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Game Talk The Bunker
1

I’m in a bizarre situation whereby I love the game despite the fact that I never actually make it past day 1.

When starting a new game I used to do a standard new game (survival shelter, and a customised character geared towards surviving), but now I’m just doing a “play now!” thing so that it’s varied, because I’m dying anyway.

When I start (in the shelter at least), I’ll peak through various curtains, then tear a couple down to make slings. Then I’ll go downstairs and pick up whatever I find in the dark in the cellar. I’ll smash the locker etc, and pick up any blanket etc. Then I try to get to a house on the edge of town and either get killed on the way, or not long after being in the house.

I read that you are supposed to travel at night but if I wait until dark to travel then I get cold and hungry/thirsty.

Also, sometimes there are so many items lying around that I don’t know what to take and I become overwhelmed. Obviously food and drink is a priority, but beyond that I don’t know.

Is there anyone who can help me stay alive until at least day 2? I get the impression that there is a lot of fun to be had with this game if you can just last weeks rather than days.

2

In fact it’s rather easy if you keep in mind a few thing. I’m sure there is already quite some post about it, on reddit too.

-There is a movement cost for every tile, for example windows and bush have hight movement cost; So lure any zombie you have in sight to into them.

-Lure them one per one. If you see anything big early (hulk, etc) avoid them. (just go somewhere else). Stay in range of them and move until one come then go back. Take care of sound if you don’t have any sigh (corner of a building, etc).

-Don’t fight if you have some pain. Don’t strain yourself if you have a low str build, and avoid cutting yourself (windows). It slow you down AND reduce your focus.

-Talking about focus, try use it when you can. If you have more than 50 early that mean you can just train yourself at sling, melee, or other fight skill (ranged skill can be trained by shooting in the wind)

-If you go the ranged route, pick few rock=> pebble and train yourself to lv2 trowing before you try to move. (you won’t be able to reach lv3 because of your focus low)

-if you want to go melee, make a makeshift crowbar. You will pray door with it quickly.

-You can up a bit your skill early in the shelter. Smash stuff around, and craft whatever suit yourself to lvl up. I think it’s only in the experimental, but if you use it you can ‘batch’ (b) up to 20 item in a row instead of craft them one per one, it greatly reduce the crafting time for food, water, etc.

-If you need a fire to craft or sight, you only need it to start crafting. no need to burn down 5 plank in same time.

You biggest problem may be water early, because you need a lot of them. If you don’t have any fresh water spot (marsh, river, lake, sewage treatment, mansion pool, pool, etc …) you may have some trouble because it will cost you a lot to move from a point to another, and you won’t have much storage & bottle or whatever.
then come any special encounter (I’m looking at you, moose, mi go,etc …)
After this come the cold; You should be able to find enough clothes, or worst case rag from house around.
and finally your own stupidity. Because you don’t have any need but food/water, and food is easy to get from wood while water is infinite from a lot of spot, you can use this to take time to clear slowly the area you want to access.

3

If you’re having a hard time killing zombies you can up the amount of starting points you have by going to the options, if the weather is also bothering you can also change the season.

That being said, you can change the starting points and put points into skills like tailoring and such, which will allow you to craft some decent clothing early game. I’d also recommend putting points into dodging if you have problems with melee combat.

Forage near a forest by pressing E on bright green bushes, you can get food and survival experience from this too.

For early game weapons, a knife spear is a great early weapon that can be crafted right at the start and has a reach attack that can be done by pressing f. A sling is also a good ranged weapon that can take out regular zombies with ease, it also uses a common ammo (Pebbles) which can be obtained by crafting a rock and a hammering object of 1 (like another rock).

Making a makeshift crowbar will allow you to break into houses without making too much noise, noise which can attract nasties into your spot.

Customize your character to suit YOUR needs. You don’t have to play in an evac shelter either, while it may seem difficult, playing something other than an evac shelter (Like ambush start) can give you some mid-late game weapons and abilities.

