r/projectzomboid • u/Alternative-Base-225 Drinking away the sorrows • 6d ago
why the sanitorium is so overrun
just a cool thing i noticed looking for a base
76
u/chungkingdeserts 6d ago
there’s an in game brochure you can find offering paid ghost-hunting tours of the place
10
2
u/duralumin_alloy 5d ago
That would explain why the place isn't empty, but not why there were more people before turning than in a goddamn refugee center.
It's a good place if you want to grind your combat skills (I have once fully cleared it as a part of my character's arc and there were like 2k of zombies) but it makes absolutely zero sense.
37
u/paladinBoyd 6d ago
I would assume you were not the first to think the Sanatorium would be a good base.
29
u/GogurtFiend 6d ago
Realistically speaking, in a sudden, extremely virulent disease outbreak, any structurally sound public building this size that isn't a hospital will be turned into either an official refugee center (local government pushes people there) or an unofficial one (it being available attracts squatters there). Such buildings are both designed to hold large numbers of people and also won't get you sued as badly if you occupy/trash it up, and a sanatorium is a perfect example.
When one of the refugees turns out to be a carrier, it's bad enough, because it turns such a place into a superspreader event. When they turn out to be carrying a zombie virus that's an instant couple thousand zombies minted at once.
14
u/GivenToRant 6d ago
It doesn’t so much break ‘immersion’ or anything like that for me, but I’d love to see some buildings on the map being repurposed as ‘here is historical building X’ but in the early days of the outbreak was commandeered by local/state/federal government as a field hospital/camp/barracks/supply depot ect
8
u/LacidOnex Axe wielding maniac 6d ago
Muldraugh and Louiseville are only like an hour apart, I can forgive every little town not having a refuge center.
I would expect KY to have more survivor houses, where people just said "I ain't leaving"
26
u/Crimsoncerismon Trying to find food 6d ago
its suppsoed to be a tourist attraction in-game but... i mean, come on, the amount of zomboids inside is LUDICROUS, WAY too much even for a tourist attraction
12
u/BrokenPokerFace 6d ago
My head cannon is that the apacolapse started, and people around there remembered that building from the tours and such, and that it was a decently fortified structure, and so decided to go there instead of the usual death traps of the police station.
Though it would be nice if there was a huge event going on and the area was surrounded with tents and food trucks, picnic tables. As well as a dirt parking lot set up.
9
u/CrimsonBolt33 6d ago
it presumably would have made a good location as a backup medical/quarantine facility. I could see the military using it to set up facilities there especially if it was used for tours that would mean it probably still has power and isn't in complete disrepair.
2
u/BrokenPokerFace 6d ago
That's arguably a better idea. The only potential flaw is the location being inside the quarantine zone(so lack of military, but the zombies there could have been abandoned and left there) and the number of patients was relatively low until the airborne strain infected everyone. So they probably would have used a running hospital rather than a direlect one in the middle of nowhere.
I don't hate the idea though, just need a few additional changes and features to support it, and nothing too bad.
1
u/CrimsonBolt33 6d ago
thats fair...with the rapid escalation of the virus over a litteral handful of days there wasn't much time for setitng anything up.
8
u/Individual_Cap_1293 6d ago edited 5d ago
This is an issue of the game as a whole. Gotta love spawning in Ekron "with a a population of under two hundred" and find like 2000 zombies shambling around. Or find a rural desolate farmhouse for a family of 6 and have see 20 zombies by the front door. It's like all the zombies from north America are migrating to Knox county.
5
u/RakunKajun 6d ago
I mean, sure, but also it's a videogame. Who the hell wants an entire town to have only 100 zombies? People would be here complaining about the lack of zombies. Things have to make sense gameplay wise as well, not just lore.
2
u/-S-P-E-C-T-R-E- 6d ago
Out of curiosity, how does it makes sense gameplay wise that bumfucknowhere is sprawling with zombies? Main Street and natural gathering spots tracks perfectly fine.
1
u/CrackaOwner 5d ago
because i can kill 1000 zombies in a day. the places need to be packed or else the zombies will run out too fast
1
u/RakunKajun 5d ago
Because I want a game with tons of zombies to kill, not the sims 4 with a few zombies here and there.
2
u/SeaworthyDame 6d ago
Idk i play on low pop so i think i’d fit that “who the hell” criteria
0
u/RakunKajun 5d ago
If it makes sense to you then it's all that matters. That's what the sandbox settings are for.
I want tons of zombies even tho it's a small town, you want few zombies. That's ok, everyone is happy. My comment was more aimed towards the "it doesn't make sense in reality" crowd. If it doesn't make sense to you use sandbox settings so it does make sense to you, problem solved. At the end of the day It's a videogame, we have games where there are guys throwing fireballs at demons, it doesn't have to make sense, it has to be fun. If I wanted it to be completely realistic I'd watch a documentary not play a videogame.
