Gobsmacked

[ryvn]

The key to early-game combat is to realize that 1) You’re faster than most zombies, 2) You can throw rocks and zombies can’t. Lead them to a big open field, run in circles and throw rocks at them until they die.

If going into towns is getting you killed, try foraging for food in the forest while you’re training up Throwing and Melee. Butcher animals for meat, search underbrush for eggs. Flee on sight from Bears, Moose, and more than one Wolf. You’ll need to start with some Survival to make all the stone tools. (Stone Pot, which will let you boil water and make scrambled eggs, is Survival 2.) You can practice tailoring with animal pelts or by cutting up the window curtains in the evac shelter for rags - reinforcing your clothing only adds a few points of armor, but it makes a surprising difference in survivability, and you can make additional useful items like arm warmers to combat the early Spring chill.

[Alasnuyo]

And don’t forge to butcher/smash all the zombie corpses you killed. They revive after a few hours if you don’t, albeit at severely reduced hp.

And you can also get threads by disassembling rags, but that tends to be a lengthy task, so only do it somewhere sheltered. Constantly loot the zombies for better equipments and tools.

And I personally find that it is a lot safer for an early character to find food by foraging the underbrushes for wild veggies and bird/reptile eggs or harvesting fruit bearing trees (if they are ripe). So much safer than going deeper into town for food runs and easier than hunting wildlife for meat. It also grinds your survival skill.

A decent early ranged weapon is the sling; easy to craft and easy to reload. You can get more ammos simply smashing up rocks for pebbles. Very useful for kiting slower enemies and for hunting small games. Grind your throwing skills by slinging pebbles at walls/random patch of dirt. You can get it up to 2 or 3 levels in a few hours.

And don’t sleep in rooms with windows. Your scent will leak out and the zombies can smell you. To mitigate that, close all the windows and draw the curtains in your homebase. Or better yet, board all the windows.

Once you are skilled enough to take on small crowds safely, always take out the spitters and shockers first. Preferably at a distance. Those are a serious pain in the ass. Especially the spitters.

[TheFlame52]

Once you are skilled enough to take on small crowds safely, always take out the spitters and shockers first. Preferably at a distance. Those are a serious pain in the ass. Especially the spitters.

I’m a near-god and I still take out the spitters first. Fuck 'em.

[Natures_Witness]

reads thread title

jumps to conclusion without thinking

Ooh that sounds messy, not to mention the loss of a tasty snack. The icing probably goes everywhere, and you probably get crumbs of the chocolate cake bits on everything. Unless it was still in the Saran Wrap, in that case it might not be so bad.

Still, what a waste of a perfectly good Gob.

[Loendal]

Well, I don’t know if it was just dumb luck, good fortune, or the added precautions I took this time around but I’ve managed to set up a comfy base right on the edge of a town near my starting evac location. I went into the first house, closed all the curtains and blocked the smashed in door with a bookcase and looted up some nice treats and a few basic tools.

I then went out and got a stick and a rock for a hammer and tore down some curtains back in the evac center for rags and such. Then I went into the second house on the block. It has a lovely fireplace and plenty of room to stretch out, and has become my base of operations. I’ve been collecting things (In retrospect, probably too many things) and gathering up most of the basic tools. Found a fully stocked bar in the basement of the house across the street from that one Been reading about barrels and funnels for rainwater, but I think I herniated myself trying to get the barrel back to base. Plus, it’s full of Whiskey… I’d hate to just waste that!

After a little further along, I went a little deeper into town and snuck into yet another basement. This one happened to be owned by a gun nut! Woot! Lots of ammo for my trusty .45 and a nice ergonomic grip for it as well. I’ve been doing well with keeping alive, I think I’m up into day 6 or 7 now… Maybe further (It’s on my work laptop, I’m at home now). My poor cop has had to deal with a major bout of depression, focus was at 5 at one point. Probably brought on by having had to kill an NPC after she tried to steal my stuff, and another that came after me with a knife spear. The Addictive Personality trait probably isn’t helping here either I do think I owe a good portion of my relatively zombie-free journey so far on the other 3 NPC’s who are living in this town. They’ve been killing the buggers off I think.

I’ve found an Electric car in pretty good shape, just needs an Engine. I also found another house that has a garage attached to it, so I’ll likely be moving my base up to there at some point, though I hate to leave my fireplace behind… I’ve grown rather accustomed to starting a fire and curling up on a pile of blankets and rags in front of it to sleep. Siphoned a few cars dry as well in case I stumble on a gas burner that’s in good shape.

[Oragepoilu]

stuff to know :

You need to grind skill, you should stop wasting you time to close doors and push stuff, it’s useless.

At first …
Use, if you have some, stuff that could cheer you up. you will grind faster with hight morale.