Things that are a priority go from: A decent weapon, Good clothing (Early game should be focused on pockets, warmth, and decent protection, Dusters/Trenchcoats/leather jackets are a good example.), watertight item like bottles, a pot or something to boil water, and something to cook with (Like a pointy stick to roast meat or pots which completely fulfill this), a way to start a fire, and something to butcher meat with also helps.
I’m sure there’s more, but basic essential items like this should do.

Make sure you aren’t too encumbered either, if it’s yellow it’s fine, but if it’s red or something, you can be severely hampered in movements like dodging or running or even if you hit or miss during melee combat.

If I missed anything, or if you have specific questions, ask me or go to ‘Tips, tricks and newb questions!’. The other veteran players will gladly be able to help with anything.

4

As above: If you’re having a really hard time up the starting points and choose a profession that starts with a decent weapon, like the police/military recruit or baseball player.

put some points into your stats, take some soft negative traits to get more points on chargen-- stuff like bad hearing, lactose intolerance etc. Positive traits such as quick, deft, fleet-footed, parkour, nightvision are pretty handy.

More general tips:

[ul][li]Don’t rush raid cities during daylight.[/li]
[li]Don’t fight when you’re wearing lots of armour or backpacks. Drop them, drop any loot that takes you over your encumberance.[/li]
[li]Kite. i.e lure individual zombies onto stuff that slows them down so you can spend more time bashing them before they react. Bushes for example.
Another one is to break a single-tile window, jump through, then let the zombies come to you, although shockers and spitters can be a problem.[/li]
[li]Items to find as a priority: Some way of starting fire-- a lighter – a pot or pan to boil some water. Hotplates, RV kitchens with a working battery and water purifiers can be useful for this. That’s your water and food sorted. Decent weapon-- Baseball bats, crowbars etc. Stuff like the baseball bat can be upgraded pretty easily. Armour – Leather or maybe denim will do in the early game. Even just a leather jacket helps a lot. Tools: TAILORING KIT. Seriously, once you have some thread you can fit all your clothes/armour and keep them repaired. Hammers, screwdrivers, come a close second and allow you to construct stuff like boarded up windows and give access to many electronics and mechanics recipies.[/li][/ul]

5

Thanks for the tips, I’ll print them off and see what I can do.

So should I only approach towns etc at night? Maybe stay in the forest and get food from bushes etc until it gets dark?

6

Most people say to go only at night, but it can lead to more problem to a newcomer than go during the day.

I don’t see any advantage to go at night for you, you see nothing, but meanwhile Z can still attack you using smell and noises.

During the day you have a clear sight and may be able to make more cleaver movement using stuff around, like moving a furniture, luring them, scout Z, etc.

A veteran can go a night because they know how town generation work, quickly recognize the pattern of the houses and can swiftly move through it and loot it while avoiding unwanted attention from Z you can’t deal with early. It’s also a good way to lure Z inside a house and burn them, because it may attract more around the fire but they won’t spot you because of the fire itself you you stand outside of the light from it. But I’m sure than someone that can’t survive day 1 won’t do that anyway and will just end stuck hand to hand with something that they didn’t see coming, like Zdog catching you, forcing you to kill it, allowing more to come using the noise, etc.

The only moment you will want to go at night it’s because you have nothing else to do or want to loot area you already scooted but saw a special Z you can’t kill.

7

OK thanks, will bear that in mind

8

Small tip: Wear gas mask/firefighter PBA mask at all times, you can laugh at boomers, bloated zombies, smokers, flu and cold after you do that

9

[quote=“Oragepoilu, post:6, topic:10814”]Most people say to go only at night, but it can lead to more problem to a newcomer than go during the day.

I don’t see any advantage to go at night for you, you see nothing, but meanwhile Z can still attack you using smell and noises.

During the day you have a clear sight and may be able to make more cleaver movement using stuff around, like moving a furniture, luring them, scout Z, etc.

A veteran can go a night because they know how town generation work, quickly recognize the pattern of the houses and can swiftly move through it and loot it while avoiding unwanted attention from Z you can’t deal with early. It’s also a good way to lure Z inside a house and burn them, because it may attract more around the fire but they won’t spot you because of the fire itself you you stand outside of the light from it. But I’m sure than someone that can’t survive day 1 won’t do that anyway and will just end stuck hand to hand with something that they didn’t see coming, like Zdog catching you, forcing you to kill it, allowing more to come using the noise, etc.

