i don't know how game is now 3 balista they never come, 1 balista pulls from killing like 6 zombies here and there coming one by one from 2 screens away, but then mutants won't come to 30+ snipers and 3 balista... IT is so random that it is not even enjoyable

They come if they hear you or you get too close.

Harpies and Mutants are easier to noise aggro than other zombies, AND they have more watch(visual)range.

Visual range also determines how far away zeds can be noise aggroed, and Harpy and Mutant can come from very far away.
The default max noise aggro is visual range times 4.
Giant is the only one that can not be noise aggroed.

Now using 5 snipers or soldiers usually means you WILL get overrun by too much noise and die.....
Especially on the Desert map.

So wait till you have like 20 Snipers, soldiers, and use them near a walled-in ballista line in case you aggro a mutant, you can fall back.

And yes, noise aggro has some RNG as infected randomly scan a few tiles once every few seconds.

This also means not everything gets pulled at once, even from very heavy noise as some might not scan those tiles.

So if you are very lucky house getting infected will not pull many zeds.

1 Single ballista will very rarely pull a mutant, but very unlikely.

And YES, noise aggro having some RNG is bad, still the player has a lot of control over noise aggro management,

The game does ZERO explanations of how"noise" works, so I recommend getting a YouTube video.

ONLY zero noise way of killing zeds is the two trap types.
That is why player do wave 1 and 2 by luring waves into a trap zone with the ranger running around.

After that, Ballista is the best in terms of kill-to-noise ratio.


Understanding noise is crucial for harder difficulties and for the desert map, even on lower difficulties.

Snowmap has much less noise, and you can be far more lenient with map clearing, even early on.

Regardless of the noise game will send out random waves and later on, even attack waves from VODs.

Early game, they also need to be killed in low-noise ways, or killing them will cause noise aggro.

Killing too slow means infected will hit your walls too much, causing too much noise means you aggro more you also kill them in too much noise, so you aggro more.

Hardest difficulties will force you to understand noise, and too much noise early on means GG or you fall behind eco and GG by the next wave.

mutants can come, they also can ignore almost insane levels of noise.
when they do come, they come running and screaming collecting all the other zombies to run with them. which can be the bigger issue, because the mutant itself can probably be kited.

melee close combat would trigger them 100%... otherwise they are random. game a bit undeveloped

I feel the pain...I've spent years struggling with the second map till recently...this game is brutal lol.

I never really tried survival maps, I recently did the second one yeah 110% or whatever the default is.

the mutant disappeared from my map at some point. I assume it ran into my army and got killed. but I was looking and was like, where did he go?

900% Is reasonably impossible. even people whove been playing for years still fail around 20% of the time.