Cataclysm is losing its charm for me, send help

At this point, all I do is choose the template I always choose, load up a world, smash windows, loot the houses, then run from zombies and just continuously move, only ever stopping to loot mansions and gas stations, and sleep. Then I get killed by something I underestimate. It’s getting stale for me. Maybe If I gave myself more goals, then I would enjoy it more. Any advice?

One big thing that can help is to try out some various starts. Always picking the same template can easily make things stale. Similarly try imagining an actual person when you build a character, then think if the traits you are picking would actually fit with that character. This will help reduce the min-maxing you do slightly and allows for more RPing of the character.

you could also, like the post near the top of the list here, “play yourself” and see how much more challenging / easier / interesting that turns out. For example me giving myself “bad back” drastically changes how I play. I either go full nomad, have to be extremely selective on what I take with me, or do a ridiculous amount of supply runs

Or, do what I’m doing! Set yourself massive long term goals to achieve. Nothing easy, I mean proper goals which will take you many attempts to complete. The following is a list of all my personal goals, feel free to take a few of them for your own;

  1. Build a zombie proof fortress on and island with a bridge connecting it to the main land.
  2. Make the island completely self sustainable, crop fields, massive solar generator, fishing for food.
  3. Add traps, turrets and obstacles around said island, making it impervious to any kind of attack from Monsters and NPC’s alike.
  4. Recruit plenty of NPC’s to live in said island, a community of survivors.
  5. Gain enough mutations, bionics, and Granade buffs to make my character near unstoppable.
  6. Build a behemoth of a vehicle capable of running down armies of zombies, yet completely self sustainable and able to live in it, like an on the go home.
  7. Find the elusive classy items, like a top hat, monocle, tuxedo, waistcoat, suit, walking cane, fancy watch, pocket watch, dress shoes, few rolls of money and anything shiny to show off your wealth, gold bars and such.
  8. Build a farm for Marloss berries.
  9. Create a Diamond Katana.
  10. Find an NPC that wants me dead, trap him somewhere, then blow him up using a missile silo.
  11. Hoard all the items in a massive underground vault, nice and organized.
  12. Pet room, there has to be a room for pet cats and dogs.
  13. Run through a city with so much speed, on so much crack, that no enemy can catch you. Bring the massive horde together, then do an epic last stand to see if you can survive, using guns, explosions, traps etc.
  14. Find out what happened to goal number 11.

I can’t recommend this one, moving items between z-levels is so annoying that you might want to jump out of window instead.

make a zombie Hoard!

drag 'em (or lead 'em) to an enclosed space.
bring lots for conducting your “experiments”

I can’t recommend this one, moving items between z-levels is so annoying that you might want to jump out of window instead.[/quote]

Basement item hoarding FTW!!!11!
For some reason no matter what I start out trying to do I always end up looting all the houses and shops, collecting all the ammo, guns, food, medicines, and drugs and making gigantic piles of each in a basement or firehouse base. I guess it is a personality thing.

well when cata is starting to be boring i just stop playing for a while wierd things can happen when you forgot what you did before last save “wtf? why i am in middle of nowhere with this crap and witout my stuff”

Stale? Really?!

A dude I know tatooed a katana on his lower leg, following a zombie town’s population shrink-down to zero.

Games that don’t receive regular updates but follow some plot get boring, but not this one.

A trick I use when DDA become stale is hand-craft a special “scenario” using the debug menu. Pick a location, edit the map as needed, spawn items (weapon, supplies) and zombies (sometimes other things too) and see if I can survive.

The experimental has this too, you can chose a scenario among many, pick a location and try to survive. Also make some goal for yourself. Explore those exotic location, find an artifact, build a death-mobile, become a cyborg, or just try out those delicious mutagen.

Make an overpowered character and try to discover/explore everything once every two weeks.
No need to restart until you run out of things to find.

After two weeks people will have added so much content rinse repeat.
This game is infinitely fun if you like the genre.