1. grind survival lvl3 with the bush outside (you will find stuff to hold water).
2. grind cooking lvl 1
3. make basic tools. Now you can boil water and have save meat.
   Here, you got your survival part into the wood. Should be near night.
4. break windows, pick all the stuff around, disassemble string and whatever you want to rag.
5. grind tailoring near the computer. At level two, you can start to repair your stuff UNLESS they are near-destroyed. At lvl 3, you can alway repair them, very rarely destroy them but only loose some rag/string/etc instead. Stop when you don’t have rags around.
   ~If you need more rags, your best bet if to broke some windows. It’s quick and yield a lot of them. Also pick the string.
6. make basic clothe for all your part. Some are better than other, but aim for clothe that can hold stuff because 90% of the time you will be hauling stuff anyway. Keep leg/feet at 0, torso a 0 if you go melee or arm/hand at 0 if you go ranged/trowing.
   Here, you can survive morning greating from local people without having a sweat !
7. Grind dodge. Untill you can’t grind anymore. Start with weak mob tought, or you will be hurt. Check your points : if it go to 35 or less with a morale of 0, stop grind and haul stuff instead, because you won’t earn xp anyway.
   Should be day6-7. Maybe more if you’r done bad and is slowed by pain/frost.

Now you just have to either grind tailoring to max ( = survival equipment imba), fabrication (= imba weapons, but book needed), mecha ( = make a small car just for the light/ kitchen unit to save time), or just scavenge stuff around.
Just don’t forget to always retrait when you are a 10-15 pain, because it mean you take too much damage anyway and you will be slower so it will be worse.

early game is just be enought fast to rush important survivals skills.
Mid game is more about survive special encounter when you scavenge (brute, shocker … spitter aren’t that much a problem if stick at 6-8 square of them untill they spit into the ground and most the time miss you)
end game is just about getting killed by a turret or a flamming eye. Everything else is fine with survival armor + great dodge skill + sometime a bit of medkit/painkiller.

[FunsizeNinja123]

THE ENCUMBRANCE MAN

THE ENCUMBRANCCEE

Take off your backpacks and check your enc. levels with the @ button. Make sure your clothing fits.

I like to keep my enc below 3, and when I get higher stats I leave it at 4 or 5.

[Force21]

[quote=“FunsizeNinja123, post:21, topic:7766”]THE ENCUMBRANCE MAN

THE ENCUMBRANCCEE

Take off your backpacks and check your enc. levels with the @ button. Make sure your clothing fits.

I like to keep my enc below 3, and when I get higher stats I leave it at 4 or 5.[/quote]
so having an encumbrance of 1 or 2 isn’t bad for the first couple weeks? yay! i thought all encumbrance is bad so ive been trying to get all clothes down to 0

[Valpo]

so having an encumbrance of 1 or 2 isn’t bad for the first couple weeks? yay! i thought all encumbrance is bad so ive been trying to get all clothes down to 0

you though correctly. all encumbrance is bad and should be avoided as long as your meele skill lvl is at 0.

[digitCruncher]

Any helmet, a reinforced trenchcoat, reinforced t-shirt, reinforced cargo pants, reinforced socks and shoes, and reinforced undergarments are all you need to have good early-game armor, carrying capacity, and encumbrance . You end with 1 arm and 1 torso encumbrance, some head encumbrance, and sometimes some mouth and eye encumbrance, depending on what helmet you have. You can’t carry everything, but you can carry the all important knife, hammer, screwdriver, flashlight, lighter, water bottle, tiny amount of food, medicine, and possibly even a pot. Everything else can be crafted (even without a pot you can craft a pointy stick and drink a aluminium can of something, in order to get something with 1 cooking and 1 boiling capability), and your weapon can stay in your hands.

Other things are nice to keep at home, especially blankets to keep you warm at night. And as always, it is always safer to make multiple small trips, rather than filling two dufflebags full of stuff, and hoping you don’t get ambushed with 8 torso encumbrance. And if you are lucky, you might find some better equipment, so try to be flexible, and not treat this as gospel.

[TheWumpus]

The first thing I have done since I got over my initial zed meat playthroughs is to avoid towns like the plague for a little while. Do as the others have suggested and look for a remote patch of wilderness. Check along roads for military wrecks, they often have army spawns and rarely have serious threats in the area (but don’t step on rubble if you can avoid it, stepping on rubble can lead to !!FUN!!). If you find a car on a road that just needs batteries/gas, make a note on your map (m to pull it up, N to make a note). If you find an electric vehicle chances are it will probably start (assuming it hasn’t been snowing for days).

If you have to, spawn in summer until you get the hang of the early game. Perishable food spawns will be pretty much gone, but you won’t freeze to death picking through bushes for eggs.

[IcedPee]

Erm, may I suggest checking out the Cataclysm: DDA Survival Guide at https://docs.google.com/document/d/10lx79fcpgDHjqXit7VZ7kWNadxgPh_gkoa_MNgKsG8w? If you CTRL+F for “First night survival” you’ll find an easy 21-step guide that’s 90% effective for lasting the first day. The guide itself is incomplete but we’re working on it.

Hope it helps!

[KA101]

[quote=“IcedPee, post:26, topic:7766”]Erm, may I suggest checking out the Cataclysm: DDA Survival Guide at https://docs.google.com/document/d/10lx79fcpgDHjqXit7VZ7kWNadxgPh_gkoa_MNgKsG8w? If you CTRL+F for “First night survival” you’ll find an easy 21-step guide that’s 90% effective for lasting the first day. The guide itself is incomplete but we’re working on it.

