How do you keep the game interesting at higher levels?

[Ferodaktyl]

Once i reach high enough skills i usually quit or kill my char, because i find no fun in 1-shoting anything that moves, and start a new one.
I also go for random chars , trying to play to their strengths, but most times i find myself following the path of minimum resistance, like metagaming the encumbrance, the XP spending/gaining and exploiting the hell out of the game (not very or even a little difficult now), although i try to avoid car kills and mutation management.
Well, what is your strategy for keeping the game interesting for longer playing time?
I was thinking of trying to play an amish character, no meds, no junk food, only manually crafted weapons (not all recipes though, some are too awesome), wool, cloth, fur and chitin for armor, you get my drift, no high tech tools of any kind. Even so, throwing gets OP, same for archery, so maybe enabling skill rust at vanilla levels.

[Reservoir]

Like always, explore, mutate and install yourself fancy cmbs. Build yourselfa good car and explore around the world looking for strange temples, mines, dungeons…

[Labtop_215]

Find a portal generator and fight otherworldly beings.

[Caconym]

Fortify a location and then go out each day and cleanse the nearby areas, once those are clear I relocate and repeat the process.

[Slax]

Build a super-duper vehicle.
THE DESTRUCKTOR

[kevin.granade]

Add new game features.

What? Don’t look at me like that.

[halberdsturgeon]

My games generally follow a trajectory of basic survival, then acquiring guns and bionics, then building up a well stocked safehouse, then grabbing my nomad kit and going out to purge the cities and rural areas as much as possible while hoarding valuable tech/adding in more and more bionics/playing roulette with mutagen/purifier. I haven’t yet gotten to a point in a game where I’d acquired all the bionics and mutations I wanted.

I’m looking forward to NPCs and factions being readded to the game, it will make things a lot more interesting.

THE DESTRUCKTOR

Zombie Tractonator.

[drake1storm]

Mod it.

[panicsuit]

Ingest every flask of mutagen you come across.

[i2amroy]

Ingest every flask of mutagen you come across.

As an interesting side note in the current dev versions if you picked up the “Robust Genetics” trait this is actually a valid strategy.

[system]

The game stays interesting on the long run when you are a hoarder like me.

I love piling up ammo, weapons and other stuff that I find precious, funny or useful. I have a flatbed truck with many trunks and I drive around and explore areas that can be exploited. Sometimes I stop in the middle of a road, pitch up my tent and rollmat and check every trunk and feel proud of the stuff I already have.

A key rule for that play style might also be te reason why my chars live so long: NEVER EVER WASTE ANYTHING! You have 1000 rounds of .223? Good, then never touch it and rely on your renewable wood bolts/arrows!

Another aspect that keeps the game interesting (and is a consequence of my love to hoard) is crafting some high level stuff. A flamethrower, coil gun, charge rifle and a manhack(inactive) are just cool things to have, even if you never use them.
Grading up a vehicle can be fun, too and is also time consuming if you search for decent parts to install.

The last thing that makes the game enjoyable is imagination. Whenever I see a group of dead scientist/soldiers/“gangsters” I imagine what they were doing there and how they died. I try to imagine what sick experiments they were doing in the fema camps and I always laugh about the little easter egg on farms: The zombies in the barn remind me of The Walking Dead.

[Nopkar]

[quote=“Rookie, post:11, topic:1081”]The game stays interesting on the long run when you are a hoarder like me.

I love piling up ammo, weapons and other stuff that I find precious, funny or useful. I have a flatbed truck with many trunks and I drive around and explore areas that can be exploited. Sometimes I stop in the middle of a road, pitch up my tent and rollmat and check every trunk and feel proud of the stuff I already have.

A key rule for that play style might also be te reason why my chars live so long: NEVER EVER WASTE ANYTHING! You have 1000 rounds of .223? Good, then never touch it and rely on your renewable wood bolts/arrows!

Another aspect that keeps the game interesting (and is a consequence of my love to hoard) is crafting some high level stuff. A flamethrower, coil gun, charge rifle and a manhack(inactive) are just cool things to have, even if you never use them.
Grading up a vehicle can be fun, too and is also time consuming if you search for decent parts to install.

The last thing that makes the game enjoyable is imagination. Whenever I see a group of dead scientist/soldiers/“gangsters” I imagine what they were doing there and how they died. I try to imagine what sick experiments they were doing in the fema camps and I always laugh about the little easter egg on farms: The zombies in the barn remind me of The Walking Dead.[/quote]

almost my EXACT playstyle, only i make a detailed backstory and just roam around, setting up scenario’s and whatnot, sometimes even throwing my weapons when i pretend they ‘break’…I’ve lost some good guns doing that but it’s SOO much fun in the long run.

one other thing i’ve done…take a car FAR away, crash it into a building in the middle of a foreign town…don’t load up the car with your gear, just a few essentials (2-3 MRE’s, a gallon jug of water, maybe a crowbar).

now RUN. (never go back to your former base, make a new one in the area…it’s like New Game+)

[Iosyn]

Long run? You mean like, day 5? I find by then I generally have to re-organize my hideout a second time, just to clean out the clutter.
A pile for canned food, a pile for perishables, a pile for canned drinks and another for clean water… clothes, electronics, weapons, meat…

Oh god, the meat. Goddamn seriously there’s so much.
In my current game I’ve got 4 tiles full of bones and another 3 tiles full of rotten meat. I’m suprised they haven’t smelled me out already. I killed two deer at the start-- and wolves just seem to keep throwing themselves at me saying ‘eat my tasty wolf-flesh.’

not to mention no less than NINE squirrels have fallen into the spiked pits outside my window. I haven’t even bothered resetting my bear traps yet, because that would mean another 10-20 squirrel corpses.
Seriously guys don’t remove the cook rotten meat thing unless rotten meat dematerializes.

[ballfairy]

build a vehicle that is more engine than anything else and
go really fast everywhere and try not to die, it gets intresting quick.

[system]

[quote=“Iosyn, post:13, topic:1081”]Oh god, the meat. Goddamn seriously there’s so much.
In my current game I’ve got 4 tiles full of bones and another 3 tiles full of rotten meat. I’m suprised they haven’t smelled me out already. I killed two deer at the start-- and wolves just seem to keep throwing themselves at me saying ‘eat my tasty wolf-flesh.’

not to mention no less than NINE squirrels have fallen into the spiked pits outside my window. I haven’t even bothered resetting my bear traps yet, because that would mean another 10-20 squirrel corpses.
Seriously guys don’t remove the cook rotten meat thing unless rotten meat dematerializes.[/quote]

Oh gosh, what a pity that I abandoned my old base. I would like to take a screenshot now. I’ve been setting up bear traps every morning and during the nights tons of squirrels/rabbits flooded the parking lot in front of the sewage treatment. A giant red carpet infront of my home, I can tell you that.

[geldonyetich]

I usually manage to get myself killed somehow at higher levels.