Advanced Tips for the Accomplished Survivor

[SteeleMatrix]

It’s frustrating to see that every Cataclysm tips and tricks page is always for beginner level players. There’s never posts for us veterans, so here’s a list of some intermediate to advanced level tips. The ones posted here were just off the top of my head so feel free to add to the list below.

1. If you already have a tool that holds a charge (ex. sewing kits use thread, flashlights use batteries) and you see a duplicate of that tool out in the wild, empty it of its goodies. Since you don’t need the tool itself, you will probably need whatever’s in it (batteries, thread), so you might as well take them.
   This applies to any tool or object of this kind that is refillable.

2. Save before installing CBMs. If you save and something goes horribly wrong with the installation, then immediately close and load up the game again for another try. This may seem like an exploit to some, so only use it if you’re still learning the game and are experimenting, or if you’re just a dirty cheater like that.

3. Take all books that you find. Even if you can’t use them anymore because you’ve already read them, or if they’re an entertainment book that you’ve already read, you can still use them as fuel for a CBM or for burning in a fireplace. (Note: burning books is generally frowned upon, but if that’s you’re forte then more power to you)

4. You can never have enough of something. As a loose rule to follow, everything has a use. It doesn’t matter if you think 200 bottles of non-drowsy cough syrup is enough, when you start using them for crafting, you’ll find yourself running out very quickly.

5. When you start to explore further out from your base into unknown and dangerous lands, don’t leave home without some kind of ranged weapons. Aside from the obvious shocker zombies that have deadly ranged attacks, things like boomers, spitters, and brutes will also want to be taken out from afar.

6. Find what type of melee weapon works for you (if you’re a melee character). As a starting player, we generally looked for the weapon with the highest damage to use as our weapon of choice. But that’s not always the best decision. The deadly Zweihander may have superb damage, but is quite large and cumbersome. A katana may have less raw damage, but it’s smaller weight and size will lend itself to quicker attacks, allowing you kill opponents such as brutes and hulks with greater ease. (For clarification, the Zweihander may have high damage, but it’s inability to hit quickly will force you to spend more time in proximity of a brute or hulk, allowing them to potentially deal massive damage to you.)

Again, feel free to add onto this list of tips that you’ve discovered on your adventures

[secretfire]

These are my tips/personal things. I’m not sure how useful they are, but its what comes to mind for me.

1. You can run away from almost anything. The few things you can’t, maneuver around. Use bushes, fences, cars, etc. all as if you were in an action movie. YOU ARE. Break down windows, run around cars and then down the middle so zombies crawl over them. You don’t really need to be great at combat. You can just run. You’ll last a lot longer getting good at running and manipulating the environment (setting gasoline on fire, pushing things in front of doors and going out windows) then you will by being badass at combat and taking stupid risks.

2. Resist the urge to cheat. This may seem stupid, especially as cheating can very easily remove the ‘grinding’ parts of the game - but cheating will ruin the fun. Its better to boost initial skill points and then NOT cheat, even if that means death, then cheat. Its easy enough to thrive in the game without cheating. So if you cheat your way around, say, bad mutations or CBM problems, then end up overpowered, you’ve ruined the game. I always bump up my starting points enough that I can have a ‘realistic’ number of starting skills, refuse to ever grind (unless it would be in-character and I’d have a good rp reason) and then refuse to cheat.

3. Speaking of stupid risks…fire is your friend! You can clear entire towns of zombies with fire. You can even destroy Mi-Go with fire. Its an easy trick. Just lure them all into big buildings, one by one, then shove something in front of a door and escape out a window. After setting the place on fire. Do this two or three times and the town will be clear’d enough that you can even read by the flames and roast marshmellows cook meat using it. Its like a fun family cookout, except your family is burning in flames while trying to eat you.

4. Installing CBM is pretty safe if the risk is under 20%. By ‘safe’ I mean something will only go wrong about 1/5th the time. If at all possible, read a first aid, mechanics or electronics skill-book beforehand, unless the risk is under 10% or so. Stuff will go wrong still, on occasion, but you have a decent chance of removing it without complications at those percentages.

