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Now, I know witches are already in Overrun, but they need some serious tweaks to compliment Overrun's gameplay loop if you ask me. They are far too easy to bypass or crown, which is a serious shame given the HUGE potential they have to shake up a survivor's strategy with a mutation that has them already moving slowly, scouring every room, and firing their weapon way, way, way more often than vanilla, so hear me out...
2) should have substantially more health to circumvent autoshotguns being cheesy witch-deletion weapons that basically do the same thing as crowning but with multiple shots at once (z_witch_health 2500)
3) should be able to hear gunshots from much farther away (z_witch_threat_normal_range 1500 ((which is actually the max for the convar, it simply ignores values higher than this in witch ai behavior)) and z_witch_threat_hostile_range 1600 which must always be a higher value than normal_range to avoid buggy witch ai behavior)
4) should anger much slower (z_witch_anger_rate 0.015)
5) should calm down slightly slower (z_witch_relax_rate 0.03)
6) should get angry from repeated gunshots/melee swings happening in her 1500 vicinity substantially faster (z_witch_hostile_at_me_anger 25)
7) should have substantially larger personal space (z_witch_personal_space 400)
8) should get angry toward survivors who are in her personal space substantially faster (already achieved by the z_witch_hostile_at_me_anger convar above)
9) should notice flashlights from twice as far away (z_witch_flashlight_range 800)
10) should get angry from flashlights in her flashlight vicinity substantially faster (already achieved by the z_witch_hostile_at_me_anger convar above)
11) should have a longer attack range to prevent witch swipes occasionally not hitting the survivor due to janky witch navigation or intentional ai manipulation via the environment (z_witch_attack_range 130)
12) should be considerably faster to make up for instances where she is triggered from much farther away thanks to her buffed convars as well as counteract ai navigation cheesing that buys the survivor more time in the chase without them actually running farther away (z_witch_speed 400)
13) should be substantially faster while burning (z_witch_speed_inured 350)
14) should take substantially longer to burn to death (z_witch_burn_time 50)
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Using the above convars, the witch I've meticulously built is designed to discourage any form of kill-based violence (gunfire OR melee swings, bashes don't count) in line of sight of the witch (up to a certain distance until she no longer cares). The range at which she can hear you shooting, spot your flashlight, or notice you looking directly at her are all significantly increased. The more you shoot a gun/look at her/shine a light at her while in her line of sight, the faster she will get angry. This forces a survivor to get careful and creative in how they clear out and then move through that area.
Contrary to the vanilla witch, this type of witch is MORE dangerous out in an open area, not less, as it enables her to utilize her giga-buffed activity detection ranges and lock down a larger region that will stunt your ability to defend yourself if you're too close and have nothing to break her vision with. Given her buffed speed, health, attack range, and uncrownable stat, setting an Overrun witch off without a plan is a guaranteed death sentence for even veteran l4d2 players. This results in the survivor being forced to pick off commons near the witch without upsetting the witch or being anywhere near her, thus limiting which angles they can use and at what distance they can do it.
In the spirit of what VALVe themselves always intended with the witch, there are multiple methods to deal with her but the most ideal is to sneak by and ignore her, so I've gone ahead and made sure that's how this one works as well, but it's no easy feat.
I fine-tuned the witch to just barely be able to be run past in a straight line with unbroken LOS should there really be no better options for you, but you cannot stop or you won't have enough time to clear her insane aggro range, and you cannot look directly at her as having your crosshair near her while you approach her will double her anger rate (which frankly I didn't even know until I built this new witch, so it should be mentioned as a tip for survivors). This extremely not-ideal approach requires that ANY commons that might have otherwise been in your way have already been picked off, and no specials are about to surprise you as you're doing your witch sprint.
For witches that spawn directly in your path and literally must be dealt with, you'll want a molotov and an adrenaline, as fire slows her down, but she will still be able to run much faster than you, meaning you'll need a fair bit of the map to run back through to survive the chase before she burns. Either that, or bring a weapon that can headshot her and stun lock her with bashes (deagle, sniper, etc). Due to Overrun's instant bash cooldown trigger though, this is still a VERY dicey and uncomfortable solution, but it works. If a survivor doesn't know how to headshot stunlock, they're likely not ready to handle a difficulty-boosting mutation like Overrun anyway ;).
2) should have their personal space drastically increased (z_witch_wander_personal_space 900)
3) should have their detect-nearby-violence auto-alert radius drastically increased (z_witch_wander_hear_radius 775)
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This results in a wandering witch that can see from much farther away, but will get angry slower, giving you a bit more time to try and figure out where you are being spotted from and break LOS with her. She also acts as a slowly moving LOS-based don't-attack bubble, with her hearing radius being smaller than her overall spotting radius. This causes the witch alert music to play when you enter her spotting radius, but still gives survivors a small and fair window to hear that music and stop firing if they currently were, so as to avoid unfair scenarios where the witch is immediately set off because a survivor didn't realize how close she was from a different direction.
She works similar to the sitting Overrun witch, where the main objective is keeping LOS broken with her, because if LOS with her is held, not only are you on a timer to break it, you cannot fire a weapon/swing a melee even once, or she will go off, which makes her even more dangerous and effective at shutting down a survivor's ability to kill commons than her sitting counterpart depicted above.
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I very much love this mutation and haven't found a better one since, but it always annoys me that it has essentially removed content from the game by erasing specials and, in my opinion, improperly utilizing the bosses for the way the mutation fundamentally alters the gameplay loop.
If you've read this far Overrun author, would you consider updating this mutation to have some sort of 'elite' version that includes the above changes? It'd make the mutation perfect in my eyes, balancing every aspect of all the zombies in a way that stays fair to the survivor(s) without outright removing the threats they pose entirely or falling back into the obnoxious vanilla meta of hurrying up or rushing through areas to avoid getting caught by director-triggered surprises.
Thanks!