Overview
This is a guide for hacking the enforcers at the junkyard, but the same process can be used at other locations too.
About this guide:
This guide is long. I apologize for that, but I talk a lot. If you hate reading, sorry.
Unlike hacking the smaller robots (the scouts), the enorcers can kill you, and they’re really really really good at it too. A lot of this guide is a collection of strategies for making the hack attempt easier and more survivable, especially for people who might not have the max level weapons and armor.
Do these strategies work?
Yeah, they kinda work.
- This guide is focused heavily on the Junkyard POI location in the north west corner of Zone 4, but some of the information can be applied to enforcers at other locations on the map.
- This was all done on an official server. No cheats, no admin commands, no easy mode private server settings, like 100% damage reduction.
- I did all these hacks solo (just to repeatedly prove that they can be done solo), except when helping other players get their own enforcers.
- I will admit we did inherit some higher level gear from a person who stopped playing. That’s why I have level 3 plate armor, pump action shotguns, etc.
- This guide is the result of every screwup, mistake and horrendously dumb idea all boiled down… so that you don’t have to repeat them yourself. I lost three entire sets of gear, and died more times then I can even remember to make this guide.
- WARNING: This game is early access, and changing frequently. There’s a chance that some of the strategies or tactics will be made useless by future changes.
I reorganized the guide, and moved a lot of things to a “PROTIPS” section at the end of the guide. If you are trying to hack your first enforcer, skip all those sections. Most of that content is wacky things like hacking two enforcers at the same time, etc. It’s not useful to lower level players.
Why the Junkyard?
The Junkyard POI has some of the lowest level enforcers, about level 3-6.
Don’t let the low level number fool you, these things are crazy deadly. With the best armor in the game now (level 3 plate armor) I can survive about a half dozen shots from their guns before the armor is shredded, and their melee stomp attack will kill me in one hit, everytime. Every stinking single time.
- Junkyard’s outer fence will keep you from being swarmed by zombies during the hack. It forces them to come at your from only a few directions.
- The interior of the Junkyard is a maze, slowing down zombies coming towards you even more.
- Hills to the south let you see down into the Junkyard, so you can see how many enforcers are alive, and if they are awake.
- The two buildings to the north of Junkyard can’t be entered by enforcers, so you can run there for safety, or pull and kill them from there.
- The Junkyard is still in the PVE zones, so you don’t have to worry about getting shot in the back while doing the hack.
Once you get the hang of the hacking process, you can try it on higher level enforcers at other locations. Good luck with that. After getting killed so many times by the level 3-6 enforcers, I don’t even care about the higher level ones right now. Hard pass on messing with their bigger brothers.
The guns of the level 30+ enforcers will kill you in a single hit, even with level 3 plate armor on.
Map of the Junkyard
The scale of the map might be a little off here and there, but that’s the junkyard layout. The west end is an open parking lot. The east end is lower then the rest, and accessed by ramps that lead down.
Unless you have seized the junkyard and control it, all the doors in the mechanics shop will be closed. Of course, if you do that, no more enforcers spawn in the junkyard, and this guide will be really useless.
The position of enforcers is marked on the map too (some move in small patrols, some walk way back and forth). Throughout the rest of this guide, I’m going to refer to them by the number on the map (#3, #4, etc). I have my own nicknames for each spawn position, but I can’t put them here. They are not nice words. I have grown to hate each of them. A lot.
I hate #4 the most.
This is a view from the hills south of junkyard. Blocked by a lot of trees, so…
I cut down all the trees, so you have a better view!
West end, showing parking lot.
Eest end, showing lowered area with ramps leading down.
It is possibly to place tents near several low spots on the south fence, that will allow you to hop up on the tent and then make a running jump onto the fence. The tents used to last for a very very long time, but recently zombies are destroying them frequently right after nightfall (funny that’s happening now).
Be aware, you won’t be able to get close enough to place the tents without alerting the enforcers, and agro’ing them on you. This is best done either after you have killed all the enforcers in the junkyard for codes/motors/ammo, or during the actual hack attempt while the nearby enforcer has shutdown and gone to sleep.
Even if you’ve previously placed tents, I still recommend that you carry a tent in your inventory (if weight allows), just in case a zombie spawns right next to it and smashes it when night falls.
Tent outside the red metal shelving, just south of where the center enforcer patrols (#3). You can literally only place the tent right between the tree and fence. It will be red non-placeable east or west of that tree.
Tent at southeast corner of fences
Mechanics Shop & Military Crates:
The mechanics shop building at the Junkyard contains military crates.
Those crates contain some sweet sweet loot, but normally you have to have seized the Junkyard POI before the doors to the building open and you can loot the crates… or… dooooooooo you?
You can totally reach 5 out of 6 crates from outside, even when the doors are locked.
Uh huh. Yes you can.
Do this by walking up to the walls or doors, and then tilt your view down. Your head will pass through the wall, and you can see inside the building. With some careful movement, you can get a prompt for looting the crates to appear. Your ability to reach the crates can depend on what kind of weapon you are holding, which changes your camera angle. I was using a pump action shotgun, but other weapons will do the same.
NOTE: To get to all 5 of the crates, you will have to kill at least 3 of the enforcers that spawn in the junkyard, and possibly a 4th.
Two crates right behind the red double doors on the north side of the building, next to the POI generator.
West side of building, near the front, visible through a window.
This crate is behind the west wall of the building, to the right of the “firing slit”.
This is on the east side of the building, on top of some oildrums. It’s visible through the ruined rollup door on the east side, looking into the junkyard. You will have to kill the center enforcer to get here.
The 6th crate, in the middle of the room. The only one you can’t reach. The 6th crate was removed during an update, in order to add a the grinder (auto salvage bench), and the crafting table for making grinders at the Junkyard.
The crates will drop high end guns, like ak-47’s, Pipe rifles, grenades, and rifle, shotgun, and pistol ammo. They will occasionally drop low level stuff like sawed off shotguns too. Using this trick it’s also possible to reach a pinion mace, mining helmet, and a shovel.
Getting Out of Junkyard in a HURRY!!!!:
Okay, I showed you where to place tents to hop over the fence, but once you’re inside, there are only a few spots where you can get out of the junkyard.
So here’s some examples.
Of course, you can just run out of the junkyard using the 2 entrance gates, just north of the mechanics shop. Normally there’s an enforcer right outside those gates! You shouldn’t even step foot in the Junkyard unless you’ve pulled and killed it so you have this as an escape route option.
The huge scrap pile on the north wall. Watch out for the corners up against the wall, if you slide down into those little deathtraps, you will not be able to jump out. In that shot, one is blocked by the arm of the crane, sorry.
One of the deathtrap pits. I have found enforcers, armored zombies, you name it stuck in these pits. The one on the opposite side isn’t as deadly, but on several occasions I was stuck there sort of floating in midair, with my arms out. Like I was stuck in the middle of a jumping animation. You can get out of that eventually, but if you were being chased by an enforcer… well… not good.
On the east side of the big line of crushed cars that stick up from the south fence, is a yellow scrap bin. Jump on it, and hop onto the cars. Be careful you don’t over shoot, and land in the crack between the yellow bin and the crushed cars. If you’re being chased by an enforcer, that’s… bad.
