[quote=“KA101, post:90, topic:546”]Losing != Fun here. Losing = time wasted. I read the briefing material and don’t enjoy the idea of smashing my shelter. (Personal concept of a 2x4 is not something I’d want as a weapon, nails or no. Too large/wide.)
If there’s a game-start time option, I missed it. NV & light step, among others. Usually a martial art.
Zed vision range isn’t always apparent.[/quote]
Ka, agreed. still, i seem to be on the other end of it. i’m using fewer and fewer points at startup now to restore some sense of surprise and challenge. I wound up settling on a map that had a gazillion worms on my side of town and greatly enjoyed that part of the game; but it was more or less over once by the time i had found my car. i had a good 90mins of fun to clear a path to the gas-station but i’ve made so many arrows now that almost everything dies in a hit or two, or if not that, forgive me, to my spear. its like the zombie part of the game is now just prelude (to what awaits, i’m not sure). i don’t know if its me having gotten the hang of it or that watching the scene with a 60x50 viewport made it all too easy. i’m even refraining from rock throwing completely. 
I think if you start with everything at 11 and 12 points in positives there’s no way that you will have a problem. push it to 10 12 12 10 and you won’t even be ueber to fast. I suspect it might be that i gave up quick for fast healer, which is a completely amazing perk that has given me the greatest boost. I figured I had to try that now that bandages have a more reasonable cost to them. And it works really well. You just go to sleep and you wake up healthy from just about any damage. Take your vitamins, have some antobiotics… i don’t think i bandaged more than a few times since going all dex.
I forget the sequence, but I didn’t destroy my shelter at all. I don’t take skill so i must have found something good in the beginning. I remember what a pita it was to not have a backpack but I’d found cargo pants early and just took my time with everything, wore all the stuff i had and played with the worms until i had dogde around 7. it took me till today to find a 2nd rucksack, right now i’m debating if i should kill everyone in town with the car or level up firearms/bow and piercing some more.
As for starting, yeah, there’s a startup time. I set it to 17:00 so i could gather 2hrs worth of wait time before going out. I moved into the first house on the block and have only been to the shelter to read and finish off the worms. I aquired over 150 ant eggs with just a few fights and have a brazier stacked with 26 logs in the corner of my main room there. I like the simple diet and I only used the mp3 player so i could craft in the rain. Getting enough sleep might really be the secret here. That, and never doing anything without XP in the pool. That actually works well now that making water is finally so straight-forward.
Did you see my post about making a big and a normal view-port? If not, work it out. make one that’s easy on the eyes and another one that lets you see a radius of 50…60. then you can see the Z’s idle during the day. They are just stoopidly standing around and you can choose whatever crazyness you want to do with plenty of info. You need to have the normal roguelike tactics down standing behind the doors, whacking them when they are slow, use pits and minefields against them etc. Pits are almost the best thing ever. Can’t believe it took me so long to make them. You can even prep something in-town at night, then show up during the day and have them come to murder themselves. … its still a lot of fun when you don’t use their lack of intelligence against them though.
and again, yes, your vision completely outranges theirs now. start late, hang out, have some berries, cut a blocking stick and bring a rock, find some vitamins and cargo pants and play it slow till the juice turns bad. you should really be in great shape by then. just don’t fight anything. if you find an axe or a shovel you’ve already won. and heck, you can even make them now. seriously, use a shovel to make a few secure spots around the shelter and around the houses in the neighborhood and you can drag anything that interrupts your looting there.
just take your time, the law that says your confidence will kill you still applies here. cheers! p.s. blocking with a spear seems to count as bashing even when you dont use it to pierce. so you an safely carry one, not only does it look much better than a 2x4, noone will ever know 
