Wait, I thought Landmines needed at least 10 per, not 9.
My friend and I just got done screen sharing a game via Skype. I mention this because he clears out cities EXTREMELY well. He had 20 strength, kravmaga, and some melee, dodge, and firearms skills. He killed 2 zombie brutes with his [shadow=red,left]BARE HANDS [/shadow](not to mention that he also killed at least 40 zombies just by punching them…[glow=yellow,2,300]once[/glow].)
So…I guess that’s one way; just kill everything.
Knife spear
Window frame
???
PROFIT
I’m pretty sure it’s only 9, I say 10 because Sunny weather lowers it by one. If you hug roads, however, you should be fine, because there’s a bunch of dirt holes in the pavement, so just avoid them by about 10 tiles and you’ll be okay.
Also, SKiPPY, how did you and/or your friend manage 20 strength? Did you lower the other stats at the beginning, or mutate Str mutations w/ that new ‘Enhanced Strength’ CBM in addition to what the level was at the start?
[quote=“SKiPPY, post:22, topic:3124”]My friend and I just got done screen sharing a game via Skype. I mention this because he clears out cities EXTREMELY well. He had 20 strength, kravmaga, and some melee, dodge, and firearms skills. He killed 2 zombie brutes with his [shadow=red,left]BARE HANDS [/shadow](not to mention that he also killed at least 40 zombies just by punching them…[glow=yellow,2,300]once[/glow].)
So…I guess that’s one way; just kill everything.[/quote]
If you get hydraulic muscles and krav maga on a char with base 20 str you can kill any zombie that isn’t a Zombie Hulk in a single hit, even with 40 Str and 12+ unarmed skill a hulk takes two hits.
You can basically kill an unending horde of zombies as long as you have a corner to hide behind (So shockers/spitters can’t get you from range).
My char only had 18 strength at the beginning, but I mutated Strong so I had 39 strength with HM active, I became an unstoppable zombie killing machine for as long as I had power, unfortunately my char was so stupid he could barely install any CBMs, I destroyed 2 hydraulic muscle CBMs (causing myself horrible pain and a mutation) before succeeding…
Don’t use cars in cities unless you have high driving skill, a small car, and spare parts plus tools. You will run into a lot of things…
Zombies will spawn near-unlimited amounts while driving a car. Attach a muffler to your car. Zombies will spawn anyway, but its best to have a weapon or two.
Shopping carts also work very nicely as mobile cover, because you can force the cart onto the square the enemy is about to move into, and then they have to take the movement penalty while you take free shots at them. I like to think that the player has some sort of secret kung fu ability with the shopping cart and is hammering zombies with it.
Don’t forget, people, that some car frames can be pushed to the side of the road by hand.
Kudos on finding enough power to use Hydraulic Muscles for an extended period of time, it’s such a power drain. The last post also brings up a good point, if you can just find a shopping cart clearing out a town becomes significantly easier, because the cart can hold an absolute monster amount of resources, it saves you from having to load on rucksacks and duffel bags for that torso encumbrance, and it’s a mobile form of a slow tile. If only you could load on spikes, then you could have joust tournaments with hulks.
You can.
I added a trunk on this shopping cart. You can also make huge trains of shopping carts.
That… kills… zombies?
Just attached a spike to a shopping cart, it unfortunately did not allow me to shove it into a zombie, I got the “Something’s in the way” message, hopefully this feature is added in the future.
Can you actually ram spikes into zeds with a pushed vehicle? On the other hand, I am now considering electric motorized shopping carts with spikes. Those sans spikes DO exist, incidentally, for the sake of handicapped customers, so it’s not a farfetched thing to even be added officially.
As for earlier questions of builds, I hold that melee builds are superior for city exploration. Towards that end you can gear for unarmed, light weapons, or heavy weapons. The common link among all of these will be strength. Dexterity is important as well, but can be neglected dependent upon what you want to focus on. Intelligence and perception are primarily for how much importance you place on bionics/booklearning and ranged combat, respectively.
Unarmed - Fast attacks, and you are allowed some further specialty based upon which style you pick. You can easily work it into an archer or gun-centric build by taking Tai Chi (bonus to block absorption from perception) or Snake Style (bonus to hit and damage from perception). Most styles have good defensive capabilities, block being most common. Tends to work best with light or little armor/clothes to accentuate speed. Also the best pairing with mutations, cephalopod especially for extra attacks.
Light Weapon - Here you have your knives and whatnot. Fast attacks and the like, but tends not to carry many side bonuses (block, etc.). This is more likely a range-focused character’s melee option than a specialty. If you focus on this, light armor helps to keep your attacks fast.
Heavy Weapon - Sluggish, but hits like a truck. Zweihanders, sledgehammers and the like fall into this category. Dexterity is more important here because missing will result a stumble more often than with lighter weapons (by my conjecture anyway). These tend to carry more bonus effects (block, etc.) than light weapons. Wearing heavy armor/clothing is almost obligate because you expose yourself by how slow you’re swinging.
No matter what your style though, use of terrain is important, especially early game. If you’re having problems exploring the city, you’re probably not making good use of your terrain to single out your enemies and get free shots on them, or you’re letting yourself be overwhelmed.
Jhonn Candlebury is making a guide, please, PLEASE send this to him, it is really good explained and very good explanation of the builds.
If you get lucky enough to find a sewing kit pretty early on (or start out with the tailor profession), you can start practicing your tailoring skill using rags cut from either zombie clothing or curtains from the shelter. Once you get enough skill in tailoring, start making multiple shorts and cargo shorts; these will help you carry more without encumbering you all that much. After that, start working on making some cargo pants, trench coats, glove liners and cotton hats and reinforce them suckers by using the sewing kit on them while having some spare rags nearby.
You may look like a crazed maniac with stacks upon stacks of clothing on, but it’ll protect you from normal zombies as well as those annoying wolves and spider that would spawn in and around the city in a few in-game days~
Of course they’re deathtraps, but my crowbar wielding shower victims prefer to ignore that fact and jump right in.
My most succesful character so far (0.7, static) found a working car right after looting her first suburban house. She used the little fuel left in the tank to suicidally drive to the nearest gun shop, grabbed a shotgun and shot her way to a military surplus store next door to get some gear. She then took a katana in a pawn shop across the street and the rest is history. All before lunch.
I tried a similiar approach in my current 0.8 run and although I wasn’t so amazingly lucky, I was slaughtering zombies by dozens with a broadsword before my first sunset. I’m fairly new to this game so I might be missing something, but I really don’t understand why would I spend any time by running in the woods butt naked except for RP reasons. All you need is right here, you just have to grab it.
Whatabout the sewers within the cities? Are they good escape routes, or are they just Deathtraps?
IMO, sewers usually aren’t great ways to travel. There’s enough fish & snakes in there to make travel fairly slow (the sewage doesn’t help) and sewers aren’t actually laid out in a predictable fashion.
If you find a Sewage treatment and get the map (hack the consoles downstairs), then you can use that to make some determinations.
Not being able to ram enemies with pushed vehicles is intended, not planned to change. Otoh if you slap pedals and controls on that sucker you can still ram them.