New in Cata (0.C Cooper)

Game Talk The Bunker
21

Mostly the “good” and “bad” traits are a matter of personal playstyle.
Here’re my trait preferences, just to give another viewpoint:
On the fence:

  • Scout: nice to have, but binoculars or a survivor telescope can get you by if you’re not playing with hordes (which you only do if you’re wanting a just for lolz, see-how-long-you-can-not-die game rather than a serious character you get invested in)
  • Pretty/Ugly - Shrugs Call it a wash. Pretty isn’t a terrible way to burn a point, but ugly isn’t crippling either. You can mutate into and out of either, but having pretty tips the scales slightly away from the “hideous abomination NPC’s will chase with torches and pitchforks” side of the chain.
  • Weak Scent/Strong scent - one makes you slightly less noticeable to critters, the other makes hostiles more likely to wander into that killbox full of nailboards and spike pits near your crafting room’s metal-bar window and gets you some points. Either way, visual detection is the larger problem for most things you’ll worry about before you have ways to deal with scent.
  • Parkour Expert: not too shabby, but I’ve played with and without it; main difference is without it you have to plan better escape routes, which would still be the better escape route with parkour expert. 2 points seems a bit expensive for what you get out of it.


My go-to traits: I don’t take all of these with every character, but these are the first ones I consider when looking at where to burn those last few points or snag a few more.

  • Night Vision Not being nightblind is good. Really, really, good.
  • Light Step Less noise = good. Less likely to set off traps = great.
  • Optimist : constant +5 free moral, increases the benefits of all moral boosts, and resists negative moral penalties. Wonderful, wonderful trait. (Moral contributes to your focus and boosts or debuffs your stats, so you want it as high as possible at all times.)
  • Masochism : I love this trait. Turns the moral penalties from pain into fairly long lasting moral boosts. Counters some of pains stat penalties, but typically lasts long enough to give a true boost after the aspirin kicks in. Its a gift that keeps on giving, seriously.
  • Stylish early game, a good source of small, cheap moral boosts from some things you want to keep around anyway, like hairpins, certain “cool” armors, and nice watches, and there are tons of decorative items that don’t add much if any encumbrance. In the late game you can load out your character like Mr T using jewelry for optimal boost with minimal encumbrance.
  • Gourmand - Makes food and drink into an endless fountain of moral boosts, and makes even terrible tasting stuff more tolerable. (Think “I hear X is considered a delicacy in some places…”)
  • Robust Genetics: If you don’t take this, you’re essentially putting a “kick me” sign on yourself for the mutation system. You will almost certainly mutate at some point, by intent or accident. This turns it from a “mostly bad” thing to a “mostly good” thing. If you’re playing a lab-start character or plan on ever shooting for a threshold mutation, its pretty much obligatory.
  • Fast learner: a bargain at any point cost. The least efficient use for points at character creation is skills. With this, a few minutes bashing rocks together, taking apart flashlights, and boiling water will cover its cost in skill levels, and you’ll be able to rank up skills to high levels significantly faster. Especially if you’re sane and turn off skill rust.
  • Fast Healer - faster healing? yes please.
  • Tough: This one is a bit odd, I know, but I favor melee characters. While I pick it only when I’m going for a high strength bruiser that’s hit the “raising this stat any higher will cost two points” barrier, this boosts the benefit of all those points I already put in strength, makes any later strength boosts even better, stacks with a lot of other heath-boosting mutations, and helps keep you out of the crippling “frail” side of the chain. Not for everyone, but if you’re a brawler who likes to be able to fistfight hulks and win, its not a bad choice at all.
  • Melee Weapon Training/Self-Defense Classes/Shaolin Adept/Venom Mob Protege - I usually take at least one of these. Check the wiki’s article about choosing your starting styles for which are definitely worth it and which probably aren’t. Never Martial Arts Training, though- the books for those can be commonly found in Dojos. These styles are far more rare to find, and certain styles will hugely increase your ability to survive in the early game. Some of the most interesting options turn otherwise lackluster items or your fists into extremely potent late-game weapons, or make your character exponentially harder to hit, let alone kill.

