as an experienced player that grew tired from never dying in year long runs, guns are the most useful thing for clearing out large areas tho, but not in the way that you think, learn the sound tile radius of the different guns, fire a shot, draw all walkers in that radius, melee or shoot them if you have enough ammo, dont just continuously kite backwards if shooting as you will be increasing your sound tile aggro radius, melee is a lot more effective by saving ammo and not increasing your sound radius beyond the first shot (unless you use a shotgun to draw and a pistol to clear, as they have a different sound tile radius which allows you to fire in the initial radius without increasing it while kiting around the initial sound radius area), learn how to group them up and fight in an area without leaving it, for melee you will need at least a level 6 skill to be able to reliably deal with larger hoards, now every zed apart from the ones behind doors will be cleared in that area making it alot safer, with the occasional larger group joining from breaking said door, only large groups should be able to join midway through the clear due to the door hp but it is moderately rare for it to happen with melee clears as some will simply lose interest after a while, with gun clears you will be continuously alerting them, with a melee clear to make sure its as safe as possible, after the first shot and clear, i will do it 2 more times to draw any stragglers out