Afraid of Dinosaurs, forgot about the Dinomod

[Klundalak]

Greetings fellow survivors. I picked up an old save from more than two years ago, and had it loaded up in the latest stable version, which is 0.F3. I finally managed to have a character who successfully survived for more than a week, and I am stockpiling on some loot. It seems my old dufflebag could no longer carry any more crude wooden arrows on me, so I opted for a staff sling with rocks, which actually works pretty well.

Nothing too eventful has happened that first couple of weeks. I helped the refugee center deal with their zombie problem, started looting a couple of houses in a nearby town, all the while training my skills.

I came by this basic forging guide on the official wiki page, and I thought, hey, that sounds pretty cool. Having my own forge sounds like an awesome idea!

I started off by building a charcoal kiln, chopped down some logs for the charcoal, the mundane stuff. According to the guide, the anvil needs a clay crucible, which needs a clay kiln, which itself needs a decent amount of clay. At this point I wasn’t aware that my wooden stove was actually capable of crafting a clay crucible, and by digging any tile of dirt would give me meager, but enough, amounts of clay for the crucible. Anyways, being the newbie I was, I followed the guide and looked for a river to extract some clay.

Now here is where the scary part, at least for me, started.

I looked at my map and found the closest lake, which is quite the distance from my evac shelter. When I neared the lake, the couple large carps and salmons didn’t matter much, I just looked for the nearest clay and started collecting. Halfway through, safemode paused my job: Spotted a Zombie Amargasaurus!

What?! I used x to span the camera over at the blinking dot on my minimap, and I was SCARED. A HUGE Zombie Amargasaurus, its sprite spanning multiple tiles, just at the edge of my screen. I stopped all operations and ran back to my evac shelter. Oh lord, it was then that I checked my mods list, and I forgot that I had left Dinomods on. After a couple of hours, I went back to the lake side, and now there are TWO of them! At least it seems they were moving away from the river, so I was able to finish my clay collecting quest and ran full speed back home. Oh hell no, I’m never going back there again.

You thought that was the end? I wish it was. I was looting this house in a town, and when I tried for the basement, BAM! A prompt showed up warning me there is a Compsognathus in the way! WHAT? What even is a compsogwhatchamacallit? Why the hell is it in the basement? Frick no! I ran back to my evac base, saved the game and quit.

Since no info was available in the hitchhiker’s guide or the official wiki, I had to a bit of searching on the internet looking up those names just to understand what kind of crazy monster dinosaurs they were. The game did a great job scaring the crap out of me.

So how did you guys handle these dinosaurs? Is there a way to disable this scary mod without ruining my save? I get bug reports saying the game couldn’t find any wildlife field offices, probably related to the dinosaurs? I suppose my staff sling is useless against these behemoths.

Anyways, I am already at level 4 fabrication with 99% experience. I plan to finish my own little metal forge workshep and craft some more durable armor before I return back to the outside. Clearing out the nearest town may be my next goal.

[Klundalak]

Anyways fellow survivors, I am back to continue exploring this beautiful world of New England, with dinosaurs.

Good news, my rock forge has been completed, along with a fully functional anvil! Awesome, now I can start blacksmithing! I started installing metal bars on my windows to raise my fabrication skills, while also improving my defenses. By the time I hit fabrication level 6, I was able to craft myself an awesome hatchet, how cool is that? Just look those stats! A straight upgrade from my stone axehead.

At first, I was afraid of having a hot forge, so I constructed it outside the confines of my evac shelter. One of these nights I started hearing swishing sounds next to the walls of my forge? But when I opened the door and checked around, there was nothing. I checked the roof too, nothing there either. In the following day, a deep pit appeared out of nowhere in the woods near my house too? I hate these strange occurrences, so I brought my entrenching tool and filled the pit up. I guess that take cares of it. Hopefully.

Has any of you come up against something similar before? Anything peculiar happened after? Feel free to share with me.

Last time I learned about the existence of dinosaurs and how afraid of them I was, and this time I learned how much I hate basements. Yup. Basements.

Last time there was a compsognathus right at the stairs of the basement. But this time, THIS TIME, oh Lord, things are much worse. I was scavenging this new house, saw those stairs going down, and proceeded to descend them. The moment I went down, goosebumps grew all over my arms: The floor was riddled with roach dirt, roach eggs, and of course, a group of giant roaches. UUUEGH, disgusting. I ran back up, climbed out of the window, all the while slinging rocks at those giant cockroaches. Green roach blood is being splat all over the place, totally disgusting.