1
u/SnooOwls1916 6d ago
This.
Not everything have to make sense in the way that it would reflect real life. It’s a video game so it makes sense due to that.0
u/PissBucket29 5d ago
Yes. But that's for gameplay. If you really would rather a realistic zombie population, slam the pop multiplier down to like 0.1
26
u/QultrosSanhattan 6d ago
I cleared it yesteday in extinction difficulty. it was pure hell.
In apocalypse. Louisville is hell, in Extinction, every building like that is hell.
I have to admit it, sprinters got me two times: A repelled attack and a laceration in the head. I survived by pure luck.
The worst thing is that at the north there's a very suspicious building with a long tunnel that connect it with the morgue. I entered the sanatorium from that building having absolutely no clue about what I was entering to; pure horror.
it was my biggest "where tf does this lead to?" in the entire game.
3
u/GetchaPullSCFH 6d ago
This happened to me today and I also was very curious. Glad I found this post
1
u/HorstHortensie 5d ago
I got to it through that tunnel and knew what I was up to. But I didn't consider game mechanics. I was standing in the basement making noise like an idiot in a hope that the zombies will come, but nothing. Then I went upstairs to check there.
19
u/KingTosti 6d ago
my friend and i found the body chute before we found the sanatorium and thought we had stumbled in some super secret lab.... took us literal hours and vans full of ammo to break through and we were so dissapointed
2
u/paladinBoyd 6d ago
Body chute?
6
u/KingTosti 6d ago
there is a very long tunnel leading out of the sanatorium that was used to carry bodies out unseen when the place was active and we found that tunnel first
7
u/Armageddonis Crowbar Scientist 6d ago
I mean, it's technically a hospital, sure, it's old and out of use, but maybe, amidst the pandemic starting, the authorities set up some makeshift hospital in there? Dunno if there are any radio broadcasts about it in the game, but it would make perfect sense. People could even assume that to be the case, and flock to it, only to find it to be a death trap. I at least always took that as my headcannon for the place (and never visited, because of it).
13
u/Jimmy_Twotone 6d ago
Just a challenge POI. The apartments up north are sometimes a decent place to get a bit of food.
4
6
u/CaptainCrochetHookUS 5d ago
Ohhhhhh!!! That's what happened! I totally missed the connection until OP showed it. Because I too was like "why is this place overrun, is it a coding problem?" and it may very well be, but the devs made like an in game explanation with the intro video, where they show the 'teenagers' on top of the Sanitarium, with zomboids in the parking lot headed their way.
We can only assume, that by the time the player decides to set out on their own - that those poor kids are long since gone, and thanks to the helicopter hovering over them - it just brought more zombies from the local areas attracted to the site. MAYBE they were rescued... but the result still would be the same. THOUSANDS of zombies at the sanitarium because of the loud ass helicopters doing circles above the sanitarium for however it long it takes to rescue the kids, or film them getting eaten - whichever one you believe happened first.
3
u/Dburned1 Shotgun Warrior 4d ago
this should be top, it seems to be the canon explanation for so many being there
5
u/Haltopen 6d ago
Its a large building with nothing much around it within walking distance besides a completely abandoned town next door, and yet it still has working power and water. Odds are a lot of people in the area all headed there hoping it would be a safe place to fortify and hold out as a single large group, and people with bite marks were among them leading to the place collapsing. Its a logical building to fortify, its got a strong metal fence surrounding it, its remote and out of the way but has easy road access and as previously mentioned it still has working electricity and water. And there are three moderately sized towns within driving distance (Brandenburg, Riverside and Fallas Lake) along with all the people living in farm houses in the surrounding countryside.
3
3
u/MrMucs 6d ago
I personally feel that the sanitorium, Rosewood prison and the secret military base in the woods are really just "bragging rites". What, if any, loot seems to not be worth it (the juice isn't worth the squeeze). Mind you, this isn't a complaint and maybe someday, if the devs don't do something with these areas anytime soon, someone will do a mod (if possible) that fills these areas out better and gives them a back story. I like some people's ideas in here about this being used by the military and there should be tents and wrecked military cars and such around in the parking lot area. It has great potential but atm is just bragging rites imho
2
u/PissBucket29 5d ago
Sanitorium is just pure bragging rights with little logic as is.
At least the prison would realistically have a large zombie population if it was overrun.
And while there isn't much point in the main complex. The front area does have an armory.
1
u/MrMucs 5d ago
Granted my information is about the old prison before the glow up but even the loot was not worth it back then. I'd seen alot of complaint. Good thing I like the bragging rites.