That is the south side of the long ramp against the south fence. Run along that concrete lip, jump on the yellow scrap bin, the crushed cars, and over the fence.
Okay, this one’s a bit tricky. That’s the mechanics shop, the red metal shelves, and westmost scrap pile marked “zombies cannot cross” on the map. Jump on the red car, then the grey car, then jump diagonally to the red metal shelves. Once you’re on the red metal shelves you can run along them to the roof of the mechanics shop.
Help! It’s Chasing me!
Okay, you did it. You got too close an enforcer and now it’s chasing after you. Some things to know:
- They don’t give up.
First off, it’s not going to stop chasing you until it kills you, or you kill it.
If you don’t see it for a second, that just means it’s running all the way around to some exit. Or, it’s stuck in a corner running endlessly, trying and trying to reach you. Soon as you move somewhere else, it will slide one way or the other and get unstuck and start coming towards you again.
There’s no scenario where they just “give up”, and no timer on the agro. I lured one to a nearby base and it stomped around outside for over 2 hours realtime until I was forced to kill it. Enforcers that are on agro never shutdown and go to sleep, so until the agro is ended, it’s useless for hacking.
- If it’s a good spawn point, You DON’T want to kill the enforcer:
If you’re serious about hacking an enforcer, then every enforcer in a good spawn point you are forced to kill is just one less chance. Now you have to wait hours and hours for it to respawn.
Sounds crazy, but you want to let it kill you. It will end agro, and return to the junkyard. Just make sure you run far enough outside the junkyard so if you die, you can get to your body and get your gear back. If you are far enough away, open your inventory and quickly remove your armor and put it back in your main inventory. This keeps the enforcer’s shots from trashing your armor. Enforcer kills you, respawn, and get your gear back.
If you’re lucky enough to own a base nearby, just run inside and remove all your gear and put it in a container first. Then go outside and let the enforcer kill you.
- Scrap Piles:
The two big rusty piles of scrapped marked on the map as “zombies cannot cross”… guess what enforcers can’t cross those piles either. By crossing over the scrap piles, you can take a major shortcut, and in most cases force the enforcer to take the long way around through the junkyard. On some occasions, enforcers will leap right to the tops of the piles of crush cars, but that’s actually kind of rare.
Cutting across the scrap piles can give you the time you need to reach the main gates, or one of the other exits.
- Enforcers can’t fit through most doors:
Enforcers can’t fit through standard doorways, so the two buildings across the street to the north of the junkyard can be safe places to run.
- Enforcers can get stuck between 2 trees or other objects:
If you see two trees very very close together, run between them. There’s a chance the enforcer will wedge itself right between them. At the NW corner of the mechanics shop, is a red barrier pole. On several occasions, when I took a sharp turn going around that corner, the enforcer got stuck there. Be aware, when I say “stuck”, the only reason it’s stuck is because it’s trying to follow you, and running in place. If you were to double around it, it would immediately turn and attack you.
That is one of my tamed enforcers stuck between the Junkyard signpost and the NE corner of the fence, just to give you an example. Cut through the gap, and make a hard turn, and wild enforcers can get stuck there. If you shoot them with a shotgun, be prepared for the knockback to actually pop them out, and when they charge back up, sometimes they just go around the pole.
What you need to start the hack:
Like the UA Scouts, you need to have certain items and materials in your inventory to start hacking an enforcer.
- Hacking Tablet
- 1 Enforcer Activation Code
- 1 Electric Motor
- Mechanical Parts (bring 20, quantity required depends on enforcer level)
- Power Tools (bring 35, quantity required depends on enforcer level)
- Gasoline
- Rifle Ammo (optional)
- Tent (optional)
- Hacking Tablet:
Hacking Tablets can be found in military crates, or crafted from 1 laptop and 6 powertools at any workbench. Each tablet is good for 10 hacks.
EDIT: After recent patches, laptops are now much harder to find as loot. They were apparently completely removed from the loot tables of zones 2 or higher. The best source is apparently the houses in zone 1 way west of the high school, around the lake.
- Enforcer Activation Codes:
- Electric Motors:
Both are drops looted from dead enforcers. It possible to get both a code and a motor from the same dead enforcer, or multiples of either, or none. Totally random.
- Mechanical Parts:
- Power Tools:
quantity of each needed for the hack depends on the level of the enforcer (they go from 3-6 at the Junkyard). A level 3 needs 13 mechanical and 23 power tools.
Bring 20 mechanical parts, and 35 power tools just to make sure.By the way, behind the two buildings north of the junkyard is a loading dock where boxes full of parts spawn. You can get mechanical parts, power tools, makeshift parts, springs, gears, canned meat, and other things there. More then you could ever carry. it is just inside the PVP zone though, so be warned.
- Gasoline
Without gasoline you cannot start up a successfully hacked enforcer. Gasoline does spawn on the red metal shelving at the junkyard, but bring some of your own just in case it’s all gone.
- Rifle ammo:
Ammo the enforcer’s guns fire. If you hack one, slap some ammo in his inventory, and let him do all the heavy lifting from then on. It’s good exp for the enforcer to kill the rest of the zombies. Rifle ammo is also found on the red metal shelves in the junkyard, unless someone has recently cleaned it all out.
- Tent:
Just in case one of the tents placed earlier is destroyed by zombies. Seen this happen twice now, right after night fell.
Other then these items, you need the weapons you plan to use to defend the enforcer. Make sure you can run and jump well, as some of the strategies I suggest will require it.
If you own a shelter near to the junkyard (like I do on my server) I found it a really good strategy to have a box with nothing but these materials in it, in the exact quantities, ready to go. I open it, press R to loot all, and I have everything I need for the hack. Avoids embarrassing situations, like finding out halfway there that you have a full stack of 50 mech parts in your inventory, and you’re moving like a dead tortoise and can’t jump well.
- Hacking Tablet:
Weapons for killing Enforcers and Zombie defense:
I have +125% ranged damage, so take that into account on weapon suggestions. If you have lower ranged damage, your mileage may vary.
KILLING ENFORCERS:
- The hands down winners for killing enforcers are the shotguns.
They say “35.00” damage, but that is per pellet, and they shoot a lot of pellets. A lot.
The Hunting shotgun
- 2 shots, super slow reload.
- Does knockback effect sometimes.
- Very tight pattern (small circle) and hits enforcers like a freight train.
- Best used from a safe place, like pulling enforcers to a building. The low ammo capacity and reload will get you killed in the open.
- Recipe to craft it unlocks at level 30.
Pump Action Shotgun:
- 6 Shots, slow reload.
- Does knockback effect sometimes.
- Widespread pattern (big oval), so sometimes pellets miss main target.
- Best choice if fighting enforcers in the open, Spray and pray you kill it first.
- Can be found in some houses in higher level zones (zone 5, etc). Crafting recipe unlocks at level 39.
ZOMBIE DEFENSE (During the Hack):
Pump Action Shotgun: If you have one, good for the whole fight.
SMG, or anything higher (Ar-15, AK-47, etc).
SMG’s are really the entry level weapon here, and you should have plenty of rifle ammo for it from killing enforcers.
EDIT: After the most recent patch (1-22-2019) something is wrong with shotguns. Regular human zombies up close can run through multiple shotgun blasts unharmed. Shotguns have been fixed now!!!, they are super effective again. Will slaughter what you’re aiming at, and many of the zombies behind it too.