The only moment you will want to go at night it’s because you have nothing else to do or want to loot area you already scooted but saw a special Z you can’t kill.[/quote]

Erm no. The reason raiding at night is suggested is quite simple: Z’s don’t have night vision. Most, if not all(don’t recall offhand), Zs track primarily by sight but lack night-vision. Scent tracking is minor and for the most part, the player can limit the noise they make which, combined with taking the night-vision trait makes night raiding significantly safer. Knowing town generation has absolutely nothing to do with it. With a night-vision capable character, one can easily run into a Z and retreat loosing the Z swiftly.

As for burning houses to handle a few Zs. That’s not a great idea either.

That said, a couple of overall tips for the OP:

  1. “Play Now” - While I fully understand the desire for variety when you keep dying on day 1, I’d suggest limiting how often you do this. What you need at the moment is cumulative experience in regards to beginning survival. This is accomplished best by having similar starts and tweaking what wasn’t useful to you. Make a character and save it as a premade profile so you don’t have to spend as much time rebuilding it when restarting. Change stat/skills depending on what seemed to be working for you.

  2. Goals - Right now your primary goal seems to be surviving past day 1. Since you’re having trouble, start considering that a long-term goal and think about what’s happened to cause you to have problems. Make tackling those issues your short-term goals and spend some sessions learning how to handle them. Achieving those goals will not only help you feel like you’ve accomplished something, even if you die, but will work in training you in how to survive in Cata overall.

Some suggestions for such goals:
Successfully get into a single building without any Zs following you inside
Lure a Z into a specific tile(bushes are good choices for this, drop something and work on getting them to walk over that item repeatedly without being hit)
Sleep on a bed in town without Zs finding you
Explore a specific type of building and find out what it may have

As for more specific beginner tips:

  1. Night-Vision - Have all of your starting characters begin with this. Drastically increases the distance you can see at night(although it still won’t let you craft/read without additional light) and like I mentioned above, gives you the advantage over Zs when raiding at night.

  2. Makeshift Crowbar - Mentioned already but here’s some extra details. Assuming you start in a shelter: Grab a rock, wield it and smash the lockers in the NW corner to get a pipe. At this point you can make it. As for using it, ignore windows and only try to pop doors. Going after a window has a chance to break it, that equals noise and can let Zs zero in on your location. Not to mention that unless you open the construction menu(*) and clear the window out, which takes time, going through a broken window can hurt you and/or rip up your clothing.

  3. Curtains - You can examine a window (“e” then direction) to open/close curtains. You can also remove the curtains as well resulting in a long string, some sheets and a heavy stick or two(don’t remember offhand). Not a bad idea to yank at least one down to make some Makeshift Slings(& then tab over to Armor). Wear em and your early inventory issues are gone for the moment. Closing curtains is useful when raiding towns due to keeping outside Zs from seeing you roaming around. Best to do so diagonally to minimize exposure.

  4. Warming up - If you’re running the Evacuee profession, you should have equipment that’ll help keep you mostly warm. The two main exceptions are gloves and head-wear. Now, while you aren’t actively wielding anything in your hands, your coat’ll keep them warm. However, it’s not a bad idea to cut up some sheets from the curtains to get rags(stand over a sheet, hit “B”) and make two hand wraps and wear em to help. Make a turban(again, or two) for your head if desired as well. If you have a sewing/tailoring kit and some tailoring skill, feel free to make something better.

  5. Fight only to survive - In other words, avoid fighting until you have a better handle on just surviving. In Cata it’s essentially you vs the world(marginally less so with NPCs perhaps but still). It doesn’t matter if you killed a Z if it rips your clothing to shreds, landed several bites and generally slowed you down, it just made it that much easier for the other Zs the noise alerted to take you out. Avoidance is one of the best tools you have to staying alive in the beginning.

