Dealing with abusive players (Tutorial)

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Since each town is made up of 40 citizens, the odds of finding 39 active, selfless, able, co-operative companions are nigh to zero.Some may slack off, some others might waste resources, some others might go as far as to completely wreck the town just for the hell of it. Since their actions lead to a loss of AP in the best case, and a total town wipeout in the worst, learning how to deal with them is of the utmost importance if a town wants to be able to hold out.

Selfish players

You will often meet players who think that getting the top score or possessing the most items is more important than working with the co-citizens to make the town last longer.

Their soul

• A high number of Home Upgrades distinctions
• Several Shunned distinctions
• A quite high number of Alcohol, Drug Tests and Drugs Taken distinctions

Selfish Acts

Acts of selfish play can be:

• Taking food, drugs and drinks from the Bank to refill their own AP without any real purpose
• Hoarding important items, mostly weapons or drugs, to make sure they're the only ones to use them
• Upgrading their inhabitation up to House
• In extreme cases, taking defense items from the town to improve their own home

Solution

• Shun them so that they can't take anything important from the Bank and cannot hoard water
• Keep all important items in the Bank or in a locked home so that they cannot steal them
• Reach out to them and convince them to cooperate with the town, either before or after the shunning

Griefers

When selfish players take a step forward, they decide that their only purpose in life is just annoy the crap out of well-working communities, even if this means triggering their own early demise, gaining few to no SP and distinctions whatsoever, and becoming infamous and hated by the rest of the players.

Their soul

• Very few SP despite having been in many towns, ergo many deaths in the earliest days of a town
• Extremely high Shunned and Hanged distinctions
• Often very little Forum Posts

Griefing acts

Actions griefers carry out are actions that willingly damage the town with little to no benefit to themselves, such as:

• Stealing important items from other players or the Bank without a reason
• Taking important items from the Bank and dumping them out in the desert
• Attacking other citizens
• Opening the town gates just before the attack, or closing them while people are still outside
• Wasting resources on repairing useless items like the Mini HI-Fi (Broken)
• Luring a citizen to a zombie-controlled zone and ditching them, leaving them alone against the undead
• Upgrading their home past House, consuming Defense items and such decreasing the town (and their own) chances of survival
• Producing Vial of Poison or Toxin and contaminating food/water/drugs with it
• Tampering with the Town Map or the External Map to trick others into going in unsafe zones
• Joining the Watchmen with status effects such as Terrorised, decreasing the defenses

Solution

• Keep an eye out for Cyanide pills.Griefers often secure them to quickly escape the town after disrupting it and thus damage several towns without waiting for midnight.
• Shun them as soon as possible, but make sure that they are in town. A particular exploit lets the griefers keep the items they bring out of town.
• To prevent the above mentioned exploit, play daredevil with them, and don't shun them until they get back into town.When they get back, they can be shunned and deprived of their goods.If they don't, they can be locked out to die and the goods can be retrieved the day after.
• Hanging is the only way to make sure the griefer is rendered harmless, as they can still scavenge for items to use against the town when shunned.
• Attacking them, preferably with a Taser into inventory, and wounding them is a good way to prevent them from further griefing.
• If you suspect a griefer in town, Portal Lock is a good insurance investment, other than designating two or more "gatekeepers" so that in case a griefer slams the gate open at the last minute, they can close them just before the attack.
• Make a list of griefers and be sure to have them shunned before they can do any damage should you cross them again.
• Contacting Die2Nite Support and showing proof of their griefing. They will be either warned or banned from the game.

Forum trolls

All they do is annoy and provoke people in the forums hoping to trigger a flame war.Since offensive forum posters can be easily reported and banned, and who is angsty and asocial in general has the more viable option of Griefing, these individuals are pretty rare.

Their Soul

• Tons of Forum Posts.
• Usually they don't even have a soul anymore, since their first trolling can get them banned.

Acts of Trolling

• Provoking players with posts of racial, sexual or otherwise offensive posts
• Tricking players into building/voting for the least-useful building
• Spamming/flooding into important topics
• Creating multiple topics to "bury" the ones in first page
• Harassing other players in general

Solution

• Simply click the Report link next to their post to have them banned. Game over for the troll.

Newbies

Even though they have no malignant intentions, new players often make mistakes that have a heavy impact on a town's well-being.Thus they have to be reached out to and taught the ropes of townsmanship.

Their souls

• Blank slates, or been in almost no towns.
• No SP, or very little distinctions.

Newbie mistakes

• Going out of town, and not being able to return because they went farther than they can walk back to town (eg. going out with no items and traveling for 5 AP)
• Downgrading resources in the Workshop, making Twisted Planks from Patchwork Beams or Wrought Iron from Metal Supports
• Wasting AP and votes into building and upgrading the wrong construction sites.
• Using drugs and alcohol irresponsibly
• Using Water Purifying Tablets to make water from Jerrycans
• Wasting AP trying to fight zombies barehanded
• Running away from zombies without even asking for help beforehand
• Using useful items like Broken Human Bone or Pathetic Penknife as weapons, and leaving them outside.

What to do

• First thing first, call them out. Open a topic for them in the forum where the other citizens can give them useful tips. Linking or posting one of the many guides in this wiki will save time.
• If they don't respond to that, send them a private message.
• If he doesn't answer to neither, congratulations, you just found an asocial noob that is too busy doing what they think to be "grinding" to care about the social aspect of the game. Feel free to shun them.
• If you suspect newbies to be investing resources into construction projects that the community doesn't want to build, investing resources in a Building Registry can help into pointing them out.

Inactive users

Some times a player won't even go past choosing a class, or will just join the town and quit. These are players that either joined the game expecting to find god-knows-what action-packed graphical grinding RPG, and had quit as soon as they saw how things actually go, or can't log in to Die2Nite but got, unwillingly or otherwise, dragged in along with a coalition.

Their Souls

• Besides from several deaths by Dehydration, since any kind of player can become inactive there isn't any distinctive sign of them.

Inactivity

• They simply do nothing. They don't even open up their Doggy Bag and Citizen's Welcome Pack upon joining the town.
• Since they cannot log in to drink water, they die from becoming Dehydrated! by the 3rd or 4th day.
• Although they cause no direct damage to the town, their inactivity means that at least 12 AP of workforce per day are lost.

Solution

• Inactive players can be shunned to gain their initial items
• Even though it's tricky and inconvenient to build a Cremato-Cue by day 3, it can be of great use in a town with many inactives as it allows to recover 24 AP in Human Flesh per corpse once they die of dehydration.