I Need Strategy Help

Game Talk The Bunker
1

This game is kicking the crap out of me.

Every character that doesn’t die from a Moose attack within 10 minutes of spawning (you think I’m exaggerating? The time before last there was no warning whatsoever, a moose just broke the shelter window down, reduced a full health NPC to a bloody pulp in two hits, and started on my character immediately after) comes face to face with at least one Shocker Brute, or Zombie Hulk by Day 4.

The last character I played (a poor student, so no appreciable amount of storage) the only one not to die from a Moose attack, or catch flu on Day 2, escaped the Shelter with a Makeshift Crowbar, Makeshift Knife, Makeshift Hammer, 12 Improvised Lockpicks, 2 Knife Spears, 9 Nailboard Traps, two Makeshift Slings to hold it all, and an NPC in tow.

On the way to the nearest house the NPC got mowed down by… wait for it… a Moose.
That’s okay, free Leather Backpack, and fitted boots.

Got to the houses and there’s two Grackens, Mi-go, and 5 mundane zeds about twenty squares to the north.
That’s okay Grackens, and Mi-gos won’t get within attacking distance if it means stepping over a nailboard trap, so surrounding yourself with eight of them (nailboard traps, not Grackens, or Mi-gos) works wonders for keeping them at bay while stabbing them to death with a knife spear.

Grackens dead and Mi-go retreating (for now at least), the only thing I have to deal with is every zed within 2 overmap squares in every direction. Not voluntarily of course, wander spawns is on so broken windows and smashed cars in an attempt to reach my character (and possibly the Mi-gos parrot ability) inevitably draw more attention. Fortunately, a three by three square of nailboard traps (bless whoever made them) is more than enough to deal with Zombies, Zombie Children, Grabber Zombies, and whatever Scabby Zombies are. Between killing things I cracked a house open with the Makeshift Crowbar, it had a basement with a wood burning stove and two beds.

Kill count is 38 (not counting the ones the traps finished), Left Arm is in yellow, and everything else in light green, not bad for Day 1.

At this point it’s getting dark, so I packed the nailboard traps up and ferried them to the basement holdout to redeploy tomorrow.
With all the potential threats taken care of I proceeded to loot a house to the east of my holdout and another to the northeast of that, as well as a Military Surplus Store to the south of the first house. Nothing spectacular anywhere, but three MREs.

At this point my character is tired, and no other houses are close enough to the cleared areas to risk searching, so back to the basement for a good night’s sleep.

Day 2 sees everything except the left arm healed completely, grab Nailboard Traps and Makeshift Crowbar, and Knife.
Do a little happy dance since this character didn’t get the flu (it may not be a big deal to you but this is the only character in two [real life] days that has made it this far and hasn’t). Continue dancing out a window at the top of the house, and promptly stop as a Zombie Brute becomes visible about thirty squares to the east. That’s okay, Zombie Brutes can still be dealt with using the aforementioned Nailboard Trap square. Set the traps about two squares above the house, and lure the Brute in. It works, eventually. Pulp the Brute with extreme prejudice.

Head south to look for more stuff, there’s another Brute in the street below the house accompanied by 3 mundane zeds and two Unseeing flavor. Caught the Brute’s attention seperately, and repeated the process. Pulped with extreme prejudice accented with a dash of fear. The Unseeing Zombies are faster than I thought, and you can’t get too far away or they stop paying attention to you. Otherwise nothing notable. Kill count 43. Day 2 started late, so it’s already dark at that point. Pack up the Nailboard Traps, return to the basement.

Running scared from the Brutes revealed a Grocery Store to the west, go there under cover of night.
Step outside window on the west side of the house, Shocker Brute 43 Squares to the Southwest, another Shocker Brute 48 square to the Southwest. Go very very North to avoid them. There’s a Spitter inside the store, Character’s legs are in light green. Commotion draws a Zombie Soldier, Knife Spear is ineffective.

Ran, didn’t even get any food. Milled about in the basement until character was tired.

Day 3. Went out window to the West. Zombie Hulk 15 Squares to the Southwest. That’s not okay. Went back in the window, and ran through the house shutting every door between character and Hulk. Made it to the middle of the street to the east of the house, then Zombie Hulk gave my character a friendly push the rest of the way, then came to help her get back up.

If this were an isolated incident I’d be okay with it (actually I wouldn’t, but there’s nothing I can do about it), but things of this nature have happened to every character who has survived the initial Moose onslaught, there’s always at least two Brutes of any flavor before Day 4.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m doing here, I’m not just whining that the game is too hard, I knew what I was getting into when I turned on PKs Rebalancing. I just want to know how to best deal with Hulks, and Shocker Brutes, armed with only a Knife Spear and Nailboard Traps. Also, how not to die from Moose.