  6. Fight smart: Sometimes a fight’s unavoidable. That’s fine, it happens. Doesn’t mean you need to grab your trusty crowbar and charge head-on at the Z. Use the terrain to your advantage. Are you outside? Get the Z to walk onto a bush(see short-term goals mentioned above) and fight them while they’re on the bush. Inside? Hop out a window and force them to fight you while on the windowsill. Being on bad terrain messes with your movement points and makes them attack less frequently. If it’s daylight and you have matches or a lighter, light the bush on fire for additional damage. I don’t advise doing that at night since it’ll attract more Zs but you can also take advantage of that fact and use it to lure them away. Just remember that fires won’t last long if it’s raining. Also, probably a good idea to drop your slings(AWAY from the fire) before starting the fight. At best, you have a dead Z and spend a little time picking up your gear. At worst, you attract some more Zs and have to leave it but it’s still intact to obtain later.

That’s all I have to offer at the moment.

10

[quote=“Enepttastic, post:9, topic:10814”][quote=“Oragepoilu, post:6, topic:10814”]Most people say to go only at night, but it can lead to more problem to a newcomer than go during the day.

I don’t see any advantage to go at night for you, you see nothing, but meanwhile Z can still attack you using smell and noises.

During the day you have a clear sight and may be able to make more cleaver movement using stuff around, like moving a furniture, luring them, scout Z, etc.

A veteran can go a night because they know how town generation work, quickly recognize the pattern of the houses and can swiftly move through it and loot it while avoiding unwanted attention from Z you can’t deal with early. It’s also a good way to lure Z inside a house and burn them, because it may attract more around the fire but they won’t spot you because of the fire itself you you stand outside of the light from it. But I’m sure than someone that can’t survive day 1 won’t do that anyway and will just end stuck hand to hand with something that they didn’t see coming, like Zdog catching you, forcing you to kill it, allowing more to come using the noise, etc.

The only moment you will want to go at night it’s because you have nothing else to do or want to loot area you already scooted but saw a special Z you can’t kill.[/quote]

Erm no. The reason raiding at night is suggested is quite simple: Z’s don’t have night vision. Most, if not all(don’t recall offhand), Zs track primarily by sight but lack night-vision. Scent tracking is minor and for the most part, the player can limit the noise they make which, combined with taking the night-vision trait makes night raiding significantly safer. Knowing town generation has absolutely nothing to do with it. With a night-vision capable character, one can easily run into a Z and retreat loosing the Z swiftly.

As for burning houses to handle a few Zs. That’s not a great idea either.[/quote]

Night-raiding in stable works just fine… night-raiding in experimental is MUCH harder than day-raiding, due to the new zombies. Feral Predators have night vision out to, I think, 40 tiles? And they are faster than you. And they have an IMPALING attack. Nasty buggers.

Also, the huge boomer (an upgrade to the regular boomer) can cover you with glowing gunk, making you the only thing in town that most zombies can see. You can imagine how that goes.

Also, the corrosive zombie glows. Nice to know where they are, bad to fight them (since see above).

So yeah, night-raiding in experimental is MUCH MUCH harder.

And burning down buildings can be very VERY useful, in the right circumstances. It’s very loud, so it attracts the zombies, and a noticeable number of them will die (though many of them will eventually get back up). Just make sure you aren’t anywhere near the building, as it will attract zombies from EVERY direction, so there’s not really any safe spaces close to it.

11

[quote=“deoxy, post:10, topic:10814”]Night-raiding in stable works just fine… night-raiding in experimental is MUCH harder than day-raiding, due to the new zombies. Feral Predators have night vision out to, I think, 40 tiles? And they are faster than you. And they have an IMPALING attack. Nasty buggers.

Also, the huge boomer (an upgrade to the regular boomer) can cover you with glowing gunk, making you the only thing in town that most zombies can see. You can imagine how that goes.

Also, the corrosive zombie glows. Nice to know where they are, bad to fight them (since see above).

So yeah, night-raiding in experimental is MUCH MUCH harder.

