Has anyone seen any good strategies to maximize the effectiveness of day 1 and 2 scavenging? These days are special in that
- All the zones start out undepleted
- Many zones have no zombies at all, so it is possible to get far from town
- There is no watchtower or upgraded map to let people know the number of zombies in areas, so you either have the color or nothing
- People are not coordinated enough to have expeditions arranged, or know when other players are online and whether they are reliable
- Good early scavenging can make or break a town
I'm looking for strategies that would maximize the number of searches that occur in undepleted zones, while preventing anyone from being lost in the world oustide (any day 1 deaths are unacceptable).
Edit: Adding a bounty to gather other ideas or at least get feedback on mine.
Best Answer
The best Day 1-2 strategy is definitely to go as far from town as possible! The zombie numbers will never be as low as you see them on the first day. This is the perfect time for the furthest zones you can possibly reach to be searched.
Your town should be using an external map application to mark all items left in the desert anyway, so it doesnt matter if you deplete 3 zones for example and can't bring everything home. The items will be listed there for later collection anyway, and it always lets you hand pick what the best items to take back on Day 1 are.
Now as it has been said, this potentially only works in towns with good communication. You need to know that if you get stuck you will be rescued. For this purpose, you should assign 2-3 "rescuers" for the first couple of days. These players will not spend any AP until everyone in town is home safely.
The majority of the time, if somebody gets stuck with zombies on day 1 or 2 another scavanger will be close enough that they can actually rescue them, rather than having to waste the AP of one of the rescuers. This is why you only need a small number of them.
Really, on Day 1, you want to get at least 30 people in your town out scavanging. The AP costs for Workshop, Watchtower, Search Tower and even Armour Plating are all quite low and easily achieved even with 30 people out scavanging (our town had 33 out of 40 players scavanging on Day 1 and still built 6 structures on Day 1, including the ones I listed above).
Nobody should waste 2 AP on a tent!