Preparing for the hack:
The five enforcers that spawn at the junkyard are too close to each other.
Any attempt to get near one has a very high chance of alerting others. If you like having gunfights with 8 foot high death robots in pitch black night, leave all five of them alive. I don’t, so I suggest you kill some of them to simplify the problem. They take hours and hours of real world time to respawn, so that gives a long time to hack the remaining ones.
Kill 3 of the 5 during daylight hours. Leave 2 of them alive. Yes, this is going to reduce the chances that one of them goes to sleep (more robots = more chances each night) but after getting killed about a dozen times, and losing three sets of gear, this is what I do now.
I suggest killing #1 and #2 in the east parking lot, and #4 on the south side. Leave #3 and #5 alone. Those are your best hacking candidates.
#3 and #5 are so far apart from each other, that you can approach either of them without alerting the other (by hopping over the fences using the tent trick, see the section of the guide with the map). This gives you two chances that one of them will go to sleep each night.
They are also inside the junkyard walls, and this will prevent zombies from swarming you, and channel the zombies to you from one direction. Of those two, #3 is clearly the better choice if you see both asleep. The junkyard is like a maze, and many of the attacking zombies will get stuck trying to path to you, and you will have plenty of time to finish the hack, and let the enforcer help with clearing out the rest. With #5, the zombies have more of a straight shot to that location, you will have to a kill a lot of them by yourself.
If you have a group helping you, consider leaving one of the parking lot ones alive as well (3 chances one goes to sleep instead of 2). With a large enough group, you could leave all five alive, and just kill whatever ones don’t go to sleep. Or consider my wacky method of conserving some of them by agro’ing them away from the junkyard for the rest of the hack (see “PROTIPS: Conserving Enforcer Spawns” at end of guide)
Why kill those other 3 enforcers?
#1 can detect you from all the way out in the parking lot when you try to get close enough to hack #3. He used to be able to jump on top of the mechanics shop, and hop right down where #3 was. Not sure if he can still do after recent changes in a patch, I really don’t care to find out. Kill it.
#2 is too close to the south edge of the fence. If you are trying to hop the fence with the tent trick to get to enforcer #3, in order to hack it, you will most likely be detected by #2 as well.
#1 and #2 are also so close to each other, that if you alert one of them, you often get both chasing you.
And besides, they make horrible hacking candidates because they are out in the open in the middle of the parking lot. If you try to hack them you will get assaulted by zombies from all directions during the defense. Hacking them can be done (I successfully hacked #2), but it was really really really really not fun. So if you don’t plan to hack them, kill them, get them out of the way.
Then kill #4.
Man, that one moves way too much. He goes from the middle of the junkyard all the way to the southeast corner. If you are trying to hack #3 or #5, he will get close enough to detect you, and attack. So eliminate the risk of getting interrupted during the hack, by eliminating his shiny metal butt.
Single Player Game:
If you’re playing this game in single player mode, then I highly recommend you reduce the hack down the lowest risk possible:
Kill 4 of the enforcers. Leave only #3 alive, in the very center of the junkyard.
That one is the easiest to defend. Zombies only come from one direction, and many of the attacking zombies will get stuck in the maze of the junkyard. You will deal mostly with the regular humanoid zombies running at you, some lickers, and a few poison and brutes (ones that appeared on top of the crane, or managed to get through the maze).
Since there’s only one enforcer alive you will probably have to camp it longer, waiting for it to go to sleep. But if the only enforcer left alive does go to sleep, the junkyard will be as quiet as a ghost town. You can start the hack in pretty much total safety (I have only seen a zombie inside the junkyard on one occasion before the hack started). The biggest risk during the hack is gone: hostile enforcers charging in and attacking you… they’re all dead already. You just finish the hack, and then just concentrate on the defense! burn them zombies down!
For anyone playing this game single player on what is basically a multiplayer server, man, my hat’s off to you. Playing this game in single player mode is like an ironman challenge. I made this guide mostly FOR people playing single player. You need the enforcers. you need the help badly.
Pulling and Killing Enforcers:
This information is also useful to people who are just trying to kill the enforcers for codes and electric motors, or farming them for rifle ammo. If you’re careful about the pulls, you won’t even get shot at, and you can kill the enforcers even with low level weapons and armor.
Easist way to pull the enforcers in the parking lots (#1 and #2) is go the buildings across the street north of the junkyard, shoot them from the doorways with some longe range weapons and then let them come to you. I use a pipe rifle now, but I’ve done it with other weapons, and even a compound bow.
This screenshot is of the the westmost of the two buildings across the street from the junkyard.
They can’t fit through the doors, and you can just blast them point blank. Be careful as they will try to move back and forth to get an angle to fire at you through the doorway. If they are standing like they are in the screen shot above, they can’t shoot you. If they suddenly shift to your right, yeah, that could happen. Just move farther towards your left, they will shift back again. The ultra careful way to kill them (if you such low level armor that even a single shot will kill you instantly) is to just shoot them right as they are in the screenshot above. Half the pellets from the shotgun will hit the wall, meaning you will have to fire repeatedly. It would even be possible to kill them with much lower level weapons this way, it will just take a whole lot of shots. I have killed them with bows before. Not even going to tell you how many arrows that took, but it can be done.
One last thing about the doorway (once again, in the westmost building north of the junkyard). See the cardboard boxes, pallet, and folding chair to left the doorway in screenshot above? Something is wrong with the collision on those objects, if you are in the doorway and move leftwards into them, it’s like hitting quicksand. I’ve been shot a few times because of it. With level 3 plate on, it’s annoying at best (oh no, I have to repair my armor a tiny tiny bit now). With lower level armor on, you are probably dead dead dead.
Then pull #4.
I used to stand on the hill southeast of the junkyard and shoot #4, and you could pull him easily. He would hop over the fence easily, and chase you. But that is sort of a problem now.
Since a recent patch, enforcers have a lot of trouble getting over the junkyard fences now, so pulling #4 is much harder now. People were hacking enforcers, then jumping the fence and running away without killing all the zombies spawned during the event, so the devs fixed that: Enforcers can’t jump the fence anymore. #4 will get stuck somewhere in the junkyard, and can’t navigate out. You now have a hostile enforcer in the junkyard, so kiss any hacking attempts good bye that night. Remember what I said about how they never give up. He’ll be running in place in a corner, and as soon as you move to a location where can navigate towards you, he will be coming for you. Until you kill him, or he kills you, he will never ever give up.
Follow the path in the map shown below. Stay far away from the eastern fence, or you can agro enforcer #5 too. Cross the street, with the orange wall on your left, and run around to the back door of the closest building across the street from the junkyard. You will have to cross into the PVP zone to do that, but the front half of that building is in the PVE zone. By the time you run in the back door, he will be running up to the front door (that is why you have to go for the door on the north side of the building, not the door facing the junkyard). I have 160 stamina, and I can run there in plenty of time, even when dropping back into a trot to recharge stamina.
He seems to be getting stuck on the wall a lot now. In this screenshot, I had to take a second shot at him to get him unstuck and coming at me again.
Same deal as the others, shoot him from a doorway.
Are they Asleep?
