Hey newbs, what world settings do you use to cheat the apocalypse? (easy world settings)

Hey, just wanted to see how other beginners made their worlds to survive the apocalypse.
I’m not looking for people who max their diffiiculty, i want to hear how they make their worlds easier.
(plus, the most recent threads are from, what, 2015?)
i usually make the world loaded with mods that make the game easier IE removing nutrients & removing zombies (sometimes monsters entirely.)
i try to make the cities slightly larger and slightly closer but it never… really… does much.
what do you do to make the apocalypse unrea- ahem easier?

When I first started playing I used the no revival mod (or whatever its called) and had zombie speed set to something like 80%. Not much else.

1 Like

I use an ungodly amount of mods that add op stuff

2 Likes

I tend to enjoy the game a little more leisurely with zombie speed set to 75-80%, and resilience to the same, just so they aren’t quite such bullet sponges. Pumping up their numbers a little can make sure that you still have some close calls that you need to stop and think about, and increases how frequently I tend to see advanced zombies, so the variety is still there.

Turned off revification to avoid having to pulp everything, and playing freeform with points obviously allows you to make a godlike person with as many perks or stats as you like, coupled with the stat boosting mods that give you points from skill levels and kills quickly pushes you to extreme heights so you can play more fast and loose.

Also realizing the power of reach weapons! My god, much of the power of guns without the hideously annoying warnings while trying to aim.

1 Like

I just use defaults these days but when I was learning I would set zombie speed and resilience to 75%. I generally recommend that to newer players because it helps you while you learn which enemies are the most dangerous and such. I also started with ‘classic’ zombies or whatever (where it’s just basic zombies) but I can’t recommend that, the variety of enemies is one of the major draws of the game.

I used to also slightly increase item generation, but we’ve been getting a lot of locations with increased loot density, so that’s a bit unnecessary on current versions, imo.

And just do yourself a favor and turn off fungals. I know a lot of people play with them, but in my opinion they just make the game tedious and laggy.

2 Likes

When I started I just created a character with all the skills, good traits and superstats. Usually you don’t need much more. Once you start learning the mechanics you may want to tone down the character until you feel confortable playing with a random one.

I don’t like extreme difficulty so I doubled the amount of loot. I first tried 4 times - I saw it at another post - but so much loot was generated I did not feel the need to move much around - a lab run netted me all the junk food, water and books I needed to survive for an entire season. Turns out, there is such a thing as “too much loot”.

Also, if you’re just learning, you may want to try the cheat section. Learning all the recipes and having access to any item is boring in the long run but if you just want to know what an item does or how a mechanic works is a good choice.

You can play like Minecraft in Peaceful mode by using the ‘no monsters’ mod.

Pro tip: You can start in a town with no monsters, have a good explore of the local area, then take ‘no monsters’ out of your save file. You then have a real safe haven to start off with but monsters when you go out of the places you have already explored. :stuck_out_tongue:

3 Likes

Little late, but I usually just lower zombie speed and up item spawns when I’m feeling like a fun romp instead of a grueling survival experience. Just don’t make all your worlds easy, it’ll be a net fun loss when you just overpower all opposition with ease.

I’ll occasionally debug in some MREs and/or a mess kit when I play as the military classes, too. Usually ends up biting me in the ass when I pass over other food, anyway.

Set enemy speed to 20% & resilience to 69%, and play with single point pools so I can dump most of my non-trait points into stats.

Right now, I’ve been playing with the mod that removes all but zeds and disables revival, and I’ve been doing wilderness starts - I find that when you’re in the wild monsters spawn less, and it’s a lot more fun to survive to the winter.
I also set the season length to 15, day start to either 0 (which sometimes doesn’t work) or 12 (which is past frost season) and zed speed to 50%.
I also am planning on playing with the mining mod soon ^-^ it works OK with the current experimental build… no initial crashes, unsure if it’ll crash later on : P
I’m considering adding back in ants. because, ants. I need chitin.

