Now while I’ve always had trouble deciding on a start for myself but this topic was created with the purpose of letting others get a chance to talk about sttart locations, classes, and traits.
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I’m a classic type, I just go with a temporary base in a evac shelter or a cabin if I start in the wood scenario then farm skill in order to make a bigger base or a deathmobile, with scarse successes ^^’
I am mostly a melee type so I hate guns and roll with 10 10 9 9 stats, some perks to get some speed in movement and learning, of course night vision and sometimes pyromaniac for the happiness bonus
trigger happy and squeamish are an easy +1
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For some reason I usually end up being the egrarian type. I’ll start or find a farm and take it over, or find a place for a base… then begin farming. I actually like animal drawn vehicles more than fuel powered ones, but that seems to go back to preferring “simpler” characters. Once I have a steady food source locked in, then I’ll begin working on fighting skills.
Also I really like lighthouse starts. There are good supplies to start out with, then you can go island hopping, finding the little islands floating around in the huge lake.
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I usually always go for a freeform build, I find that theres never enough points for those little traits that dont do much or so few skills that my character knows less than the average high-schooler.
My favourite build is usually based on myself and it usually lasts the longest.
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how much time does farming need to have decent crops? I never dealt with that
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I haven’t personally gotten into farming but I do know from looting farms, wheat and some other crops give a lot of calories and do not rot for up to indefinite times. And then you can also make it semi automatic with stuff like tractor reapers that till soil, seeders that plant, and scoopers that pick up items can be used by vehicles to make enough food for many people very quickly.
Just looting a wheat farm with most of its crops gone yields at least 100 wheat, which each have 500 calories or baked into bread for more nutrients. Farming is very productive with the right tools.
However I actually don’t know the exact time it takes to grow, I would assume at least once per season ignoring winter.
I’m not sure the exact number of days, but plants grow in stages & they have to be out of the reality bubble to advance from one stage to the next. That’s why I like island hopping- I can explore for supplies and set up a few bases and/or gardens so they’re out of the reality bubble until I go back to check in on them
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I always played melee builds specialized for breaking zombies in swaths, the update to stats made it impossible to create.
You could always do what I do and go into settings > debug and give yourself a few more points, I usually buff my trait limit and up my skill points but you can buff stat points too.
Or just go full freeform and do whatever you want.
Makes sense, What is your favorate combat build?
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I find that a high strength character with a crowbar can easily take out most lower zeds and upgrading to a homewrecker or such just dominates with the right armor.
Having that said, I personally prefer knives and blades. I know that a spear does reach attacks and cutting isn’t the best against some enemies but I like the roleplay of shooting of a couple hits then pulling out a combat knife to finish them off. My last character had a cool lajatang and was using rifles whenever he had the ammo.
My favourite classes to play as are the game master, musician, and survivor/backpacker.
The game master starts with a speaking book along with an assortment of other stuff. Its special trait is a little weird though because it allows you to read higher int books at no additional cost. Its strange for roleplay reasons because you would think a game master is smart, but the smarter he is, the less his bonus affects him. All in all though, I just like this class for the roleplay.
The musician is my favourite out of the bunch because he starts off with a really rare item that helps improve morale. Its not that useful overall but I think I’ve only ever found one guitar ever as a loot drop. For roleplay it also has a lot of scenarios that you can come up with between hobby, pop star, basement band, etc.
The survivor/backpacker I included as one because they are very similar. Survivor starts off with some basic clothes and tools, while backpacker has a backpack. You can get what they have fairly quickly but overall they are good for almost any start.
I used to like making bases in places that had some starting light like the computer console but ever since cellphones were introduced you can get almost unlimited light at nighttime because the cellphones eat through the battery really slow (especially the 300 charge one) so light is fairly easy to get. Houses on the edge of town are my favorites since you have nearby fields for any agrarian work, if you have a river bank nearby you can also get unlimited food with the plastic traps and being close to town let’s you loot a bunch of materials really easy for crafting or vehicle construction.
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Starting on top of an apartment by choosing the Large Building start with either Traceur(since the new z-levels its really fun to break a chase by climbing rooftops) or Urban Ninja if I feel more rp-ish. You can easilly kite away the zombies to fall off if they are too numerous and usually the first 3 top floors are mostly clear. If you can get to drag 2 Refrigators to the main stairway entrance at ground then you basically sealed the zombies off if you didn’t aggroe them into attacking them. Which you can do by setting up furniture along an edge to be able to climb to 1st floor. So basically close off the stairway then climb thru the side and its all yours!
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This thread has been very enlightening for how to start.
I’m new to the game, and so far I’m enjoying playing the randomly rolled characters. For them, I have been trying to find loot from the nearby towns. Since the world persists my evac shelter has gotten more inventory with each passing character. All that said, I’ll have to try farming soon!
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For melee, Ninjutsu with Fleet Footed (try to mutate it), Parkour Expert and Quick is really fun. Just abuse your speed and keep running away to re-trigger Sneak Attack and only attack either then or when the enemy is stunned/downed.
For bonus points keep a few large cardboard boxes at hand to instantly create 400 movement cost barriers which take 0 turns to deploy.
(I’m assuming that abusing large cardboard boxes is a well known tactic for butchering/disassembling/vehicle stuff in dangerous areas.)
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How does it work? Please elaborate on the use of large cardboard boxes. I always wondered.
You can hide in them, so as long as they don’t smell you, they won’t actively hunt you down since you don’t make noise.
How do you know that they don’t smell you?
Can you make two small holes for then eyes in the box to be able to see?
You can only see the area immediately around you, but yeah I adore deploying cardboard boxes for tactical stealth while doing long tasks in the open during the day.
In one lab start (that turned out to be an island prison lab… But that’s a whole other story) I used the large cardboard box to sleep on the floor so nothing wandering by could see me through the windows.
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