I am sure something like this was proposed once a time, but whatever.
So the idea is simple: cataclysm should have more hidden dangers, not only obvious ones.
At this moment you can just remember where radiation can be met (toxin waste dumps, broken atomic items, craters as map extra, etc.) and avoid them. That’s not a way to go.
According to the backstory, portals throw some weird chemicals out in the air, these chemicals cause some weird shit like extreme changing of temperature, radiation out from nowhere and stuff.
Now, let’s imagine we have a city. There is a city center. A city center is supposed to be more dangerous place with better loot, isn’t it? But what do we have now? City centers just have more dangerous zombies. The problem is that zombies might be avoided by raiding at night or just by grinding enough skill to deal with them easily. And I propose to make extra !!FUN!! by making spawning that “weird” shit near city center. The nearer it’s to the center - the more dangerous this stuff should be.
Moreover, I think that’s not fair that you can just find an artifact by being lucky, take it without lots of problems. I guess “weird shit” MUST be near any artifact in quite huge area.
And of course that makes an use for those useless portals
Obstacles:
Shock/Fire/Toxic vents
Background radiation (may be extremely deadly)
Random explosions
Temperature insanity (extremely cold or extremely hot local climate)
Always some weather (always sunny, always cloudy, always rainy, always ACID RAINY :D)
Local features (for example you can get “stim” effect out from nowhere just for being in such an area, or slimy for no reason, or start hallucinating)
The most robust one: some tiles of map may REGENERATE and become something else. If you see that there’s a gun store on the map, don’t be surprised when you find some random house instead.
Where that stuff happens:
- Near to city centers
- Near to an artifact spawning place
- Near to a random spawned portal
- Near to map extras like Helicopter Crash, Random Crater and stuff
- In random places
As I said before, the nearer it’s to source, the more dangerous everything around it.
I think that will change everything: Night Raids will be useless without being prepared for everything, you can “scout” areas and suspect artifacts (triangulation FTW) and stuff.