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Bandits in Louisville and Valley Station: outposts, hunters and how to survive armed survivors

Checked | 4 min read

Bandits are armed survivors, and on ZA-Z they live only inside the PvP danger zones: Louisville and Valley Station. Twelve buildings are held by bandit gangs, and gangs on the move come after survivors who linger on foot. They shoot on sight, they loot their own dead, and they drop everything they carry when you put them down. Nowhere else on the map will you meet one.

#Where are the bandits?

Only inside the two PvP zones, Louisville and Valley Station. A bandit that chases you out of a zone stops at the edge and is gone. They never set foot in Muldraugh, Rosewood, West Point or anywhere else.

Eight buildings in Louisville are bandit outposts:

OutpostWhat to expect
Motelthe hard one: Militia, every one of them with a long gun (rifles and shotguns)
Theatrethe other hard one: Militia again
Factorya mixed gang: handguns, melee, the odd shotgun
Officesa mixed gang
Farm storagea mixed gang
River road housea mixed gang
Warehousea mixed gang
Schoola mixed gang

#What about Valley Station?

Valley Station has four outposts of its own, all mixed gangs, and the same hunters as Louisville:

OutpostWhere
Community buildingon the road down from the Louisville gate
Motelnear the gun club
Restaurantjust south of town
Big storethe commercial strip to the south-east

Valley Station has far fewer zombies than Louisville (a few thousand against Louisville's hundreds of thousands), so its bandits last longer and its fights are with people, not hordes.

#How does an outpost fight?

Each outpost holds five bandits: two sentries outside and three defenders inside.

  • Sentries stand, sit and smoke around the building, and sleep between midnight and 7 in the morning (game time). Awake, they spot you at about 30 tiles; asleep, only when you are almost on top of them.
  • Defenders wait inside and come for you when you enter. Any of them will shoot at you through a window if they can see you within about 40 tiles.
  • Boarding up will not save you. Bandits smash windows and pull planks off barricades to get at a survivor inside a building.

The gang appears while you are still far away, so you never see it pop in. Kill all five and the outpost is cleared. It fills up again about an hour (real time) after it was cleared, and only while nobody is within 150 tiles of it.

#Will bandits hunt me?

Yes, if you stay on foot. Spend more than 20 seconds on foot in Louisville or Valley Station and a gang of three to five may come for you, starting 30 to 45 tiles away, out of sight. Then nothing more for you for 15 real minutes.

  • Drivers are left alone: hunters only come for survivors on foot.
  • No hunters come for you within 200 tiles of an outpost that is still held (the outpost is fight enough).
  • No hunters spawn where the zombies are thick: they would not last a minute.

#Do they ever run?

Sometimes. A bandit below about 70 % health breaks off and runs 100 to 200 tiles away, for good. A bandit that is outnumbered steps back a few tiles and then comes again. They also stop to bandage when they bleed and nobody is shooting.

#What do they drop?

Whatever they carry: their guns, their ammo, their bags and the rest of their kit. Briefcases can hold money. There is no stash crate: the loot is the bandits themselves.

#Where am I safe?

  • Your safehouse claim. No bandit ever comes within 45 tiles of a claimed safehouse, and none is ever sent within 60 tiles of one. Bandits do not wreck claimed homes, ever.
  • Outside the two PvP zones. They do not exist anywhere else.
  • Player-built walls are never broken by bandits, and bandits do not steal from your base, sabotage cars, crops or generators.

#What happens at a server restart?

A bandit still standing at a restart does not last: it is gone, or at worst it comes back as an ordinary zombie. Outposts that were cleared keep their timer and fill up again on schedule; the others are ready for a fresh gang the next time someone comes near.