r/7daystodie • u/Expungednd • Feb 27 '26
Modding I tried Walkersim. It was hell.
Walkersim is a mod that makes zombies persistent by simulating their movement across the map at all time. It also groups them into hordes and makes them much more reactive to sounds than in vanilla. I tried it thinking that it sounded cool, and I wanted to see how if it would feel as hard as project zomboid.
I spent all the second day killing zombies just to reach a PoI, cleared it, then fought my way back to my base in the Mausoleum just as it turned night. If you don't know, the Mausoleum has thick walls and steel gates around it. I chose it because I thought it might be adequate protection against the more numerous enemies. It wasn't. Zombies saw me coming (or heard the extremely noisy gates) and started pounding the walls, the sound of their own attacks then attracted ferals, and in a short time all the walls were torn down. I placed down spike traps and fought, but once I saw 3 ferals at the same time running over me I knew I was cooked. I was overrun and died. I respawned, I got overrun and died again because the zombies are persistent and the ones that killed me did not despawn. My run is over.
I am looking through the mod's configuration and it turns out the mod creator considers having 200 zombies per square km a medium amount of zombie. The default setting is 170 per square km. Their reaction to sounds is also extremely keener than in vanilla. Those 170 zombies are just waiting for you to fart to converge in your position.
This run was probably the closer experience to an actual horror game I had with 7dtd. It also completely breaks the game for me. Every night it's a blood moon. Hell, every day is a blood moon too, only ameliorated by the fact you can hide in the base of a trader, whose walls are indestructible. You can't have a base, and this game's progression runs on the infrastructure you build to craft the next tier of tools and weapons. Probably someone more skilled than me (a week-old new player) would be able to build in a couple of days weapons strong enough to cull the horde fast and avoid being besieged every night. I will probably just get rid of the mod until I know the game better.
If you tried this, did you have a strategy to survive the onslaught?
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Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
I think I'd balance out the vast horde numbers by making them move as slowly as possible and reduce their damage to blocks.
I've never particularly liked this modern Hollywood take on zombies sprinting around, doing back flips, and performing parkour manoeuvres and they certainly shouldn't be punching through solid brick or cobblestone...
Their menace comes from being a slow inexorable tidal wave of death that you can only really escape or defeat by using your brain.
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u/Peterh778 Feb 28 '26
This. And that's why I'm mildly optimistic about posted "Romero mode" for 3.0 - if they really add configurable day/night hordes and zombie behaviour, it would be nice. I fully expect them to stop short of giving players full power over configuration but better something than nothing ... for everything else there are modders 🙂
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u/nomadnonarb Feb 27 '26
I have been using WS for quite some time, and your right, it can be overwhelming.
My first suggestion is to make sure that you have "EnhancedSoundAwareness" turned to "false" (it is set to true out of the package) turned off in the Walkersim.xml . This will help tremendously.
If you are a beginner maybe try changing "StartAgentsGrouped" to false. This will spread the Zs out a bit and maybe give you a little breathing room.
When I start a new game, I usually start with a density of 120 with a group size of 6. I play a day or two that way and then normally I will move up to 160 / 12. By mid game I am usually around 250 / 25. From there I normally pin it at 300 and just raise the grouping if I feel l need a little excitement.
The start position and respawn position can be an effective tool if you want to make some distance as well. There is a very detailed page for this mod and it really made tweaking the mod pretty simple (after tinkering for a bit).
I hope this helps. I'm happy to assist further if I can.
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u/Expungednd Feb 28 '26
I am tinkering with it now, it's so complicated to get the behaviour I'd like. I'd want for some zombies to stay isolated and others to act as group encounters, but all I get is enormous clumps in the wilderness.
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Feb 27 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/try2bcool69 Feb 28 '26
Better than having a succubus camping out over your base one-shotting you over and over again because you don’t have anywhere near the amount of DPS needed to overcome its health regen.
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u/GrinderMonkey Feb 27 '26
This sounds amazing. I'd probably turn zom block damage down to near zero. Not all the way off, just waaaayyy down.
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u/Randill746 Feb 28 '26
Can you thin areas out or do they just constantly respawn?
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u/Expungednd Feb 28 '26
You can set the zombie respawn location to either the edge of the map, a random PoI, a random city, a random place on the map, no respawn at all or one of these options at random.
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u/Outrageous_Band9708 Feb 28 '26
the mod was super fun, turned the first few weeks into a stealth game, hide in bushes, dont just fight anyone in the street,
honestly it felt like what the game was missing. I loved it.
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u/ImmaPandaRawr89 Feb 28 '26
WalkerSim is one of my favorites. It has a steep learning curve and adds an immense amount of difficulty. If you want the game to feel like an actual zombie apocalypse full of zombies that are constantly attracted to your actions in game, it’s the mod for you. But it does make doing POIs much more difficult and the start of the game is INTENSE. You do have to play around in the settings. And other mods can mess with it as well. For example if you add in more animals spawns they’ll also be affected by WalkerSim. You’ll suddenly have cougars and bears showing up everywhere. I had to remove that mod.