2

Lower the spawn rate or zed evolution rate. Nothing you can do about moose. When they want to kill you, they will, one way or another.
I once had a moose send my noobmobile into a skid toward a gas station. Made it out with a leg in the red, sans-serif noobmobile, but waiting for me a few squares away was…you guessed it, the moose.

3

Ranged weapons are your friends, make a sling or bow and practice on something harmless like a fox or a regular zombie. This also can let you plink shockers at night (since they glow and you don’t), which can be a nice early way of handling them.

Avoiding zeds is also your friend. Try picking up night vision and hunting primarily at night (since you can see almost everything before it sees you, except shady zombies which aren’t so bad). This also applies to stuff like turrets, mi-go, and wasps - just leave the area they are in for some time when you have more equipment.

You’re in the shelter, so those tend to be nice hiding places far enough outside of town that zombies won’t follow you all the way over for a few weeks. No reason not to make the trek from shelter to town each evening if it means not being trapped in town by zombies.

Basically, each time I see one of these posts my first thought is that you’re fighting too much and avoiding too little. Don’t be afraid to mark potentially-large portions of your map as “off-limits due to hulk/shocker/spitter/mi-go/wasps/turrets/etc.” at the beginning, especially if there are still other things that you can raid or books you can read in the mean time - mansions just outside of town, non-moose forests to train up survival to get the aforementioned ranged weapons, etc.

4

+1 to that. Completely forgot to mention improvised ranged weapons.

I once built a character around throwing. Started throwing rocks and moved on to throwing knives, etc. Pretty good to rely on especially if you plan on packing a lot of explosives later on. Definitely gets you through early game, too. Just make sure to practice on normal zed and up your strength a bit.

5

Ah, throwing! :wink:

6

moose run away from noise, so just shoot a bullet or do something that makes a whole load of noise
you can try yelling, you might get lucky and make the moose flee

7

I haven’t tried the improvised ranged weapons yet, but I did always respect the reflex-recurve bow’s power, I just didn’t use it until I could manufacture Metal Arrows (it’s much more convenient now that it’s one recipe). Are there any improvised throwables, or just rocks?

As for avoiding them, I had no idea that the game spawned a Hulk until I saw it out the window 15 squares away, all the windows on the west side were broken so there weren’t any curtains to peek out of. Believe me I would have happily avoided it had I known it was there.

I know guns scare Moose, but this is at the beginning with no guns, and the yelling has yet to work. Are there any early game craftables that make a ton of noise? Moose are typically far from towns, so I’m not really concerned about wander spawns there, but I can’t shoot guns in towns because the game spawns brutes very liberally.

8

Yelling was surprisingly effective for me. Soon as I realized a moose was after me (in the forest with reasonable distance between us) I began Yelling, he got some attacks on me, but eventually got frightened and left despite doing more damage to me than I did him. Other times have yielded similar results, including trapping a moose in a shelter with the blinds closed (so moose didn’t register them as windows) and yelled/threw things at him as he ran along the back wall trying to get away from me. Eventually succeeding in getting out through an open window on the opposite side.

9

Your problem is that you’re not good enough to play this mod.

10

Well, even as an experienced player, I’ve probably got a solid 50% death ratio during the first three days or so - things usually improve a lot after that hump.

  1. Light Step & Night vision are really good early survival benefits - they help you scavenge at night without attracting attention. Combine them with Ninjutsu and you can move around virtually silently at night, evading pursuit, killing zombies a few at a time without attracting a horde.

  2. The basic Cudgel is an excellent training weapon, as it has a wide array of special attacks, it is fast, and hits well - also, it doesn’t do very good damage, so its good for extending your ‘training’ sessions against wimpy decayed zombies and the like early on to jack up your melee and bashing skills to useful levels.

  3. I notice you said you were carrying multiple slings - keep an eye on your encumbrance. Don’t let any section of your body - esp torso/legs/arms get to 20+ or it will basically cripple an early character, making it trivial for any zombie to maul you. Cargo pants and a leather duster are about the most you can go with early on without over-encumbering yourself dangerously.

  4. One of the first things you should be trying to find is an intact shopping cart. The ‘Hobo-Mobile’ is your greatest friend and ally in the early days of the apocalypse, as it allows you to travel light for combat while still scarfing a lot of loot. Grocery stores are a great first stop for early food and a cart, if you can reach one.

