That’s why you do a bionic monster for Krav Maga. When you bust out the claws you double up. Unarmed bonus and slashing bonus. Nice early game, but by no means a late game build. I just say it because that’s how I learned. I’ve literally never started in an evac shelter.
Just start with esrkima and instantly solve all your MA problems.
The police sniper was mainly to address the issue of having a weapon to deal with a moose or wolves. It’s better to have a weapon to handle an oh-shit situation than to not have one because you were worried about too much noise. If I’m in a situation where my life depends on it, I won’t be worrying about noise.
As for the weapons skills, sure melee weapons is probably overall better, but I was addressing the issue of people putting points into skills they don’t need.
I don’t really see any of the things I’ve said as bad advice. They work for me all the time.
That’s why you do a bionic monster for Krav Maga. When you bust out the claws you double up. Unarmed bonus and slashing bonus. Nice early game, but by no means a late game build. I just say it because that’s how I learned. I’ve literally never started in an evac shelter.
The bonus from Krav to stab is nice, but you get a bigger bang for your buck from the bonus to damage you get from the other martial arts I mentioned, which, since the claws are ‘unarmed weapons’, work just fine with the claws.
The first three I mentioned are viable from early to late game, while the last one is requires some skewed point allocation to be good early game, but it really shines once your dodge is well-trained.
Just start with esrkima and instantly solve all your MA problems.
Eskrima is one of the best MAs there, works beautifully from early to late game, but not one you’d pick for an unarmed character.
The police sniper was mainly to address the issue of having a weapon to deal with a moose or wolves. It’s better to have a weapon to handle an oh-shit situation than to not have one because you were worried about too much noise. If I’m in a situation where my life depends on it, I won’t be worrying about noise.
Moose and wolves, you can run away from or scare away. You can run away from pretty much anything that early, and definitely anything that’s killable with those weapons.
Instead of the shiny sniper, you can put those character points into a martial arts and a couple levels of melee, or pick a profession that provides a good melee weapon (several), a ranged weapon with reusable ammo (hunter), armor that trivializes fighting zombies (biocop, firefighter), mobility to escape anything (cyclist), easing early wilderness survival (the various camper/prepper/whatever), or providing often difficult-to-obtain tools, particularly those that let you get a car running earlier (screwdriver, wrench).
With most of those, you can punch the moose/wolves to death, or melee them to death, or kill them with silent arrows/bolts, flee from them, or run them over, while also making your life easier for more than emergency situations.
As for the weapons skills, sure melee weapons is probably overall better, but I was addressing the issue of people putting points into skills they don’t need.
Putting points in a skill when you could just train it to that level in a couple hours is putting points into skills they don’t need. So is putting points in skills for using them with a weapon they can stop using before even leaving the shelter.
I don’t really see any of the things I’ve said as bad advice. They work for me all the time.
You can play that way, you can be successful that way, and they provide some meager help to your survival over not using those points or picking something less useful, but when there are so many better options, it is bad advice to give to new players when they are looking for ways to increase their chances of survival.
You’re absolutely right ABC. I just feel like certain martial arts can be a crutch if you get into them too fast. The game is more fun if you can vary up your playstyle imo.
True, true, tho a problem is that I don’t think the game spawns books for either Tiger or Dragon, or at least that was the case ages ago and I haven’t seen them spawned, so if you want them, you kinda have to take the MA at chargen.
The books exist and you can debug them in. I don’t think they naturally spawn though.
I prefer a missed start now-a-days. A house has better loot and I’m generally lucky and get close to the edge of the map. I don’t bother to night raid and just use line of sight breaking to lose hoards, cut thru houses, slide around cars, zig and zag. First thing to do is make a spear for the reach. Then convince the npc to join you for meat shield or distraction. Peek outside after looting the house for carry capacity, weapons, warmth, tools and food in that order of importance. Make a run for anything on the edge of town that looks like a good hidey hole. slowly work out from there picking zombies off carefully. Kite them and draw aggro slowly. Pull them to bushes, fences, broken windows, around corners, anything that will give you an advantage.