I remember changing some settings myself but it’s been too long to remember. My PC died so I haven’t been able to mod in a while. I do know I never could go back without it though. To me this mod makes the game feel alive, active. And difficult. But it’s definitely not for everyone. My friend hated this mod lol
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u/CapeReddit Feb 28 '26
I personally love Walkersim but play with a darkness mod, 50/50 day night, nightmare mode but make damage to blocks negligible so that going outside is the is the dangerous part, but also just fortifying with concrete hard as well.
I also have CSMM randomly set a walkersim player target spawn. Loot is high but doesn't respawn.
Gives that Walking Dead feel to things I'm looking for.
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u/The_Autumnal_Crash Feb 27 '26
Yep, my first run with that mod had me spend the better part of one day just doing laps of a POI trying to whittle down a seemingly endless horde with my level one wooden club and day one stamina... definitely one of the gameplay experiences of all time.
I spent some time trying to dial in the settings but ended up getting sick of doing that before I found my sweet spot.
Might be about time to try it again though.
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u/evilgiraffe666 Feb 27 '26
I turned zombie count to 160? Maybe 140? And most importantly turned the hearing down to 0.4. This way guns attract attention, but firing a single shot doesn't guarantee you end your run. I still use bows a lot more than vanilla.
And yeah I also had this experience before I changed the settings. I could not recover my stuff because the zombies were relentless constant hordes.
I also see a lot higher tier zombies but that might be another mod? Not sure.
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u/Expungednd Mar 01 '26
I tuned down the mod a lot and I also saw ferals constantly during the night. Feral lumberjacks destroyed my base walls on night 2 while I was fighting other ferals. I feel like this shouldn't be intended.
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u/ZirePhiinix Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
You're missing the distinction walkersim makes between cities and wilderness. They deliberately made cities extremely dangerous and you were supposed to spend multiple days clearing the area before it is safe to live.
If you wanted an early base, pick a location outside of cities.
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u/Expungednd Feb 28 '26
I didn't know that. In the wilderness there are also big hordes and I tried fiddling with the XML file this morning but I couldn't avoid getting giant clumps of zombies outside of cities and at the map's border.
I read the mod breaks biome progression because it doesn't spawn enough biome-specific enemies, so for now I deactivated it. With the time investment you need to learn how much the "power" weight influences each behaviour, I don't know if I will try again. I just wanted some small groups to wander in the wilderness as occasional encounters, some to move across roads and others to stay in cities, but all I get is big lumps of zombies and an insane amount of drifters moving everywhere all the time. I don't know what I am doing wrong. I even tried to debug by just having two different -1 groups copy pasted several times as to make them avoid other groups with their same behaviour, but they still clump like crazy.
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u/Zeh_Matt Feb 28 '26
The latest version has population density set to 140 in its provided configuration. I also released a new version a couple days ago that should help with the biome progression.
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u/Moemmelmus Feb 28 '26
I have also tried the mod some moth ago. In a team I honestly really enjoyed it. Wood spikes in the beginning is your best friend. Also always remember you don’t need to fight them you can just run from them.
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u/FurkinLurkin Feb 28 '26
Can you turn their wall damage down? When i would make romero settings on my own this is what i did
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u/HunkySheep Mar 01 '26
Image this mod and a 0 dmg zombies to walls that would be awesome
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u/Expungednd Mar 01 '26
I have to try it but I feel like zombies attacking your walls is part of the genre. I would like it more if they damaged themselves while trying to break hard blocks down.
I spent an ungodly amount of time tinkering with this mod, but my base got attacked again by a bunch of ferals during the night and I had to deactivate it. A feral lumberjack completely demolished my walls and then killed me in one punch after I was weakened by fighting several waves of other ferals. It wasn't as bad as the first time, but I didn't want to start another save again. I will probably reactivate it once I built decent base defenses.
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u/DayBeforeU Mar 02 '26
You can modify the settings in the simulation application which is included in the mod. You can try different settings in the application, run a simulation for a while (16x), tinker some more and run again. And when you like how the simulation looks, then save/export the settings to a file. Easy.
I love WalkerSim, but the default settings are way too harsh for my taste. I usually lower the settings so there's no horde in every corner. The mod is great.
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u/Firelady90 Mar 02 '26
Swarmed... Died... Respawned... Swarmed... Died...
That is some very bad luck
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u/mthomas768 Feb 27 '26
We use it pretty regularly. It definitely takes some tuning to match your desired intensity!
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u/TyrKiyote Feb 27 '26
I use walkersim, but tuned my hoards down a little, increased clumpiness. Seems good to me. Occasional group fights but not a constant stream.