Game is too intimidating to play!

[Straume21]

[quote=“ianpwilliams, post:1, topic:11876”]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?[/quote]

I used to run this setup a few years ago in Cataclysm. Pretty fun, pretty long-term games, but great for learning the mechanics. Just set city size to 1 or 2, distance between cities to a higher number, and use the mod to disable all non-wildlife enemies. It can be fun to run this with random NPCs on, too.

[pisskop]

Tobe completely honest, at least 60% of my characters die within the first 6 hours. The sun rises at about 5:40 on Day 1, and I start at balls.

Many, many, of my titular characters never even see their first sunrise.

My last death was a character who found a basement and some decent armor. He was able to 1v1 zombies relatively okay, but like ive said, you dont need to nor should you want to 1v1 zombies.
Anywho all it took was 1 brute while he was waiting for the nearby zombies to suicide into a burnng housefire. The brute tossed me out a window, and then I was too slow to outrun a skeleton dog. I had to set fire to the dog, which illuminated me to nearby zombies, and a shrieker caught on and I was cooked.

Another survivor found a darkman, and foolishly tried to loot the complex. He accidently cursed himself, and with 2 melee skill and a makeshift crowbar he was not going to be killing it. So he left the house to go find a grenade or enough supplies to make a molotov. Well, wherever it went I couldnt find it and couldnt remove its curse.

Another survivor got hemmed into a burning building by waves of zombies and the fires themselves.

By the by, those three deaths are all within the last 24 hours. Death is commonplace.
Deaths happen. Part of rouguelikes is how cheap life is. Its a story, and a learning experience.

pedit:

Also, you may wish to start with a static NPC. Static NPCs are far, far more skilled than random wandering NPCs, and usually have items to share and may even travel with you. They have good weapons and are capable of at least distracting zombies if not outright being a bodyguard.

Looting their dead bodies is quite worthwhile too. The NPC who starts at your location is never going to start out hostile to you.

[ianpwilliams]

[quote=“Straume21, post:21, topic:11876”][quote=“ianpwilliams, post:1, topic:11876”]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?[/quote]

I used to run this setup a few years ago in Cataclysm. Pretty fun, pretty long-term games, but great for learning the mechanics. Just set city size to 1 or 2, distance between cities to a higher number, and use the mod to disable all non-wildlife enemies. It can be fun to run this with random NPCs on, too.[/quote]

Yes I like the sound of a setup like this. Zombies are fun, but a more “realistic” survival setup could be good I reckon.

And yes I’ve died more in this game than any other, which doesn’t bother me at all. But for once it would be nice to last a week or two!

[rremyroy]

I strongly recommend checking out Aavak’s videos series. It explains everything a beginner needs to know. It starts with version 0.B but he upgrades later on. Most of the concepts are the same across versions.

That is how I changed from this game is way too intimidating to this game is pretty easy.

[ianpwilliams]

Thanks will do

[Submarine]

Fighting in this game is all about kiting and positioning and off course knowing your enemy.

Let the enemy make the last step to come next to you so it spend most of its action points, now attack it once ( with a quick weapon you can attack it up to 3 times and still be fairly safe) then press your run key and go diagonal one step away from it. Disable run let the enemy close the gap again and attack it once, repeat till its dead. This works much better if you force the enemy to step in a tile that slowed it down but it is not fully necessary.

This is not 100% fail proof as it is still possible to get hit but for me it works great.

• use a weapon that use 100 or less action points with a +1 to hit or better.
• Armour providing by even simple clothing makes a huge difference in your survive ability.
• Keep encumbrance at 30 or lower when you have no/low combat skills.
• Keep position your self so not more then 1 enemy can attack you.

Good luck!

[ianpwilliams]

Yes encumbrence always gets me. Must travel light!

