Looking for advice and info for a pseudo-neolithic isolationist

Game Talk The Bunker
1

HAI GUISE

So far I’m playing with my most successful character, already reached the 7th day… feels like a year.

I had the incredible luck of finding a Mansion in a most optimal location. It is partly embedded in a forest, and the nearest town is far enough for no zeds to show up here at all. Plenty of wildlife to hunt, and so far I’m managing to stay clear of the bears. The mansion doesn’t have anything impressive of loot proper, except books, which prove to be a great entertainment.

A couple of early raids got me several essentials: combat knife, pot, frying pan, sewing kits, water purifier, some starting tools, some non-perishable food, a good number of bottles to store water.

This is in great part a survival game, and in this mansion, I have extremely easy acess to food, water, and survival crafting material.

Why in HELL would I get out of there? My only real worries, in chronological order, are:

-Not spotting a bear soon enough and becoming bear food.
-The day my two cheap lighters and matchbook run out.
-Winter if I haven’t been able to craft enough cozy fur clothes by then. Still, having to worry about that would be GREAT, because it’d mean i’d have managed to survive for months without a bear eating me or dying to a horde of zeds when some of the necessary essentials run out.

So… I have some questions.

-What are the gameplay differences between palisade wall, log wall and regular (wooden) wall?
-Is there any natural source of crafting reagents that allows me to make rope, or is it only craftable from pre-apocalypse materials?
-What is the palisade pulley system good for?
-Can anything other than needles be made out of bones?
-Any general advice on eschewing raiding previously civilized spaces and living off the land?

2

  1. I think you can exploit a bug, in that you load a sewing kit with sinew, unload it, and thread comes out, That could be craftable into rope given enough upconversions.

  2. I haven’t seen bones for anything, but I’m having a hell of a time trying to get needles from em, not like it matters with the sewing kits though

  3. Be careful about roaming, once I fell underground and died trying to scramble through a mine, where the only ‘natural’ exits are the ones beneath homes, or subways or something else underground. Of course they were stupidly far away.

  4. I’d assume eventually you’d run out of wood. I don’t know how it compares, but I’ve been carving a single stick or spear into twelve skewers, they seem to burn for a while, though not in rain obv.

I could’ve sworn bears aren’t actually that hard; it’s spiders that get me. I can usually literally walk through like 2-3 wolves with enough gear on and only a wooden spear, but if a single jumping spider starts getting me I can die before I get nary a hit on it.

3

Hello fellow user. Thanks a goddamn lot for teh input!

Coincidentally enough, between the OP and your reply this bug happened to me with a bone needle, and at first I thought bummer, but this casts it under a new light.

4) I haven't seen bones for anything, but I'm having a hell of a time trying to get needles from em, not like it matters with the sewing kits though

Butcher stuff and/or read “how to pitch up a tent” or whatever is called the survival book untiil level three and then you can craft all the needles you want from bomes. Fails a bit at the start but eventually it picks up.

5) Be careful about roaming, once I fell underground and died trying to scramble through a mine, where the only 'natural' exits are the ones beneath homes, or subways or something else underground. Of course they were stupidly far away.

I only stray from the mansion as near as barely needed.

6) I'd assume eventually you'd run out of wood. I don't know how it compares, but I've been carving a single stick or spear into twelve skewers, they seem to burn for a while, though not in rain obv.

Yes, I realize that, but I happen to be right next to a forest, so after ALL the furniture in the mansion is recycled, I’ll probably run out of ideas about what to do with wood than wood itself.

Nails, however, are an entirely different kettle of fish.

I could've sworn bears aren't actually that hard; it's spiders that get me. I can usually literally walk through like 2-3 wolves with enough gear on and only a wooden spear, but if a single jumping spider starts getting me I can die before I get nary a hit on it.

What???!!

We must live in alternate realities. Bears have always mauled me. Or made me bleed out.

I hunt jumping spiders for the chitin, which I hope when I get a high enough survival skill will be craftable into something interesting. I hunt with wooden spears (a couple of javelins now) and they usually pose no problem. Procedure: Throw both spears, recover to throw again if you can; if you can’t, melee.

How do you deal with bears???

4

Tailoring is the skill you are looking for if you want to do things with chitin, not survival.

