New player needing guidance

[Mussorgsky]

If you are tired of trial and error, Vormithrax has a great beginner tutorial series on YouTube. I’d say the basics would be… controlled fire, and confidently sourcing food and water?
( construct brazier/find oven or stove, scavenge houses or search bushes in the woods for food )

I have tried pretty much every tile-set out there and still use ASCII 99% of the time. I feel like, at least in my experience, once you’ve gotten used to the classic ASCII roguelike pseudographical style, it actually feels like a handicap to switch to tiles. Much harder time in accurately gauging exact spacing and object recognition ( probably that wouldn’t be that big a deal if I used a particular tileset til greater familiarity ).

On a similar note, I also find the vi-style directional keys to be much nicer to use ( but harder to learn ).

Obsessively tinkering with fonts is also an OCD thing I seem to find myself doing all the time… shrug
My typical arrangement:

[PhenomPhear]

I’ll check him out thanks! I use the numpad to move around, and I remapped num 0 to ignore monster since I hit it fairly often. I have safe mode to re-enable itself after 50 turns, but, I’ve died because of that so I try to just ignore non deadlies. I actually dislike your font very much. Too blocky / low res looking. But, you like it so that’s no matter to me.

[Mussorgsky]

Haha, I like the blockiness specifically, it’s a ttf clone of a C64 font. It’s definitely a very subjective thing. The amount of fiddling you can do with it, both on font and tileset side, is a great aspect of games like this.

I only turn off safemode when I’m intentionally encroaching into a known danger area and eying the spot list. Hitting the ignore with it on is annoying ( but much easier if you are using the vi keys ).

…also it can be pretty helpful when advancing into dangerous territory with safemode off to use the SHIFT+directional keys to offset your view to give you a clearer picture of where you are headed.

[PhenomPhear]

I have no idea how to use VI keys, I may have grown up using ms-dos and early apple mac’s with the 5.25" disks, but I mostly played games like DOOM, BLOOD, C&C and stuff like that. RL’s are newish to me. I’ve played some earlier ones when I was younger, but, I was always drawn to the flashy graphics of upcoming games and new technology. These days I find those games lacking, and much more enjoyment in a game like CDDA, it’s so deep and allows your imagination to unlock and actually be used.

oh cool, view shifting could be nice. excellent tips guys thanks.

[DrakeDragon8]

My basic game plan to start is usually gather the materials for a forked spear (Fabrication 2, Survival 1), and then when attacking zombies just run until there is a tile between use TAB to attack and move away. The movements for zombie types differ for each. DO NOT attack anything that even SEEMS powerful like brutes, hulks, or anything shocky. Find a house or other place with a fireplace, brazier, or stove(Not oven). The outskirts near a town are a good choice if you can clear the place. Then just do whatever, I usually make a deathmobile(Thank you Cata++ and Blazemod)using a weird abnormality in that Cata++ allows you to install foot pedals in a car and then install any type of electric motor as a Generator in that spot. The battery output of the generator is the same as the motor of the same type but requires less power to use, so mulitiple generators can be used especially in the same spot at the cost of power which is also speed for a vehicle. Add turrets like UPS rifle and your set to explore.

[Axema]

Torn apart again by a Mi-go

That is normal reason to die.

[PhenomPhear]

ay… I just keep getting rekt. I had a semi decent character going but while moving to a new location to loot at night I was crossing a parking lot and a zombie necromancer came into view out of nowhere and wooped my butt. Now I’m struggling to get up and going again. It’s such a pain to tear down all the curtains, cut up some sheets, craft a nord, hammer, crowbar, bandages, chestwrap and handwraps for more protection, sling, and everything 5x a day after I die. It really makes me dislike the start. I don’t want to try an OP start or anything. I just want to at least survive as the basic evacuee with good traits, no bad ones, fab and survival

[DrakeDragon8]

Dude RNG is nasty took me at least 10-12 tries before I got my current character in good shape but have heart eventually you’ll get the right mix to make a good living. I’m not fond of the nord it kinda blows, again forked spear for those sweet sweet reach attacks, or if your feeling particularly masochistic you could try the knife spear. I usually go with the evacuee myself and I don’t make clothing others than the bare minimum to stave off the cold and no tools as ripping a curtain down to get heavy stick to bash lockers to get scrap for spikes and chunk of steel for hammering 1 is all I need

[PhenomPhear]

I hear ya. Got a decent start now. Looking for shopping cart and good water supply or some kind of tank to hold a lot of water

[DrakeDragon8]

60L tanks work well if you can cut them out of a car and rain is free water if you can set up a funnel for it

[PhenomPhear]

forked spear

Man you weren’t kidding about that forked spear. Using it today and it’s

[TheKobold]

If you want something that doesn’t have the fragile tag the stone spear is a pretty good option.

[DrakeDragon8]

Glad to hear it, the next evolution would be the pipe spear once you get the welder and the welding goggles

[DrakeDragon8]

Stone is okay but it’s durability is less then the forked spear

[TheKobold]

Even with the fragile tag on the forked spear?

[PhenomPhear]

it’s fragile, but, it’s not that bad, can usually kill a day and half worth of Z’s before it’s pretty beat up. Might be a good idea to carry 2

[ecchi_squid]

<-- had to learn the hard way not to cauterize infections if I have disinfectant available. fml

[PhenomPhear]

I did as well. I now try to avoid doing that at all costs. I see it as last resort rather then first instinct now.

[DrakeDragon8]

How so? I did it all the time including my current unless something changed?

[PhenomPhear]

well I started noticing that cauterizing is not as safe as you expect. I got really bad RNG for awhile and everytime I did it it advanced the infection, then to green. Since it’s so RNG, I try to avoid it now. Disinfectant is pretty easy to find anyways once your able to get into town.