My kingdom for a sip of water!

Game Talk The Bunker
1

Hi. I’m RindFisch and I’ve just found this fantastic roguelike a few days ago.
Like any good newbie I proceeded to die in droves figuring the game out and enjoyed every minute of it.
Marvelously crafted game. Kudos to everyone involved.

Now that I think 've got a handle on basic proceeds thanks to devouring the wiki and forums and sending lots of guinea pigs out to get their brains eaten, there’s one thing that still gets me. Thirst.

At the very beginning of the game, I feel I’m way too weak to just clear even a small town, but that’s where all the water is. Keeping to the woods means enough to eat, but death by dehydration sooner rather than later. There seem to be no ponds or rivers at all. Raw meat doesn’t have a quench value, even though it’s full of precious, liquid blood. Berries are too rare to keep the thirst away.
I’ve never managed to raid a liquor store without having to fight at least a dozen zombies and even that doesn’t yield enough to drink to even keep satiated until I’ve healed from the wounds those zombies caused.
I basically feel forced to take on way more zombies than I’m comfortable with trying to scavenge enough liquid to survive and it usually doesn’t work out too well.

Soo, as a question to all experienced zombie survivors: How to you get enough to drink to survive the first few days, before you’ve found some decent equipment and trained up some decent combat skills?
I’ve read all the newbie guides I could find, but while I manage early crafting and getting a decent weapon and backpack and enough to eat, thirst seems unsurmountable for me.

2

It’s tricky, and involves a degree of luck.

If you can find a funnel, you can set it up by (a)pplying it to an outdoor square and can then collect water from it during rainy weather.

If you find some dead scientists, they’ll usually be carrying a bit of clean water, and if you can gain access to a lab, it will have lots of bottles of clean water.

In wilderness areas, look out for LMOE Shelters (red cross on map, building surrounded by trees on main screen) - they have a water source inside, plus supplies, and a stove which will help with purifying the water.

3

If you’re just starting out, aim for the OJ and cider (in that order) before water. They don’t provide as much Quench for the volume, but they go bad. There’s minor Nutrition and morale bonuses too.

MarkB’s advice is sound. Milcorpses can also have water.

4

[quote=“MarkB, post:2, topic:2833”]It’s tricky, and involves a degree of luck.

If you can find a funnel, you can set it up by (a)pplying it to an outdoor square and can then collect water from it during rainy weather.

If you find some dead scientists, they’ll usually be carrying a bit of clean water, and if you can gain access to a lab, it will have lots of bottles of clean water.

In wilderness areas, look out for LMOE Shelters (red cross on map, building surrounded by trees on main screen) - they have a water source inside, plus supplies, and a stove which will help with purifying the water.[/quote]

Funnels don’t seem to work for me. I just get a hotplate, make pot, get plenty of batteries, and camp near a toilet purifying the water.

5

[quote=“ajwilli1, post:4, topic:2833”][quote=“MarkB, post:2, topic:2833”]It’s tricky, and involves a degree of luck.

If you can find a funnel, you can set it up by (a)pplying it to an outdoor square and can then collect water from it during rainy weather.

If you find some dead scientists, they’ll usually be carrying a bit of clean water, and if you can gain access to a lab, it will have lots of bottles of clean water.

In wilderness areas, look out for LMOE Shelters (red cross on map, building surrounded by trees on main screen) - they have a water source inside, plus supplies, and a stove which will help with purifying the water.[/quote]

Funnels don’t seem to work for me. I just get a hotplate, make pot, get plenty of batteries, and camp near a toilet purifying the water.[/quote]

Ah–they just changed funnels so you have to leave your container there and wait for it to fill, rather than deploy the funnel and then use it repeatedly to fill each of your containers. Might be a problem.

6

What I do is bring a brazier and a pot with me, break the window of a bathroom, cut the sheets up into rags and burn them on the brazier while I purify all of the water.
This is mostly because I never find a hotplate early on and a brazier is very easy to make.

7

Heads up, but in the experimental toilets now have limited water.

8

Getting water at the start of the game is not that hard.
Just get survival to 1 by examining underbrush and then smash that evac shelter to make a knife spear (you can craft that spike from smashing a locker and the rag from cutting a window sheet).

Once in town, use strategic windows (zombies crawl through windows very slowly) to hit them as they climb toward you. And keep near houses and clear from any shops.

And dont be afraid of getting a few bruises.

9

Don’t worry about clearing a town at the start. No matter what stats and skills you give yourself it won’t happen. Clearing a town is an objective for mid-to-late game, although even from the start clearing section by section is pretty simple (aka kill everything around a house you intend to loot, rest and heal up, kill everything around the next place you intend to loot etc.)

