Guides:Ghost Town Reclamation

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. These zombies were drawn by feeding groans and are looking for easy kills. Most feral zombies tend to shamble on after a couple of days when they realise there is no more survivor meat to be had. Ghost towns are self sustaining. Zombies pass through looking for survivors, and finding none move on, whilst most survivors enjoy sitting inside a powered building with 30 or so of their brethren. Whilst they are safe there is no overwhelming reason to leave.

Now believe it or not, Ghost Towns 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; I christen it Riotville

	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. Living or dead you primary goal is to find out where the zombies are.

A living scout with construction can find you the exact repair cost of buildings, that is their advantage, a zombie scout can go about his business unhindered by the living dead. His information won't be as accurate but its a personal preference.

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 zombie	Place

Looking at the scouting map of Riotville you notice several things.

• Only 10 zombies
• Clusters of zombies inside the TRPs
• Repair costs are pretty high
• Someone's barricaded the Junkyard.

Now only one of these points is important.

• Only 10 zombies.

Malton is a city full of Hospitals, Necrotechs and Factories. No one cares about a specific one. Wherever you're character is in Malton you're probably less than 20ap from whatever resource building you need, fully repaired and powered. Let the zombies have these for now. Whilst they worry about holding a building, you can reclaim a suburb around them.

Repair costs mean nothing. You only need to click "Repair" Once to undo days, weeks or months of ruin. The number is meaningless, merely the ruin state matters. That's what puts 99% of survivors off coming to the suburb.

As for the junkyard, its a single badly maintained building. In the overall theme of things its not really important. Its probably only like that because it can't be ruined. Your goal is the suburb, not the Mystery of the empty Junkyard.

There is no way that ten zombies should be holding an area of nineteen 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.

Equipment

Basically you all need a Toolbox and the Construction skill. Generators and fuel and needles for everyone, plus first aid kits if you get infected and the odd member carrying shotguns to shift the particularly stubborn Rotter.

Phase 2. Dying

Phase 2 is the key to reclaiming the suburb. You need a suicide repair run (I'm assuming five members). All five 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 leave all your groups members in Negative APs.

	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 zombie	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, ten zombies. Ten zombies who probably don't log in everyday, otherwise they would have followed the horde to fresh feeding grounds.

One of survivors' biggest flaws is that 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 a 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 APs. Then you return. Now remember those zombies that killed you? You've got two new advantages.

• You know their profile IDs (Contact List any zombies who ate you, infected you or ruined your buildings. Share this info with your team mates.)
• 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. The buildings you already repaired will have a very low repair cost, but to the average passing zombie, they'll still looked ruined and abandoned. Remember, we want no incentive for zombies to stay around.

	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 it's 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...

Now this is where it could all go wrong. You may discover a hyper organised zombie horde has moved in. (or more likely a major survivor group declares that they are about to reclaim the area, and every local zombies swarms over to stop them.) In this case its best to reassess your option and maybe think "Where have this horde moved from?" & "Can I repair there?"

If that doesn't happen, eventually Riotville will look something like this:

	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

Time for the next phase.

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 approximately 10 AP. It should take a zombie 40 AP to undo the same barricades. You can raise four buildings to VSB. Factor in the now-low repair costs and your five 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. With the rest of the group close by, you can begin coordinated attacks. One member can suicide repair whilst the others raise cades to protect them.

	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. Zombies 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.

In addition, if zombies are in a neighbouring block, lighting an NT is the perfect way to draw them out so you can sneak in and repair the adjacent buildings.

Further Thoughts

Remember that if you're combat reviving, that any building barricaded above VSB can be turned into a piñata. In the short term it's not necessarily an issue, but remember it's 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 these reclamations you can become more advanced. You could employ Vampire Tactics to avoid having to retreat to be revived, or start targeting those zombies 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.

Remember, if you want to discover the rough AP cost of repairing a building whilst a zombie, you can look at its internal description.

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 TRPs will create the perfect conditions for the spawning of new characters. Even if people stay in the area for only a day, it's one day where zombies have to work harder to make headway.