I’ve looked for ages in a bunch of books, checking in libraries too, but I don’t see one about making bionics. I thought there might be one in a hospital, but all there was, was drugs (and the likes) and zombies. I know it’s possible without starting as one, but I can’t seem to figure it out. There are plenty of places I have yet to explore, but I don’t know which ones would be good to do! (Playing expiramental)
I can’t really help you on the side of MAKING bionics, but I can advise where to find them, at least those places I have found myself.
Labs are GREAT sources of bionics. One of the potential room types is basically just a bionic storage. With good computers skill to hack the doors, or a pickaxe/jackhammer to break down the walls, you can access potentially a lot of rare bionics.
Another way is butchering certain zombie types. Zombie scientists, technicians, bionic operators, and shockers can all give bionics. Power storage is common from all of them, other bionics are rarer but do happen. You also get a bunch of burnt out bionics which I have HEARD are used in crafting other things (working bionics?) but I dont know how.
You can also sometimes get a bunch of bionics buried in the rubble of helicopter crashes. Its often worth digging around in them, just in case.
Not very many Bionics can be made. The only book I know of that has them is “Augmentative Tech Review 2041”.
It has the recipes for “Cranial Flashlight” “Power Storage”, and a few others. Power Storage requires Plutonium Cells to make, and Cranial Flashlight requires High quality lenses and a few other things. All crafted bionics also need processor boards or burnt out bionics to make them.
The best places to get bionics would be butchering things that have them. Shocker Zombies, Shocker Brutes, Zombie Scientists, Zombie Bio-Operators, and Zombie Technicians all carry them. You do need high survival to maximize your chances, though. When you butcher a corpse that has them the game randomly selects a few from a list that is unique to each type of corpse. I would advise that if you manage to off one of them you pulp them with smash (the “s” key), then raise survival to 8 or so and come back to butcher them.
As Haerdalas said, Labs can have warehouses that contain crates with Bionics in them. You will need a Crowbar/Makeshift Crowbar/Halligan Bar to open them. The armories might contain them, but I’ve never seen that happen.
Science labs are great places for them. Zombie scientists, technicians, bio weapons, shockers, and shocker brutes all potentially give bionics on butchering. Augmentative Tech Review 2041, Rivtech design and one of the lab journals (herrara?) offer some recipes but many bionics are only available as loot in science labs, and some only as science lab finale’s.
I read somewhere that they sometimes spawn in hospitals, but I’ve never seen one there. Like Haerdalas said, they spawn under the rubble around crash sites. "e"xamine the rubble while you have a shovel in your inventory, that’s how I’ve found most of mine.
Okay, thanks, that’s all really useful. Now I need to find a science lab and actually LOOK for those pain-in-the-butt shocker zombies. I guess I’ve just not been lucky enough to find the right books, but there are a lot in the game after all.
There ARE books, but as anything besides standard bionics like you would find in a tech review are closely guarded company secrets, you won’t find them just lying about. That kind of thing tends to be locked in safe. In a vault. Now, what buildings have both things inside them?
Also it’s not a guaranteed spawn, and you might want to check out doctors offices and vet clinics for a useful tool first.
The best places are military facilities (they always have the best toys, also intentionally vague) however you need to pray to the RNG gods and you need to get somewhat elusive access cards. Labs can be good as they are more explorable though the recent Experimental seem like Labs have far more turrets making them very deadly to explore.
I’ve never survived long enough to go to a lab, but they have TURRETS? how do you deal with those? would it be better to go ranged or melee against them? And I have trouble getting proper guns so bows and arrows or javelins for me. Are there turrets in the military places too? (why is it so hard to get bionics?!)
I have found a couple of bionics from shockers, but they seem to just be upgrades to power or something. I couldn’t tell if some of it was an upgrade or something you need to install first and do a sort of layer by adding more. Or something like that.
Personally, I think in future versions there should be enough (possibly make-able) bionics to turn yourself into a cyberman, the only human in you is like, your brain or something. And even THAT has been altered. You wouldn’t even have bones! Instead a robot power skeleton, and bionic arms powerful enough to toss a Zombie Hulk! Ooo, laser eyes!
The trick for dealing with turrets in LABS is pretty simple - all turrets generate light. Labs are otherwise pretty much lightless, so all you need to do is turn off your light source before opening any doors. If the door/wall of the room you are about to open is lit up, there is a turret within and you probably shouldnt open it. If it isnt lit up, there are no turrets near the door.
Of course, turrets are not the ONLY thing down in labs, but they are one of the nastier ones.
Ok, But what about actually attacking them? I found a turret outside a hospital - which killed a person who was just about to become my follower - The turret is right out in the open, how am I supposed to hurt it without dying? Since I can’t have the mission, I’ll just consume the corpse of the dead person, but if i get to where he was, I would be shot by the turret! I have much better armor than Forrest did, but I’m not immortal. and I’d like to check inside the hospital for some bionics too, of course.
Its not easy to deal with turrets in the early game. Later on, you can take them out by shooting them from beyond their range (which is fairly limited, though be careful, obviously). Alternately, if you are in power armour or something you can probably just walk up to the thing. Be careful though - they explode upon death. Try not to be too close.
If its in the open, you can also theoretically get it to run dry on ammo if you can kite enough enemies through its line of fire. This is how I got into a military outpost nearby my main base on my current survivor - I just waited for the waves of zombies that periodically passed through to head over there and get torn to shreds over and over until eventually the turrets ran dry, died to zombies, and I waltzed in.
