TheBrainfart

As you said there are different forms of zombie lore, and remember that little box that lets you edit zombie lore in sandbox mode? There could be an option in there, as for default it would be that they don't pull at your shield except on occasion, so maybe a percent chance that they will grab you/your shield instead of just trying to get their teeth into you.

It would take intelligence for a zombie to know to pull at your shield, and therefore throwing you off balance. My question is, if a zombie is smart enough to try to pull at your shield, why don't they just pull your bat, axe, etc. out of your hand? The way zombies attack you in most games and movies is that they put all their way on you, get a hold of you, then bite you. They don't pull at you to get you off balance. If you disagree go start up any zombie movie and check.

I was thinking that it would be awesome if we could destroy walls that are already there, and if you destroy the proper supports the other floors come down. You might think this would be extremely overpowered, but not if it took days to do and brought every zombie in the neighborhood towards you. Or maybe you want to renovate your house, and in doing so you break the wall that's supporting the entire building, and it all comes crashing down (or at least part of it) on top of you. This could be used if a house that you don't quite like is blocking where you want yours to be. It could also be used to gather materials, break walls inside your house to make more room, and also to pave a path for an easy way around town. This would allow you to basically change the town to exactly how you want, depending on how much time you put into it.

I'm going to address a few of the issues people have brought up, bear with me for a little. First things first, about the "blacksmithing isn't a trial and error process", with the addition of NPCs (In a future update) perhaps one of them could be a smith and train you. If not, books. Furthermore, everything can be a trial and error process, it just matters how much time you want to sink into it. I've seen a smith work before, sure alot of things are complicated, but nails? It takes about one minute to make a nail, and its one of the easiest things to smith. Also, this would address one of the issues i had before. There is a limited supply of nails on the map, albeit there's alot of nails. I tend to like to do a lot of construction, making a LOT of safe houses around the town, and i ran out of nails. And for if/when they add multiplayer, all of the houses etc. will get looted rather quickly, so you need to have some way to create everything you need (Farming for food, construction for shelter), and on that note, what happens when all the weapons are being used or broken? How do you get (or make) more *wink* *wink*. Lastly, you could have a blacksmith profession, which the benefits of would be obvious. Next, Muldraugh is not going to be the only town, and even if it was you CAN make your own blacksmith's tools. A lot of things don't even take an anvil, and for many of the things that do you can just use a hard, flat surface. Perhaps a granite counter? Obviously it would break eventually but not before you got a few tools out of it. Now to address the shields. First of all, zombies wouldn't pull on your shield, they aren't intelligent enough. Zombies just keep walking towards you and put all their weight on you, in which case the shield would be extremely useful for bashing them back. Also it could block a zombies attack as long as hes not right on top of you. Maybe you would even be able to put it on your back and it has a chance to block attacks from behind? Not sure if i missed anything, if there's an unresolved issue i didn't touch on feel free to reply, not sure if ill be looking back at this for a while though so sorry if i don't reply. In addressing the issue of it being loud, that's fair game. Its the same as with carpentry (which is also very loud). Sure its essential to survival, but there needs to be risks as well as rewards.