As for water, I’d strongly suggest looting house fridges. Orange juice, apple cider and cans of coke and root beer should be able to sustain you for a while. Once you’ve got a nice little place settled, make sure you have a container (plastic bottles, gallon jugs and the holy mecca of water refinementing~ jerrycans) just go to the bathroom and use the toilet. fill up your containers with water (and make sure you have some spare containers to empty the cleaned water into)

Grab a pot or frying pan, which can usually be found right next to the fridge in any house-- just examine the oven. Then, get some smashed wood or skewers (use your pocket knife to carve wood). drop a skewer or piece of wood outside and use a lighter or matches. enter the crafting menu, go to drinks and voila, boil up some clean water. :slight_smile:

Here’s some more tips:

[ol][li]a weapon. See about grabbing a rock and making a crowbar or a nailboard from the stuff in the evac shelter. pointy sticks are another great weapon for throwing.[/li]
[li]Clothing. Grab some for storage. Cargo pants, army pants, trenchcoat/hoodie, backpacks etc.[/li]
[li]Books, food, tools. A hammer and screwdriver are essential. Later on you’ll need a hacksaw and wrench too.[/li]
[li]a sewing kit. Gather all the thread you can find. You can use it to make clothing fit to reduce the encumberance which is an absolute must for combat and reinforce it so a small scuffle doesn’t mean you’re wandering around in tattered rags.[/li]
[li]combat: Take zeds on in ones and twos. Kite them (i,e, let a few come to you at a time don’t wade in right away.) If you can get them to step onto a vehicle, window or shrub it takes them longer to pass the terrain-- so you get longer to bash them in the face ;)[/li][/ol]

Lastly, welcome to the forum! I hope you have fun, it’s a great little game.
If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask, any ideas for additions to improve the game etc… let us know :slight_smile:

Funnels.Just need to say now, you need to drop a water container on the funnel before it will actually be able to collect anything-- and remove the collected water before acid rain or drizzle unless you want acid water. which can be good for other uses, but I digress.

10

Thanks for the additional tips so far.

Okay, my newest game was my luckiest start so far.
Me and my trusty crowbar managed to clear enough zombies to get access to a military surplus store, two restaurants and five regular houses. Looting everything inside just yielded 4 bottles of clean water and a single can of root beer, though. No other container apart from those and a jug of ammonia I’m not thrilled of just throwing away, either. So again I’ll have to go explore further before I’m even fully healed, but at least it’s the first time I’m not half dead already. And that’s with fighting all zombies through a window frame I lured them to.
I’ve never once found a hotplate yet, so boiling water is something that has to wait until I get a filter mask. In my earlier tries without one even a single burning piece of wood produced enough smoke to kill me when trying to use the fire, which seems kinda excessive.

Maybe I’m just unlucky, but I’d really like to be able to drink an animal’s blood. Even if it made for a very unenjoyable drink (as most people dislike the metallic taste), it would make for a possible early game alternative if you’re in no shape to fight a dozen zombies.

And how useful and rare is ammmonia anyways? This is only the second jug I’ve ever found, but the gallon jug is tempting to use to scavenge water.
Do I shoot myself in the foot if I just pour it out? Making mutagens and purifiers later on sounds useful…

11

Gallon jugs are very useful for carrying water, but you can use all that ammonia to make a nice amount of batteries.
tin/alu can + scrap metal, butter knife + Ammonia. As to how rare it is… It’s not that rare but honestly I’d save it if you’re planning to do much crafting.

Personally if you see any jugs of bleach about I’d Unload them and just use them for water.
You can make superglue with bleach, (bleach+water iirc) but all that’s really useful for is crafting bandages if you run out of duct tape.
Also remember to grab bandages and first aid whenever you see them… Bleeding and smoke inhalation can kill ya pretty damn quick.

Remember if you feel like you don’t want to risk combat just grab a few books and read for the rest of the day until you get tired.

12

Superglue is useful to craft explosive slugs. Explosive. Slugs. Instantly turn your shotgun into a large-clip grenade launcher. Enough said.

13

If you have a nice gallon, then unload it, find a Pump station and fill it with gasoline.

Nothing says ‘Die’ to zombie hordes like having them pursue you through a window while you unload a trail of gasoline and then lighting it on fire and running the hell out of there.

I actually don’t have problems in towns. I simply out-run the zombie hordes and pray to god I’m not hit.

Being hit even once is the true cross, because there’s pain to deal with and the lowered stats. And if you’re slowed down…welcome to the Food Chain.

14

You can boil water from the river if you can avoid getting accosted by giant insects and frogs.

15

[quote=“Labtop_215, post:14, topic:2833”]You can boil water from the river if you can avoid getting accosted by giant insects and frogs and have a ready supply of meat and practice dummies.[/quote]There, fixed it for you.

16

In a dozen characters, I’ve never seen a river or pond or other form of natural water source.
Are they that rare or am I just unlucky?

17

If you want to see how rare they are, use the debug menu to reveal the whole map. There’s usually 1 or 2 rivers per map, and they’re huge.

18

Dark blue Rs bordered by light blue Rs. that’s a river. As keldo said they’re pretty huge.
Don’t jump in carrying anything or else you’ll sink like a rock. At low levels this includes clothes too.