If an enforcer doesn’t shutdown at night, there’s no point in going near it. You have to know if it’s asleep or not.
If an enforcer goes to sleep, it happens pretty much at 21:30 game time.
You can see the in-game time by hitting the “add” button (the + sign on the numpad), which temporarily displays the extended hud.
If the enforcers are still walking around after 21:30, they aren’t going to sleep at all that night. Pack it in, go level up, craft, salvage, etc.
The best view of the junkyard is from the top of the hills to the south. It’s a relatively quiet area.
The nights in game were recently shortened, in order to make the days longer. Apparently, the length of the day and night can’t be more then a certain number of minutes (24 I think), or it causes problems with the game. So, you want to be in place near the junkyard, and ready to go before nightfall. There isn’t time to run all the way from some shelter, or across the map anymore. So plan to be standing somewhere near the junkyard, as night begins. The screenshot above is a pretty good place, nice and quiet.
Just be careful of all the pop-in spawns at dusk (at 21:10) in the surrounding areas, and look out for the super fast running zombies since the last patch.
But from up there, you can move back and forth and spot the enforcers moving about in the junkyard. This is also the reason I suggest placing the two tents on the outside of the south fence, because I always start each hack from on top of the hills to the south.
How close can you be to an enforcer, and still have it go to sleep? you tell me. No one has a clue. I can tell you from experience, I’ve seen them go to sleep from right where I was standing in that screen shot above. The chance of them going to sleep is so random, that’s there’s a lot of superstitious nonsense about what you have to do or not being doing for them to shutdown. It’s just random. As long as you aren’t so close that it starts coming to kill you, I think you’re good.
After night falls, of course you won’t be able to see anything anymore. So here are some methods for figuring out of they’re asleep.
- Method 1: Run up to it in the dark, if you hear big stomping metal feet and gunfire, guess what, it’s not asleep. By the time you hear the feet stomping, you have agro’d it. Run away, kill it, etc. If you have to kill it, wait hours and hours before it respawns again. This was the method I used over 40 times, and another player on my server did over 90 times. This method is like pulling the pin on a hand grenade, dropping it between your feet, and hoping it doesn’t go off. It sucks. A lot.
- Method 2: Fire a flaregun! they have flareguns in the game! Oh, wait, they don’t actually make any real usable light, they are totally broken at the moment. Heavy sigh.
- Method 3: If only there was some other method of seeing a little better at night. Oh, the whole problem makes me so mad, I just want to smash stuff like the hulk! Yeah, hit me with some of that radiation so I can hulk out. What kind of radiation was that? I forget.
Hint: it’s method #3. It’s all about method #3
The Hacking Process:
If you have already hacked the robot dogs, the UA Scouts, a lot of the enforcer hacking is going to be very familair… with the exception of one huge curve ball at the end.
You have to complete the hack, find and delete the file “REGISTERLIST.ML” before sunrise, or… well, I assume it wakes up and kills you. I’ve never waited to see what happens. As long as the hack is finished before dawn, the actual taming process and zombie defense can go on well after dawn (and will).
Assuming one of the enforcers went to sleep, and you got over the fence safely, no other enforcers is stomping over to kill you, and everything is quiet, you should see something like this.
Ready your hacking tablet in your hotbar, aim at the sleeping shutdown enforcer and press “E”
Type “Y” to start the hacking process.
Enter the “crack code” (enforcer activation code). Any codes in your inventory are shown on the screen. It doesn’t have to be in uppercase. Be aware, the font they use is a pain. B’s look like 3’s, S’s look like 5’s. etc. If you aren’t 100% sure about a code, bring multiples codes. If entered correctly, text spools down the screen and it goes to the next step.
Enter the IP address and Port, as shown on the screen. Use the top one, doesn’t really matter. The first 4 groups of numbers are separated by periods (three periods). After the 4th group, add a colon, then the port number. Hit enter. If done right you see text spooling down the screen again. On to the next step.
Now you need to find the file “REGISTERLIST.ML” and delete it.
When you find it, type “DEL REGISTERLIST.ML” and hit enter. It doesn’t need to be in upper case, I just did that so it’s easier to read.
But… wait… what… where’s the file???!!!!
I see what you did there, tricksy dev’s!
It’s not in the root directory, it’s in one of those folders that are marked “folder” up at the top of the screen. In the screenshot there, they are “BOOT” and “MANAGER”. The folder names are randomly chosen each hack, and the “REGISTERLIST.ML” is in a random one. So time to go hunting.
Type “CD (foldername)” and hit enter, to go into the folder. If you were lucky enough to find the file in the first folder you checked, then use the command “DEL REGISTERLIST.ML” to delete it, and the taming process and zombie defense will begin.
If that folder doesn’t contain the file, type “CD ..”
Cee Dee space period period.
That takes you back up one folder. Try another folder quickly until you find the file
On the example shown here, I found it in the second folder I checked.
Once you delete that file, you will see a box with two bars appear over the enforcer. The top bar is the enforcer’s current health, and the bottom bar is the progress meter for the taming process.
The taming process has now begun, and so has the zombie attack.
Defend Hacked Enforcer From Zombies:
So, get ready, you have about 5-10 second before the first zombies come at ya’. I’m not kidding.
Since this is Zone 4, expect to see all 4 types of zombies. Regular humanoid, poison, spider/lickers, and the big armored “brutes”. Every server seems to have different names for these things!
This map shows the path zombies will take if you are defending enforcer #3.
Zombies will come from only one direction!
This is the spawn path if you are defending enforcer #5.
You get attacked from two directions. No bueno.
This why I keep saying enforcer #3 is the best hacking candidate, but you take what RNGesus gives you. If #5 went to sleep first, you roll with it. The ones coming from the south are actually spawning on top of the crane (they appear in midair and fall down on it).
if you are trying to defend enforcer #5, there’s a really good spot that gives you a good view of both directions: stand on the yellow scrap bin shown on the map above.
This puts you just high enough to see the heads of zombies to the west as they run towards the top of the ramp (except for lickers, which you will pretty much only see when they appear right at the top of ramp), and you can look to the south and see right between the red metal shelves and the red minivan. If you shoot to the south, some of your bullets will hit the red metal shelf. Being on top of the yellow scrap bin is a little protection from lickers/spider zombies if they leap at you. They slam into the side of the yellow bin, then have to crawl up towards you.
If you have to hop down and shoot a regular zombie that slipped by and is attacking the shutdown enforcer, you can do that quickly, and get right back on the yellow scrap bin very quickly.
Those are the spawn patterns for those two enforcers. If you hack a different one, each different enforcer has it’s own pattern of zombies that spawn far away from it, and then home in on it from both inside and outside the junkyard.
Zombies cannot seem to cross over the two large piles of rusty scrap metal that divide the middle of the junkyard, though you can stand on top of them and shoot down at zombies.
If you are doing the hack solo, I don’t recommend doing that though (see the part about zombies running inside enforcers hitbox below). If you have friends helping you defend, they can park on the tops of the piles, and thin out the zombies as they pass by.
By the way, enforcers can’t cross those scrap piles either. If you’re being chased by one, take a shortcut over the scrap piles, the enforcer will either have to go the long way around through the junkyard, or in some cases will be jammed into a corner running in place (trying to follow the shortest path to get to you).
You CAN Damage the Hacked Enforcer:
Until the taming proces is finished, the hacked enforcer still counts as a hostile mob.
You can shoot it, and you can damage it.
Also, because of the fact it’s still hostile, if you have a tamed enforcer with you, and that enforcer is on “aggressive” stance, it will try to kill the enforcer being hacked.
Not 100% sure, but it looks like the stomp attack of a tamed enforcer does no damage to a sleeping enforcer being hacked. One of my tamed enforcers I brought into the junkyard slipped the leash and stomped the sleeping one 3 times. No damage at all, but it does knock the sleeping enforcer around like a hockey puck. I have had my tame enforcers hit sleeping enforcers several more times now, still no damage to the shutdown enforcer (before it was hacked, or while taming process was underway).
Zombies Can Run Into The Enforcer’s Hitbox
- Zombies can run into the hitbox of the enforcer. They can end up inside of the enforcer, and be very very very hard to hit after that without damaging the enforcer.
This has been the number one cause of failed hacks for me so far. Some regular zombies simply can’t be shot once they’re inside the hitbox of the enforcer.
The biggest threat there are the regular humanoid zombies, they are your number one targeting priority!
They can run directly into the center of the enforcer. You will just see their heads sticking out of the top of the enforcer. Yes, it’s a bug.
The lickers can kind of do the same, but only the front half of their bodies will overlap into the enforcer, and their nasty frog legs will be sticking out behind. You can shoot their legs easily. I have no clue about the poison and armored brutes. Not a single one has ever reached the sleeping enforcer.
If one does end up inside the enforcer, use a low damage weapon (pistol) to carefully shoot the zombies heads. Of course, more and more zombies are showing up to attack it the whole time you are doing that.
If you have a pump action shotgun you can shoot the enforcer, and use the knockback effect from the shotgun to bounce the enforcer back, leaving the zombies exposed. Don’t aim square at it, but a little off to the side so not all the pellets hit it. Yes you will damage the enforcer, but probably not enough to kill it. If you can’t kill those regular zombies inside it’s hitbox, it’s dead anyways. Don’t try this with the hunting shotgun, the pattern of pellets is too small and tight, you will do way too much damage to the sleeping enforcer.
In that screenshot, I’ve shot the enforcer twice with a pump action shotgun, and only did that much damage (the top bar is the health meter). There was more damage then that, but it was already healing when I took the screenshot, andit healed to max about 4 second later.
Hostile Enforcers Interrupt Hack:
If other enforcers are still alive in the junkyard when you begin the attack, there’s a very good chance they will interrupt the hack.
#3 is the most likely to do this, as the zombies will enter the junkyard just north of it. It can detect zombies it cannot even see through the walls. It will agro on a single zombie, and run through the whole entire junkyard trying to reach and kill it, and go right past where you may be defending enforcer #5 during the hack. Enforcer #5 is less likely to run to the center of the junkyard, where you might be defending #3, but it has happened on several occasions. #5 will either chase regular humanoid zombies who run past him from outside the junkyard, or he will come to shoot the zombies that spawn on top of the crane.
So if you see one charge in, open up on it. This is your one chance to take some free shots at it. The enforcer has a one track mind, and won’t even realize it’s being shot at for a few seconds (it’s only focued on reaching and killing that one specific zombie). I have killed enforcers before they even knew I was shooting at them.
Plus there’s always the chance it was coming there just to shoot at you, be firing at the other enforcer as soon as you see it!
If it does reach and kill that one zombie it was targeting, it then tries to return to it’s home position on the map, but will agro anything along on the way back. That can be you. So if it runs past and you don’t kill it, get ready, it’s coming back.
If you are doing the hack with a group of friends, I highly recommend that some go and simply kill the other enforcer(s). possibly before you’ve even begun or finished the hack.
Hostile enforcer still alive at the start of the hack can also get glitched out and stuck places while they are running around trying to reach zombies, but you can’t depend on this as a reliable tactic. I have seen them get stuck on top of the crane, on the fences, etc. But it’s more likely they will come charging in on you during the hack. Plan for it.
If it does “glitch” out and get stuck, I recommend you leave it alone. Make sure the newly tamed enforcer doesn’t shoot it (set stance to anything but “aggressive”). After you get the newly tamed enforcer out of the junkyard, see the section on “PROTIPS: Resetting Glitched Enforcers”. If you reset the glitched one, you can have another chance to hack that one on following nights.
Defend until Taming Progress Bar Fills:
Keep defending the enforcer until the bottom bar fills up. Watch that bar, because when it fills up and ends, a box pops up on screen asking you to name the newly tamed enforcer, That box freezes you in place, and blocks most of your view (surprise!). And every single time, it’s at the worse possible time, zombies barreling down on you. Just spam anything into the box and close it, you can rename your tamed enforcer anytime you want, as many times as you want, whenever you want later on.
If you think the progress bar is getting close to finishing, you might want to hop up onto something like a car
Finally! a good shot of the pop-up window for naming the newly tamed enforcer!
Activate the Newly Tamed Enforcer:
Aim your crosshairs at your newly tamed enforcer, which will still be shutdown on the ground.
Press E to open the enforcer’s inventory.
- Add gasoline
- Add rifle ammo
- Click “Startup” button at bottom center of inventory screen
- Exit enforcer’s inventory
Your newly tamed enforcer will now be standing upright, waiting for your orders.
If you aren’t being attacked, aim at the enforcer and hold E to access it’s control menu.
Change stance to “Neutral”. Now if anything runs up to the enforcer and attacks it, the enforcer will stomp and/or shoot them on it’s own. You can now relax for a second, catch your breath, reload weapons, heal up, etc. Other then that, an enforcer on neutral will not go charging off on it’s own. It will only attack zombies who attack it first.
If you are somewhat familiar with controlling robots, and you feel more adventurous, you can change stance to “Aggressive”. On aggressive stance, It can also be very hard to control it, and it can go beserk and run after things, so you might want to skim the rest of the next section on controlling enforcers.
Controlling Enforcers:
There are keyboard shortcuts for some of the controls.
- T = “Move to/Attack to”
- Y = Stay Put/Follow
- U = All follow/All stay
- T is like a “heel” command to a dog. It will make the enforcer stop what it is doing, even attacking, and move to the targeted location. It makes a huge glowing blue arrow and circle marker each time you use it. Once an enforcer reaches the destination, it stops there. It will only start moving again on it’s own if it’s set to “aggressive” stance.
- After the enforcer reaches the destination of the T command, if it’s on “aggressive” stance there is a 3 second delay before it begins choosing targets and attacking. This happens after every T command.
- If your crosshairs are pointing at an actual enemy when you hit T, you order the enforcer to attack it instead of moving there. You will see a glowing RED arrow and circle marker instead of blue, centered on the enemy. The enforcer will shoot or stomp the target.
- This also happens if you target a dead monster’s body. If a body is close to you, and you try to target the ground in a line that passes through the dead body, you will get the red “Attack” marker on the dead body. Very very very annoying!
Enforcers don’t move to or attack dead bodies.
- Targeting either living or dead monsters also switches the enforcer’s stance to “attack your target” from then on. Stays set to that until you change it back to something else.