I thought roaches were bad enough, but that was not end! This next house that I looted also had a basement. I thought my previous cockroach encounter was just pure bad luck, but this one was just proof that bad things come in pairs: A basement filled with sewer rats! What the FRICK? What is wrong with these people and their houses? Those pests are showing up all over the place! Goddamn. Hell no. I stormed out of the house. But wait, what is that thing to the North? A feral human!? What!? Terribly disgusting! Screw this! I ditched my scavenging run and went straight back to my base. That was a horrible way to end my day. Are these feral enemies new enemy types introduced in some update? Their design, not only disgusting but also horrifying. How did they come? What is their lore? I am terribly afraid of them, great design I must admit.

[Klundalak]

After a couple of in game weeks, I’ve finally changed my mindset of the game: these enemies are now my resources, I put them down, then I get to harvest what is on their bodies, or sometimes even what is left of their bodies.

The town clearing progress seems to be going pretty well. I’ve cleared out a doctor’s office for some medicine, and I’ve also cleared out what seems to be an extremely luxurious lounge, which contained a decent amount of gear and books. This third house though, seemed quiet strange. All of the windows were barricaded, and the main doors were all locked up. I even saw a pulped zombie corpse at its doorsteps. At first, I thought that these were signs of potential NPC survivors, who boarded themselves up in the outskirts of the town. But as most things go in the apocalypse, all I found was zombies in the house. Yet, half of the house was walled off, except for some stairs going down. Seems suspicious to me, I plan to upgrade my gear further before exploring further.

There is a police station and a military surplus located in the center of the town, and as expected, the whole place is crowded with mobs. I will have to somehow thin down their numbers. The normal zombies and feral humans are fine, I’ve even managed to take down a couple of Z-9s during my other scavenging runs. It’s the zombie cops, SWAT zombies, Zapper zombies and zombie soldiers that are really annoying.

But at least we’ve got good news: A new survivor NPC has been added to the camp! How awesome.

Yet strange things have been happening too. Some of the pulped corpses that I left before have disappeared? Also, this random fat zombie wandering around the edge of the forest the other day suddenly became a pulped corpse? I checked around but I didn’t find anything peculiar, hmmm.

I guess I am not alone out there after all. The “dumb” zombies out there in the open may be the least of my threats.

[Klundalak]

To continue from where we left off last time. Things were pretty uneventful, I was turtling through the town, going house by house, cleaning out 3-4 zombies on average a day. But the game always finds a way to surprise me:

There was this house I was looting, which was next to an electronics store and behind the store was a police station. One of these days when I left the house from the back door, a message pops up:

You heard a voice to the north: “Halt citizen! Seize your weapons!”. There was only a zombie cop to the north within my vision at that time, and according to the game, it cannot see to my location yet. Strange thing, I thought to myself. So apparently zombie cops could speak now? But how? Who could be the intended audience of such a voice? I didn’t pay much attention and carried on with my daily looting.

The next day I came back to town and decided to loot the electronics store. When I reached the back alley of that electronics store, what a sight to behold: a riot control bot surrounded by a group of zombies: a zapper zombie, 2 tough zombies, 4 normal zombies, 3 fat zombies, a feral human, 3 zombie cops and a SWAT zombie. Just not far down the road, there was also a zombie dog corpse. I waited for one turn to observe just what the hell was going on, and I was amazed by the combat ability of this riot control bot:

The zombie lunged at the riot control bot, but it dodged!
The fat zombie lunged at the riot control bot, but it dodged!
The zapper zombie lunged at the riot control bot, but it dodged!
The tough zombie lunged at the riot control bot, but it dodged!
The feral human struck the riot control bot, but its armor stopped the damage!

This riot control bot has insane defenses. It also occasionally bursts out this white milky gas, which seems to have relaxation effects? Not too effective on the zombies though. It is a robot meant to protect humans, right? I see its status as “Hostile”, but I suppose it is only hostile to the zombies around it. With this thought in mind, I inched up and one by one, I took out the zombies surrounding the riot control bot, with a bow of course. Ah yes, I forgot to mention, I have finally made my first quiver! Hoorah!

How disappointing. Even after helping the little robot take out the zombies around it, it is still hostile towards me. Good thing is, this robot ain’t too fast, so I managed to trap it in one of those empty houses which I’ve already looted before. Furthermore, this little bot still has another buddy to help it: a cop bot! I ran away from it though, blocking line-of-sight using the buildings and trees.

What an awesome trip! Tons of Kevlar armor, hell yeah! Oh well, I’ve got one more item added to my todo list: figure out a way to deal with or befriend the local law enforcement machines.