In my experience, bears are best dealt with via large amounts of ranged attacks, and pits if you have some set up nearby. If pits aren’t handy, you can move to put bushes in the bear’s path, but (because I’m pretty sure you can’t outrun a bear on foot once it’s aggo’d you) you need to be careful not to spend so much time repositioning that you lose time in the long run. I’ve gotten lucky and beaten a bear in melee once or twice, but unless you have some points in dodge, I wouldn’t count on winning that fight. They aren’t unstoppable juggernauts of death, but they are definitely a capable foe that, unless you really need the meat/furs/etc, is probably better to avoid whenever possible.

5

On bears, I probably had a good weapon and was wearing too much kevlar, leather, and army gear for warmth or something. One of the runs I also found a katana, which is like 48 cutting damage.

Spiders, idk man, they just start biting, poisoning, and just smacking the crap out of me, and the one time I had throwing 3 and only managed to hit a spider like 2/15 times.

If you can find them, there are boxes of 100 nails. I found one in a home I think, but obviously you’d be more likely to get them in a hardware store. Maybe one of the programmers could throw in a nail recipe, based on scrap metal and a furnace.

One note is you might get sick. It’s not terribly bad, but it increases thirst, and it seemed to increase sleeping for me which made my precarious hunger/thirst situation worse.

6

Spiders aren’t a big deal if you have a gun bigger than a .22 and don’t let them get close. An easy source of nails would be burning down a building, each square should have between 5 and 10 nails in it.

7

I deal with bears regularly by throwing spears. 6-10 spears usually do the job well. I carry no less than 10 spears when I’m roaming, 5 when i’m on a mission.

As soon as the bow recipe’s are put in i’ll move from spears to bows and then it’ll be a whole different story.

As far as spiders go, again, training throwing religiously is the only reliable way that i’ve killed them. the only problem as you can imagine is them getting close. so pay attention and throw that spear kiddo!

8

[quote=“Nopkar, post:7, topic:846”]I deal with bears regularly by throwing spears. 6-10 spears usually do the job well. I carry no less than 10 spears when I’m roaming, 5 when i’m on a mission.

As soon as the bow recipe’s are put in i’ll move from spears to bows and then it’ll be a whole different story.

As far as spiders go, again, training throwing religiously is the only reliable way that i’ve killed them. the only problem as you can imagine is them getting close. so pay attention and throw that spear kiddo![/quote]

What do you mean ‘when they’re put in’? You can craft longbows right now.
2 archery 1 survival, a heavy stick, 2 3ft strings, and you’re set.

9

IIRC you can shoot through pallisade walls and stuff. Think of them as chainlink fences made of wood.
log walls create a wall (duh) but it’s smashable by even normal zeds I think. It’s the kind of wall barns and cabins are made out of. As for the wall (wooden) I’m really not too sure. Isn’t that just a standard house wall? (although there are generally rebars when I burn houses down, which kinda invalidates it…)

Spiders aren’t anything to fear. just grab a crowbar and bash away. even with an 8str character I’m killing giant black widows all day. I’d honestly expect myself to die from the poison, but I guess not.
Of course, your strength is rapidly turned to 1, so you better hope there’s nothing else nearby depending on how much poison you’ve sucked up.

10

Re poison: Poison Resistant at start is kinda neat (no ST penalty) and I like to believe that it makes getting Venom in the mutation lottery more likely.

Last I checked melee/preferred weapon (cutting, combat knife+ IMC) around 4-5 was plenty to nail any spider. But then I have trouble with cougars, so what do I know?

11

You people seem to be in the opposite situation as I’ve been. My last character tore through bears with ease, but was taken down in seconds by a black widow, and had a bit of trouble with other spiders before that. Ran into a bear on the first day with nothing but basic clothes and a wood axe (level two dodging skill and no melee skill whatsoever) and managed to take it down in two hits after luring it into a bush. Maybe I got a critical or something, I can’t remember the details of that fight. Afterwards I’d got a bow made (Had level 2 archery skill from character creation) and managed to take them down from range easily enough. Spiders were another story. Jumping spiders were a bit tricky but never gave me too much trouble, but even with level 6 archery I never even managed to hit the black widow and died a few rounds after it got into range and poisoned me.