5. Once you have a decent number of mutations, stop installing CBM’s. Its just cheesy until more drawbacks to this get coded in. Sure, you can be super-powerful, but if nothing challenges you the game will quickly loose its allure. Its kinda understandable to think the mutations might work their way around your current biological/technological makeup, but silly to think that electronics meant for humans would work on, say, a giant cat, or a squid, or a 20 foot tall bear.

6. If you want an easy-mutant start, look for caves until you find one with rats, then chill out in the bottom with the Rat King. You’ll either come out looking like a rat or a vampire, depending on your luck and how quickly you get out. Either way, its an easy way to have a human be mutated against their will if you can’t find a decent rp reason to use mutagen.

7. Rollerblades are way more portable and less maintenance then a car. I always seem to crash cars in CATA due to difficulty turning them. Rollerblades need no fuel, are portable, easy to obtain, and can zip zip zip you through some pretty infested areas and down long stretches of highway.

8. Blowguns are GREAT weapons for character wanting to develop ranged weapons skill. Way better then archery. Sure, they do almost no damage. But they have very low dispersion and so train marksmanship up wonderfully. They are also super duper easy to make loads of ammo for. Be careful how you use them - I find they are best used at night when being sneaky because it lets you just sit there silently and snipe away at things. They’ll crit often, but not do much damage. Choose your targets well and they are very fun and rewarding.

9. Cheat without guilt if its more fun, even if it contradicts one of the rules above.

[deoxy]

1. Map notes are your friend! Mark the places on the map you’ve cleared out (you can even make the note invisible on most squares if you set the color and symbol correctly so that it doesn’t make your map a blinky mess), mark the stuff you find and want but can’t carry off yet, and for goodness sake, tell yourself where the stairs in the labs are! (Also, telling yourself which way the rooms in the lab have exits can be very, VERY useful - I use the <^>v marks for house facing for which ways have exits.)

2. Subways and sewers are much safer to get around in than the town (at least, on 20x monster spawn they are…), so take the time to map them our and open all the manholes you find - you never know when you’ll need to run away and take the sewer back to your base instead of going through town.

3. Encumbrance stays bad forever, you never out-skill it. Seriously, even with 20+ melee skill, high torso encumbrance slows down your attack speed far enough to make you vulnerable. I didn’t realize the attack speed thing for a while.

4. As you reach higher melee output, be careful killing spitters - if you overkill them in combat, you may get splashed with acid from their corpse, and it seems to hit multiple times before you can react (I’ve seen as high as 5 instant hits - ouch). Melee isn’t their main threat - switch to a weaker weapon so you don’t overkill them, even if it means more swings.

5. Manhacks occasionally drop plutonium cells when destroyed, even though they don’t when butchered. Get a scientist into the lab where a non-zombie creature is imprisoned, and the constant agitation will keep the scientist producing manhacks basically forever. Free plutonium, yay.

[Noodles_of_Doom]

5. Manhacks occasionally drop plutonium cells when destroyed, even though they don’t when butchered. Get a scientist into the lab where a non-zombie creature is imprisoned, and the constant agitation will keep the scientist producing manhacks basically forever. Free plutonium, yay.

Here I was shooting LAW rockets at the nukes in missile silos so I could get their plutonium- thanks for the new source of plutonium mining.

[Derpular]

1. Map notes are your friend! Mark the places on the map you’ve cleared out (you can even make the note invisible on most squares if you set the color and symbol correctly so that it doesn’t make your map a blinky mess), mark the stuff you find and want but can’t carry off yet, and for goodness sake, tell yourself where the stairs in the labs are! (Also, telling yourself which way the rooms in the lab have exits can be very, VERY useful - I use the <^>v marks for house facing for which ways have exits.)

You can also mark a tile “explored,” which grays it out without blinking.

Take some aspirin into labs. Leave one in front of any turret door you find as a warning to your future self, who will be sprinting down to level -4 to fetch another full rucksack of loot, and may not be alert enough to notice that the wall is illuminated.

Take trash objects into mines, and drop one on the up stairs to each level. Odds are there’s a gas vent close enough to obscure the whole area, making finding the upstairs again an immense pain otherwise.