The first thing i do is check my map to see if i spawn on the edge of town. Then i quickly grab the two or three most useful things i see, usually a knife, lighter or bag,and then i pop a door or window on the side of the house closest to the wilderness, hit the sprint key and run to the nearest woods. I don’t spend more time looting because the zombies probably heard me and i find busting out quickly is usually my best odds of escape. Sometimes the better plan is to hide out until nightfall though.
If im lucky enough to get a lighter or matches i will light the building on fire (3 tiles together to ensure it burns even if its raining). i like having wander spawns on because it more challenging but also opens up some cunning tactics like this. The noise and light from the fire will attract the zombies from all over the city and distract them while you make your escape. Odds are good that a bunch of them will get killed too. This is also my tactic to be able to loot a fresh city in relative peace early game. Whack a few vending machines or atms for even more chaos. They will make a ton of noise and spawn an eye bot or two and maybe even a riot control bot if you are lucky.
Sound can be both a clever tool or a deadly mistake depending on how you use it. Instead of running towards the turret you should have instead moved to the opposite side of the turret from the migo and used the shout key to lure it into the death zone. Turrets arent the only thing you can do something like this. All the hostile factions dont like each other either. If there happens to be a fungal patch or an ant nest nearby you can use a similar technique to kite them in and then “scrape them off” on a convenient ant or fungaloid.
Once i make it out of town i craft a cudgel. I prefer it to the spear for its decent block modifier, its accuracy and speed and the fact it has flurry on it. The only thing spears have is reach and i find that half the time i blow my reach shot and the thing just comes up amd eats me anyways. Dogs, coyotes, and wolves become trivial with a cudgel. Just use . to pass your turn until the dog comes in melee range and smack him. He will run away then come back so you wait amd smack him again until he is dead. Even if theres like 12 dogs you almost never have to fight all of them. Usually you can just kill 1-3 and the pack will leave you the F alone. If you dont have a knife then smash a few undergrowths or shrubs for withered plants, a small tree for heavy sticks and grab a couple rocks and make a stone one. You can do this with 0 skill.
I usually dont bother with towns until i need something very specific. Once i escape and get myself some very basic equipment i try to go find a mansion. They usually have just about everything a fresh character could need, books, food, meds, tools and if you are really lucky some will have medieval weapons and armor. There are zombies but they are in manageable numbers.
Once i clear out the place i usually set up here and build my skills and tech base. Put a metal tank and funnel outside for water and make a hobo stove to cook food. Get enough electronics skill to build a makeshift welder and put battery compartment mod in it. Get a frame, foot crank, alternator, vehicle battery(s) and saddle and build a power bike to charge the batteries. Pop them into your welder and you have a cheap source of infinite power by riding your bike. Steal a shopping cart from a nearby town to haul your crap home or around the base and build or repair a functioning vehicle. Once you have a vehicle with all the fixings your options open up a lot. Then i usually go looking for science cards, books and military loot so i can get to the labs for the good stuff.
I like eskrima a lot but i like silat the best. Silat + cudgel or better yet, trench knife or machete can be kinda silly. Once your character skills up and gets decent armor you can just wreck zombies. Ive occasionally gone up to hulks and punoed their face for like 120-150 damage and killed them in a hit or two.
Theres lots of ways to do it honestly. Thats why i love this game. General rule of thumb is that if it looks like a bad idea it probably is and its not the best idea to go picking fights until you are much better prepared.
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Depending on your settings, if the house has a second floor or a basement, that can be a good place to hide. Without a certain option enabled, they just can’t detect you there, and even with it, they rarely figure out how to get to you.
Weapons with block are pretty sweet, something else along these lines is the right martial art combined with decent arm armor, or wearing two-by-four arm guards. Later on, many of the better melee weapons have block.