Thanks for the tips, do you know exactly how long the turret range is? I’m so good at throwing skills that I have near perfect aim at 22 tiles away, not sure if that is far enough though.
In terms of running out of ammo, a melee NPC walked up to the turret with dogs chasing him, and zombie dogs chasing the dogs and regular zombies chasing the zombie dogs. A bat flew into range too, so I’m sure it used up a large amount of ammo.
I believe milspec turrets have 30 range, and 9mm turrets have something like 18 or 20. The milspec has the m4a1, and the 9mm has a basic SMG so the range is limited on the range of the weapon. In the event of turrets in the open try and approach at night, they can only shoot at what they can see. Stay out of their lit distance and do what you need to do.
Also looting a gun store might be a good idea. Turrets don’t have a ton of health (although if you get grazing hits it can be pretty aggravating). Currently all weapons are capped at 30 squares so keep that in mind.
As for dealing with turrets in labs if you’re not comfortable trying to shoot them try finding the components for a control laptop. Make sure once they’ve become friendly to try and walk into it, this will give you option to disable it (which also yields whatever ammo it happens to have). Also works for bunkers, not for outposts unless you can approach without getting lit up.
Excellent places to check for guns in labs is barracks rooms if you can find them, the lockers in the rooms outside the armory usually contain at least one military weapon, sometimes more, sometimes of all the same caliber and magazine type. The lockers also contain military clothing/gear so if you want any of that it’s a good source. Keep in mind you will need to hack the computer outside the 'racks to gain access and milspec zombies sometimes spawn inside.
30 and 20 seem about right. Unless things have been changed, their range is somewhat lower at night; basically at most two tiles beyond their light radius, I recall. Like I said, unless things changed in the past 6 months the general safe way to destroy basic and milspec turrets is to be a little outside of their light range and blast them there.
Also, for standard turrets, 6 months ago I can basically just walk around the very edge of their sight range and let them shoot. Their accuracy isn’t that good when they’re trying to shoot you at the farthest point of their max range and they usually miss, and it becomes a matter of waiting it out until they run out of ammo. They can still get some hits in, so it’s something you gotta watch out for. Once again, things may have changed since I last played.
EMP Grenades! If you have high throw skill they are really good against turrets. If you invest 3 points in electronics at chargen, you’ll have Electronics 4 and the recipe from the start. Otherwise you need 5 Electronics and a copy of Advanced Electronics, or the Anonymous Anarchists Annual variant of the AAA Guide 2040. Obviously you have to stand outside of the turrets range and inside of your throw range to make good use of it.
The only required tools are a soldering iron, which you can make from the start if you invest 2 points into Electronics to get Electronics 3, and a screwdriver, or screwdriver set.
All of the necessary components except the long string can be obtained by disassembling a broken console. Long strings can be found in ample supply by tearing down curtains in houses. If you have high enough mechanics (I believe it requires 2 or 3), and a screwdriver, which you’ll have anyway if you’re doing this, you can also remove the seatbelts from cars and trucks and you’ll get short ropes. Short ropes can be disassembled into long strings.
The best part of EMP Grenades is that even if one goes off on you it won’t actually hurt you. It will drain any power you have in power storage bionics, though. Another absolutely brilliant part of the EMP Grenades is that they may shut the turrets down instead of destroying them. If it successfully shuts the turret down it will become inactive, and you can pick it up and redeploy it elsewhere to make it friendly.
If you’d like I can give you a breakdown on how to get into Labs and Bunkers safely using only a Jackhammer and EMP Grenades.
As a note for anyone else who needs help and reads this, I noticed that there is a (seemingly rare) chance to find bionics in an electric store, however they are behind metal bars and/or a metal door. What i did to get the bionics was use an electric saw and simply cut through the metal bars, however an eyebot came down nearby, so watch out for those. Luckily Richie and Gale blasted the first police bot to bits and I threw a grenade at the second. (It. was. glorious.)
It doesn't seem possible to 'smash' open anything made of metal, at least not with regular melee weapons. I could have thrown a grenade, but it might have damaged the bionics and not even break the metal bars. I decided not to risk it. A similar thing with driving a car into the metal bars, the bionics could get hurt, the bars MIGHT not get broken, and you might get hurt.
Most electronic stores don't have anything like that, but there are still bits and pieces to craft cool electronic stuff.Explosions are fun.
It would have been much easier though, to go inside the store, open the door to the room holding the bionics and pull the display shelves out of the way (“G”) until you get to the one you’re looking for, although moving things using Grab is a bit cumbersome until you’re used to it. That variant of the electronics store might have a locked metal door out front. If it does then you can pick it using improvised lock-picks made from scrap metal (smash anything metal to get scrap metal rocks and chunks of steel can hammer of you don’t have a hammer available), as crowbars cannot open metal doors. Gun stores can be picked too. It takes a long time and many picks but is usually a less noisy, less eyebot-ty way in. If you’re playing wander spawns, then lockpicks are a must to get into houses in early game without the noise a crowbar makes.
Which bionic(s) do you need to store power? I have quite a few, but none look to be the right thing. I don't need to worry too much (I think) with power generation since I generate power by walking and can install a bionic which consume batteries for power. Now i just need somewhere to store power or it's all useless!
EDIT: wait is it a Power Storage CBM? (and what does CBM stand for)Yeah, its power storage (and the upgraded versions) which you use to store power. They infinitely stack, too. You can get a LOT of power storage by the late game.
Not actually too sure what CMB stands for myself, actually.