[Pandromidal]

CBMS:
Most cbms become common enough late game that you shouldn’t feel bad loosing a few. Common cbms are anything you find in normal cbm rooms in labs. If you destroy an integrated toolset or an internal furnace there’s going to be several more just like it when you explore the next lab. Resist the urge to install the rare ones until you actually have the skills. One exceptions is that the cerebral enhancement cbm which is how you will get those insane skills to begin with. That said you should just recklessly install power storage from almost day one. Drugs can boost your int by insane amounts so use all the relevant drugs that you have in your inventory which will give int boosts. You can also get “elated” from using anything that improves your mood such as an mp3 player. Put everything together and you should easily be able to get +10. With some work you can even get to an over stimulated state where you have +20 to int.

Auto Pickup
Leverage auto pickups for all your item needs. Use ?, 3 to set up wild cards like “cash card*”. Set up a rule for every kind of 0 volume medicine. If you need batteries, power converters, etc., set up a rule for those too. Even if it’s something rare, like let’s say you are trying to build laser turrets, just set up a “laser” rule to auto pickup any laser stuff. This will save you from not noticing items when you are butchering zombies. When you first start the game everything is new, but after you have played for a while it’s easy to miss a screwdriver or other basic item because your last character already had a dozen kicking around, but your current character has none.

Get the hang of Labs
Labs are awesome. They are literally a gold mine of all the stuff you want. So get the hang of them. Even with no skills or good supplies, once you get the hang of them, you should never get killed the random turrets and other dangers. If you take lab challenge you even get extra character creation points and can start with high night vision! Also, getting out of labs is trivial once you get the hang of it.

Don’t be Ashamed
Don’t let other players shame you out of optimizing your character creation. If you are the kind of person who doesn’t like maxing out their negative traits with all the usual stuff then more power to you. However for the rest of us, please don’t feel bad for making your characters start out as awesome as possible. After all this IS the optimization problem that the game has given you.

[Pandromidal]

One more thing:

The computers by turrets in labs will reveal large parts of the surface map. This is incredibly useful. Even if you have 0 computer skill, killing 2 or 3 turrets and getting electrocuted a few times by the consoles should do the trick. In fact, some of my characters got into the habit of going into labs specifically to reveal more of the map.

[Coolthulhu]

[quote=“Pandromidal, post:6, topic:9357”]Don’t be Ashamed
Don’t let other players shame you out of optimizing your character creation. If you are the kind of person who doesn’t like maxing out their negative traits with all the usual stuff then more power to you. However for the rest of us, please don’t feel bad for making your characters start out as awesome as possible. After all this IS the optimization problem that the game has given you.[/quote]

This, a lot.
Game starts at character generation, not after it. Sometimes even earlier, at world generation.

[Zioko]

Woo, just here with a few tips for mid to late-game, mainly on the topic of some less-talked about features or the things that take a bit of getting used to or learning.

1. You know that little ‘turns to run’ debuff you get from mouth encumbrance? I bet it’s tempted plenty of us to take it off at times, namely when evading the inevitable horde you attracted from that demonic gun store alarm, or the window breaking from your misplaced blow or crowbar. Sure, getting rid of that debuff would be helpful, but what about the risk of influenza or the cold you run into the moment you remove that gas or filter mask? I’d take a few more moments of fleeing than a week of being helpless, myself.

2. This ties back to the whole ‘being wary of when you remove your mask for health reasons’ thing I mentioned. Every time you install a CBM, drink a mutagen, install a CBM or even just have a smoke, you lower your soft health stat. If this “soft” health stat is lowered for too long, it begins to lower your “hard” health stat, which is the one that actually increases your risk of being sick and such. These two stats typically try to move towards each other, or even out, if you will. So down those vitamins, guzzle a cup of herbal tea and, most importantly, lay off of the cocaine and Medical Mutagen every once in a while- you don’t want to come down with the flu the moment you take off your mask to flee from that horde.

3. Now onto a non health-related topic- batch crafting, and how dangerous it can be. Everyone loves lutefisk, right? That phlegmy, afterbirthy fish soaked in lye and water? Well, I had amassed a fortune of fish, lye and water to batch-craft about twenty of the things, at a cooking difficulty of 6 and a skill of 6 under my belt. Luckily for me, I happened to catastrophically fail in the cooking and waste every bit of my hard-earned fish fillets and lye. So, essentially, the moral of this story is to not batch-craft anything you’re not sure you’ll succeed in making, as the risk of failure is too much to bear when you actually fail.