Blocking is especially good when you’re encumbered, like for example from wearing a duffel bag, because doing that reduces your dodge a lot, but it doesn’t affect your blocking chances any.
The poor man’s version of this is to make a cart using a wooden box or foldable wooden box (not too difficult to make), coupled with either some looted wheels (easy) or making wooden wheels (requires some fabrication grinding).
A wooden box offers less storage than a shopping cart, so it’s inferior in all ways except for the fact that it’s helluva lot easier to craft since it doesn’t ask for welder.
I like the combo of a cudgel and a small wooden shield. You can block a good amount of stuff. Even early game when you skill is low. Which is a huge advantage when your armor is crap at stopping bites.
That actually doesn’t work. Unlike other techniques*, blocking looks for what you have equipped with the best blocking bonus and uses that, and if you don’t have any, checks if your martial arts lets you block with your limbs.
So if you have, for example, a cudgel, a shield, and a martial art that lets you block with your legs, it’d always block with the shield until it breaks, then the cudgel, and only after those two are broken are the legs considered (you block with the healthiest limb).
Incidentally, if your unarmed skill is high enough, you can be better (or as good) at blocking with your limbs rather than with the shields/weapons you have equipped. Your character will still block with your equipment regardless.
*With other techniques, the applicable techniques are placed, alongside ‘do nothing’/‘regular attack’, on a list, then one is picked at random.
Really? I thought it just stacked the checks. One of my characters has a shield, machete, and chitin arm guards specifically for that purpose. Now I feel like a derp.
For moose and wolves I prefer yelling, or if it’s too late for that, start a fire and put it between me and them.
Normally I don’t put any points into skills unless I’ve got a particular jump-start thing in mind, with the exception of dodge. 1 point for dodge-2 is well worth it, IMO. It’s not too hard to train the skill if you can find a zombie child or something, but it can be difficult to arrange on day 1, and having dodge-2 has helped plenty of my guys escape nasty starts.
Wonder if It’s considered cheating to start multiple saves to share starting equipment? >_>
Well the difficulty of that is that you won’t alwats guarantee the same starting area.
True, but I think the game will load a character only into what’s already been built in the world. If you only see one evac area there’s good chances of spawning in it.
Edit: unless the world hasn’t generated a necessary building, then it will add one to the world save.
You don’t even need the wheels. I usually make a box cart early on and just drag it around until i find a shopping cart and then switch. It makes more noise without wheels but, if I am going into an area where that will matter, I just leave the cart until I have cleared out enough bad guys and then go back for the cart.
EVERYONE IS WRONG!
Your SECOUND character has a HOME with a FORGE and KILN, WELDER, and CLEARLY plenty of skill grinding. You are building/Dismanling cars. Have a PROPER kitchen, and already have motored vehichles for looting.
Your doing just fine. From here dragable/electric/peddle powered vehichles for when you want to loot quietly, solar and battery for infinate power, and/or install storage bettery slots on the vehichles you normally run so you can swap them for less full base batteries as needed.
Traps & outer walls in any directions you might expect thincker groups to come from, if you think it might be a problem especially in the spring/summer, and get your tailoring, crafting, and chosen fighting abilities leveled towards tackling the harder ‘dungeons’
If things get to ‘slow’ at camp, you can always make a secound character to share the home with, that specializes more in fighting, wither in, or outside that world, and practice player and character fighting abilities and techniques.
Your already doing better than me and i’ve been here since '14 
It’s viable, tho I prefer to get the wheels, it’s only fabrication, what? 4 or so?
The issue with the box alone is not the noise, it’s that without wheels you hit the limit on how much weight you can drag long before you hit the box’s volume limit, so a box is good, but a box with wheels lets you loot even more.
Ditto for making it with a foldable wooden frame rather than a regular one, if you can manage it, you now have a box that you can pack up and move through stairs, as well as stash on vehicles.