[Klundalak]

Time sure does fly. It was just Spring yesterday, and now it is all of a sudden Summer. Damn. The weather is too hot right now, I had to take off most of my gear to prevent over-heating. The only thing I’m wearing is literally a pair of sunglasses and a pair of pants.

By the looks of it, scavenging the city with the zombies still roaming around isn’t a smart idea. Instead, I’ve shifted my focus towards upgrading the base, sorting out the loot and crafting more gear.

First things first, a sustainable source of water seems to be crucial. My character dehydrates a lot faster during the summer, requiring almost twice as much water intake as before. Thus, I got myself a well built right next to my back door, which is also next to my forging area.

Next thing up is food. Spring was fine, foraging the underbushes and scavenging kitchens was enough. Food is also easy to come by during Summer, with all the fruit trees and berry bushes around. Looking are my reserve of salted vegetables, I wouldn’t be too worried about Autumn either. Winter would be the main problem. I don’t expect anything to grow during winter, meaning that I will have to stock up on preserved food if I wish to survive. Getting prepared for the worst is never an overshoot, right? Since most of the crops take only a single season to fully mature, I’ve started my own farm. I usually wake up a few minutes before sunrise, since it’s too dark to craft anything I just spend this time plowing the ground with my hoe. With a small farm going on, I should expect a decent amount of harvest by autumn.

With the comestibles out of the way, next thing up should be gear. Weapons and armor to suit up myself, and any potential followers later on down the road. A decent amount of Kevlar was looted from the zombie cops and soldiers. I butchered them up and crafted a full set of heavy survivor gear, and a full set of winter survivor gear. I should also diversify my arsenal. A machete and bow would be great in the short run, but I should prepare for the long run. With scrap metal looted from a helicopter crash site, I’ve crafted weapons for each damage type.

[Klundalak]

Talking about upgrading the base. Most of the windows at my evac base was either boarded up or had no curtains. Boarding up the window prevents light from coming through, hindering my crafting projects. But having pure windows without any reinforcements does not sound too safe. Thus, I’ve decided to install metal bars on each window, and installed back all the curtains. I’ve already got enough sinew from the butchered zombie corpses, no need for more threads.

I doubt that the wooden doors would be of any use defending my base from an attack either. Even the reinforced wooden doors do not satisfy my needs. I’ll just have to take down every door and reinstall metal doors instead.

Taking a closer look at my walls reveals that they are flammable? Not good enough. Constructing a cement wall would be ideal, but too luxurious. I just do not have access to any cement. But adobe bricks seem more durable, at least when compared to a bare wooden wall. With soil left from my previous well construction and enough straw from a close by barn, I could start my adobe brick project.

While waiting for my adobe bricks to dry out, I’ve decided to take a closer look at my map. Cleaning out a single town was just a short-term goal, but rebuilding an entire community of survivors would need more than that. I’ll just have to expand my base further to house more survivors, thus, I’ll have to look around for more advanced technologies. There seems to be a hazardous waste sarcophagus to the far East of my base, and far North past the river where the dinosaurs appeared there is an LMOE shelter. Not too sure what either of them contains, but I should take a chance to explore them sometime during the autumn. The edge of a larger metropolis has been revealed to the south of my map, and a larger city seems to be right next to the town which I was scavenging. I don’t suppose I’m well equipped to clear them out yet, but I believe with enough time, I’ll be able to take them back for humanity eventually.

[Klundalak]

Man, summer sure is a boring season. My character keeps overheating, so I have to literally strip my dude naked so as not to suffer from a heat stroke. I’ve crafted almost any gear that I had a recipe for, I’ve preserved large amounts of wild veggies and berries for the upcoming winter. My adobe bricks are coming along pretty well, but I just don’t seem to have the sand needed to help build the wall. There is a sandbox in town, but it’s guarded by a zombie, and I don’t plan to engage with it until autumn.

The boredom has finally gotten the better of me and I decided to explore the hazardous waste sarcophagus, bare naked with a military rucksack. Looking at the name, I thought it should be heavily guarded by all manners of crazy enemies, after all, “hazardous” is not a word used in naming a location lightly. But surprisingly, the whole place was empty? I picked the lock of the security office’s door and went in. The offices were entirely intact, and no one was to be found around at all. There was a good number of tech-related books though, and a lot of aspirin for some reason. There is this larger “building” next to the office, with a closed door and what seems to be a metal gate. I tried picking the door since it was locked, but the game keeps alerting about this “whirring” sound. I thought screw it, even if there is something behind that gate waiting to annihilate me, I will still open this door and see it for myself!

With a “click”, the door unlocks, and guess what was behind the door? A harmless cleaning robot. What a relief, phew! To my right, there is this whole row of storage cabinets, and OH MY GOD! I’ve struck gold, baby! There was a TON of advanced CBMs, with one of them being the blood filtering CBM! Cool! Although I still do not have the medical skills nor equipment needed to install them, having them is still good enough.

[Klundalak]

CBMs weren’t the only loot available. There was a cleansuit and Geiger counter. I tried the Gieger counter on myself. Oh no. My radiation level was 92? That was not fun. Oh well, at least now I know why this place has the word “hazardous” in its name. I didn’t want my radiation level to shoot up any further, thus, I ran back out and went back home.

By the time I got back to my evac shelter, I checked myself again with the Geiger counter and now my radiation level is 102. Not good, this level is when cancer could potentially start happening. I got some blue tablets which I looted from the doctor’s office hoping that it could help. Thing is, I just don’t know how much I should take, and how often I should take them. The next day I checked myself again. Thankfully, my radiation level has lowered to 80. It’s slow, but it’s getting better. My stat screen says that I am currently suffering from the “weak” status. I also got nausea. It didn’t matter much though, as I wasn’t hungry, and it went away by itself after a couple of hours.

The HWS is definitely a jackpot of loot, but I should wait a while to recuperate from the radiation and prepare myself before going back in there.

I just realized that I’ve been chronicling my character’s story for a while now. I am actually rather satisfied with this character. It’s my first character that has survived past the first week, and I am confident that I will be able to make it pass my first winter. If you’ve read all my posts up until this point, then hopefully you have enjoyed my character’s story! I myself had a great time playing and writing, and I am enthusiastic to share my experience.

There is this one thing that is troubling me though: plastic sheets. Where or how should I get one? I have a single piece lying around, which was found by luck foraging the underbushes. Even in my crafting menu, I don’t seem to have a recipe for it. I could craft a rigid plastic sheet, but apparently the two of them are not the same item. Thing is, lots of gear require it as a material and there is no substitute for it. I want to craft a survivor duffel bag, but I am just lacking this one piece of plastic sheet. I’ve foraged many underbushes since but didn’t find another plastic sheet. How do you go about it?

[potato_guy]

Really enjoyed reading this.
Tbh i never would have guessed I would enjoy reading a character narration instead of just playing the game but that was surprsingly interesting.

If you continue the series or start a new character, make sure to write down what happens next.

[Klundalak]

Glad you enjoyed! Haha, I guess it works the same way as watching youtube playthroughs. Sometimes I watch a playthrough for so long I even forgot to play the game.

Since my current mid-term goal would be to at least survive past my first winter, I should be continuing this thread with more updates.

[Klundalak]

Picking up from where we left off last time. I refrained from revisiting the hazardous waste sarcophagus since my radiation level was above 100, which was obviously bad for my health. It was around mid-summer by then, and the weather was incredibly hot. I managed to complete Dino Dave’s entire shopping list of items, since there were so many empty cardboard boxes lying around. After bringing him what he needed, he told me that he will need some time to complete his project. I must say, the fact that someone like him could survive for so long in an apocalypse is just a true miracle. Even though he isn’t allowed inside the refugee center, at least he has a roof over his head, and there is Taylor there to help him with food.

There is something peculiar with Dr. Luo though. Fungal zombies? That’s something new. First time ever heard about something like this, never saw one. Hopefully I will never need to come across one.

During my runs back to town collecting cardboard boxes for Dino Dave, I did manage to shoot the zombie with my bow and finally got the sand that I very much needed. With enough sand gathered, I begun constructing fortifications for the evac center. During the process, I learned that I apparently could cut grass, that’s something new. I’ve started to realize that slowly, but surely, the days are getting shorter, and the temperature is falling a bit. I guess that is a precursor to autumn?

Around day 80ish of the summer season I fell sick to influenza while I was sleeping. My bed was setup in the basement, it was a fully constructed bed with a mattress, blanket and pillow. I suppose I caught the cold because I was sleeping almost naked, and the temperature has dropped, since it’s only a week and half before autumn. I was lucky to have some nondrowsy cough syrup scavenged from the doctor’s office in spring. Never thought I’d need it now more than ever.

But hey, a decrease in ambient temperature is good news! Finally, I can gear up and continue cleaning out the town.

I tried a different approach this time: raiding the town at night. I just need to be extra careful though, wouldn’t want to bump into a zombie face-first, that would be nasty. It proved to be rather successful! Unlike daytime, where zombies spot me tiles away, I could literally close up to them and take them out with my bow, one by one.