From my understanding of mutations (which is far from perfect, and mostly just from reading the wiki, so don’t put too much faith in it), it wouldn’t make it any more likely, as your disposition toward getting mutations from certain categories only takes into account other mutations, not starting traits. It is the per-requisite for the Poisonous mutation, though, so it at least means that you can get that straight away, and don’t need to mutate poison resistance first.

12

I’m pretty sure it takes into account starting traits. I keep evolving Very Fast Healer and stuff.

Anyway, do poison kill you that fast? It doesn’t last that long (only a few minutes), so you should be able tor ide it out if you’re at full health.

13

I think the ST penalty from being poisoned allows the spider an easy time to rip you into shreds. The poison damage itself is negligible in my experience.

14

The safest start I can find is taking all the speed perks, and a point in throwing and survival. Pick up some rocks early and throw them around until you’ve got the inventory space to burn on spears (then upgrade to javelins asap). If you’re patient and don’t let yourself get surrounded, you should be able to kite and destroy medium-size groups of zombies without any weapons but found rocks, with minimal risk. So long as you find a pot, at least two containers, and a water source that isn’t infested with monsters, you can last quite a while if you take minimal risks. For that matter, the ‘find a pot’ part is optional, if your hunting goes well enough to make your own out of rock and sinew. Using this method, I almost never have trouble with spiders. Enough javelins to reasonably engage in combat take up a lot of space, but murder most things, provided you’re careful to balance throwing at range and retreating a lot.

Still tend to die from bears, though; they tend to be beefy enough to take your ranged javelin hits and fast enough that you can’t safely kite them. Since this build tends to not develop much melee skill, you tend to die when forced into it.

15

I must be missing something. What makes black widows dangerous? Compared to jumping spiders they are slower, less aggressive, don’t dodge as well, don’t jump, and do a little more cutting damage at the cost of melee skill. I’ve never bothered to engage one outside of running them over, but I honestly don’t see the threat. They have “BADVENOM” I guess, but at that speed they’d never get close enough to me to use it.

As to bears… check and see if Archery for Kids is in your book collection. Going that route will increase your need to chop trees, but will save you from bears. I’ve literally had the “walk around a blind corner into a bear that hits you before you realize it’s there” situation play out a couple of times, and both times arrows to the skull at point-blank range have gotten me out of it with little more than torn jeans and the need for a band-aid. And a lot of questions about how the bear got inside of an electronics store without opening a door or window.

Furs aren’t going to be a sticking point for you if you spend some experience on survival. I think meds are going to be a bigger issue for you. As soon as you use up what you found in the mansion, you’ll be playing without Adderall, caffeine, first aid, oxycodone, antibiotics… for a while you might do poppy drugs, but I don’t think poppies currently regrow. Have FUN. :stuck_out_tongue:

16

Y’know my first bear was killed in two hits with something silly like a wooden spear or a crowbar, can’t remember which.
After that? It’s been the exact opposite. Every bear I meet fucks my shit up like you would not believe.
I can remember three examples where said bears have ripped open my torso and caused major bleeding in the first turn.

As to spiders, again they’re not really a problem (aside from the odd jumping spider. Just annoying to fight, like wolves or Cougars.
Why are they hostile anyway? Jesus. Oh wait, they’re cataclysm dog-sized mutant jumping spiders.

Only thing I find odd is once I found a black widow inside my safehouse, even though all the windows and doors are locked.

17

Spiders can jump in houses, well, if they jump or come through the basement I guess.

How much leather are people getting from creatures? I was used to getting 2-3 pieces per animal, now I have survival 3 and I got 23 patches from 2 bears and a deer I think, and like 100 sinews from 1 deer.

18

i hunt sneakers and leather clothes for leather patches :stuck_out_tongue: - dangerous beasts, especially when they feel the knife closing

19

How are you getting leather patches from creatures? I just get fur pelts. Unless you mean cutting the pelts with a knife to get patches?

20

yes, just cut up the fur.

on a side note, a longbow RUINS bears with 5 archery…headshot city.

wolfspiders? not so much. i’ve been a snack 3 times now. only my crowbar has saved me :frowning: