Guides:Ghost Town Reclamation

Ghost Towns?

A ghost town is an area with little survivor or zombie presence. Normally they occur when a large zombie horde has destroyed an area and no one has tried to reclaim it. As the horde move on they normally leave a cloud of ferals in their wake. But even feral zombies tend to shamble on after a couple of days when they realise there is no more meat.

Now believe it or not, they are among the easiest places for survivors to thrive. Here's a rough guide on how to do it.

So here's a pretend suburb.

	54	55	56	57	58	59
71	Hospital	Building	Walk	Park	Avenue	Auto Repair
72	Monument	Plaza	Club	Railway Station	Street	Church
73	Cinema	Hotel	Hospital	Fire Station	Bank	Road
74	Plaza	factory	Building	junkyard	Place	wasteland
75	Fire Station	warehouse	NT Building	Building	Police Department	Place

Phase 1. Scouting

The First Thing you have to do is scouting. A single survivor who knows how to hide in plain sight could scout an entire suburb in a couple of days. You don't even have to be alive. Remember, if you want to discover the rough AP cost of repairing a building whilst a zombie, you can look at its internal description. You can even formalise your scouting on a wiki map like this one of Eastonwood. So lets say you've done that, as below.

	54	55	56	57	58	59
71	Hospital Ruined 18ap 2 zombies	Building Ruined 24ap	Walk	Park	Avenue	Auto Repair Ruined 37ap
72	Monument	Plaza	Club Ruined 1 zombie	Railway Station Ruined 36ap	Street	Church Ruined 34ap
73	Cinema Ruined	Hotel Ruined 40ap 1 zombie	Hospital Ruined 27ap 1 zombie	Fire Station Ruined 33ap	Bank Ruined	Road
74	Plaza	factory Ruined 32ap	Building Ruined 40ap	junkyard QSB	Place	wasteland
75	Fire Station Ruined 28ap	warehouse Ruined 32ap	NT Building Ruined 52ap 4 zombies	Building Ruined 28ap	Police Department Ruined 29ap 1 zombies	Place

Looking at the scouting map, you notice several things.

• Only 10 zombies
• Clusters of Zombies inside the TRP's
• Repair costs are pretty high
• Someone's Barricaded the Junkyard.

Now only one of these points is important.

• Only 10 zombies.

There is no way that 10 zombies should be holding an area of 19 buildings. Although numbers may vary this is a fair example of an area ripe for reclamation. Its time for you to move in.

As a group, you should have a rally point. The location is up to you, but it should be somewhere quite nearby with a maintained Revive Point, because you're going to get eaten. Quite a lot. At least to begin with.

Phase 2. Dying

Phase 2 is the classic suicide repair run (I'm assuming 5 members). All 5 survivors enter the suburb and repair the first building they discover that is empty. If targeting a Dark building don't forget you will need a generator and fuel. This will probably put all your groups members in Negative AP's.

	54	55	56	57	58	59
71	Hospital Ruined 19ap 2 zombies	Building Ruined 25ap	Walk	Park	Avenue	Auto Repair Ruined 38ap
72	Monument	Plaza	Club Ruined 1 zombies	Railway Station Ruined 36ap	Street	Church Ruined 35ap
73	Cinema Powered REPAIRED	Hotel Ruined 41ap 1 zombie	Hospital Ruined 28ap 1 zombie	Fire Station Ruined 34ap	Bank Ruined	Road
74	Plaza	factory REPAIRED	Building REPAIRED	junkyard QSB	Place	wasteland
75	Fire Station REPAIRED	warehouse REPAIRED	NT Building Ruined 53ap 4 zombies	Building Ruined 29ap	Police Department Ruined 30ap 1 zombie	Place

Now Normally standing in a building with no barricades for a long period of time is suicide, but remember, 10 zombies. 10 zombies who probably don't log in everyday, otherwise they would have followed the horde to fresh feeding grounds. Take it from me. I once repaired The Israel Building (Borehamwood), and that was a 360+ Repair. Survived it, and I didn't even have barricades for the first 4 days.

One of survivors biggest flaws is they generally play as if they were their character, and because of this, hate dying. The sooner you come to terms with the fact that dying is part of playing Urban Dead, the better survivor you will become.

It should be noted that your low numbers also give you another advantage. Being the only survivor in a building means that even if zombies do find you a feeding groan's range will be only one block, certainly not enough to attract large numbers of zombies.

We're going to take the worst case scenario. The zombies notice the repairs and horde over, killing you all and ruining the buildings again. You're dead before you even wake up.

	54	55	56	57	58	59
71	Hospital Ruined 21ap 2 zombies	Building Ruined 27ap	Walk	Park	Avenue	Auto Repair Ruined 40ap
72	Monument	Plaza	Club Ruined 1 zombie	Railway Station Ruined 38ap	Street	Church Ruined 37ap
73	Cinema Ruined 2ap 1 zombie	Hotel Ruined 43ap	Hospital Ruined 30ap	Fire Station Ruined 36ap	Bank Ruined	Road
74	Plaza	factory Ruined 2ap	Building Ruined 2ap 1 zombie	junkyard QSB	Place	wasteland
75	Fire Station Ruined 2ap	warehouse Ruined 2ap 1 zombie	NT Building Ruined 55ap 3 zombies	Building Ruined 31ap	Police Department Ruined 32ap 1 zombie	Place

Phase 3. Dying (again)

It takes you a day to stand up and wander back to that RP you set up or identified. Another day to get revived and to save up AP's. Then you return. Now remember those zombies that killed you? You've got two new advantages.