Remember that police station I mentioned before? I managed to clear out its backyard, most of it. There was a SWAT zombie, heavily armored against my makeshift arrows. I lured it away from the police station though. I peeked into one of the rooms, wait! Could that be? I panned over my crosshair at the creature to take a closer look, and what a surprise! It was another survivor! Another human, in this zombie ridden town! And she was in this police station all the time! A pleasant surprise, I must admit. She was equipped with a knife spear, and she was surrounded by zombie corpses and scraps of meat. I must admit, she is a tough one. She asked me to gather some cattail stalks for her, super easy task. With a bit of luck, I managed to recruit her! It’s only one more survivor, but that’s more hope for restoring humanity!

On the way back, I helped our new arrival treat her wounds with some disinfectant and a bandage. She wasn’t hurt badly, only a couple of scratched on the torso. She should be fine.

After witnessing just how effective a knifespear was against zombies, I got rid of my quiver and bow and picked up my steel spear. Unlike my first melee weapon, the cudgel, this steel spear has a reach attack that could attack zombies before they get too close. Armed with a new weapon, I headed back to town.

It’s daytime by now, and I’ve cleared out more than half of the town. But as I push further west, the zombie population is getting denser. It’s then that I realized, there is a grocery store at the west of the town. Huh, I bet it must be filled with loot. I came across a little dump surrounded by barbed wires. I observed something interesting over here: the zombies really have no sense about what is dangerous or not, they literally walk into the barbed wires and kill themselves in the process. And even if the barbed wires didn’t kill them, they die from walking over all the metal wreckages. Using this to my advantage, I cleared a large group of zombies by luring them to their demise. That was easy. Still, the grocery store is a tad out of reach. How about a detour back to some of the houses we left out before?

[Klundalak]

Before I forget, I actually found some more points-of-interest during the summer season:

1. A lumber mill. It’s located just north of the hazardous waste sarcophagus. It’s filled with nails, planks and of course, plastic sheets! So many in fact, I don’t know if I’ll ever need all of it.

2. A pond with some fish. Not too far from my base, slightly to the northeast. It’s so small that it does not even show up on the over map. Unlimited source of protein? And probably some survival skill training? Sounds good to me.

3. A decayed cougar. This one was an interesting find. I did see a few zombie dogs in the town before, but a zombified version of a wild animal, that’s a first one. There were a few pulped human corpses around here before, which have turned into zombies already. I suppose the cougar is the culprit. There’s also a triceratops around here, pretty cool. I should come back someday to take out this cougar before I start fishing in that pond.

[Klundalak]

Now back to town.

I remember there was this specific house that I found before, just across the doctor’s office. What’s so special about it was that all of its windows and doors were boarded up. The house was also divided into two compartments with a wall in the middle. The first half of the house has the main entrance and some windows. The other half of the house was completed surrounded by brick walls. I could hear faint shuffling inside. There is a staircase in the middle of the wall dividing the building, surrounded by metal racks and a safe. I descended down the stairs into the basement, smashed a zombie and a fat zombie, but that was pretty much it, so I went back up.

I was curious as to what kind of “surprises” waited for me in the other half of the house, so I grabbed one of the metal racks and moved it away. Right behind one of those racks was metal door. That’s strange. I’ve only seen metal doors used for garages. The only time I saw a metal door in the interior was at the police station. What harm could possibly happen if I opened this door? It’s probably just some rich man’s stash of treasures.

The moment I pushed open the door, I was shocked by what I saw. The scene in front of me was, ironical, almost made to purposefully mock me personally: There was a survivor zombie just a few steps away from me. Further into the room were a couple of beds, fully built with mattresses and all, and a couple of more zombies just shambling around.

I was demoralized after seeing this. I mean, I know it was the apocalypse, bad things happened, but did it really had to be this horrible? What could have happened to this group of zombies before they became zombies? Probably a group of survivors thought that they could just wall themselves in until help came around. But I guess “help” never came around, and they all just turned into zombies. They stumbled around aimlessly until I came here and opened the door.

I closed the door and headed straight back to base. I saved the game and closed it. I’ll probably have to put the game down for a couple of days before I come back. Could my group of survivors also end up like them? I need a few days to get my morale back. I never thought that the theme of the game could get so dark all of a sudden.

[Klundalak]

Since the new 0.G version of the game came out, the save which I was playing on became obsolete. Many items and mechanics failed to carry over. Thus, I have decided to stop my current playthrough. I will generate a new world with a new character. I’ll definitely come back once I get a better grasp of the Gaiman version of the game. Oh, and of course, Dinomod will definitely be enabled!