- On “attack your target” stance, it will attack only monsters you shoot a weapon at, or designate with more T commands. Other then that, the enforcer just stands there and does nothing. If you are wondering why your enforcer just stands there watching you get beat on by zombies, that’s probably what happened.
- The Y command is bugged, I don’t use it.
- The U command will make the enforcer follow you. It’s a quirky command, and sometimes just stops working, you will have to access the enforcer’s command menu and manually “enable following”.
IMPORTANT BUG:
After a recent patch, there is now a bug where if you switch player weapons or to items on the hotbar, your robots lose “following” status. When they lose that, they no longer listen to some of the keyboard commands. Which means if they are on “aggressive” stance, they can now run off out of control. Typing “U” while pointing your crosshairs at them fixes it sometimes, but most of the time you will need to catch up to them, and manually access their menu by holding “E” and change following to “enable following”. That can be a little hard when it’s running full tilt attacking every zombie it sees (replace “hard” with “nearly impossible”)
WARNING:
DO NOT take an enforcer on “aggressive” stance into the PVP zones if you are with other players and their robots. As soon as your enforcer crosses into the PVP zone with it set to “Aggressive” stance, it will attack all other players and robots that do not belong to you. Being in the same squad does NOT protect them from being attacked by the enforcer.
The PVP zone begins just north of the junkyard, and actually cuts directly through the middle of the two buildings across the street from junkyard.
Clear the rest of the Junkyard and Leave:
With the help of your new big metal best friend, work your way out of the Junkyard. You have to fight your way out. But with the enforcer at your side, it’s gonna be easy. Just look out for any other still living enforcers.
By the way, check the PROTIPS section at the end of the guide for a way to get yourself and your newly tamed enforcer out of the junkyard without fighting your way out. The shortcut is actually shown in screenshot below, but is explained in the “PROTIPS: Getting an Enforcer to Hop the South Fence”
Can you see them in the screenshot? Wait, it will be lot clearer in the next screenshot.
This giant mess of nastiness was waiting at the corner there. The hilarious thing is, by the time I killed these and got here, half the bodies had faded away. This was one of about 3 similar clumps I found while leaving the junkyard. THIS is why I say enforcer #3 is the best candidate for hacking.
Last of the attackers, about 3 poison and 4 brutes stuck out in the parking lot.
EDIT: After a recent patch (1-22-2019) A lot more zombies are spawning during hacks now, but many can’t path inside the junkyard and get stuck outside. Normally there’d be only about a half dozen left outside, mostly poison and armored. Now I’m seeing like over two dozen outside the junkyard, and most of them are armored zombies.
And here I am outside the junkyard, back at my nearby base with another newly tamed enforcer (my third). I have nine, ten , eleven, twelve Thirteen fourteen fifteen now.
(This is getting ridiculous. I need help. Seriously, I’m running out of room to store them now. I have to teleport them inside the base now.)
Hope this guide helps you with hacking your own enforcer!
Acknowledgments:
I’d like to thank the people that helped make this guide possible
Hellgator, Yo, without your help, much of this would not have happened at all. We figured a lot of stuff out together, and eventually made something that seemed impossible, totally possible.
“Can enforcers shoot through the chain link fence, lets go stand there and find out… for SCIENCE!” Answer: NO! they cannot! Yeah!… Wait.. what is it doing? is it… hopping over the fence??!!” Bam! DEAD! Lesson learned!.
Oni, thanks for testing out how enforcers behave in PVP zones, and letting my enforcer kill you, what, 6 times??? (once completely by accident. woops).
Fallacy and Sn1pz, thank you for indulging me while we finally found out what happens when you hack two enforcers at the same time. Sorry it made the hack more difficult, but it worked out in the end and Sn1pz got his first enforcer!
And Zarathul, even though I never met you, thanks for a ton of help (in an indirect fashion) that allowed me to spend so much time on hacking enforcers instead of pawing through trash cans for scraps. Much of this guide would not have happened at all without your help. Your name still lives on, at the High School, Warehouse and other POI’s across the server.
PROTIP: Get a Nearby Base
Okay, I know that sounds easier then it is. Most of you are rolling your eyes, throwing up your hands, and cursing right now.
But how do I have nine, ten, Eleven, twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen enforcers?
Opportunity.
The junkyard is right down the street. I can log on, and within a few minutes, kill 3 enforcers, and then camp the 2 remaining ones. I keep a box in the base, that’s pre-loaded with all the materials and equipment for a hack, in pre-counted quantities. I open it, hit R to loot all, and I am rolling out to go hack. I don’t have to run halfway across the map just to go see if they’ve respawned. I walk out my front door, and I can see enforcer #1 walking in and out of the street in front of the junkyard.
If you’re part of a group trying to hack enforcers, getting a nearby base is one of the best things you can do to make it easier.
But great gods, DO NOT take the little shipping container shelter NW of the junkyard. At night, the gates of hell open up around there!. Seriously, just apocalyptic levels of zombies. It is a great place to level up by the way, for your player, or another tamed enforcer. So if the enforcers didn’t go to sleep, plan B it, and go kill zombies there.
PROTIP: Mobile Respawn Point (No Base Needed)
Okay, can’t take a base? you sort of don’t need one, if you have robot dogs (UA Scouts).
Bring a robot dog or two, and park them somewhere safe. Most zombies don’t attack robots unless the robots attack them first. Place a tent nearby for respawn.
You now have a baseless “base”.
Use one dog as a container to put all your gear in if you need to reset or unagro enforcers (by letting them kill you). When you respawn at the tent, open the dog, hit R to loot all, and you have all your gear back.
Use a second dog to hold a backup set of gear for corpse retreival. Just enough weapons, armor, food and water to let you go grab your dead body. You want a light set of gear, since you will be picking up your whole other set.
The dogs you bring can be the lowest level ones you have, so less risk. Just if you agro an enforcer do not run towards the respawn point. Run anywhere else! Don’t lead the enforcer anywhere near the dogs, or it will shoot them, and possibly re-agro on you when you respawn at the tent.
PROTIP: Server Wide Communication
If you play on a multiplayer server, you might want to announce you are attempting to tame enforcers at the junkyard, and ask (very nicely) that people avoid the location until you are finished.
There’s nothing worse then getitng all setup for a hack, waiting night after night and then seeing someone enter the junkyard and shoot an enforcer 5 seconds before it could possibly go to sleep.
Beat. Head. Against. Brick. Wall.
This is going to heavily depend on the culture of your server. On some servers, this might prompt trolls to roll up and kill all the enforcers for amusement value. It might also prompt people to ask if they can come help you, in order to learn the ropes of how to tame enforcers. Could be a good thing, or a bad thing. On the server I play on, If I see an announcement like that, I volunteer to help with the defense, etc. I am totally down to help others get their own enforcers too. I have helped 5 other players get enforcers on my server now.
If players announce they want to kill enforcers for codes, motors, or ammo, well… Describe which ones you kill anyways, and let them kill them, or how about trade with them? If you’ve been farming enforcers, you might have tons of all of that to spare. I’m willing to give other players 100’s of rnds of rifle ammo not to kill the enforcers (you can get over 500 rounds from a single enforcer kill. 597 is my highest so far). I say don’t be greedy, spread the wealth around a little. It’s a public POI, and not my personal enforcer hunting ground. I have had players ask if they could have all the rifle ammo, I’ve had people ask if they could have the shrapnel too (one person on our server is stocking up on grenades for POI seizures, and power leveling).