Back when I first started playing, seasons were still 14 days, iirc “Frozen” status was just recently added too, so I’d have fun things happen to me like “Clean Water (Hot) (Frozen)” or “Cooked Meat (Fresh)(Hot)(Frozen)” which was hilarious.

I remember that there used to be random Chicken Walkers too - so essentially, instant death - as well as random minefields in town or open fields.

Back then what I used to do was to get rid of nether monsters, fungals, disable Z levels (which we can’t now, sadly) and Acid Ants. I’d set monster speed to 85 but increase their resilience to 130% to make up for it.

I took a long break, returned about 2 or 3 months ago after… idk about a year without keeping up with the game. No Ants, No Nether Creatures, No NPCs, no revival, no freeze, 60% speed, 120% resilience. Single Pool of 8.

Nowadays, if I just want to play leisurely - literally just to chill, avoid minmaxing or just want to do a longplay with the intent of Semi-RP, 80-90% speed, 200+ % resiliency on monsters, no ants, 91 Day Seasons, Day 0 Spring Start, Loot increased by 15-50% and just enjoy myself a stroll around the semi-realistic world of Cataclysm. With the caviat of always, always taking Imperceptive Healer and either Clumsy or Strong Scent.

EDIT: Then again, everyone plays as they enjoy :slight_smile: it’s a single player game, and what matters in the end is that everyone spends their time the way they want to - it’s supposed to be fun, after all, not a chore.

I’ve turned evolution of the zeds down low. I got sick of sneaking around shockers and juggernauts every block. Also, I ditched fungal monsters.

No fungal monsters those things lags my game too much idk how to get the fungal samples that 1 of the beggars want at refugee center with it do.
Stats through skills is just good idk what to say.
Every good thing that mods added.

Easiest way to do it is turn off zombie revivification (something that I’ve had turned on since 0.A, reviving zombies just annoy me).

Best way to do it without feeling like you’re cheating would be to get 3 dodge and 3 melee.

You can substitute with a martial art of your choice + replacing melee with unarmed but the 3 dodge with low encumbrance would save your life in a 1v1 with any mundane zombie.
You can do just fine with 3 dodge, my go-to is get 3 dodge at chargen and pick up a fire axe ASAP.

I don’t fool around with zombie speed since I pick all the speed enhancing traits from the get-go (quick, fleet footed)

Thankfully my computer is good so I keep fungals, since there’s an added challenge and satisfaction of burning fungal forests down. I don’t mess with evolution either since if you’re fast and efficient you can manage them well, though I suspect it’s more of me being a veteran at the game than anything. I recommend keeping the rate as-is or only nerfing it by a small amount since evolutions confer some benefits.

For example, zapper zombies don’t drop CBMs when dissected, but when they evolve to shocker zombies a couple weeks later they do. So it’s a good idea to get a dielectric capacitance system CBM from zombie technicians (found at substations) and have them repaired, sterilized and installed ASAP to farm shockers for their parts as well.

Very much a Cataclysm noob here. Tend to go with very slow and fragile zombies, slow or disabled evolution, no acid, no explosive, and no fungals, much better loot, faster construction and skill training, and no skill rust.
Custom characters with two - three times default multiple pools, or stupidly powerful freeform.

Still haven’t made it past about a week. Tend to play as the mood takes me, then when the mood leaves there’ll be a new version before I feel like playing again. Or I just don’t feel any connection to the current character and make a new one, or I decide I don’t like the build anymore and make a new character.

I mean the easies way to have a noob world is to do the Freeform custom charact and pick all the good shit. Just that and ya’ll get a boring gameplay lmao. Unless ya have the zombbie evo, speed and health at max.

Just for the heck of it, decided to try making myself as a Cataclysm character. Absolutely zero chance of doing this as a default character, while I don’t have particularly high stats, too many of the traits fit and I know too much. The only skill I added which I couldn’t justify to myself was two levels (one point) of spellcraft.
Had a real stroke of luck though. Two evac shelters in the woods pretty close to the LMOE shelter I started in, and a nicely stocked magic shop on the outskirts of the nearby town. No Mana Bolt, but a nice selection of other spells to use on the local zombies.