4. Please, for the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, don’t play with joke monsters. As the creator of this thread knows, I once had an amazing character with insane bionics, perfect mutation record, and a rather fine bastion of a base in a fire house in a laaaarge city. I was running around with a monomolecular blade, and suddenly I see several “V” pages of Zombie Dancers, and at the helm, a thriller. They’re not only blocking the road, but slowing my game down a good deal. So, apprehensively, I stab the Thriller and gib him, spawning hundreds of hulks. After a long chain of events, it turns out the massive event and numbers of all of this ended up ruining my game file- I reloaded after closing, and the numbers of hulks doubled each time I attempted to reload. So, turn on that mod and get rid of those vile, game-ruining beasts.

I’ll be back with more, friends- just give me some time to get rid of this flu.

[KA101]

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:8, topic:9357”][quote=“Pandromidal, post:6, topic:9357”]Don’t be Ashamed
Don’t let other players shame you out of optimizing your character creation. If you are the kind of person who doesn’t like maxing out their negative traits with all the usual stuff then more power to you. However for the rest of us, please don’t feel bad for making your characters start out as awesome as possible. After all this IS the optimization problem that the game has given you.[/quote]

This, a lot.
Game starts at character generation, not after it. Sometimes even earlier, at world generation.[/quote]

By all means.

Just keep in mind that by making The One Optimal Character, you may have problems convincing yourself to play any other way. shrug

[Pandromidal]

[quote=“KA101, post:10, topic:9357”][quote=“Coolthulhu, post:8, topic:9357”][quote=“Pandromidal, post:6, topic:9357”]Don’t be Ashamed
Don’t let other players shame you out of optimizing your character creation. If you are the kind of person who doesn’t like maxing out their negative traits with all the usual stuff then more power to you. However for the rest of us, please don’t feel bad for making your characters start out as awesome as possible. After all this IS the optimization problem that the game has given you.[/quote]

This, a lot.
Game starts at character generation, not after it. Sometimes even earlier, at world generation.[/quote]

By all means.

Just keep in mind that by making The One Optimal Character, you may have problems convincing yourself to play any other way. shrug[/quote]

Maybe, but I bet most people’s optimal character build would be different.

[Coolthulhu]

Just keep in mind that by making The One Optimal Character, you may have problems convincing yourself to play any other way. shrug

But then you can switch to intentional challenges.
Optimizing within some arbitrary but well defined rules doesn’t leave this “I have to do badly in order to have fun” distaste.

For example nudist challenge, 5.0 spawn fast zombie world, 4 dex character or just the default bad day and lab starts.
I had way more fun with any of those than with any of the “I won’t take Insomniac because it is just free points” characters.

[Pandromidal]

[quote=“KA101, post:10, topic:9357”]Just keep in mind that by making The One Optimal Character, you may have problems convincing yourself to play any other way. shrug

But then you can switch to intentional challenges.
Optimizing within some arbitrary but well defined rules doesn’t leave this “I have to do badly in order to have fun” distaste.

For example nudist challenge, 5.0 spawn fast zombie world, 4 dex character or just the default bad day and lab starts.
I had way more fun with any of those than with any of the “I won’t take Insomniac because it is just free points” characters.[/quote]

… and that probably leads to another advanced character tip. If you are getting bored, switch things up. At some point you will get into a very grindy pattern. The way to avoid this is to choose something different like a radically different starting location, or a cool challenge mode. For instance, I’ve played my fair share of evac shelter games, but right now I’ve gotten into the Lab Challenge scenario. Part of this is just because it’s a very rich unique location for your vulnerable just-out-of-the-gate character, and learning to break out efficiently was several days worth of fun.

… did I mention how much I like labs LOL

[MormonPartyboat]

1. Chemistry plus salt water and charcoal is your friend. With just those ingredients and a few simple raw materials (wood, scrap metal), you can make quite a lot of chemicals. Salt water makes bleach makes oxidizer powder. Charcoal makes ammonia and lye. Oxidizer powder, charcoal, and ammonia makes gunpowder.

