Challenging your game?

[Lesseps]

So… how do you challenge your game?

What I mean is - skills getting higher really fast. I have like 20 days/season and start in summer. When autumn comes, I have like 8 bashing/8 melee and double-triple hit almost any zombie. I have trunks of food, ammo, weapons. I have my mobile fortress outfitted with almost everything you need for crafting and survival, including .50 cal turrets, kitchen, welding, chemistry, minifridge, bedroom, full military plated and repaired etc. A lot of interesting army clothing and armor etc.

Items set to spawn at 0.2 rating. Zombies at 1.2-1.5.
Still the game generally poses no challenge for me. I dont want to go endgame yet, cause I like scavenging or something.

Summarizing everything said above - how do you make a game challenging in the middle stage ? (beginning stage can be challenging if it’s winter, some handicapped start etc.). Maybe some specific world/game options I might use?

I’m open for suggestions.

[deoxy]

I run with 5.0 spawn. That helps a lot - the difficulty is not linear, both for reasons of numbers AND for reasons of “more likely to get a zombie master, and zombie master more likely to have LOTS of zombies around to upgrade”. By the first fall (standard seasons), I generally expect most zombies to be upgraded.

In 0.C, I ran with 20x spawn, just for a challenge. Gratz to the devs for the zombie evolution features (and new zombies)!

[Random_dragon]

From what I’ve done, I’ve found that the crazy zombies are really more of an early-game hazard. I prefer using the Mundane Zombies mod because the special zombies really screw with gameplay. You will eventually get the gear and skills to handle them, though you’ll still want to play smart. Early game? Forget it.

I remember one time I set item spawns to basically 0, in a winter start. It made the SURVIVAL part challenging until what I’d consider late game because I had to do crazy things like smash lab bunker walls just to get some rocks (back when they could be smashed with just 14 strength and a battleaxe), but it didn’t affect combat.

[Coolthulhu]

Very fast evolution + increased spawn is enough to make cities very dangerous to the point where they’re not worth raiding without good guns.

Experiment scenario - less points, but more fun mutations (including challenge ones).

Bad mutations picked at start: leg tentacles is horrid, beak is quite bad (no good mouth armor), tentacle arm is mixed

[Random_dragon]

But again, I’ve found these disproportionately mess with my early game, more than their late-game effects. ;A;

[deoxy]

From what I’ve done, I’ve found that the crazy zombies are really more of an early-game hazard.

Not with 5+ spawn setting - the masses even in small towns (especially if there’s a master around) make standing and fighting quite deadly until VERY late-game. SEVERAL hulks + MANY MANY predators + 5 or necromancers + MANY corrosives + quite a few grapplers… yeah, if you get stuck in that, even very late game, it can get VERY hard to get out again.

One time, late-game, I tried to push through a large city at night just to get the banks in the middle. I had over 15k bionic power and just shy of EVERY bionic in the game (not including a very few I had but didn’t install), a fusion blaster rifle, a laser rifle, a diamond katana with ichi-ryu martial art (was 2-hitting hulks with it!), and more… I did manage it, but I was very hurt and entirely out of power when I escaped. Seriously, without some way to destroy corpses in a hurry, those kind of numbers with that many necromancers is amazing in its ability to grind you down.

[dakenho]

the newer builds have more exotic zombies which are harder to deal with. There just seems to be more shockers and spiter’s and such.
how many points do you play with? you could try less points, high thirst and high hunger so you consume more.

this type of game really depends on how challenging you want to make it for your self. sure there are settings you can change but you can also do something like a vegetarian run, I honestly hope NPC’s are a bigger thing in the future,having other people you would have to feed and manage.

This though is the biggest problem you will run into in any survival game, you eventually get to the point where you have so much stuff/tools/whatever that the primary game play loop of scavenging for resources is no longer fun and not really needed. This game is actually a good example of one that gives you some options at that point.

[vultures]

I dunno how CataDDA can get boring; the sheer simplicity and a broad choice of very powerful items and weapons are nothing short of a death trap. If the ‘Pain’ variable governing your character’s ability to move and act was just slightly more punishing, all the zombie kids would be laughing when you enter the Cataclysm. Zombified horrors rule the urban areas whilst natural predators along with ethereal monsters, in and out their corporeal bodies pose a myriad of threats throughout the open spaces. Seeing all this, roaming bands of undead abominations behave as a considerable challenge on their own, especially when you stop paying attention to that stamina stack.

In more recent builds, there is a Zombie Master or a few Necromancers at every road intersection. Even if the possibility of you getting cornered by the army of ever-raising dead isn’t enough - meaning you could manage to escape somehow - a Zombie Hulk is willing to chase you through entire city or town blocks, eating through fences, wrecks and vehicles as the game was Pac-Man, not CataDDA.

If the abovementioned isn’t enough, consider the possibilty of an anomaly on the generated map. For instance, the recent character I introduced into Cataclysm had to deal with two fungal blooms in the spring of the first year. The fungs spread rapidly, draw out Zombies and cover both the roads and plains with fungal beds. Because I had to act quickly, fixing him up with a ride to aid in torching up that hell-spawn machine, it was no problem to keep exploring the map in order to find if there is a greater danger just around the corner. Guess what? There is a dozen of Megastores throbbing-full of upgraded deadZ and, of course, a Fungal Tower nearby.

To put it bluntly, I don’t dig your lack of interest because of CataDDA’s “vanilla flavor”. The only, and that’s one and only time this game got easy for me is when my character got the best possible streak of mutations after completing some pretty advanced surgical attempts to enhance his body bionicaly. Usually, I just get to lead this buzzing hero-wannabe with bulgy eyes and a sharpened stick.

[Lesseps]

Yeah, I finally downloaded experimental version. Ridiculous amount of Zombie Hulks and Shocker Brutes is not challenging IMO, it’s silly. Alright, now how do you need to playwith settings of scaling to get rud of that?

[Random_dragon]

That’s what I’m still finding to be a problem. I can never make things MORE challenging in the long run. If I setup a game to be challenging even into late-game, it’s even MORE challenging in early game.

Monster evolution sorta works, but its effect is diminished if you have mundane zombies on, and it’s a raw timer with no ability to judge how fast the player’s combat capabilities are increasing.

I kinda wish we had some way to make the available threats scale up, evolve, or otherwise become more dangerous in response to player growth. As it stands, you can make the game STAY challenging for longer, but the challenge can only really diminish, not increase, which is something that might be interesting to see.

[Voqar]

As a relatively new player, just playing is a challenge.

I can see how people who’ve played the game to death and who have set routines could need further challenges.

The jump to experimental from stable is enough of a challenge for me since it’s way more brutal.

[Arek_PL]

best challenges stop to be challenging after some time
look at some old games like UFO:EU
at start you die alot
at end game you die too but sometimes you only get fatal wounds what kill you in next round unless healed
but at end game you do 184% accuracy snapshots
and at early game only 60% with aimed shot

in cata you too reach point where you can die but nothing poses a big threat to you unless its overpowered
but you can create your own challenges like pro human runs (no bionics, no mutations) or you can start doing chalenges like J-9 or beating tankbot with bare hands