# Starter Help

**URL:** <https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312>\
**Category:** The Bunker\
**Created:** [April 3, 2015, 5:53pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312 "2015-04-03T17:53:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Shrde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8baadc/32.png) [@Shrde](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Shrde)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2015, 5:53pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/1 "2015-04-03T17:53:58Z")

</div>

Hello Im newish to CDDA and I can help but get killed moments in to the game whether it be by Mi-Go’s or Skeletons of some kind and i find them everywhere it seems. I can’t look the town and idk how to wilderness survive. What should I do?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Derpular](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Derpular](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Derpular)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2015, 6:17pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/2 "2015-04-03T18:17:55Z")

</div>

Newbie Tips:

Quick, Fleet-footed and Parkour Expert are excellent positive traits to take for a new character. You’ll be able to outrun almost every variety of zombie.

The best negative traits are Addictive Personality and Glass Jaw. They’re both lots of points and you probably won’t even notice them in play.

Nightvision is absolutely essential for any character, otherwise you’ll be completely blind in the dark.

Melee combat (if you’re faster than them):  
Single out a zombie, and wait for it to step next to you, using up a bunch of its actions.  
Hit the zombie once.  
Back away, and repeat.

Start in summer. You won’t have to fuss about with tailoring right off the bat to keep your hands from freezing solid.

The game is NOT balanced for a straight-8s character. They will have a hard time. You want to take some negative traits, or challenge scenarios, and get all your stats up to 10 or 11. Put the rest in Dexterity.

To learn wilderness survival, start with the Survivalist, and when you know the recipes, try out Bionic Prepper for its sweet integrated toolset.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Azrad](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Azrad](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Azrad)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2015, 6:29pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/3 "2015-04-03T18:29:28Z")

</div>

A long, long, long time ago, I found out that using flashlights in the middle of the night leads the zombies to you.

Seriously, night vision can be more or less essential for night raiding. Start out at the edges of towns with the houses to get basic supplies. You might get lucky finding good stuff on basements. A bit riskier, but you can do some small raids in the middle of the day if the houses are at the very edge of town. If you see zombies, click V to see the distance between you and them. If you see an exclamation point next to them, that means you’ve been found out. Step back, lure them far away and kill them one on one. Either wait for them to stand on a bush to slow them while you attack, and you can also try setting the bush or shrub on fire to soften them up.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Shrde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8baadc/32.png) [@Shrde](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Shrde)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2015, 7:24pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/4 "2015-04-03T19:24:03Z")

</div>

Here is one of the templates i made  
Str 10  
Dex 12  
Int 8  
Per 12

Traits  
Truth Teller  
Ugly  
Parkour Expert  
Addictive Personality  
Mood Swings  
Heavy Sleeper  
Near Sighted

Skills  
Dodging 3  
Mechanics 2  
Cooking 2  
Fabrication 2  
First Aid 2  
Survival 4  
Swimming 2  
Trapping 2

Profession/Class  
Survivalist

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Shrde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8baadc/32.png) [@Shrde](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Shrde)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2015, 7:28pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/5 "2015-04-03T19:28:54Z")

</div>

And Here is the other

Str 10  
Dex 12  
Int 8  
Per 12

Traits  
Slow Reader  
Mood Swings  
Addictive Personality  
Ugly  
Far-Sighted  
Truth Teller  
Insomniac

Skills  
Cooking 1  
Fabrication 1  
First Aid 1  
Survival 1

Profession/Class  
Bionic Prepper

Are eather of these good if not how can they be improved

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Coolthulhu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/coolthulhu/32/2446_2.png) [@Coolthulhu](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Coolthulhu)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2015, 8:33pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/6 "2015-04-03T20:33:35Z")

</div>

Take a lot of dexterity. 14 or 16. It is a great stat.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Shrde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8baadc/32.png) [@Shrde](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Shrde)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2015, 8:48pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/7 "2015-04-03T20:48:55Z")

</div>

ok how dose Dex work

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Coolthulhu](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/coolthulhu/32/2446_2.png) [@Coolthulhu](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Coolthulhu)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2015, 9:39pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/8 "2015-04-03T21:39:50Z")

</div>

Boosts accuracy, dodge, crit chance and martial art technique chances.