2. The easiest way to get long rope to make cargo carriers is to hack seatbelts off every car you see. Even the destroyed ones drop a significant amount of long string.

3. Don’t be afraid to use what you have when you need it. Find a grenade launcher? Drive on down to your nearest megastore and go wild with it rather than tucking it away in your stash. You are one of the last consumers left on a planet of consumables, appreciate your unique position.

4. Some stuff doesn’t really need to be hoarded. Rags are everywhere, wood is plentiful, scrap metal’s as close as the nearest destroyable vehicle. If you need electronic components, just mark where the nearest school is and strip its computers when you need. That gives you more room to sort everything else you own and carry around.

5. Read. If you can get skillups from a book, take the time to do so. Dig into your non-perishable stash if you need, per rule 3.

[Pandromidal]

[quote=“MormonPartyboat, post:14, topic:9357”]1) Chemistry plus salt water and charcoal is your friend. With just those ingredients and a few simple raw materials (wood, scrap metal), you can make quite a lot of chemicals. Salt water makes bleach makes oxidizer powder. Charcoal makes ammonia and lye. Oxidizer powder, charcoal, and ammonia makes gunpowder.

2. The easiest way to get long rope to make cargo carriers is to hack seatbelts off every car you see. Even the destroyed ones drop a significant amount of long string.

3. Don’t be afraid to use what you have when you need it. Find a grenade launcher? Drive on down to your nearest megastore and go wild with it rather than tucking it away in your stash. You are one of the last consumers left on a planet of consumables, appreciate your unique position.

4. Some stuff doesn’t really need to be hoarded. Rags are everywhere, wood is plentiful, scrap metal’s as close as the nearest destroyable vehicle. If you need electronic components, just mark where the nearest school is and strip its computers when you need. That gives you more room to sort everything else you own and carry around.

5. Read. If you can get skillups from a book, take the time to do so. Dig into your non-perishable stash if you need, per rule 3.[/quote]

Where are you getting salt water? I mainly only find it in plastic bottles in labs. Also I never seam to have enough computer parts, because making power storage cbms is very power converter and amplifier circuit intensive.

[Valpo]

You ll find endless pools of salt water in swamps.

[martinuzz]

ZERO encumberment max holster capacity setup (I think):

• 2 small handguns (2x ankle holster)
• 1 handgun with silencer (1x light survivor harness)
• 1 smg (1x holster)
• 1 reflex recurve bow or a rifle, whichever pleases you (back holster)
• quiver with ammo for bow, or a second back holster for a shotgun, second rifle or whatever
• nodachi, katana, or whatever tickles your fancy (scabbard)
• combat knife (sheath)
• hunting knife (boots)

[URL=http://s303.photobucket.com/user/martinuzzz/media/goodgeardda_zpsr446kzy8.png.html][/URL]

The above gives me 3 head encumberment (which has no effect). That’s it.

[Shadowdweller]

[quote=“martinuzz, post:17, topic:9357”]ZERO encumberment max holster capacity setup (I think):

• 2 small handguns (2x ankle holster)
• 1 handgun with silencer (1x light survivor harness)
• 1 smg (1x holster)
• 1 reflex recurve bow or a rifle, whichever pleases you (back holster)
• quiver with ammo for bow, or a second back holster for a shotgun, second rifle or whatever
• nodachi, katana, or whatever tickles your fancy (scabbard)
• combat knife (sheath)
• hunting knife (boots)[/quote]That many weapons is excessive and unnecessary. As the game progresses volume / encumberment becomes less limiting and reducing weight becomes more and more important. Clothing with greater storage becomes available and better armor and supplies generally weigh more.

[RADIALTHRONE1]

[quote=“martinuzz, post:17, topic:9357”]- combat knife (sheath)

• hunting knife (boots)[/quote]

You can actually have 2 knives in a pair of boots (One for each, obviously) so the sheath is unnecessary

[Random_dragon]

If you have an NPC companion that’s slower than you, you can goad them to board a vehicle (move into their space, hit “no” when asked if you want to attack, they step back). If it’s one you intend to drag behind you, they’ll stay put until you let go AND move far enough away.

Push them onto a seat square and you can drive them around. o3o