in your inventory (food for chef service, armor for engineer service) and drop it on the listed serviceman's icon. Chefs will improve the Hunger recovery of foods and engineers will repair armor, in exchange for a fee that is set by the player. These items can then be used/sold later. Doctoring works a bit differently: you bring your medicinal item and drop it on the doctor's icon, and they "administer" it on you immediately in exchange for a service fee. You cannot take an "administered" bandage with you into the city for later use, and doctors cannot administer when they are traveling in the city.

You don't have to be logged in for the character to provide a service, but providing a service is tiring and thus limited. So, you can't simply set the price to a low level and wait for the money to roll in over time: a low-cost service provider will be swarmed with orders and be kicked off the list when he's no longer able to work. Then, players will have no choice but to use the more expensive providers.

The Inner-City: this is where the magic happens. The inner city is pretty huge, a 38x38 sector map with each sector being several screens wide and high. The Outpost is located at the center of the western edge of the map, and the very first and smallest sector (where you spawn when you enter) is always devoid of zombies. Beyond that, zombies in the immediate area are the weakest. A purple ">" shaped area fills out the rest of the western quadrant which is where the medium-difficultly monsters are, and where you first run into crows. The other three quadrants are overrun with the strongest zombies.

It's kind of difficult to tell some zombies apart at first. There are kids (easiest), females (easy), males (tough), fat zombies (toughest), and long-arm zombies (long reach). Naked zombies are slightly tougher than clothed zombies. Shooting a lot of zombies in a row will give you aggro and make the zombies move faster: they start slow, then gear up to normal speed, and then begin to run. The faster they move the more XP they give.

There are green or "irradiated" zombies, which randomly show up and are far stronger than the other zombies in the given area. They have enough HP to transition to full running speed before they die, and all of the zombies around them will also begin to move faster since your aggro will be high. Unlike regular zombies that disappear upon death, green zombies remain visible and can be looted. (good luck getting rid of the other zombies, though)

There are stationary corpses and broken vehicles that can be looted on the open streets. However, items are generally more commonly found inside various buildings: apartments, convenience stores, office buildings, restaurants, and public restrooms. It's easier to get trapped by zombies in a building, however, and the first time that I was killed was when a green zombie followed me into the bedroom of an apartment complex and a fat zombie came in after him and trapped me in a corner.

Players can setup their own "Outpost" in the city by placing a barricade on all first-floor windows and the exit door. Each barricade takes one bag of nails and one pile of wooden plants, placed with a claw hammer which has unlimited uses. Certain buildings are easier to barricade than others due to the number of windows, but once they're covered the zombies will stop spawning. You'll have to clear out the existing zombies, after which is when Outpost Mode becomes available. You can do most things in a Player's Outpost as in the main Outpost: use Storage, check Records, level up, and buy/sell with other players in the same trade zone.

[Jonathan Meer]

Looks fun. I'll probably dabble.

[Rafael]

Is there a map somewhere I didn't see? Howtf am I supposed to know where Millsborough is?

[Pinky]

When you're in the Inner-City portion of the game, hit "M" which will open a new tab with the map. That map has all of the locations named for you. The best time to review the map is right when you load into the area that has no zombies, so you can take as long as you want. When the map window loads it'll jump directly to the spot where you are, with a start denoting your location.

Checking the map while you're deeper in the city can be more difficult since you have to deal with zombies, and I generally only take a quick look at the map when I come to a fork in the road. When you accept missions, the map will have the streets of your prescribed destination highlighted in yellow.

Also, when you go into your inventory screen during a romp in the Inner-City, it actually takes your character out of the game. You cannot do it while there are zombies in the area, though. When you're doing tooling around in the inventory, you'll have to navigate back into the game and you'll be returned to the sector that you were last in. Since you left, all previously searched corpses/cars/etc will be refreshed so you can search them again. However, if you had placed any barricades then they will be removed.

[Pinky]

I'm having an awful lot of trouble soloing the "missing person" and "find the item" missions in the medium difficulty sectors. Although they don't force me into combat, the zombies in the middle sectors are a lot more aggressive and stronger than the normals, which makes searching a pain. It's much easier to do outright "extermination" missions, which temporarily clears a whole zone of heavy zombie activity. I try to pick combination missions so I can exterminate the undead in an area and then get on with searching, but that doesn't happen too often.

[Pinky]

My character's on level 14, and here's how the cost of death generally goes. Armor is busted and health is set to 20% for revived characters above level 10.

$400-600 for lvl20 medicinal items.
$180 for doctor's services to get the most out of the items.
$3-10 engineer services to fix my low-level armor.

Other expenses include a $100-200 for a cooked tin of level20 food (or $70-100 for cooking service on a salvaged tin) to recover from hunger. A full box of 12 gauge shotgun shells will also set me back by $2700-3000. These general expenses are regardless of death, but when hunger strikes and ammo is low around the same time that you die it gets piled on.

So, it's at least $600 up to about $1000 every time that I die, and several times that in a worst case scenario. I should probably join a clan so that I won't have to depend on random pubs or go solo so often.