  5. Zombie hulks… yeah. It used to be weeks before you saw these guys, but now they frequently appear on Day 1. They suck. Peek around house corners and through curtains before you open a door or step around the corner, if you see a hulk, abandon that section of town. If one sees you during the day you are probably dead - but try to line up a place to get hit where the knockback will throw you past the corner of a building so that you can get up and break LOS, and hopefully drag him THROUGH the building, where the walls will slow him down (slightly). At night, just try to let him punch you down the street and then run like hell while you are out of his sight range.

  6. Molotov Cocktails - I forget what fabrication you need to make these, but they are one of the only easy-to-make early weapons that might let you clear an entire horde, if you can get them to file through it and it isn’t raining. Even brutes can die to it if enough regular zombies are stacked up in it burning intensely. Hulks, not so much.

  7. Skills - I mostly focus on Fabrication and Tailoring early, in addition to the usual melee. They are vital for damn near everything regarding weapons, armor & equipment, so they should often be your leading skills. I usually start raising archery fairly early on as well, as bows make it more reasonable to engage brutes or shockers early - though throwing may be an easier/faster route? Guns are loud and you have to be pretty lucky to find the right ammo for them early on.

11

I have a guide that I wrote a while back but I’m on my smartphone in an airport. However I’ll try and give some advice.

Picking fleet-footed and quick can let you (") sprint ahead of most (if not all, I believe) zombies. If fleet-footed is mutated to road runner and you get the CBM that can boost your speed by 10%, you’ll be so fast it’s silly.

In fact, you can further up this speed boost by getting padded feet and light bones and you’ll basically be Usain Bolt x10.

I think speed affects your to-hit bonus too, but I’m not 100%.

But in general, night vision saves lives, and molotovs are the best cost-effective weapon out there for an early game survivor.
Lure zombies into a house (preferably one that you already looted) and sprint through and close every door/window you pass through, thus trapping them inside. Then light a Molotov, throw it at the house, and watch the world burn.

Other ways to kill zombies is to make nailboard traps or dig and make spiked pits (in a zig-zag or checkerboard pattern) and lure them in to die.

Making a knife spear and pressing (f) to do a reach attack really works. Trust me, I’ve cleared a hospital on a frail (50% less total health) character and I can tell you that poking zombies or other enemies while moving backwards is a great strategy, early and end game.

12

Thank you for taking the time to offer help.
I do use Light Step, but does the Silent bonus on Ninjutsu make an appreciable difference? More importantly, does it extend to melee weapons, or is it exclusively for unarmed? I’d also never considered the possibility of deliberately using a weak weapon explicitly for the purpose of training skills, so that advice is much appreciated. Also does Night Vision still just increase visibility one square? That doesn’t sound worth anything more than one trait point.

After far too many deaths because of it, I am now in the habit of dropping all storage clothes before engaging anything in combat, so I’m usually good on encumbrance.

On the subject of the shopping carts, does fighting while one is held using “G” incur any penalties? Sometimes I do keep one around (I remember having one in a version of the game where it would inform me at least once a day that the Shopping Cart’s battery died, even though it didn’t have one), but I always released it before fighting, just to be cautious, and usually ended up losing it if it was night.

I’ve never used Molotov cocktails but I noticed the recipe only allows for gasoline, diesel and possibly ethanol, or denatured alcohol. I can understand why drinks with relatively low alcohol content wouldn’t work, but are whiskey and vodka Molotovs really only limited to cinema? I ask because I’ve never made a Molotov of anything in real life. What about noise levels for Molotovs?

In my experience regarding skills, tailoring is incredibly useful, but only once it’s at 6-8. At any lower levels (even 5) attempting to repair clothes has an exponentially higher risk of damaging them, regardless of the projected odds.
I usually set to work grinding tailoring as soon as I’m in a secure place with a few days worth of food. Wooden needles can be made easily and long strings from curtains can be broken down into an ample supply of thread at a notably faster pace than rags. Smashing beds yields rags to work with, though that does make noise, then for level 0 tailoring I’d make hand wraps, level 1 I’d do arm warmers, level 2 balaclavas, level 3 boonie hats, level 4 metal arm guards, and I’ve got nothing requiring relatively little time or materials for 5+. I’m saying all this in case anyone knows any better auto learned recipes for each level. As for fabrication, I usually grind it to three, then ignore it until I find books, but if I start employing archery I might change that. The only reason I’m hesitant to use archery is the rate of breaking for the arrows, I usually don’t have a problem with it when I can make metal arrows, but by then survival is seldom an issue.

13

[quote=“Rot, post:11, topic:13171”]I have a guide that I wrote a while back but I’m on my smartphone in an airport. However I’ll try and give some advice.