Basically all combat rolls.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![deoxy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@deoxy](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/deoxy)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2015, 11:46pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/9 "2015-04-03T23:46:00Z")

</div>

Get alone boomer and just let it swing at you a while - they do very little damage, don’t bite (which causes infection - almost all other zombies do that), and don’t cause bleeding (which several other zombies do, especially skeletons). It’s a great way to get your dodge up… I think it caps at 4 against Boomers (you have to find better fighters to dodge after that).

Fabrication is your friend! It lets you make stuff. Hit & - you have to have enough light (top right corner in the & menu tells you the brightness). Make stuff that’s the highest level you can make to train fabrication so you can make better stuff.

Tailoring is also your friend! It lets you repair your clothes, fit your clothes (so they cause less encumbrance) and eventually make good clothes/armor. All you need is a needle (which you can make with fabrication skill level 0) and thread (which you can get by disassembling rags - rags you can get by Butchering any clothes you don’t want. Well, you’ll also need rags sometimes, depending on how badly damaged your clothing is.

Construction can be helpful - hit \*. Train it the same way you train fabrication (make the best stuff you can). You can use it to build walls if you get it high enough, and you can build line-of-sight blocking furniture earlier than that (all zombies can bash that down, but only if they want to go through there… which they probably won’t if they can’t see you!).

Get a pot or a frying pan ASAP so you can boil water (to get clean water) and cook meat (eating raw meat can be bad for you). Both of those will train your cooking skill some… and, at least for the early game, that’s all you need cooking for, and you can do it at cooking skill 0.

Look for books - some of them will train your skills if you read them or teach you recipes (under look in the fabrication menu). You don’t have to learn the recipes if you have the book nearby.

If you don’t have a bed, roll mat, cot, or couch to sleep on, make a pile of clothes you don’t want/need and sleep on that - it’s quite a bit better than nothing.

That’s the basics.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Pandromidal](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/pandromidal/32/430_2.png) [@Pandromidal](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Pandromidal)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2015, 12:19am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/10 "2015-04-04T00:19:24Z")

</div>

I’ve actually kind of wondered why night vision isn’t default. It seams like the defaults should be aligned with what a new player would use so that they can in theory not have to tweak anything.

More on topic: In general Fast equals life. There are several successful early game strategies. I think the laziest is to have good dexterity + low encumbrance and use melee. This will do the trick in a lot of circumstances. A second tactic is to throw 2x4s and rocks at enemies. I think that given a sufficient supply of 2x4s you can kill virtually anything. A third is to use traps. For instance if a normal zombie walks across ten nail board traps it’s basically toast. You can get creative with traps to the point where you can take down a bio-operator with nothing more than skewers and a lighter. Be creative. There are many strategies especially once you take terrain into account.

Note: You will most likely want to do some sewing right away. One of the things I didn’t realize when I was new was how important a lack of encumbrance is. I was always weighting down my characters with torso encumbrance making melee impractical. It there’s one thing cdda taught my it’s that, in case of a zombie apocalypse, you should buy a sewing machine.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Pandromidal](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/pandromidal/32/430_2.png) [@Pandromidal](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Pandromidal)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2015, 12:21am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/11 "2015-04-04T00:21:06Z")

</div>

One more thing: ‘e’ examine bushes in forests will give you food and survival skills 🙂

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Shrde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8baadc/32.png) [@Shrde](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Shrde)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2015, 12:39am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/12 "2015-04-04T00:39:01Z")

</div>

How can i get fire to cook w/o Smoke or burning the house down earlly

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Noodles\_of\_Doom](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/noodles_of_doom/32/431_2.png) [@Noodles\_of\_Doom](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Noodles_of_Doom)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2015, 12:47am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/13 "2015-04-04T00:47:33Z")

</div>

> [@Shrde](#):
>
> How can i get fire to cook w/o Smoke or burning the house down earlly