And burning down buildings can be very VERY useful, in the right circumstances. It’s very loud, so it attracts the zombies, and a noticeable number of them will die (though many of them will eventually get back up). Just make sure you aren’t anywhere near the building, as it will attract zombies from EVERY direction, so there’s not really any safe spaces close to it.[/quote]

First off, while I just recently came back to playing the game, I’ve been playing the Experimental and haven’t had many issues night raiding once I remembered what I mentioned earlier.

Something else to keep in mind is that the OP is having issues surviving past day 1, and my advice pertains to that. Let’s get him/her what they need to know to survive the first day before mucking with more advanced concepts. Telling a beginner that burning down a house to deal with basic Zs(since the chance of meeting an evolved is slim at day one) isn’t a good idea. It removes a potential source of supplies, and knowable terrain that could be better utilized in avoidance.

As for the Zs you mentioned? The chances of the OP running into evolved on day one is slim. Even then taking the three you mentioned in mind:
Glowing Z during a night raid? Don’t go near it.
Boomer? Unless the enhanced version has vision or scent tracking enhancements, treat it like any other Z and backpedal a bit then change direction. Just like how you avoid any other basic Z.
Predator? If the sight range is as bad as you say(hadn’t had the privilege of running into one of those yet), I still wouldn’t rate their risk to be massively higher than during the day. Even if you’re raiding the outskirts of a town during the day, there’s still going to be a decent chance of them getting the drop on you due to obstructed line of sight. Raiding at night will increase the chance of them finding you yes, but in exchange for drastically reducing the chances of the majority of Zs out there from doing the same.

By the time enhanced Z start showing up often enough to actually be an issue, a character should be better equipped to start raiding during the day.

12

[quote=“Enepttastic, post:11, topic:10814”][quote=“deoxy, post:10, topic:10814”]Night-raiding in stable works just fine… night-raiding in experimental is MUCH harder than day-raiding, due to the new zombies. Feral Predators have night vision out to, I think, 40 tiles? And they are faster than you. And they have an IMPALING attack. Nasty buggers.

Also, the huge boomer (an upgrade to the regular boomer) can cover you with glowing gunk, making you the only thing in town that most zombies can see. You can imagine how that goes.

Also, the corrosive zombie glows. Nice to know where they are, bad to fight them (since see above).

So yeah, night-raiding in experimental is MUCH MUCH harder.

And burning down buildings can be very VERY useful, in the right circumstances. It’s very loud, so it attracts the zombies, and a noticeable number of them will die (though many of them will eventually get back up). Just make sure you aren’t anywhere near the building, as it will attract zombies from EVERY direction, so there’s not really any safe spaces close to it.[/quote]

First off, while I just recently came back to playing the game, I’ve been playing the Experimental and haven’t had many issues night raiding once I remembered what I mentioned earlier.

Something else to keep in mind is that the OP is having issues surviving past day 1, and my advice pertains to that. Let’s get him/her what they need to know to survive the first day before mucking with more advanced concepts. Telling a beginner that burning down a house to deal with basic Zs(since the chance of meeting an evolved is slim at day one) isn’t a good idea. It removes a potential source of supplies, and knowable terrain that could be better utilized in avoidance.

As for the Zs you mentioned? The chances of the OP running into evolved on day one is slim. Even then taking the three you mentioned in mind:
Glowing Z during a night raid? Don’t go near it.
Boomer? Unless the enhanced version has vision or scent tracking enhancements, treat it like any other Z and backpedal a bit then change direction. Just like how you avoid any other basic Z.
Predator? If the sight range is as bad as you say(hadn’t had the privilege of running into one of those yet), I still wouldn’t rate their risk to be massively higher than during the day. Even if you’re raiding the outskirts of a town during the day, there’s still going to be a decent chance of them getting the drop on you due to obstructed line of sight. Raiding at night will increase the chance of them finding you yes, but in exchange for drastically reducing the chances of the majority of Zs out there from doing the same.

