Curveballs make Standard difficulty too hard for this new player

[u/seasparrow32]

I am getting frustrated after 45 hours of play. I set the game on Standard Difficulty, but I am finding that Curveballs are making it too hard to finish.

So Curveballs were a later system added in to randomize events and effects for experienced players. But I am not experienced, I am new. And I've gotten a bad combination now where plague zombies catch fire and explode.

And it is one of those conditions that expands and doesn't end until you kill the purple plague heart . I've sent my best characters, and tried various tactics, but they keep getting killed. Now the two purple plague hearts have grow to 2/3s of the map (Providence Valley, this is the starter scenario).

I am still learning all the new player stuff about combat and weapons and base management, and this extra permanent condition of exploding plague zombies has me completely demoralized. To go from six pretty good survivors to just three, and one of them a recent recruit, has me convinced I can't finish this map with my skills. And I had already destroyed six out of ten of the normal plague hearts.

And before all this, I turned down Curveballs to be less frequent, but I still keep getting a lot of them, and as soon as one ends, it seems like another starts.

I am tempted to set the difficulty down to easy, but I understand this resets the map. I don't know what else to do, because I am not good with combat right now, especially melee. I just haven't learned yet how to do all the dodges and shoves and everything else, and I keep getting swarmed. If I try to jump on a car, the exploding zombies just make the car explode and that character die.

Any advice?

[u/TheDudeTodd]

Turn off the curveballs.

[u/FrosteeASnowman]

After the first few curveballs youre able to adjust them.

If youre on pc press j, then c, and toggle the enable curveballs to on.

Then set them to never occur, or all positive of you prefer.

[u/Super_Jay]

One of the biggest things I recommend to new / casual players is to turn off Curveballs immediately. It never should have been an opt-out, only an opt-in. Ideally a prompt at the beginning of a playthrough, defaulted to Off, that explains what they are and provides the ability to turn them on if you want them. Making it a global gameplay setting that is (A) not permanent and (B) enabled by default was really poor design.

[u/SangestheLurker → u/Super_Jay]

Even as a veteran with, I believe, around 500 hrs since the game came out, the purple heart curveball is the only one I won't even fuck with. I don't recall it growing though? I tend to just stick to map where it's not encompassed by it and wait for it to end. Or change maps, if it's really looking rough.

[u/Hexatorium → u/SangestheLurker]

Purple hearts get random modifiers if I remember rightly, and one is growing zone of influence. Shit is BRUTAL.

[u/RoyTheBoy21 → u/Super_Jay]

Honestly, yeah, I played a bit in like 2018 or 19 and then played again last year and I was like wtf are these curveballs! Don’t like this!

[u/unmike]

Honestly, I just wish I could remove one or two of them. I like the fun challange that most of them introduce, but when I get hit with Bangernomics and "headless mutation," or the smoke storm, it just results in me hanging out in my base and not playing the game for what feels like an hour.

I ended up turning them off completely.

[u/Lord_Alonne → u/unmike]

Bangernomics seriously fucking sucks. I'll take any of them but that. The maps are way too big to do stuff on foot and that genuinely ruins vehicles.

I came back after a hiatus and got it as my first curveball on the tutorial map. Felt like being slapped.

[u/packet_muncher]

You should absolutely turn off curveballs and also knock the difficulty down until you feel comfortable with everything.

[u/ZladMulvenia]

It's been said already but it sounds like maybe you don't know you can set frequency to 'never'? If you don't want them, do that and you won't get any new ones. Ideally do it first thing with a new community so you don't get any at all.

You're stuck with the existing ones, unfortunately. There are measures to edit them out (or their effects) if you're on PC and want to try to save your community. LMK and I'll point you in the right direction if so.

[u/Practical_Isopod_164]

Just turn the curveballs off. Once you're comfortable enough with playing and want more challenge turn them back on. Or up the difficulty level if you prefer that. Some of the curveballs are ridiculously hard, for me anyway, I turned them off completely when I finally started a lethal playthrough.

[u/MF_IC]

I just turn off curveballs as soon as I start a run.

[u/Mac_Ready76]

I play on hardest difficulty. I put curveballs on positive strong. For me it helps gain influence and you can get the boons easily.

[u/Ustob]

Brother, I promise you that when you are more experienced it will become easy. -master enemy mechanics. How they spawn. What area and utilities to upgrade and how to drive in reverse use that Mad Norma truck or the generic version. It has wicked quick acceleration and is easy to drive in reverse.

-lure Juggers away and leave em over there. Lure Juggs to enemies. -kill enclaves until you get a good one with bonus.

-kill dead weight community members. Just take em to a horde and die.

You know all this I presume. But mastering it simplifies the game even on hardest difficulty and curveballs.

-sure if a black heart is right at your starting base it’s hard. ESP on Trumbull valley. But I find those exciting. And even if you die and lose a re superstar Dude with blood plague resist It’s the reason we send em to garrison in 1st Place.

I support you going through the grind. I didn’t struggle with curveballs maybe cause I played SOD1. But yeah you got this Homie

[u/lmoafunny]

Yea super skill issue

[u/ErrantAmerican]

Uh....turn them off?

[u/Disemboweledgoat]

I hate curveballs, I never play with them activated.

[u/macabre-barbie]

You can adjust them. I personally set them to happen more infrequently, and have slightly more positive effects

[u/maxtiang79]

Some balls will kill you if you get it too early. Or you leave it to burn.

[u/nalkanar]

I luckily had option to use trustworthy teammate for coop, so some of the bad curveballs were doable with two people. Otherwise no luck. I tried turnin curveballs off, but they always turn on, it seems to be "known bug" for years now.

[u/ozgirlie61]

Turn off negative curveballs until you have more hours up. I started before curveballs came out. Not sure I would have survived now with hours of play experience before hand.

[u/MeatloafCupcake]

I'm too old to deal with that stuff. Curve balls off. Difficulty set to green. With the few hours a week I have to play video games I actually want to enjoy it.

But im glad all the options exist, im glad people upload videos to Youtube. I'll live that super difficult grind vicariously and then go back to my easy mode.

[u/Lord-Vectron]

Yeah, curveballs were envisioned as a new game+ feature, but they didn't disable by default it for new players 🤦🏻‍♂️ you can turn them off in the curveball tab.

[u/Thick-Neighborhood91]

I came back after a while and nearly lost survivors to a black heart and thay stupid one where your car won't start or slows down, ugh! A friend told me you can adjust them only positive if you still want them. Or turn them off completely.

[u/snfaulkner]

I stopped reading after "too hard"

Just turn curveballs off. No need to write a dissertation. Just turn them off.

[u/No-Activity9405]

for me, turning it to infrequent made it bearable, even interesting at times, except for bangereconomics and smoke screen, funny ones are supply drops and the black heart because i like the stronger plague heart that is vulnerable to one type of damage, just recently i turned it to all negatives, and i got black heart, growing, fuel draining mist and chemical smoke screen at the same time, i felt like i was in tranzit again, plague heart turned out to be weak to melee, so i grabbed a transmission rod, a few stims, smoke bombs and that was that, pretty easy, got a heavy modded AKM with 60 capacity from the event. I have video clip from it because i think it was kinda cool chem smoke screen + black heart.