As long as they aren’t strong arming or trying to extort you : “pay us, or we kill the enforcers!”. I wouldn’t put up with that nonsense, I’d just kill the enforcers myself and go do something else.
If you play on a single player server, don’t make the announcement. That would be… just weird. π
PROTIP: Can Enforcers Respawn While You’re IN the Junkyard?
Yes. They can.
This happened in the middle of a hack. This was not… fun.
Only 2 enforcer were up before the start of the hack, one went to sleep, and I killed the 2nd early on. Then in the middle of the hack the junkyard enforcers respawned. The only good news is the position that I was hacking did not spawn, but the other 4 positions did.
I had brought an enforcer with me, to test using them to defend the enforcer being hacked. Still I had to kill 3 of them with a shotgun.
I do know that another player on the server had been camping the Junkyard earlier, and when I logged on, it was prepped for easy hacking (3 of the 5 dead already leaving only the best candidates for hacking up). So there’s no way to know how long it had been since the other enforcers had been killed. If you pull and kill them yourself, I wouldn’t worry about them respawning too much. This is the first time I’ve seen it in 2 months.
PROTIP: Bring Player Armor for Tamed Enforcer
Add this to the list of stuff you bring to the hack:
A set of player armor, to equip on the newly tamed enforcer. Enforcers can wear helmets, pants, and shoes. Bring the best you can make!
Armor on an enforcer is NOT decoractive, it blocks damage!
To equip it on them, open the enforcer’s inventory and then equip the armor items (from your side or their side of enforcer inventory screen). It will be equipped on the enforcers, not your character.
The enforcer won’t need it with zombies, the only reason to bring this is if your enforcer ends up in a toe-to-toe gunfight with another wild enforcer. For me, this has happened twice now.
With the damage reduction from the armor, your newly tamed enforcer is pretty much guaranteed to win that fight.
It’s hard enough to tame an enforcer, so watching your newly tamed enforcer get killed by a wild enforcer in a point blank gunfight would just suck. Majorly. Protect the time investment, armor it up!
PROTIP: Getting an Enforcer INTO the Junkyard:
At the southeast corner of the junkyard, is a weird little concrete wall that stick off the corner where the south and east fences meet.
If you run your enforcer along that little concrete wall, and then place a T “move to” marker right on top of the cubes of crushed cars, your enforcer can totally hop the fence INTO the junkyard. Why would you want to do this? maybe you want to bring your tame enforcer to help with the zombie defense during a friend’s hack.
If you want to bring your enforcer inside the junkyard, this saves lot of time running around to the two gates next to the building, and lets you avoid enforcers that might still be alive and awake over there.
PROTIP: Getting an Enforcer to Hop the South Fence:
Along the south fence is a big long ramp that slopes down to the “pit” at the east end of the Junkyard.
On the fence side is a narrow concrete lip. At the end of the lip, is a yellow scrap bin, and cubes of crushed cars. You can hop onto the yellow scrap bin, the crushed cars, and right over the fence. More importantly, so can your newly tamed enforcer.
It can be a little tricky, due to a strange bug where if you are standing too close to a robot, you can’t place any “move to” markers with the T command. So get the robot to climb onto the scrap bin, then the crushed cars. Then you hop over the fence, and use a T command outside the Junkyard to make the enforcer hop the fence. Run away!
PROTIP: Don’t Use Grenades Around Junkyard:
If you’re trying to hack enforcers, don’t use grenades near the junkyard. Apparently it can draw enforcers out of the junkyard and send them on beserk killing sprees. If it attacks you, you might be forced to kill it, then lose out on chances to hack it.
When the enforcers failed to go to sleep one game night, I went and threw grenades out into the streets NW of the junkyard for EXP. I was standing west of the the long skinny building north of the junkyard (one of the three across the street from the yard). I had already prepped the junkyard by killing the enforcers that get in the way, and only the best candidates for hacking were left.
By the time I threw grenade number 6, an enforcer charged in and started shooting and melee stomping everything in sight! I pulled back, checked the Junkyard, and the one on the east side (#5) was “gone”. The enforcer continued to shoot everything that moved in that area until 6:30 PM the next game day. Then it calmly walked to the junkyard, and right back to it’s home position on the east side. It was enforcer #5.
This possibly explains other times I have seen enforcers “disappear” from the Junkyard. Why do grenades used 1000 feet away set them off? who knows. You can shoot the ground a yard from their feet, and they won’t even react.
PROTIP: Two Enforcers Go To Sleep, Same NIght:
This has only happened twice now, during all hacking attempts.
I saw one enforcer go to sleep, never even looked at the other one. After I finished the hack, normally you’d hear the other enforcer start shooting. Nothing. No shots. That’s when I realized the other had gone to sleep too.
Attacking zombies will completely ignore another sleeping shutdown enforcer, they just walk around it.
They are only coming to attack the one you hacked, so the other enforcer sat there all night long. When morning came, I had already killed 50% of the attacker, and the other enforcer woke up and just killed the stragglers as they came by. In previous hacks, if another enforcers was still alive, it got glitched on the fence trying to chase zombies, or it ran by me trying to reach a zombie, and I could kill it point blank.
As I was leaving the junkyard, my enforcer ended up in a toe-to-to gunfight with the wild enforcer. He killed it, but was down to 2573 out of 5400 health. My newly tamed enforcer had +80% ranged damage (YES!), so it was a pretty one sided gunfight, with my tamed enforcer doing nearly double damage to the wild one.
So… If you see two sleeping enforcers, shoot one and kill it. When morning comes, it will wake up, and just become a threat to you, or your newly tamed enforcer.
PROTIP: Hacking Two Enforcers at Same Time
If you hack two enforcers at the same time, does it start a separate event with a whole extra set of attacking zombies? We finally found out the answer to that question.
Yes, yes it does.
Hacking a second enforcer starts a whole separate zombie attack event. Two, TWO, TWO times the zombies. We did a simultaneous hack of two enforcers with help from two players on my server (Thank you, Fallacy and Sn1pz)… and it got nuts.
This created two completely separate zombie spawn patterns. Zombies spawning near the other enforcer were actually coming to kill mine. Zombies spawning near mine were actually trying to go kill the other enforcer. Zombies were spawning directly in front of me out of thin air, and stuff was spawning right near the other shutdown enforcer too, in an area that would normally be totally safe. Mine had 2 regular zombies spawn right into it, and I ended up doing more damage to the enforcer trying to kill them. It died, but the other guys hacking were successful (two of them to guard their enforcer). This actually made the hack way harder, but it worked out in the end. First enforcer for the other player doing the hack, and that was the only important part!
I highly recommend you NOT do this. Just kill the second sleeping enforcer.
PROTIP: “Disappearing” Enforcers:
Okay, that’s a thing. Repeatedly since recent patches, enforcers that were spawned have suddenly “disappeared” or despawned.