• You know their profile Id's
• They moved to attack you.

Only the most determined of zombies will fall back to maintain long term ruins. A feral will normally follow the meat. If yesterday he saw you in a hotel, he'll probably be waiting for you to return. You on the other hand will strike somewhere else. Repeat Phase 2 again. Ignore the buildings you have already repaired. Focus on other empty buildings. Try to link up a large area of low repair buildings if possible.

	54	55	56	57	58	59
71	Hospital Ruined 21ap 2 zombies	Building REPAIRED	Walk	Park	Avenue	Auto Repair Ruined 40ap
72	Monument	Plaza	Club Ruined 1 zombie	Railway Station REPAIRED	Street	Church Ruined 37ap
73	Cinema Ruined 2ap 1 zombie	Hotel REPAIRED	Hospital REPAIRED	Fire Station Ruined 36ap	Bank Ruined	Road
74	Plaza	factory Ruined 2ap	Building Ruined 2ap 1 zombie	junkyard QSB	Place	wasteland
75	Fire Station Ruined 2ap	warehouse Ruined 2ap 1 zombie	NT Building Ruined 55ap 3 zombies	Building REPAIRED	Police Department Ruined 32ap 1 zombie	Place

You'll probably get eaten. Again. Doesn't matter at all, just go and get revived and repeat again until all buildings discovered to be empty have their repair costs reset. At this point you've probably got the profiles of most of the zombies about. If you enter a building and its got a contact listed zombie inside without brain rot, you can always combat revive him to remove him whilst you repair the building. What could go wrong? You're probably going to be dead anyway....

	54	55	56	57	58	59
71	Hospital Ruined 23ap 1 zombie	Building Ruined 2ap 1 zombie	Walk	Park	Avenue	Auto Repair REPAIRED
72	Monument	Plaza	Club Ruined 1 zombie	Railway Station Ruined 2ap	Street	Church REPAIRED
73	Cinema Ruined 4ap 1 zombie	Hotel Ruined 2ap	Hospital Ruined 2ap	Fire Station REPAIRED	Bank Powered REPAIRED	Road
74	Plaza	factory Ruined 4ap	Building Ruined 4ap 1 zombie	junkyard QSB	Place	wasteland
75	Fire Station Ruined 4ap	warehouse Ruined 4ap 1 zombie	NT Building Ruined 57ap 3 zombies	Building Ruined 2ap	Police Department Ruined 34ap 1 zombie	Place

Phase 4. Standing your ground

So now is the time for a big push. Get yourself revived and get Barricade Strafing. A single survivor can barricade a building to VSB for approx. 10ap. It should take a zombie 40ap to undo the same barricades. You can raise 4 buildings to VSB. factor in the now low repair costs and your 5 survivors can do something like this.

	54	55	56	57	58	59
71	Hospital Ruined 23ap 1 zombie	Building VSB	Walk	Park	Avenue	Auto Repair VSB
72	Monument	Plaza	Club Ruined 1 zombie	Railway Station VSB	Street	Church VSB
73	Cinema Ruined 4ap 1 zombie	Hotel Ruined 2ap	Hospital VSB	Fire Station VSB	Bank Powered VSB	Road
74	Plaza	factory VSB	Building Ruined 4ap 1 zombie	junkyard VSB	Place	wasteland
75	Fire Station VSB	warehouse Ruined 4ap 1 zombie	NT Building Ruined 57ap 3 zombies	Building VSB	Police Department Ruined 34ap 1 zombie	Place

So now you've done that, you can forget about your fallback area. Pick a building and all pile in. By removing your travel costs you can now save up your AP for focussing on the harder targets. Start resetting those other buildings with pesky zombies inside.

	54	55	56	57	58	59
71	Hospital VSB	Building VSB	Walk	Park	Avenue	Auto Repair VSB
72	Monument	Plaza	Club VSB	Railway Station VSB	Street	Church VSB
73	Cinema VSB	Hotel VSB	Hospital VSB	Fire Station VSB	Bank Powered VSB	Road
74	Plaza	factory VSB	Building VSB	junkyard VSB	Place	wasteland
75	Fire Station VSB	warehouse VSB	NT Building Ruined 57ap 3 zombies	Building VSB	Police Department VSB	Place

Of course then, you have the difficult problem of the Zombie held NT. Zombie love to Salt the land when it comes to these places. Don't forget the wonders of NecroNet Access. Hook up and power a generator and you can Combat Revive all of them. Indeed a single survivor can revive four zombies and suicide repair the building on their own. Barricade them in nice and tightly and prepare for the zombie onslaught.

Further Thoughts

Remember that if you're Combat Reviving that any building barricaded above VSB can be turned into a Pinata. In the short term its not necessarily an issue, but remember its easiest to repair the empty buildings first.

Your biggest issue is Dark buildings. You will need Gennies and Fuel. Other than that a Toolbox, some needles and a few faks is all you really need.

As you get better at this reclamations you can become more advanced. You could employ Vampire Tactics to avoid having to retreat to be revived, or start targeting those zombie you know are the least active. If you were really flash you could set up flares or feeding groans to draw zombies out of the area.

Finally, think long term. A reclaimed ghost town is the perfect place for a new survivor group, so do everything you can to encourage survivors to settle. Powering VSB TRP's will create the perfect conditions for the Spawning of new characters. Even if people stay in the area for only a day, its one day where zombies have to work harder to make headway.