Burning bushes outside can prevent your house from catching on fire. Also, various items like 2x4’s, clothing, heavy sticks etc. can be dropped and lit on fire.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Valpo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/valpo/32/341_2.png) [@Valpo](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Valpo)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2015, 12:49am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/14 "2015-04-04T00:49:31Z")

</div>

build a fireplace using 40 stones or a stove with a metal tank. You need a certain skill lvl in construction. If you do not posses the needed skills do not start fires inside a house unless you want ro bestow fiery death upon something inside. cook outside till you can up your skill and get the materials and tools for building a fireplace.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![deoxy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@deoxy](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/deoxy)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2015, 2:06am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/15 "2015-04-04T02:06:48Z")

</div>

> [@Pandromidal](#):
>
> One more thing: ‘e’ examine bushes in forests will give you food and survival skills 🙂

That’s a good one - B for butchering is also a good thing, once you have any kind of knife. It raises your survival skill, and it gets rid of zombie corpses (so they don’t reanimate).

Until you get a knife (or if you’re REALLY in a hurry), you can hit s for smash - if you smash a corpse until it’s “pulped”, it won’t reanimate, either.

> [@Valpo](#):
>
> build a fireplace using 40 stones or a stove with a metal tank. You need a certain skill lvl in construction. If you do not posses the needed skills do not start fires inside a house unless you want ro bestow fiery death upon something inside. cook outside till you can up your skill and get the materials and tools for building a fireplace.

You can also make a brazier - it keeps the fire from spreading, but it doesn’t contain the smoke. Useful sometimes, if you’re desperate for a fire (say, you need clean water or cooked food) and you can’t go outside (say, you’re hurt and they’re zombies upstairs. Smoke inhalation is NOT your friend (you can literally cough to death), so stand as far from the brazier as you can and still see/cook.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Shrde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8baadc/32.png) [@Shrde](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Shrde)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2015, 2:32am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/16 "2015-04-04T02:32:47Z")

</div>

What would be a good way to train construction

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Valpo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/valpo/32/341_2.png) [@Valpo](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Valpo)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2015, 3:19am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/17 "2015-04-04T03:19:05Z")

</div>

Reading books on construction is the only good way.  
You can deconstruct furniture with hammer and screwdriver to get to 1.  
You can fell trees to get to 2-3 ( processing the trunk into 2x4s)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![deoxy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@deoxy](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/deoxy)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2015, 3:23am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/18 "2015-04-04T03:23:49Z")

</div>

> [@Shrde](#):
>
> What would be a good way to train construction

1.Gather a few 2x4s and a lot of nails.  
2. Build the highest level piece of furniture you can.  
3. deconstruct it again.  
4. go to 2

Deconstructing furniture can get you to 1, after that, I raised my level to like 6 doing that. Getting to 9 ( so you can build a well and have no more water problems) is REALLY hard, though. Very much a pain. 8 to 9 in particular is brutal.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Valpo](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.cataclysmdda.org/valpo/32/341_2.png) [@Valpo](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/Valpo)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2015, 3:33am UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/19 "2015-04-04T03:33:05Z")

</div>

keep in mind that all the things mentioned are ways to lvl construction. But none of them safe reading a book on the topic and deconstructing furniture are good ways to lvl that particular skill… Instead of investing the time to grind this skill in a mindnumbing fashion you are better of spending your time to search the books.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![deoxy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@deoxy](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/u/deoxy)\
**Post date:** [April 4, 2015, 1:50pm UTC](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312/20 "2015-04-04T13:50:54Z")

</div>

> [@Valpo](#):
>
> keep in mind that all the things mentioned are ways to lvl construction. But none of them safe reading a book on the topic and deconstructing furniture are good ways to lvl that particular skill… Instead of investing the time to grind this skill in a mindnumbing fashion you are better of spending your time to search the books.

If you keep your focus up, grinding the furniture doesn’t take much more play time than reading the books, and it doesn’t take much more game time, either… for the higher levels, it probably takes LESS game time, actually, as reading the high level books takes FOREVER.

It does use up a lot of nails, though, as you generally get the 2x4s back, but not all the nails.

[Next page](https://discourse.cataclysmdda.org/t/starter-help/9312.md?page=2)