Addictive Personality: Never had any real trouble with this one. Avoid purely recreational drugs, go easy on the caffeine and booze, and save the hard stuff for emergencies. Good advice for any character, just moreso here.
Chemical Imbalance: Not for everyone, but if you have a reasonable tolerance for announcement spam, and don’t mind having to put up with a little mild fluctuation of needs, its not as big a problem as you might think- things mostly average out long-term.
Insomnia: Free points for “sleeping is mildly annoying” early on. Eventually healthy living and proper bedding, (and occasionally earplugs in a pinch) , make this one toothless. It’s actually saved me a couple times because your character will wake up at any noise, even when dead tired. Mutate good hearing or animal ears and you can nap anywhere knowing you won’t get ambushed.
Nearsighted&Farsighted- Take both, use bifocals, carry spare if you’re really bad about breaking them. Almost free points.
Trigger Happy - There are modes other than burst fire on automatic weapons? (jk) But seriously, this one is very rare to trigger, and I can count on one finger the number of times its been anything but a “darn, I used more ammo than strictly necessary to kill that hulk” problem across all my characters.
Truth Teller - can’t lie to NPC’s. So you actually have to do missions if you want the (sometimes nice) rewards. Missions are usually easy and take you to interesting places sometimes, so there’s no real reason to skip them. Free points.
[b][u]

My personal KILL IT WITH FIRE traits that I never take:[/u][/b] (remember, this is just what works for me. Some of these will probably be among other people’s go-to traits)
Accomplished Sleeper : -2 points so you can sleep better in conditions that will decrease your healthyness. Yay?
Bad Tempered a constant -5 moral debuff that you can’t get rid of, slashes the benefits of positive moral boosts, boosts moral penalties. There are less crippling ways to get 2 more points. Like albino, or slow healer.
Hoarder: I used to love this one, but recent tweaks to inventory management have made it nearly as bad as bad tempered for "things that will royally screw you via the moral system"
Sleepy: Freaking annoying trait, up there with carnivore and herbivore. Makes long crafting sessions a pain in the rear.
Schizophrenia: !!FUN!!, Dwarf Fortress style. As in, not fun at all in a game where its a choice between permadeath or savescumming.
Frail, flimsy, Glass Jaw, etc. Think of it this way: each of these gives your character permanent serious injuries that you can’t heal. Just plain not worth it.

22

Take night vision if nothing else. No seriously, you really really want night vision.
Probably the easiest start (at least for me) is helicopter crash with the military recruit class. The only thing you don’t get off the bat is a way to make fire. Other than that you got everything you need to start a successful run. Warm clothes, knife, rifle etc.
Put points in dexterity at character creation if you don’t know where else to put them. Absolutely no less than 10 points in dexterity. Being able to read faster and carry more stuff is awesome, but you will be up close and personal with a zed at some point and being able to doge them is absolutely essential.

23

Sorry for not responding before, I was in a intensive playing and it was totally worth.

Yes, as a old player of Dwarf Fortress, I know “losing is fun”, yes, the game strongly punish you for a mistake and that is the way a Roguelike game should be played, and no an pussylike game like anything done in a Nintendo game.

The game give the ambient-tension of how a good game should be.

Reading all the comments, and it enforce stuff I learned (in the hard way).

Forgot to mention is just for any starter build. The most hard part of the game is the first days. Not actually searching for a particular gameplay, the important is the beginning.

What I learned:

[b]Food / Water:[/b] [spoiler]You need to get those asap, your shelter are most likely not got something you can use, you are lucky if you get water and food in the basement, also sometimes there are zeds underground.

Get a build that have a bottle of clean water at least.[/spoiler]

[b]- Fucking wildlife:[/b] [spoiler]No seriously screw those, It was so bs when just going outside the shelter (for get a simple rock), they comes too fast and clobber your legs (Wolfs), or those snipers angry Mooses (How they can hit the head 5 times in a row with their antlers?!)

Wasps, man, they are annoying as the Cazadores from Fallout. More dangerous than a zed.

Other non aggressive wildlife. They run from you or when they are not scared, they dodge everything. (Ninja Squirrels) And you are too desperate for hunt something to eat. And every attack or action you fail to kill your food, you get more tired and eventually you are too weak to do anything.[/spoiler]

[b]Darkness:[/b][spoiler] At start I was thinking it was too hindering for do stuff, but I realized is your best friend, zeds can´t find you even if you go near them, so the best time to raid houses is the night. [b]Light steps, Night Vision, Animal Empathy, Weak Scent[/b] as [b]KliPeH[/b] says, is a good pick. [/spoiler]
[b]Tools and knowledge are way more important than weapons:[/b] [spoiler](Unless those weapons are silent and ranged like bows / knifes) Find I am like [b]Father Grigori[/b] from [b]Half life[/b], when I raid a house I got my time to secure it and creating traps near doors / windows, oc the house should have some food and water to manage living there some days till and prepare my next jump to a house and locating special spots like gas stations / garages / hardware stores. So eventually zeds wild got injured in the traps or got killed in the process if they step enough in those traps.