Picking fleet-footed and quick can let you (") sprint ahead of most (if not all, I believe) zombies. If fleet-footed is mutated to road runner and you get the CBM that can boost your speed by 10%, you’ll be so fast it’s silly.

In fact, you can further up this speed boost by getting padded feet and light bones and you’ll basically be Usain Bolt x10.

I think speed affects your to-hit bonus too, but I’m not 100%.

But in general, night vision saves lives, and molotovs are the best cost-effective weapon out there for an early game survivor.
Lure zombies into a house (preferably one that you already looted) and sprint through and close every door/window you pass through, thus trapping them inside. Then light a Molotov, throw it at the house, and watch the world burn.

Other ways to kill zombies is to make nailboard traps or dig and make spiked pits (in a zig-zag or checkerboard pattern) and lure them in to die.

Making a knife spear and pressing (f) to do a reach attack really works. Trust me, I’ve cleared a hospital on a frail (50% less total health) character and I can tell you that poking zombies or other enemies while moving backwards is a great strategy, early and end game.[/quote]

Sorry, I didn’t see your post until I’d already left that reply.

Speed sounds great, but is entirely dependent on finding said CBM, successfully installing it with 0-3 electronics, finding a mutagen and winning the genetic lottery. That’s a lot of ifs. Not dismissing it as a possibility outright but by the time it’s easily viable survival probably won’t be hard.

As I said before, if night vision only increases visibility by one square then I can’t see it being all that helpful, though the last time I actually used night vision was before I even touched the experimentals. Even with Light Step zombies can still hear you two squares away and that may very well be as far as you can see.

I do use the nailboard traps, however. I use them with much enthusiasm.
I don’t use spike pits because I try to keep moving my base of operations to wherever the unlooted houses are. As for the knife spear, it’s usually my go to weapon for it’s reach if nothing else. They get damaged pretty easily, but they’re also easy to make. As I said in the first post, if you lay one nailboard trap in every space adjacent to you, then neither Mi-gos nor Gracken’s will close the distance to atack you, so you can attack them with the knife spear, and not get hit. Zombie Scientists won’t step on them either, but they can deploy manhacks.

14

Ninjutsu has a silent attack for all weapons.

Also, when you finally get a character situated and modestly geared with a decent weapon, you should start raiding labs and start mutating. Night vision and fleet footed are both a step in the right direction, as if you went without it would be chance that you’d stumble across these mutations.

Also, you should look at the steel spear, it’s a craftable upgrade to the knife spear. Usually with pole arms my progression looks something like this:

Knife spear > steel spear > awl pike

Awl pike has a very long reach attack that can reach a tile or two further than the spears before it.

15

What’s the quickest way to a steel spear? By that I mean fastest way to get everything necessary to produce it. Is the recipe autolearned? If so, at what level? I’m assuming it has to be forged. That means finding or making a charcoal or electric forge, then all the metalworking tools, so about 16-20 game hours of work, after raising fabrication to sufficient levels thus requiring books, or several more hours of grinding which requires sufficient food not to starve. Unless I’m wrong about that and steel spear can be made by campfire like forged sword.

This is appreciated, and I’ll definitely make use of it ASAP, but my problem is that every character who doesn’t die from a moose attack (another one occured just today in fact, tore down a curtain in starting shelter and there’s a moose 35 squares to the west telepathically aware of my character’s existence [Yes, I know how delusional that sounds. I shudder to imagine that the foose have an actual hive mind] take three steps back, and safe mode warns me about a hostile moose aware of my characters position from nearly 40 squares away. I know I could have broken LoS but the moose would still be there.) has to face a mass of high tier zeds very early.

I can’t get situated with anything except huddling in basements with knife spears, because everywhere I go has Brutes and Hulks waiting for me. I would supply screenshots but when attempting to attach them it says filesize is too large and I’m not sure how to shrink it while still keeping it visible.

After the latest moose death the next character (The next school I find will be filled with zombified versions of all the students I’ve gone through) left the shelter and, after several close encounters with large packs of wolves and dogs, arrived at the outskirts of a town (2 houses, 1 museum, 1 library) with four Zombie Brutes and what must have been forty other zeds, including two Survivor flavor in front of the house at the very top.

This is everywhere, everytime, every game, in every city.

I need to know how to survive that, running and going somewhere else doesn’t work because the only places not exactly like that, just with different variety of Brutes are forests. And they have Moose.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, though, this thread has taught me a lot in just a few hours, so thank you.

Edit: I haven’t touched spawn or evolution rates at all. This is default.

16

Jesus. Even I’ve never had that bad luck with CDDA. Try building an altar and sacrificing an NPC to RNGsus for better odds. Also write elbereth on all tiles that can be accessed by meese.