Hope it helps![/quote]

Hello, IcedPee. I’m sorry you think we’re SILLYHEADS and that turrets are killing you through powered armor (last I tried, I was able to stand around in a heavy suit whilst a milspec bounced 5.56 NATO off of me until it ran dry?).

Apart from that, the guide was an interesting read. Thanks.

[system]

Everytime when I start a new game the very first thing that I do is to grab a rock, smash the lockers at the evac shelter and make a makeshift crowbar. It’s very useful as an early-game weapon and you can pry locked doors to open them without smashing it.

[Pthalocy]

My approach generally involves crafting what I can from lockers and window curtains ((e)xamine them to take down curtains, I think?). First priority is a makeshift crowbar for a weapon (and prying), and a makeshift knife for butchering/cutting up fabrics. The knife takes smashing a couple of lockers for metal to craft a spike, and then I think a rag or small strings, so it’s not immediately apparent you can craft one from shelter materials.
Turn curtain into makeshift sling. Encumberment is terrible for combat, but I avoid that as much as possible in the first day.

Raid basement for foods/clothes. Sling means you can carry things now. It also disassembles back into a sheet, which is wearable later.
Ask npc for items. Ignore npc quest generally.

Then I GET THE HELL AWAY FROM TOWN. I aim for sewage treatment plants, gas stations, any building that tends to be unoccupied. Not sarcophaguses for waste, radiation is evil. Sewage plants are safe.

From there I basically bear grylls it and forage all of the underbrush for eggs and veggies and stab smaller game. Depending on your crafting skills, getting a fireplace may be easier or harder than crafting a brazier, but you can plop flammables into a small pile outdoors away from other flammables for cooking until then. Worry about crafting more clothes after you have a safe-ish space to do it longterm.

I like to hit smaller settlements on town outskirts, like mansions, or power stations. Mansions are amazing for food without the same variety of zombies I find near cities.

[StopSignal]

[quote=“KA101, post:27, topic:7766”][quote=“IcedPee, post:26, topic:7766”]Erm, may I suggest checking out the Cataclysm: DDA Survival Guide at https://docs.google.com/document/d/10lx79fcpgDHjqXit7VZ7kWNadxgPh_gkoa_MNgKsG8w? If you CTRL+F for “First night survival” you’ll find an easy 21-step guide that’s 90% effective for lasting the first day. The guide itself is incomplete but we’re working on it.

Hope it helps![/quote]

Hello, IcedPee. I’m sorry you think we’re SILLYHEADS and that turrets are killing you through powered armor (last I tried, I was able to stand around in a heavy suit whilst a milspec bounced 5.56 NATO off of me until it ran dry?).

Apart from that, the guide was an interesting read. Thanks.[/quote]

Like KA said, interesting read. Read only the first part. I kinda disliked it because it wants you to be the toughest and awesomest without really having the full experience of the Game. It’s like a grinding guide. Taking traits for free points, seeing the game in a more mechanical way. Idk, I just disliked it. However, it’s noticeable the work on it, so I can just say good work.

[blazing_glory]

Any helmet, a reinforced trenchcoat, reinforced t-shirt, reinforced cargo pants, reinforced socks and shoes, and reinforced undergarments are all you need to have good early-game armor, carrying capacity, and encumbrance .

Pssh, having only one trenchcoat is for wimps, I go with 2 trenchcoats, and one leather trenchcoat, plus a hoodie but that isn’t really important.

[quote=“Alasnuyo, post:16, topic:7766”]Once you are skilled enough to take on small crowds safely, always take out the spitters and shockers first. Preferably at a distance. Those are a serious pain in the ass. Especially the spitters.

I’m a near-god and I still take out the spitters first. Fuck 'em.[/quote]

Spitters aren’t THAT bad, as long as your not wading directly through 5 tiles of acid you’ll be fine, plus they can help hurt a crowd of zombies and take out those blasted dogs…

[Tineen]

Spitter’s are a pain in the ass. I always go for them first in a hoard myself too.

When in doubt light bushes on fire and stand behind them.

[prytoclasm]

Just a few advices:

A good way to stay alive is to use anything to your advantage. ‘Abusing’ obstacles that give you time to attack without being attacked are a very very valid way to stay alive. Like windows (broken ones, not openend ones!), bushes or even shopping carts (the mobile obstacle).

Another point is: start in Summer. It can be lethal to start in spring and not having proper clothing within a few game-hours.

Always have a shotgun around, for those brutes, especially shocker brutes :).

But, why give hints anyways, you’ll figure all the other fancy stuff on your own.

[eatdembeanz]

[quote=“Tineen, post:32, topic:7766”]Spitter’s are a pain in the ass. I always go for them first in a hoard myself too.

When in doubt light bushes on fire and stand behind them.[/quote]

Spitters are actually pretty useful, since zombies (at least, zombies that aren’t Hazmats or Spitters) take damage from acid. They’ll do the job of a good burning bush without wasting a lighter charge.