By the time enhanced Z start showing up often enough to actually be an issue, a character should be better equipped to start raiding during the day.[/quote]

I think the important thing here is more the difference between the two kinds of raiding you’re talking about: at the start of the game, you’re safe to maybe hit a few houses on the outskirts, at most, definitely not going more than a couple of buildings deep into town until you’re more prepared, during the day, at least–and once you start penetrating deeper in, you want to avoid daytime raids anyway, because you’ll attract so many zombies on your way through the town that you’ve got a handy little horde waiting for you to start looting. So: looting deep in towns at night, grabbing from the outskirts okay during the day but avoid detection/fighting as much as possible.

13

OP, please bear in mind I was running late for a lecture when I wrote my earlier post so I couldn’t say everything I was going to.

Your best friends are caution and common sense. As long as you are cautious and only draw a few zombies at a time, daylight raiding is pretty easy. Night raiding generally needs stuff like a flashlight, NV goggles or the NV trait/mutation at the least.

Remember you have a stamina value now that drains with each attack (and drains your speed).
So after a few zombies, just make sure to take a quick rest so your guy can get his breath back.

[ol][li]Killed a zombie? (S)mash it with a melee weapon to pulp it and stop it reviving in a few hours.[/li]
[li]Got a knife? (B)utcher it. Takes a lot longer than smashing so don’t do it with enemies nearby, but trains your survival skill slowly, stops them reviving and later on, you can get special loot.[/li]
[li]Wildlife? Kill rabbits, wolves etc and (B)utcher them for raw meat to cook. Once your survival skill is high enough you’ll start carving more meat from them, sinews (that can be used for thread or crafting clothes) and pelts – that once cleaned (so they don’t rot) can be tanned into leather or fur. That will be much later though, so ignore the tanning and pelts stuff for now.[/li][/ol]
[b]

Remember your essential tools. [/b]
A weapon. Clothes and Storage-- something like a backpack, trenchcoat, army pants or cargo pants.
Something to carry water (preferably two or three.)
Pots/Pans, Lighter/matches. Don’t worry about fuel-- you can smash most things for wood to burn.
Don’t light fires inside houses. It will not end well. (until you can craft a brazier. Then you’ll probably just die of smoke inhalation.)

If there’s a nearby hardware store, grocery or off-license, check it out. If you see a wheelbarrow or shopping cart, (G)rab it. You’ll drag it around after you and you can just (D)rop items into it and it helps looting a lot. Zombies approaching? un(G)rab it, bash their heads in and take it back to your shelter.

14

On wheelbarrows, on experimental check the vehicle first. If the wheelbarrow has no wheel, it will make noise. Plus in general it’s best to check the status of the vehicle. If the container is destroyed you can’t put items on it.

15

Sewing kits are an almost essential item, tailoring kits even more so.
Bone needles and Wooden needles are craftable versions of said above.

Parkour, Fleet-footed, and quick combined make a super fast character. Even more so when fleet-footed mutates into road-runner.
Allows for you to outrun pretty much anything.

16

[quote=“Rot, post:15, topic:10814”]Sewing kits are an almost essential item, tailoring kits even more so.
Bone needles and Wooden needles are craftable versions of said above.

Parkour, Fleet-footed, and quick combined make a super fast character. Even more so when fleet-footed mutates into road-runner.
Allows for you to outrun pretty much anything.[/quote]

With running on experimentals, escaping can become quite easy. Not so much if your stamina is low from fighting, though…

One time, I even managed to run to a decently infested town in broad daylight, saunter into a hardware store, and grab a wheelbarrow and some other junk and run the hell out of town before anything could hit me.

I had no idea if there was a wheelbarrow before making that run, but I figured might as well.

And yeah, some means of sewing can be super handy. A few tries repairing or reinforcing items can net you some skill levels - which in turn can give you some crafting recipes for warm clothing. Plus, being able to repair stuff like cargo pants or military rucksacks can come in pretty handy for first day storage.

If I recall though, you also need some survival skill in order to craft bone or wooden needles. If you lack a knife, finding a sharp rock can do for a start. Butcher dead Zs, get those levels up to upgrade into a makeshift knife.

For night raids, I often prefer makeshift picklocks since they take up less volume and have no risk of breaking windows. 'course, you can only use them on doors, but for me that’s less of a risk. Many times I opened a window to find a zombie in the house.