In some cases, I’ve been standing at the Junkyard, looking right at an enforcer. I turned to look at another one, and then turned right back to the 1st. Gone. Poof. No other player attacked and pulled it, I didn’t see it stuck anywhere, it wasn’t running down the street, it was just gone. Other times It was spawned, I ran to a nearby area, then back, and it was gone. Another player might have pulled and killed it, but given who was on our server at the time, that was unlikely. On a couple of occasions, when It disappeared, I was the only one on the server.
On two occasions, I’ve seen enforcers leave the junkyard and go charging off, but that was related to people using grenades NW of the junkyard (see previous section). On both those occasions the enforcer eventually returned to the Junkyard and calmly walked to it’s home position and remained there. So that’s a different issue.
I am starting to wonder if enforcers are falling through the map, or inside large objects, and getting stuck there. We’ve noticed since the new patches added different patrol patterns, the enforcers are getting glitched out all over the Junkyard routinely now.
PROTIP: Resetting “Glitched” Enforcers:
After recent patches, we’ve noticed the enforcers moving around the junkyard a lot more. For example, the one near the east fence now walks all the way out the NW parking lot and back every once in a while, and the others do equally weird stuff.
While moving around, we’ve also noticed them getting stuck and glitched way more often now. When they are glitched, stuck, or walking in place endlessly, they will not shut down and go to sleep.
Some ways to “reset” them back into their home positions:
- Let them kill you. Take off all your gear, place it in storage (chest at nearby base, or a robot dog will do too), and run up to the enforcer. After they kill you, it seems to unglitch them. If they were agro’d on you, the lose that too, and just run back to the junkyard.
- If it’s stuck (fell into a gap, etc), shoot it with a shotgun. It should survive one blast just fine. This can knock them up and out of gaps (the huge giant scrap pile up against north wall of junkyard has little death pits at each side. Got stuck in one once, had to suicide). We had to do this recently, and it launched the enforcer about 100 feet into the sky. It was awesome. Of course, once you’ve shot it, you’re going to have to let it kill you so it goes off agro.
PROTIP: Conserving Enforcer Spawns:
Okay, this is an off the wall concept. We’re still workiing the bugs out on this one.
Normally, during the course of a hack, you end up killing all the other enforcers. Either before the hack, or it interrupts you during the defense portion and you have to kill the wild enforcer. Then you have to wait hours and hours for respawn to have more chances to hack them.
We think we have a way to put an enforcer on “timeout” away from the junkyard, so you don’t have to kill it, allowing you more chances to hack that one on following game nights.
This only works if you have:
- a safe base near to the junkyard.
- People helping you with the hack.
When one enforcer goes to sleep, and people cross the fence to begin hacking it, have another player attack the still awake enforcer. They then run to the nearby base, luring that enforcer away from the junkyard, and stay inside the base while the entire hack goes on. The angry enforcer they attacked will just stomp around outside trying to kill them. I kept an agro’d enforcer outside my base for over 2 hours real time. They just don’t give up once angry.
They wait for the other players to complete the hack and leave the junkyard with their newly tamed enforcer.
When that’s done, the player at the base takes off all their gear, puts it in a container, walks outside and lets the enforcer kill them. Yeah, nutty. But… the enforcer will then go off agro, and go back to the junkyard.
If this works, you still have another living enforcer in the junkyard, and you can continue camping that one on following game nights. Better then waiting hours and hours for respawns.
If you try this method, it’s crucial that you attack the enforcer before the hacker deletes “registerlist.ml”. After the first zombies spawn, if you shoot the enforcer, it will ignore the hit. Totally mono focused on killing whatever it targeted. Won’t even notice you shot it.
The only thing we haven’t tested is if you agro #3 in the center, while other players are trying to hack #5 on the east, enforcer #3 will have to run right by them to get out of the junkyard.. From what I’ve seen of enforcer behavior and A I, it should have a one track mind, and completely ignore the hacker. But… the game devs could change that behaviour at any time.
PROTIP: Seizing The Junkyard
We had the bright idea to seize junkyard and place fortifications, to make it easier for other players to hack their own Junkyard enforcers. Then we let zombies destroy the generator so enforcers will start spawning again.
I brought 7 enforcers, which was total overkill. They’re the bright blue dots on the map. 3 Melee stompers in front and sides of generator, and 4 ranged enforcers set up on high objects. 1 on a shipping container in NW corner, 1 on the blue wheeled trailer between the two gates, and 2 on top of the awning on the front of the building. All of the enforcers were immobilized by being overloaded. The center melee enforcer in front of generator had no ammo so all it could do is stomp.
This was way after the fight, when I’d already started removing the enforcers.
The surprise MVP of the entire fight was the one on the shipping container in NW corner of parking lot. Enforcers shots can pass through multiple targets, and since everything came at him in one single line from the NW, he mowed them down.
Most annoying threat was the huge packs of spider zombies that spawned somewhere back in the rear of the parking lot. They made a turn at the edge of the building, and ran under awning on the front of the building, where I couldn’t shoot them. The melee enforcers stomped them all to death.
Some sample screenshots of the taking the Junkyard the second time. I had 8 enforcers. This is literally only the first minute of the POI seizure. The wood fences were something I built after taking junkyard the first time, as part of an idea to make it impossible for the wild enforcers to get onto the building roof.
PROTIP: Fortifying the Junkyard
Okay, so you want to take the Junkyard and place defenses?
First off, don’t layer a million defenses around the generator. There’s no “abandon” button for POI’s. So the only way to “let it go” is to grief the generator with zombies. So if you have to put defenses, make it light. You’re going to have to destroy them to let the zombies wreck the generator. I just parked an enforcer on top of the generator, and that took care of anything that wandered in from the west.
So, Where can you build defenses then?
Pretty much the whole place, EXCEPT for the sunken lower area on the east side. Ground there is all red non-placeable for defenses, with the exception of a small patch of dirt (where it would be useless to put anything). So you can’t build any defenses right around the eastern enforcer.
The best you can do is block the ramps that lead down to that area.
I ended up building defenses around the center enforcer, blocking both ramps that leads down to the whole eastern end of junkyard, and both of the main gates. Didn’t start out intending to block the gates, but the more I looked at it the more it made sense. Then I put a few random stripes of a single row of metal spikes here and there. I’m learning that depending on which enforcer you hack, there are many spots in the junkyard where zombies will spawn out of thin air.
Ended up looking like this:
Ramp against south fence
Area where center enforcer patrols.
On the outside of the south fence, you can place a single hesco wall, and 1 row of metal spikes. I built steps to hop over the fence, by placing one tall and one short hesco wall side by side up against the fence. I could only do this by the center enforcer. The entire area around SE fence corner is all no-build. I put a matching set of short/tall hesco walls on the inside of the fence, next to where the center enforcer spawns, to act as steps there as well. These steps by the way, will allow tamed or hostile enforcers to go right over the fence, in or out.
After First Hack with Defenses:
During the hack of the eastmost enforcer, down in the pit, the only thing that even got close were the spider zombies, since they can crawl across spikes. I spent a lot of time running from the spikes on the two ramps, to kill zombies before they damaged them too heavily.
Not a single zombie even touched the enforcer being hacked.
The most damaged metal spike I could find was 1960 out of 2500. It took me 30 recycled metal and some hide to repair all the defenses to max (I skipped some spikes that had only 10-15 pts of damage from spider zombies crawling on them).
So overall, a successful strategy.