Achieving Late-game

Game Talk The Bunker
1

There is a topic with tips for beginners and those tips are good, but most of them help you survive only the first in-game week. How about a thread with strategies and guidelines telling how to live long and in prosperity?

This is not a tip from pro, but I think that bows and arrows are a way to go. As of 0.5 bows are even easier to get and that nearly infinite supply of silent wooden arrows next to everywhere can get you really far but there is still a problem with skeletons (and smokers, I think) because they are immune to arrows.

2

Crowbars. They are perfect. Quickly made, opens all doors quickly without triggering alarms, good melee weapon. Make one. Use it. Love it. Sure, you could make a nail board as quickly, but I don’t see you opening a door with one.

3

Yeah, I heard that it’s really easy to go full-Gordon with one of them. What is exactly needed to make one early? And what else are they useful for instead of opening doors and fighting Freeman-style?

4

Yeah, I heard that it’s really easy to go full-Gordon with one of them. What is exactly needed to make one early? And what else are they useful for instead of opening doors and fighting Freeman-style?[/quote]
You can make them with a rock and a pipe, or find them in a hardware store. They aren’t much use otherwise, but you always should have them on hand.

5

You can pop open manhole covers with them as well

6

Make multiple stockpiles of spare equipment and food.

I normally have 1-3 emergency stockpiles which include:
A fueled up, running vehicle with storage.
Food for a solid 3 days.
Water for 6 days.
A spare weapon that isn’t complete shit.
Spare parts.
Materials for re-building a fortress.

Basically a INCH vehicle with all this shit inside. (I’m. Not. Coming. Home.)

7

You can also pry open house windows with them.

In general I find that a great combo is a crossbow, longbow, molotovs, and bear traps.
Crossbow because traps come with steel bolts, so you can take out armored guys with it, longbow for general use, molotovs for hordes, bear traps for individuals. Bear traps can instant kill a lot of weak enemies like zombie dogs and children, and occasionally one hit normal zombies too.

Bear traps are exceedingly useful for taking out hulks and brutes, when I notice one following me I break a window or door, grab some sheets/two by fours, find a corner, deploy the bear trap, drop flammables on and next to it, then light them on fire when the hulk is just a few squares away, works every time, though you may need to use a crossbow bolt or two.

8

Make a nail board as soon as you start the game. Crowbars are useful tools and I always carry one, but they’re only average melee weapons, and you need a point in mechanics before you can craft one. Upgrade your nail board to a nail bat when you can. Absolute top priorities lootwise are a backpack (obviously) and any good clothing you can scrounge, a pot/pan, hotplate, flashlight, sewing kit, few bottles of clean water, and enough food to last a couple of days, as you probably won’t be able to butcher corpses worth a damn at the very beginning.

Keep an eye on your torso encumbrance to stay viable in melee, and remember that you can mitigate things like backpacks somewhat by wearing things that give -1 encumbrance - like a fitted tank top, under armour or wool poncho.

Grab whatever useful books you can find. First aid, survival and mechanics are good ones at the start of the game. Don’t forget that there is no time limit, so as long as you can take care of your needs, you can easily afford to spend a few days holed up reading books.

Batteries are laughably easy to keep a large stock of as long as you remember to unload any unneeded devices you find.

I spend a chunk of my experience on day two getting tailoring up to 2 so that I can fix my own gear reliably. I recommend doing the same.

Smokers will wreck your torso if you aren’t very careful. I find they’re more trouble than they’re worth until you have a filter/gas mask.

When you find a gun store, hit it up and grab whatever compatible gun/ammo combinations you can get, preferably something high caliber. This is not for killing zombies - this is the nest egg that will make the remainder of the game very easy for you. Once you find something like a Glock 19 or MP5, go hunting for dead scientists and lift one of their cards, then make your way to the nearest science lab. These places are gold mines. They’re heavily stocked with bandages and batteries (grab a hotplate if you didn’t already find one) and, more importantly, turrets. Turrets will be your 9mm vending machines for the duration of the game. Later on you’ll simply be able to open a door and blast them to scrap, but at the beginning it’s prudent to turn your flashlight off when you find one, get close enough not to miss, and then switch your flashlight back on and shoot them with your large caliber gun. Collect whatever 9mm they had. Rinse, repeat. If you’re lucky you can walk out of a science lab with over a thousand rounds of 9mm.

Your character is now survivable for as long as it takes for you to get careless. Have fun!

9

I have had quite a bit of experience, and find that even if i know exactly what i need to succeed every time, it is a rare chance that you get your supper hero survivor god that we all remember.

I personally have had 2, one that still lives on V1.0 with all 20+ levels and have stopped using it, and one on V3.0 which is currently attempting to break the land speed record.

There is only one truth when it comes to Cataclysm, if you do not have a car, you will not survive for long, a car is how you transport your large supply of loot, weapons, supplies, and craftables along with you while allowing you to haul your can right through the town and kill scores of Zombies that would otherwise destroy you. This will always be the 1 truth of Cataclysm, if you do not have a full filled fully repaired car that wont break if you hit a hulk, then you will not survive long. Ever.

At this moment i suggest the Robust Genetic, Quick, Android combo, it gives you the largest chance of getting good luck, if you experience a mutation from a failed CBM instalation, you might get 4-5 mutations, and with Robust, you will most likely get only positives.

All things are second. When you have a strong car, you can ram your way into any installation, IE science labs and military compounds.