Also I can spent time reading / training inside the secured house till I wait the night.

I really hate guns, they are powerful, but, your lack of access early, to the ammo and the noise they do, is basically a stupid option to get as a starter build, you can eventually train and raid stuff mid / late game if you want snipe with a suppressor specially dangerous zeds from far. (For make a improvised suppressor you need a muffle from a car or find one luckily in the ground or in a garage. Than is a problem of luck and have the knowledge and tools to disassemble a vehicle.[/spoiler]

Making controlled fire:

[spoiler]Other important thing most guides forgot (those than are like 2013-2014 or six months ago old ones.) Is mention the importance of getting a way to do a stove, for cooking / boil water, they avoid fire spreading and smoke cumulation (burned a couple of houses before realizing this, also burned a house that have a cannabis underground plantation).

You can´t do a proper fire outside because of the constant raining, so you need do inside your shelter with a stove.[/spoiler]

Deconstructing is better than smashing:

[spoiler]Dunno why is not mentioned in any guide, you spend more time yes, but you salvage more resources than is important early on. So for enter in a house I rater prefer deconstruct a window and going inside, them deconstruct a chair / table / dresser / bed, and reinforce the hole with planks.[/spoiler]

Never tested scout, but after some games I going to get it, because you need to locate fast the important spots. Not having it hinders me a lot for exploring a city.

Light step / 10 perception:

Died a lot for stepping in a unnoticed landmine and stepping a damn fucknugget worm (Sorry that pissed me a lot because I managed to live 1 day when started to playing).

Thanks guys for contributing about this, you got strong points in your choices, and now I fixing a new setup for a newgame.

24

[quote=“Etherdreamer, post:23, topic:11081”]Making controlled fire:

[spoiler]Other important thing most guides forgot (those than are like 2013-2014 or six months ago old ones.) Is mention the importance of getting a way to do a stove, for cooking / boil water, they avoid fire spreading and smoke cumulation (burned a couple of houses before realizing this, also burned a house that have a cannabis underground plantation).

You can´t do a proper fire outside because of the constant raining, so you need do inside your shelter with a stove.[/spoiler]

[/quote]
I assume you also noticed that along with the risk of burning your house down, fire creates a lot of smoke if ignited inside and not contained properly. You can wear a filter mask to ignore the smoke entirely mid-game, but early on you’ll want to find a way to contain it permanently if you feel that exploring the city will be too dangerous. Cooking dinner outside, at night, while it’s snowing isn’t very convenient so you must be able to cook stuff inside. The best way to use fire inside (excluding the stove) is a stone fireplace.

Now, I’m sure other users can help you with other methods, but I’m using this one and it works perfectly every single time (I always create a static base, not a huge fan of wandering around). At character creation spend one point to level Construction up to level 2. This is literally the only reason I level it up, but it has many other uses as well. This is one requirement, the other is a tool with hammering quality of 2. You can craft a simple stone hammer or use a regular hammer you find as loot. The only component is rocks; 40 of them, to be exact. It’ll take a while to collect but they’re extremely common so a tiny bit of exploring around your starting area should yield you enough to build this. Actual building time is about an in-game hour, but you can build it anywhere, which is a huge pro and especially useful when creating shelter underground. Now you can hide from monsters underground AND cook while you’re doing so!

All you need now is some firewood and a way to start a fire. Drop the wood on the fireplace tile and light it up. No smoke, no spreading fire. Warm, cozy, convenient.

25

Clearly someone missed the NES and SNES eras. They don’t call brutally difficult games “Nintendo Hard” for nothing. X3

26

Nintendo had no remorse, they weren’t pandering to the masses. And just when you thought you’d won, the battery in the cartridge would die, taking your save game with it.

27

Save file? Whats this “save file”? XD

28

Save file? wat

29

http://www.dkoldies.com/blog/-complete-list-of-nintendo-nes-games-with-save-batteries/ I played most of the rpg style games on this list. And about half of them lost my save file at some point when the battery failed. My first learning experience with soldering was replacing the battery on Zelda. It didn’t restore my save…that was my first learning experience about RAM…