I’ve started many, many new games, read a huge amount of tips, and maybe lasted to day 2 or 3 if I was lucky. Now I’m at the stage where I’m just not playing it because “what’s the point if I’m just going to die again?”. So I’ve abandoned it. But I really do love the game, so I need to get hooked again.
So I wondered if it might be worth changing settings and/or choosing mods to make the game easier while I try to learn how to survive. I remember seeing a thread which had lots of different “game builds” for different experiences, some of which looked very interesting. I know one mod removes zombies completely, which might be a bit extreme. I also just bought “The Long Dark” on PC (also survival, also brutal), and I wondered if it’s possible to have something similar to that, no zombies, start in winter, maybe more aggressive wildlife, tiny towns etc. A survival game where the wilderness and the wildlife are the dangers. What do you think?
An easy way to survive would be to make a freeform character and give your self a heap of skills. Use some of the in game mods and pick a beefed up starting character. Don’t go over board, just enough to get you going. Once you have the hang of surviving the first few weeks try again with a simpler character.
In the latest experimental builds you can just set your point selection to “freeform” and start out with 20 strength and dexterity, Bionic Prepper / Soldier / Cop and whatever traits you like. You can also go into the options menu (? and then… 1 I think it was?) and bind the “debug menu,” that gives you cheats. Even if you only restrict yourself to spawning knives and stuff and using the teleport option when you get surrounded, it’s still a pretty big advantage.
I think you could get “no zombies mode” by having static spawns and then setting the spawn rate to zero. Not sure though. I think survival would be way, way to easy like that though, 'cos you could just loot cities trivially.
You can also savescum.
Save at a safe location, then if you die, do not accept killcam or death and just kill cataclysm.
Reload and you are at your safe location. Sure, you lose progress but it is vastly better than starting over and you will slowly learn what not to do.
MAke the game easier if you feel the begining is too hard. Take more points, and take a better starting scenerio.
Combat cyborgs seem pretty popular. Not everyone can be a crack addict in the middle of the city when the game starts. Nor does everyone need to force themselves to do that.
Putting aside outright cheating, I can give tips.
-Take melee as a start. The skill melee will increase accuracy and allow you to use whatever weapon is nearby.
-Take 2 or 3 mehcanics. This way you can fix up your car as soon as you get one
-Take the mechanic/plumber or some kind of fixemup profession so you start with tools
-Plan out your route for the first day before you move out. Try to get food, water, a weapon, a car, and some clothing
-Dont fight every zombie you see. no reason to and will only drain your resources.
-Get a flashlight as soon as possible.
-Drink alcohol and take painkillers to reduce your pain levels. In the first night/day, cold and pain will murderize you. They sap your speed and strength. Try fighting a zombie with no pain and then fighting a zombie with 40 pain.
-Plan. Make a goal and get it. Try to get manhacks going. Learn how to make pheromone balls. Get the materials to make that awesome rocket launcher.
Yes, I do my best to avoid zombies, but they always spot me, usually when I’m making my way from the initial shelter to the nearest house on the edge of town. I suppose I could wait until nighttime to try to reach a house, but I’d be very hungry and thirsty (and probably cold too) by then.
If a zombie spots you you should be able to use run to get away from it (Shift+2 I think)
Also, If you’re having trouble keeping away from zombies then you could always lower the amount of zombies down. I normally play on half the normal amount (because I’m bad)
And if I remember rightly, there are scenarios which start you in the wilderness aswell as professions that go well with it. I think you can also set the starting month, or atleast set it so you start in winter, but that might be false information aswell.
Find a rock
Smash bench with it
Take the 2x4 and use that as a weapon
Find zombies
Find window
Smash window and smash it again to clear the glass off of the sill
Kite zombies over window to slow them down and give yourself free attacks on them
Repeat for the entire course of the game
Is the thing I do. I mean, I’ve lived for about 40 days in a 72 season starting from winter, so I must be doing something right. Also, don’t encumber yourself. Two backpacks/rucksacks are great for taking everything not nailed to the ground, but you’ll have a hell of a time fighting zeds. Know when to stop looting and go home to rest and recuperate.
Yeah encumberment is a pain. I’m a hoarder so it’s hard to pick and choose especially given the staggering array of items. I always usually choose pack mule but it doesn’t help hugely.
My biggest tip by far is “don’t forget that you can run” (I think it’s the " key or something similar, not sure if it’s in the stable or not). Running lets you outpace many enemies and can get you out of lots of tight spots (though you do have to be careful with stamina management a bit there).
My second tip is “don’t try to manfight zombies”. You’re intelligent, they’re not, so don’t engage them at their level of mindlessly bashing each other until one of you falls over. Lure them into traps, do hit-and-run, there are plenty of ways to use your human intelligence to beat their stupidity.
Keep trying, keep trying. The original Marloss Man was actually Sam the 53rd or something, and my longest time surviving on one character before then was two weeks. You will die a lot before you get a good character.
A reasonable starting cheat I sometimes allow myself is revealing the map. It’s even kinda okay from a roleplay perspective. I mean, your character lives in the general vicinity of the starting location, right? Makes lootin’ a whole lot easier.
Feel free to decrease mob spawns if ya want. Makes hunting a little more annoying, and I like that killing insane amounts of zombies sometimes yields firearms/tools/drugs on the corpses, but it’d make looting towns even more easy.
Just have fun with it, I guess. Do whatever makes you happy with the game.
Thanks, I’ll just keep trying I think (no cheating). And I must admit I keep forgetting about the run command, which is kind of important when zombies are around.
On top of the windows trick, it’s rather easy to grind trowing skill to 3-5 level (depend food stock you get) by trow something on a wall of your shelter repeatedly and trow stuff at them when they are out of range. Can save you from being hit, and you can trow just everything.
I’m not a huge fan of the skill grinding thing as it also feels a bit like cheating. Although I suppose that practicing something does make you better at it. I’ll give it a go and see what happens.
A simple way to avoid having to wait for nighttime for a survivor starting out is to set the game time in the world creation about an hour or so before nightfall. I’ve done that quite a bit leaving my survivor to immediately begin a night raid while not hungry or thirsty. Add in the nightvision trait and you should be good to go.
Don’t torture yourself with the idea “If I save the game too often, it’s cheating.” I archive my savegame after every game session, and will happily restore one of the saves if I die for some bullcrap reason. If I happen to screw up and die, the only thing that matters is “Do I want to continue this character?” Also, when the game asks “Do you want to watch the last moments of your life?”, don’t answer, just close the window. That way your character isn’t deleted, and you get to restore your last save later. Explore until there’s nothing left to explore, I say.
You big dirty cheater. How dare you think about cheating. No one’s going to respect you for trying to have fun in a single-player game on your own terms. Your family would surely disown you if they knew about your cheating intentions. Be sure to follow all the rules of the society to the letter from this point on.
get unarmed skill to 5 in beginning.you will gain counterattack with brawling style and character will slaughter zombies on his own even without your input at least more mundane ones(.dont forget to find apropriate clothes on your victims to not get infected.
starting in school may seem intimidiating for new plazers because of lot of zombies but if you go slow through hallways you can take on zombies one on one in most times and school will give you food ,books and material to thrive.
I actually just picked up where I left off and killed some rats in the basement of the house I was in in order to find out what was down there. Turns out the previous owner had whole shelves of melee weapons and guns down there, so I guess I’ve got no excuse for not lasting in this run through!
Also I really like how discovering things like massive weapon arsenals in the basement of a simple little house on the edge of town starts you imaging what the occupant was like. The game seems to get you to make up your own back stories.
