Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven, Part 4 Public Beta - updated 1/28/2025, 708,000+ words

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My main MC’s response to the Silverthorne camp under attack by zombies at the end of Part 3 can be summed up as follows:

Step 1: Lead civilians to safety

Step 2: Loot only the militia tents

Step 3: Launch an all-out surprise attack on the Silverthorne Militia rank and file with guns, grenades, Molotov cocktails, and Red Mamba support.

My MC killed 12 Silverthornes in that attack, and it will be interesting to find out the aftermath of such a move. Will sparing the civilians come back to haunt us later, or help somehow? How will bringing in the Red Mambas to the attack affect our relationship with them? Keith, David, and Mr. Sullivan are still alive, while Natalie, Benton, and Wyatt already died during first contact with the Silverthornes…

I’d like to find out the Silverthorne kill count each member of my 8 man team managed when given the element of surprise, their weapon of choice, plus a grenade and a Molotov to work with.

Turns out if you craft at least 8 grenades and molotovs prior to the silverthorne camp, you get an option to give your entire 8 person team one of each to throw. The text afterward describes Rachel alone doing some serious harm with her grenade and Molotov. This is followed by more explosions stopping the Silverthorns counterattack cold as your team continues attacking. This sounds like the attack did some serious harm.

The squad in question was my MC, Rachel, Jaime, Jude, Lopez, Madison, Reilly, and Rosie. This seemed like the most deadly crew I could bring, since Jaime and Rachel both go no matter what.

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1579

I have a question, I’m trying to get the pacifist achievement but even though my MC only distracted the zombies to save Dante I still got 2 kills, will that mess up my chances of getting the achievement?

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That section is the only part of the game where I go complete psycho, taking down the tower with an explosive charge, going out of my way to kill as many militia members as possible, looting and otherwise causing general chaos and mayhem, I even put a round into Keith at one point. The only top members of his group that are still alive after it all our Sullivan and Benton, who I captured at the end of part two

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My main MC let Murphy live as well, figuring that between his scientific background, the ARC’s technology, and the Survnet server I set up on-site, Murphy could be useful to somebody at some point.

At the Silverthorne camp, I typically chose to lead the civilians to safety, then loot the militia tents, and then lay into the Silverthorne ranks with an all-out surprise attack. Guns, grenades, Molotovs, Red Mamba support, everything.

Ever since finding the finding the graves, poor Marisha, and talking to Keith in Part 2, My MCs generally consider the Silverthornes a dangerous enemy. The fact the Thrones likely killed Anya and Sharif, plus the threats to other survivors in Part 3 just reinforced that. And as old Machiavelli put it: “Never do an enemy a small injury.”

That said, my MC also doesn’t want his nephew raised in a group that just slaughters indiscriminately.

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I agree that those who went on the Silverthorne mission should be noted. An after-action debriefing is warranted once we have time. If we attacked the Silverthornes, kill-count estimates from squad members and survivor reactions to events could be interesting.

Speaking of Madison, both Jaime and Rachel describe her as “bloodthirsty” and “looking for a fight.” I’m somewhat concerned at how going on the Silverthorne mission might affect her, particularly if the group attacked the Silverthornes… viciously.

Silly/Dark Humor scenario:

Brody: “Maddie, what happened at the Silverthorne camp?

Maddie: “We shot them up, blew them up, burned them up, Brody. It felt like winning…”

Brody: “MC, what have you done to my sister!?!”

MC: “What do you mean, all I did was give a traumatized 18 year old woman an AR-15, a grenade, and Molotov cocktail. Then ordered her to kill every Silver… Oh.”

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1583

Madison is my MC’s ride or die. I’m friendly with allies, or non-threatening people (usually families), but utterly ruthless with my enemies. I chose loot camp (militia), and snipe ST leaders (team: Maddie, Lopez, Jude, Rosie, Rachel, Fred, and Jamie. Killed everyone except Sullivan, and Keith (though Keith was shot pretty badly). ST definitely killed Sharif and Ayana, the couple from the campsite (I think Benton did some fucked up shit to the woman), and the family Bailey found buried. There are no redeeming factor in ST, they all had to die, Maddie was 100% right.

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Part 4 has been updated! I have added roughly 19,000 words to this version.

Please check the update log when you start the game.

One notable thing is the addition of Skills for every major character. This was a huge development, because it also involves me figuring out a way to add any training they have had done. If you load chapter 13, it goes through a process to update every character in it actually takes about thirty seconds. I’m going to have to figure out how to reduce that time, because it won’t work well in the official release.

But if you want to see their skills, you can look on the Stats page.

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I’ve noticed going through the code that my captain mc should only be able to get a max level of 5 in persuasion but I have 6 after investing in it throughout the game and teaching it to another survivor. Is that a bug or no?

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Teaching and getting taught both increase a skill by 1.

You should be able to get persuasion up to 7 on any character regardless of stat focus actually,

Use skill points to get to level 4 → Get taught by Jillian → Get taught by Rachel → Teach another survivor

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Love it. I wouldn’t worry too much about a 30 second update time.

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Do these stats show from chapter 1 when this officialy released? And the training at chp2 and 3 would be adding to these? Will these change outcomes and the NPCs workings in those chapters?

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My MCs tend to end up best friends with Madison as well, and my main Teenager MC is head-over-heels for her. Madison’s proactive, pragmatic, protective (if snarky) point of view is one that sorely needed in the group, as well as her skills.

I tend to follow similar rules of engagement with survivors as well: friendly and eager to make allies until given reason otherwise, ruthless with enemies once hostile intent is clear.

The Silverthorns have done plenty of things that would qualify as felonies/war crimes in the pre-apocalypse world (Murder of civilians and FEMA personnel, torture, theft, arson.)

Seeing their camp and the commentary from other survivors (poor leadership from Keith, rule by fear from Sullivan) makes me deem it likely that the Silverthorns will only get more hostile over time.

This increasing hostility would be due to post-apocalyptic conditions being likely to get worse over time (winter approaches, supplies and game eaten, more zombies, more infrastructure breakdown, more people losing it mentally over time.)

Better, in my opinion, to start weakening the Thorns now, and securing defenses/alliances against them, than to risk getting caught unaware or subjugated.

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Is anyone else having a problem where they can’t login to moody. I remember sending a message to a moderator a while back but I haven’t heard anything

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Moody does not exist as a active site anymore so any links connected to it will not work or should not work at least. There is a new site taken up by another person similiar to moody called cogdemos or something similiar.

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So we can’t save in the demo for the new updates?

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:: sigh :: not through moody there was a whole thing about it months ago i would point you to the person who owns the similiar site that a chunk of games have moved to but i dont recall that persons name at the moment. Yet its a mute point unless a game itself has gone to the new site.

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Okay thank you

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I’m still thinking about the best way to implement this. I’m thinking that it should go from Part 2 onwards, since that’s truly when the group forms. I then have to go back and add skill checks at different points for the other major characters.

The game is now hosted on COGdemos and you need to create an account to save the game.

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Not only just that, but we have the ability to train group and specific person in both chp2 and chp3. So they should be getting impacts on stats itself. So probably should be started from chp2.
About the story impacts part… I’m totally excited to now know who has what ability and choose best impactful mission companions from the start of all this.:fire:
Hundreds percent worth more waiting as you write those too.

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Will there end up being a way to have a real heart to heart talk about Jamie’s slow spiral? He starts as our beloved friend so I wonder if there’s anything we can do to help him

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