Disregard the above advice

Craft some molotovs, as previously stated. Even those bastards can’t survive getting roasted alive. Also a good item to throw once one gets in is a shard of glass from the broken window. Also, it might be worth digging spiked pits, despite moving a lot. Give you extra protection against…well, against CDDA :stuck_out_tongue:
May RNG get bored with fucking you, my friend.

17

What does elbereth mean? I saw that on the description of the permanent marker, I gather it’s a reference to something. And while I’m at it, what’s a dakka? Also, the Molotovs, how loud are they?

And out of curiosity, will whiskey, and vodka function for Molotovs in real life?

I will most definitely consider throwing glass shards, I never really took throwing seriously except for knives and axes, but after trying it a few times, it surprised me.

Finally, do the spike pits hold for longer than the nailboard traps slow?
And can the pits hold more than one at a time?

18

If you manage to get your hands on a hammer, a screwdriver, some two by fours, some nails, and some short ropes before you come across a shopping cart you can make the next best thing (a travois) through vehicle construction. Same cargo capacity but it makes noise as it scrapes over the ground because it doesn’t have wheels. Not 100% sure that it doesn’t come from Blazemod or the folding parts pack or some other mod though. Basically a wooden frame laid out as the base and then (i)nstalling a light wooden frame with a few extra short ropes.

19

In the experimental versions Night Vision is dependent on your perception stat. If I recall correctly, with default PER (8) your sight radius will increase by 2 in all weather conditions (3x3 in complete darkness). As your PER stat goes higher, you’ll see in the dark farther away (with 11 PER granting you a 5x5 radius in complete darkness, afaik).

[quote=“mentos046, post:17, topic:13171”]Finally, do the spike pits hold for longer than the nailboard traps slow?
And can the pits hold more than one at a time?[/quote]

I’ve had my toughest survivor get by with spiked pits in a broken house at the edge of town. His scent kept attracting hordes to him, so under constant zombie onslaught the house was nearly completely torn apart by brutes and hulks. He replaced a 5-tile-long chunk of wall with 5 spiked pits, then placed 4 more in front of what used to be windows but were now empty holes, then 6-7 more at the side of the house facing the rest of town.

These spiked pits served him quite well. I don’t know how they bear in comparison to nailboard traps, but they’re fairly sturdy for the amount of damage they do. They’re strong enough to kill zombie children and zombie dogs falling into them in one hit, and they damage regular zombies (shriekers, fat zombies) for more than half their health. As for their durability - from my experience, it’s quite random. The spikes can break after 2 zombies fall into them, or 6, or 8. Either way, the deep pit stays. If you use the spiked variant you do it so you don’t have to fight zombies that fall into it too hard. If you attract lots of zombies, expect to have to maintain them frequently. Otherwise if you just want to delay them enough to get into position, use regular pits; spiked ones use wood that could be used as kindling for your fire or for construction, and take half an hour of your precious time to upgrade.

These regular pits are a decent obstacle too. Zombies take anywhere from 5 to 8 turns to break free out of them (again, speaking from experience, I don’t know if the stats back me up here or not), by which point you’ve probably managed to kill them. Two zombies cannot occupy the same pit. I still haven’t figured out whether items inside the pit help “fill” it and free zombies faster, but I take everything out of them as to not risk it anyway. Shallow pits are as much of an obstacle as an empty window frame - 3 turns to bypass, if memory serves me right.

If there’s any tip I can give you about spiked pits, it’s this: booby trap the house with them only in your spare time, and only after you’ve secured the area.

  1. Constructing stone shovel to dig pits - 60 minutes
  2. Digging shallow pit - 30 minutes
  3. Digging pit - 90 minutes
  4. Crafting 4 pointy sticks (one pit) - ~5 minutes
  5. Placing spikes in pit - 30 minutes
20

[quote=“mentos046, post:15, topic:13171”]After the latest moose death the next character (The next school I find will be filled with zombified versions of all the students I’ve gone through) left the shelter and, after several close encounters with large packs of wolves and dogs, arrived at the outskirts of a town (2 houses, 1 museum, 1 library) with four Zombie Brutes and what must have been forty other zeds, including two Survivor flavor in front of the house at the very top.

This is everywhere, everytime, every game, in every city.

Edit: I haven’t touched spawn or evolution rates at all. This is default.[/quote]

That sort of sounds like you have a zombie upgrader (master?) in there somewhere, but on default spawn that sounds like quite a lot of zombies and I didn’t run into my first zombie master until fall-ish. Are all of these deaths in the same world, and is it possible that time (and thus the evolution factor) has advanced with each death?