This is my secret to getting a character to survive over 100 days, The V.1 character is 5 in game years old at least, the V.3 is around her (Random Char gen) first year now i believe
and as of 45 minutes ago, a damaged startup script will see to their deletion should i be unable to reprogram the script

For V.5 i have had a bit of trouble getting to the high level stage because of the edits to the vehicle spawn, but i have had a few occasions where i found a car with both an engine and a small amount of fule, only to burn out before a gas station.

“Sigh, i keep spacing out before i can finish this thing so i’m cutting off, its a bit late”

10

That’s not really true either. My last few characters haven’t used vehicles at all, as I felt like taking a break from the Mad Max thing, and my latest one is still going in year two. For me I would say guns are more important to longevity than cars, but there isn’t really one way of doing things. Some ways are more expedient or easier than others, doubtless.

11

I think the main thing is to not panic in combat. I was walking from my truck when I got attacked by a bear. I was like, “HOLY SHEETS! I’m a goner!” The I stopped and was like, “Wait. I always have something prepped for this kind of sheets.” I stopped looked in my inventory and then katana’d the stupid bear to death in one blow. :stuck_out_tongue:

12

@PiotraperPL

Nap. I hate to be wrong here, but what the heck.
The first few weeks of the show come down on this - either you find out a way not to be the game - or get sucked in. Crash windows - Zs come close, lite too many fires - care to see predators? You’ll get carpal just by squeezing the knife in your pocket thinking what to do.
So call it “stock - equip”, anyways, it’s a known “farming” ingenuity - bust a few, gear up and beat it, slip it, zzzing the hell away. Have it your way in the wild - they won’t bother if you don’t settle in their lil’ cave.
I have to support Gtaguy’s thing on this - as it’s the “bring it on” core of the game, considering stockpiles. If you’ve got a good three days’ worth of supplies on all of the checkpoints - yer a Bilbo.
Pay mind on ammo, slip some chemicals/electronics in and it’s a go.

Or you can play a suicide mission like I did, and succeed - like I did, and it’s commonly named as - kill, Kill, KILL! Keep up your melee, champ.

@Miloch - try getting out of gas in a swamp, hence the topics on the board.

13

Out of gas in a swamp? You’re just screwed there. Your best bet would be to wait for nightfall and high tail it towards the closest safe point. I don’t know if you mark out of gas vehicles or anything. But if it’s a big swamp you might be able to make a run between vehicles… If the vehicles in question are truly sealed. Or if you have the mechanics equipment with you fix another vehicle up in the dark… That’s a tough one. I always keep a jerry can of some kind of fuel. Otherwise… your just generally screwed there. Though you kinda did it to yourself there mate. :stuck_out_tongue:

14

In my opinnion, one of top priorities, (before going into big cities on Static mode) is getting a car. Any car will do, my tactic for getting a car is carrying a bottle of gas in my inventory, and when i find a car, refill it with the bottle of gas and drive it to the gas station. I always keep a couple of containers full of gas in the trunk, just so i dont run out of gas in a bad place like a SWAMP. Main reason for getting a car is, you can kill any creature with it, you can store a lot of stuff you might need for later. And try to save all the canned goods, plastic bags of food, paper wrappers of chocolate, and fresh water for later. Just eat the soon spoiling stuff, just so you don’t run out of food at something like Day 3.

15

[quote=“vultures, post:12, topic:1439”]@PiotraperPL

Nap. I hate to be wrong here, but what the heck.
The first few weeks of the show come down on this - either you find out a way not to be the game - or get sucked in. Crash windows - Zs come close, lite too many fires - care to see predators? You’ll get carpal just by squeezing the knife in your pocket thinking what to do.
So call it “stock - equip”, anyways, it’s a known “farming” ingenuity - bust a few, gear up and beat it, slip it, zzzing the hell away. Have it your way in the wild - they won’t bother if you don’t settle in their lil’ cave.
I have to support Gtaguy’s thing on this - as it’s the “bring it on” core of the game, considering stockpiles. If you’ve got a good three days’ worth of supplies on all of the checkpoints - yer a Bilbo.
Pay mind on ammo, slip some chemicals/electronics in and it’s a go.

Or you can play a suicide mission like I did, and succeed - like I did, and it’s commonly named as - kill, Kill, KILL! Keep up your melee, champ.[/quote]
At this moment every character I make, uses longbow. This may or may not be a good strategy, but hey, I’m having fun here. Recently I’m lucky with towns, because I always find a few houses with no Z’s around, breaking those two windows to get a longbow is not a problem, and If there are Z’s around, killing them with that bow is not a hard thing. I’m not exactly sure what do you mean by saying “lite too many fires - care to see predators?”.
The real problem is getting all that food nicely stockpiled. I can never find enough food to even be fed up through a night of reading books. It is possible to butcher wildlife for food but meat, even that cooked one, can rot, right?
Also, ammo is not a problem when you have bows, but I can foresee problems with getting it for normal firearms.
[hr]

I can’t even survive for long enough to get tools needed to repair cars. I can get gasoline for cars, but repairing them is beyond my possibilities.

16

As I said, if you can advance to the point where raiding science labs for turrets becomes routine, then ammo is no longer a problem, either, and guns are a lot more powerful than bows.

17

@Vultures: I have a very simple way to save yourself. Create a new character. Have him find a gas station. Get a plastic bottle full of gas. Have him run around on roads outside of town till he finds an out of gas car. Have him drive said car to a gas station. Have him fill said car up and get several plastic bottles full of gas. Have him drive right up next to your car and either fill your car up or drop them on your car. That will be the most difficult part as the standard vehicles aren’t sealed correctly.

18

I actually just posted that like 2 hours ago, lol.

19

Where?

20

First page, second last post.