17

Yeah I think I’ll go back to having premade characters with decent survival perks, and the default survival scenario, rather than random Play Now games.

At the moment I’m having issues getting the balance right between carrying capacity, encumberment, being cold, and being useless at fighting. I carry two slings for extra capacity and then drop them when I have to fight, but then my volume is way over the limit from dropping the slings. And in my last game I was just “swinging wildly” when attacking. Although I am aware that fighting should be avoided where possible.

I also tried picking bushes for food but I just got leaves and similar stuff which would have to be cooked.

I’ll try creating a super sneaky and fast character ter and see what happens.

I’m going to get half-decent at this game if it kills me, which it has several hundred times.

18

bushes are totally useless to search until you got at last 2 survival skill; it take too long to xp on them, and give almost nothing . On top of it, depend of your starting season (spring is defaut, no ?) you don’t have the same output.

Pick a new dude, choose the basic shelter survivor; don’t pick skill, but instead pick quick, and upgrade your str. You may want to pick more carry strength and volume trough trait by picking bad trait like addictive personality, animal discord, clumsy, lightweight, poor hearing, strong scent, truth teller, ugly. If you have 14str, go place them into either dex or int.

That should give you some hp, and decent damage at close quarter on top of allowing to you use some bow/crossbow with more efficiency.

Create; shelter, go down, pick whatever clothes you can that does NOT ampere you. Do NOT pick more than 10 (or 15 if the thing is really good), unless you need it for the cold.

Pick a weapon; fastest weapon earn more from str than slow one, but zombie have armor that may negate bashing damage if you don’t have enough, so best early weapon at this point is something fast (<100) with bashing damage.

If you have something to light a fire, you are good to go, unless it’s raining. if it’s raining, better try to grind some skill (bash stuff around to train you fabrication, make a needle, smash windows to get string, disassemble it, train tailoring - DO NOT cut down stuff unless needed to grind because low skill waste material. Windows have lot of rags; then make yourself enough to protect you from cold)

Then go wander around, piking rock on the way, up to any building you want to loot (house is better because it lack the possibility to spawn something nasty early). if you can do a run up to a windows , smash it twice, and use it to slow down any Z that is fallowing you to attack it while it go trough the windows.

Then loot the house; If you can do in one run, just stash stuff you want to pick near the broken windows for you next run. Eat stuff directly here, drink can;

You can at this point use a can empty to boil water. If there is some water near a windows you can light a fire outside, just enough to get you starting crafting clean water.

If there is a basement, don’t go in. May get you killed. (or try and hope getting some awesome weapon/gun, sometime)

try to get something to boil water (can, or best, pot), go back home when full, trow the can/pot near the computer along with a pointy stick if it’s not a pot.

You can now make your own food; may be annoying until you get decent container though.

if you get anything in range noticing you, go back a bit (5 square or more) and wait for him to come. trow him your stuff when it’s close, you may hurt him a bit with some luck. trowing is really easy to grind alone, just trow something at your feet (ya can do this before even going you, but make sure you have some focus >30); then a sling + pebble is easy to make and a reliable weapon against basic zombie (= they don’t have special armor). Even if you kill it it may avoid you getting one hit or two, so less pain, so more speed for you, etc. All good.

Sadly I can’t see what you are exactly doing, so I can’t pinpoint how you would have so much difficulty early. Worst case it’s not even needed to attack any zombie early now, you can go trough the survival forest way, but it take a lot of time (like, you may not cook and eat “raw fresh” meat because you can’t make a lot of fire). This way to go require at last protection from cold as a starter because you spend too much time outside, and cold will drop your speed and focus, making any move, basically useless. If you have a good starter, you can try this.

19

do not care about enc until its under 50, you should be able to hit anything what is not skeleton or kid and throwing helps to beat them

20

We must not play the same game. With 50 encumbrance, whatever if it’s 0.c or experimental if it touch a part of the body that reduce you chance to miss at 0 skill you won’t hit anything, you will be dead of your gear will be riped before. even with skill lv 10, you don’t have that much chance to hit, not even talking about getting something better than a normal hit.