[pingpong]

I think the game just requires knowing a ton, like most actual roguelikes. If you can get reasonably far in Nethack for example (make sure you use spoilers), Cataclysm should be doable. Even if not, just get used to pressing a ton of keys

On encumbrance, just drop your shit. They literally put in the feature so that if you drop a storage item, your inventory will drop with it. As for clothing, DON’T MELEE DANGEROUS GUYS WITHOUT ARMOR. Such a dumb thing to say, but really it’s a must.

If you don’t put points into skills, it’s a long start, and I’m talking like 10+ hours before you might get to “fun”, and then another 10+ to get to a secure point. I play long-term, and I normally have to spend the first year of game-time building survival, tailoring, some dodge and melee here or there, in between almost dying because of whatever. Almost dying being the key word there. If you have to set bushes on fire and burn down half a forest just so you can stay warm during the night after your arms were broken, so be it. Usually by the end of that year I have scavenged a library or a school, and grabbed a vehicle. By mid-year two is when I expect to be welding or getting into labs. The first summer is usually when I start hoarding food, if I can find a charcoal smoker. It’s easy to spend a ton of time in the dark crafting un-spoilable food, or building stupid stuff to raise skills.

I’d suggest smoker as a starting profession, you get a lighter and nice clothes. Immediately make balaclavas out of curtains, and wear an emergency blanket or two as long as you need.

Crowbar is usually a good melee, a two-by-four works. Anything with +1-+3 hit is the best. Melee is more important than guns, because you won’t level up your dodge the better you get with guns.

A nice thing is “tired” as I’ve played, is really not an issue. Even if your character is up for like 6-12hours after becoming tired, it usually doesn’t have a significant effect on skills, so it can be easy to rest your characters sleep that way.

[Firn]

The starter shelter could give you more than a first look shows.
There are 8 windows with closed curtains. You could ‘peek trough’ them to get a first expression of any enemy units around you. It may sound a little risky, but weigh up which side of the shelter you could expose. Then tear down the curtain (with ‘E’). Don’t worry to much. If there is a mi-go or jabberwock around you would die anyway ^^. If you start with a static NPC, he will act as a guard for the shelter. Keep that in mind.
The curtain will give you a heavy stick. Equip it! Now smash down a locker, maybe two. In front of the free window you can craft. Make a makeshift crowbar from the remains of the locker
-Congratulation!-
The crowbar is a decent first weapon with the benefit of prying. I use it on most of my chars in the early game. But that’s not enogh.
Disassemble the long string from the curtain. Then craft a spike from the metal stuff of the locker. Now you are able to create a makeshift knife.
With that you can finally cut up on of the sheets (curtain) to get some rags. With the second sheet you might want to craft a makeshift sling, but be aware of the encumberance!
The rags can be used to craft some cheap armour like hand wraps or a turban.
Now it depends on your character. If you have at least 1 survival, you could craft a knife spear. Unfortunatelly you need to tear down a second curtain. But it’s worth is because you get a weapon with reach attack!
There should be enough metallic stuff left over to craft a makeshift hammer.
That’s it. Now you should have some items to start with without spending one single foot in the cataclysmic world.

[pisskop]

Knife spears will last until the late mid-game if you take care of it.

Knife spears are simply amazing weapons. One of the best makeshift ones.

Makeshift crowbars are ‘adequate’ and usually better than other makeshift weapons like nail boards or heavy sticks.

[Straume21]

If you start in a shelter, you can start off with both a makeshift crowbar and a knife spear from day 1 by getting a rock, smashing the lockers and benches, tearing down the curtains and crafting a spike. Also I would highly recommend using Backpacker profession, as starting with a backpack makes starting the game significantly easier. The setback of that class is that your other clothes aren’t as great and you don’t get a bottle of water, a pocket knife, and a lighter starting out, but you can make a makeshift knife out of a spike and long string from the windows. Starting with some tailoring skill is really helpful, as you can cut up the sheets from the windows to make some armor. Also I usually start with 1 dodging and 1 melee, as those are things that help you survive the first day.

[pisskop]

tailoring 2 for cotton hats, arm and leg warmers
3 for basic ‘armor’