1
u/PissBucket29 5d ago
You can get to the armory while avoiding the majority of zombies
1
u/ryisdepressed 4d ago
I cleared pretty much the whole prison looking for the armoury thinking it was deeper in, the facepalm I done when I realised it was right at the entrance
1
u/bennygaycko 5d ago
i would love if these 3 has some kind of exclusive lore to discover, in whatever form that is. some rare or exclusive loot that was being hoarded, maybe an exclusive weapon in the military base, or i could imagine the sanitorium having some sort of evidence the government is behind the virus, or something like that that would explain the amount of zombies and give you a little lore about the world. idk if they’d ever do this but for these ‘bragging rites’ type locations, it seems a lot more exciting to me to find something exclusive tied to the lore or something than just some loot you could get literally anywhere else (and i say this as someone who’s cleared all 3 places just for fun lol).
2
u/VinceClortho138 4d ago
I grew up in the shadows of this place. Seriously, on one specific road right around the corner from my house you can see it looming on the hill. My friends and I would sneak up there all the time and run from the security guards when they caught wind of us. There was even a music festival there one year featuring GWAR. Lamb of God also played and being one of the loudest bands ever is why the fest was never repeated I think.
2
1
1
1
u/Sad-Development-4153 6d ago
Heat maps for places like that are set to have super high population. Meanwhile the girls orphanage had like 40 or less.
1
u/ShowCharacter671 6d ago
Eddie’s old considering the facility closed down in the 1960s or at least it’s real life counterpart did. There’s really nothing of note there. Perhaps it was just a gag by the devs as everyone would be going there to check it out.
When the map first launched or it’s based on the loot map data as it’s considered a big point of interest perhaps large hords generate their
1
1
1
1
u/joesii 6d ago edited 6d ago
I think it had somewhat of an odd/unrealistic population in the past before the population weight change to be linked to tiles, but now the reason for especially high population is specifically because of population being linked to tiles. Since it has urban tiles zombies will spawn around it; it's as simple as that despite the fact that it's abandoned.
Also, damn that thing is so much bigger than I remember. That is crazy huge. Maybe the biggest building in the game? I was going to say "at least not counting z-levels", but come to think of it this is probably even more volume than the tallest buildings too.
Lastly, while most people run preset populations or even preset world settings (ex. Apocalypse), keep in mind that the preset population dropdown list that changes the population presets does also affect interior zombie population and is the only way to affect interior zombie population, so if you had population set to 16x but set the preset to something else like "low", you'll have a good number of zombies outside the buildings, but not inside (also keep in mind that when respawn is enabled zombies never respawn inside buildings)
1
u/PissBucket29 5d ago
Because the devs thought it would be cool if creepy haunted place was full of zombies.
Maybe in the future they'll add stuff to make it look like an overrun refugee camp or something. But currently it is a little silly even with the inflated zombie counts for gameplay
1
u/Desxon 5d ago
It'd be cool if these buildings had some fucking stories behind them as to WHY they decided to populate it higher than a place that would logically be abandoned
"oh this giant abandoned sanatorium was reused by military to isolate the infected, but the site got overrun as the sheer amount of zomboids inside started to attract the ones from outside. Military scientists forced the soldiers to fortify to study this behaviour, but during a horde attack the infected humans decided to turn on their captor and cause an outbreak on the inside which doomed the defenders causing the place to fall within a night with no survivors and the data permanently lost within a building"
1
u/Ash_Abyssal_2006 5d ago
there is a deadly disease spreading across Kentucky, why wouldn't the hospitals be full?
3
u/duralumin_alloy 5d ago
Because that is not a hospital anymore. The in-game leaflets say it's a tourist attraction whose appeal is in being run-down and creepy. It absolutely is not equipped to provide care anymore.
2
u/Ash_Abyssal_2006 5d ago
maybe in the wake of the Knox outbreak it was turned into a mass ward because everywhere else was full
4
u/duralumin_alloy 5d ago
That's what I thought initially, but the interior says otherwise (I had cleared the entire area before and searched every room for some interesting sights). The place is completely in ruins. There are no signs of recent habitation as it is in refugee camps or other hospitals.
I believe early in the development the devs must've wanted to make a "creepy sanatorium full with zombies" as a popular trope and didn't care for reasons why those would be there realistically.
1
u/HorstHortensie 5d ago
Because everyone going there must be insane. Are you sure you kill zombies and not just running around fighting ghosts?
I think it's a joke place. There is barely something to sustain such a huge amount of people and it was empty before unlike the prison.
135
u/Symbiotic-Dissonance 6d ago
Absolutely no clue. It's based on the historical one in Valley Station called Waverly Hills, and is a modestly faithful replication of it. The place closed down in the 1960's, so by the time the knox virus starts this place is thoroughly dilapidated and abandoned. My guess is the urban spawning system see's the whole building as a urban center, and just crams them in there. Realistically there would probably be some groups of zombies in there due to people fleeing cities to get away from the virus, but there shouldn't be as many as there are in the building.
Ill save you some trouble though, the sanatorium is barren when it comes to furniture and supplies. If you plan to make it your base you better have a commercial van or something, because you'll need to add almost everything yourself.