PLEASE NOTE: This is a quickstart build, not a supercharacter build. You will not ever win a hand to hand fight with a bear using this. You will also not spend three days throwing a duck at rabbits to train your survival skill. You could have a stronger character, sure, but this character will put a fletched arrow into a zombie by noon the first day (if you find a bird before you go to town), and will sleep uninterrupted in a bed in a house the first night. All opinions, criticisms, tips, tricks, and otherwise are appreciated, but keep the above in mind please.
I’ve been trying to work on a build with a friend of mine (Dewaldo). The driving force behind it is that it needs to be small. The reason for this is that it needs to be something which you can tack on to any other character build without sacrificing many creation points in order to get a much faster start (think, safely clearing the suburbs at 10:00 AM the first day). And we’ve got something we’d like to share (and possibly put as a guide on the wiki, if reception is good).
We are open to suggestions, ideally tricks which can be added without increasing the creation point requirement. There are two skill builds because I personally like to play archers, so I invest a bit more heavily into this and the result is a longbow faster (you take a small damage output hit with this weapon over the self bow, but it is far more accurate), but this is not required.
The minimum version of this build can be fairly easily attached to any other build (must sacrifice a couple of creation points, but who doesn’t pack survival in every build anyways?). It can be used effectively at any skill level. I’ve tried to enter the button you push to do an action each time in introduce performing a new action. Hopefully I haven’t missed any.
MINIMUM SKILLS (5 creation points):
Archery 2 (1 creation point)
Survival 4 (4 creation points)
IDEAL SKILLS (9 creation points):
Archery 4 (4 creation points)
Survival 4 (4 creation points)
Tailoring 2 (1 creation point)
ATTRIBUTES
Open
PERKS/DRAWBACKS
Open
The guide:
- (s)mash a window, (*, h) clean it and (, or e) pick up the 3ft string.
- Smash another window, clean it, and step onto it’s tile.
- (&) Craft a self bow (or longbow if sufficient archery skill).
- Return to the first window and craft 10 wooden arrow shafts with the heavy stick.
- Smash a locker, use a pipe to craft a crowbar.
- Use your crowbar to smash all the benches and counters in the shelter, save the nails.
- Use boards from this to craft roughly 200 wooden arrow shafts (you should have enough boards to craft upwards of 1000, but save them).
- Go outside, use rocks to craft your arrow shafts into field point arrows.
- (f) shoot a small defenseless animal until it dies (retrieving any arrows that survive).
- (B)utcher the animal, repeat this step until butchering yields 1 bone, take any sinew you find, and if an animal yields pelts open your (m)ap and make a (N)ote on the tile to return to later.
- Craft the bone into a bone needle and return to the shelter.
- Smash yet another window, clean it and take the 6ft string.
- (() disassemble the 6ft string into 6 6in strings, then disassemble two of these into 50 thread each.
- (i) open your inventory, select the bone needle, and ®eload it with the thread.
- Smash two more windows, clean them and take the two 3ft strings.
- Pick up a curtain, (a)pply your pocket knife, (1) select cut up fabric, and cut up the curtain into 20 rags.
- Craft two pouches and put them on for a nice carrying capacity boost.
- Cut up another curtain and use it’s rags to craft a cloak. Put this on for rain protection.
- Smash two more windows, clean them and take their 3ft strings. Return to any corpses that yielded pelts (marked on your map), and cut them into leather patches.
- If you do not have 12 leather patches continue killing small animals until you do, deer are ideal targets.
- Craft two leather pouches. Put these on for another carrying boost.
- Return to the shelter, cut up two more curtains, and use the rags to craft a blanket.
- Apply your bone needle and use it on your clothes, pouches, and blanket to fortify them. If you run out of string disassemble another of the 6in strings for 50 more thread.
- Smash a locker, use the pipe to craft a crowbar.
- Go forth and multiply.
At this point you have around 50 volume capacity, rain protection, fortified clothes, a sewing instrument, a crowbar, a good long range weapon, arrows, and your starting gear. Also everything you find in the basement, but it’s pretty useless for the purpose of guide writing, as it’s random. From here your own play-style takes over, I wont say you need to do one thing or another from this point. I will, however, describe in small detail what I do next.
Typically from here I leave the blanket in the shelter (it’s heavy and huge) and go check out the fringes of the city. Usually there won’t be many zombies, and those present are easily slain. If encountering any zombie dogs hold your ground, wait until they come into your max range and open fire, if they make it to melee distance smash them with your bow (it does good damage). They will attack you once when they make it into range and then back off, giving you two to three free shots with your bow. Most other kinds of zombies can be slain effortlessly, fire and step back until they die, you are much faster than them. Butcher anything you kill or it’ll get up again. Once you’ve cleared the area around a couple houses and stores give them a loot, you’re looking for backpacks, water, water contrainers, food, funnels, books, meds, lighters, matches, cargo pants, and anything else you find that seems like it could be useful. If you become encumbered return to your shelter and drop off your haul, then return. Spend the first day doing this, then search out a good place for a base and make it yours. I tend to die making it mine, so that’s the end of this guide.
Please, discuss, critique, suggest, and otherwise help me make it better.
