I mean, you lose so much progress sometimes. And I don’t savescum mutations or cbms. I savescum BS deaths. Like one time, I was in the middle of the road at night smashing corpses and was suddenly shot by a chicken walker, which I had not seen or heard. Plus there was a shocker zombie nearby, so why didn’t the chicken walker go for it instead? That was one death I had to savescum.
But without savescumming, do you play extremely carefully or still play recklessly?
I usually play with careful actions whether I savescummed or not, because it wastes more time to load the game again just to “undo” my mistake 
Extremely cautiously, I make sure I always have an out before going anywhere, I carry what I need to deal with any enemy I might semi regularly come across. When I die it is almost always early game before I can get all the equipment I need after that characters usually last until “retirement” (i.e: I get bored of playing them).
And now you know chicken walkers have perfect night vision to compensate for their reduced overall vision radius. That’s why they’re feared.
They also target enemies intelligently, according to the wiki. You popped up as a greater threat than a mindless shocker zombie. Be proud of that.
As for me, I savescummed recently when I blundered into a turret that I had forgotten to take out, so I really have no room to talk, but I’m trying to break myself of the habit. A death is a death; every one a learning experience. Don’t get too attached to your survivors, because every one of them has an expiration date.
It’s funny I found a thread about savescumming, for that matter, because the funniest thing just happened. I was waiting for a spitter zombie to revive so I could see if it still had its spit or if it would just be a useful acid bank I could draw from. Thing revived while I was sleeping, but my turret made short work of it. After I moved it to another room and spent a day recovering from infection, I slept again, without noticing (and this is the important part) that apparently my bookcase and all my books had been destroyed by acid, because they were no longer there.
Even if I wanted to savescum, I can’t, because I slept again and save upon sleep. I had pretty much every good mutagen recipe, and now I can’t elf myself anymore. This is a learning experience.
I have to admit I reload saves all the time when i die or when an NPC dies. I play games to have fun and restarting all over again is not fun especially when you’ve progressed so far in the game.
Reloading (after dying) also makes you think of other strategies on how to approach the situation. So it can help you in a future run.
Mostly careful play and keeping emergency items in my person at all times. Adrenaline injectors, an explosive, and a loaded shotgun of some kind are typical. I make it a goal to build a railgun in order to take out high value targets quickly from long range. A ballista works in a pinch but is also quite a process to construct.
Creating custom rules for safe mode generally keeps you safe from chicken walkers, tank drones and the like, the moment they enter your FoV, you’ll be alerted and generally have time to live with haste!
Remember to drop that duffel bag or extra backpack for some extra speed!
I highly recommend rollerblades too
How do you play with save scumming? How does anything feel like you achieved something knowing you cheated to reach your goal. Playing with save scumming feels void empty and without reward to me. I personally do not get a feeling of accomplishment from games with save scumming.
Some of us have jobs, families and other responsibilities outside of CDDA so we have limited time. Dying is losing a lot progress so we reload after deaths. What’s wrong with that?
So if we use mods or modify the .json files because we don’t agree with certain design decisions is that considered cheating as well?
You play your game your way so why can’t we play our game our way? Don’t judge others just because we play differently…
I don’t savescum anymore. I just die when I die. Meh. I am playing more cautiously now than I used to, but sometimes I still do whatever stupid thing I feel like doing.
Yeah, that door’s on fire, but it’s try that or let the building collapse on me. Eff it. Then I catch on fire. Then I burn to death.
Then I make a new character. x_x
Savescumming is usefull early on to get to see more of the game in one run and learn for your next run. It s also good to lower frustrations from “BS death”, like getting insta killed by the autodoc on a 20% chance of failure opperarion …
But since it removes some of the tension it might kill the fun if abused.
I play some characters with a nine lives rule. Each time they die I act like they wake up from a nightmare at Their last save position.
I find the idea of a psychic tentacle-ly girl mildy terrifing 
Skills. I got em. 
I usually don’t savescum unless I hit a bug. Though one time for giggles I plunged my super-OP main character into the center of a huge city on foot, just to see what it would take to kill him now. He and his buddies were wiping the floor with everything, up until a nearby building’s wall collapsed and a huge mob of zombies, drawn by the sounds, poured out into the street behind him and surrounded them. He eventually died and I savescummed the “what if?” scenario away.
It hurts a lot to loose character you played for 2 months, or for example 50 hours. Sometimes i could not handle butthurt and savescummed after some stupid and unnecessary death, but allways i just could not take any fun from that character anymore. You did it once, you will do it again. There is no danger. Everything can be solved without effort if you can try infinite times.
Thats harsh part of non-savescumming mentality, but there is also a bright one. If you sudenly meet some unexpected danger: mininuke grenadier in bad place, horde of shocker brutes and hulks behind a corner when youre low on stamina, painfull burst of 5.56mm from mil turett or chicken you barerly survived. If you meet these things with your beloved hero, and somehow survive, escape, or destroy danger, you will feel emotions like not many other games can provide. Its a turn based game, and if it wasn’t, i think my heart would burst a few times when i was endangered, knowing there will be no restart, no another try. It just makes you really care about otherwise “just another stupid game, thats not real”
For me, most of my characters deaths were lab turrets, most of them due to pressing too many buttons too fast or forgetting that i left some of them untouched. Since some time, i allways explore labs with heavy survivor suit AND plate curiass over torso, together with heavy survivor helmet padded with everything. It saved me dozens times. For city exploring, usually going with just light survivor gear is more prefferable.
Sorry but that’s just you. Other people have their own definition of fun even if it means reloading a previous save for whatever reason. I did once, heck I’ve done it over a dozen times in my game. Some due to game crashes, others due to my NPCs dying and the rest due to me dying. Yet I am still enjoying my game.
When deaths come as a result of my inattentiveness as a player (walkings straight into a hulk I saw from a mile away, the turret scenario above) or a limitation of the current game like starting to hack a robot and standing in place as it shoots me to death you can bet I’ll be savescumming.
If I choose to take risks or make any other decision that leads to character death, then yeah that guy is staying dead.
I did not write anywhere that i believe my vision is the only right one. Of coure, not everyone can play 1-2h almost every day, and loosing all progress is a no-go for theese people. All this thread is about is question to non-savescummers “how you do/why you do this”.
Another thing to look is overall experience in game. With 300h sunk in, i am doing much less critical mistakes than i was doing when i had 100 or 25h, so non-savescumming is more reasonable here than for someone with very little time played.
Oh, and if i remember correctly, i savescummed once without regrets. Zombie grappler pulled me out of my deathmobile going 120km/h, because i was moving diagonally, it found a gap in my closed, fully armored cabin. 20tonnes truck then run over me : / …