Sup, new guy here

Game Talk The Bunker
1

Hello guys, i’m new.
I’ve been playing for about 6 days now, using the stable 0.A version.
All settings are default and no NPC’s since i heard they were bugged and didn’t want any shenanigans as a noob player.

I died about 6 times at the start after reading some min-max guides and starting out as a tweaker for 2 extra points, i didn’t expect the withdrawal to be so brutal, i think after playing allot more successfully with other characters that i can handle it now should i try it again.

Anyway i’ve been dying a few times as a martial artist with karate because i was new of course and didn’t know how to reinforce and repair my clothes.
I read up on needles and skewers and whatnot and i crafted like 30 wooden needles cos i thought those would fill up my sewing kit(i’m new), i learn pretty quickly that i need thread/fiber/sinew to load up a sewing kit/bone needle/wooden needle so i chuck all those skewers and wooden needles in a fireplace i built from stone(collected from breaking bathtubs).
Then i learn about rags/thread/plastic chunks/nomex/kevlar cutting and think “fuck yarr, i won’t look like a hobo anymore”.
I died somewhere and thought karate sucks so i make a new character with Krav Maga.

I’ve been reading the forums and wiki for a few days and i don’t see why people complain about dogs/zombears and shocker zombies, i can completely wreck everything so far barehanded with 0 torso encumbrance(i haven’t met a hulk yet or went into a populated lab yet, got killed with tweaker by a turret though).
Since i use unarmed Krav Maga can i use spiked/steel knuckles or does that count as a weapon and consequentially lower my damage?
I read ninjitsu can use edged weapons without penalty and bonus damage/silence but what about krav maga?
I got 4 steel jerrycans now with water/clean water/weak acid/empty to make acid for batteries from weak acid and i got a huge supply of booze from a liquor store and i don’t even drink it(i’m never going to run run out of water because a nearby house has a moat type thing i can just use to fill a jug or jerrycan, or u know just put a funnel on a jerrycan).
Got my waterskin with 6 charges and i also have lots of dehydrated meat i made in my charcoal smoker(jerky sucks?), also have vacuum packed meat slices and lots of raw materials to cook some bread/cookie and lots of other recipes.

My problem now is getting electronics and mechanics up, i guess i can repair cars but that will drain my welder batteries, my endgame is to make a solar powered bench with electric forge/fridge/floodlight and start crafting metal stuff and then start on finding a spot to build a base(living in a rather isolated house on the outskirts of town right now), there aren’t any zombies around my house just a low amount of animals that i’m thinking of building deep pits to trap and then eliminate them for meat.
When i walk to a new unexplored building and see animals on my way i throw my butcher knife/crowbar/hammer and usually kill it then butcher it and continue on my trip so i don’t think i’ll starve either.

I found a crashed military vehicle with a stealth cloak a LAW and black box + tacticool stuff that i didn’t really need, oh and a close by house had a go bag stuffed to the gills(woohoo chest rig).
I got leg tentacles after drinking mutagen and now whenever i try to disarm a bear trap and it fails cos i’m low skilled i don’t get hurt cos i don’t have feet lol, crossbow traps i throw a rock on but i still don’t know what to do with shotgun trap, i tried to disarm one and it shot me in the chest, i wasn’t hurt but it did damage my trenchcoat(that i made since 24 storage is the highest i know of).

Found some scientist corpses on the other side of the shelter i started in and didn’t explore, found some kinda useless bionics cos i don’t have energy storage stuff, anyway installed them all starting with lowest failure chance and did them all in a row, all 6 or 7 of them without failure, 2 were doubles i’ll disassemble later when i got a high elec/mech skill so i can learn the recipe.

I got a katana and don’t know if it’s worth using since i’m krav maga, i guess i’ll wait till i got a scabbard and then carry it with me.
Got a holster as well but no handguns(i got a shotty and a rifle i think, i don’t use em and don’t have ammo) so i can’t load anything in it, at least i get 3 storage from it.
Thinking of levelling my bow skill so i can craft a reflex-curve one and then craft some metal arrows in case i run into robots/ranged shit(haven’t seen any yet).

So far i’ve explored 12 houses and some stores and still have loads to go raid, and on the map i can see another town south of my housebase.
I tag explored houses/traps/scientists/basketball courts on the map, and i also found a boarded up house, a small lava river in the middle of the road, a spider infested house that i just cleared and got loads of meat from.
Found 2 shocker zombies in a basement and waited at the door then jabbed them critically 4 times in a turn for 20+ damage, so yeah they’re easy to wreck i barely got shocked and 8 pain is nothing.

I’m not planning on moving far so vehicle building/modding isn’t for me yet.
I’d like to know more specific instructions to building my electric motor/battery storage/forge/fridge/floodlight thing.
Oh and do i just go read in the shelter console light at night, i hate lighting a fire just for crafting or reading(brazier was a disaster lol, thankfully i had a fire extinguisher and yea i know you gotta Activate it but it still smoked up my house when i dropped some wood in/on it and set it on fire, i’ll stick to fireplaces now).
I got an oil lamp but tallow is kinda hard to get since few mooses are around and i don’t want to go hunting for some grease.

This was my adventure so far, any tips or questions please say so.
I feel like i’m halfway master already.

2

Look up the J-9 topic. You are not master until you are better than me.

3

To get mechanics up just remove parts from cars. Reducing 2 cars to a pile of parts will probably get you mechanics 8 and take maybe half an in game day and no batteries.

For electronics raid a library and read some books on the subject.

Katanas are really good melee weapons (my personal favorite) but they probably don’t benifit at all from krav maga.

Once you get electronics 1 or two disassemble a flashlight and use the parts to craft a light strip. They last for several days and provide just enough light to read by.

High tailoring lets you craft awesome Survivor Gear, such as the Survivor Trenchcoat which has more storage than the regular trenchcoat and still has 0 encumbrance.

Rip parts out of vehicles, put an engine, am alternator, a battery, a gas tank, and then the welding rig and other stuff on it. You’ll also need controls to start it.

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Oh. And use mechanics 8 to craft a pneumatic bolt driver. They are quite powerful ranged weapons.

5

What’s that red dot on your center of mass, Ninja? I didn’t know you followed Amaterasu…

6

Oh jesus, the tankbots are firing HEAT? That’s some nasty stuff man.
Still, I guess it’s better than them using canister shell.

7

I haven’t really read or analyzed it but this short pasta has some good tips: Cataclysm DDA Spoonfed: The Guide for Morons - Pastebin.com

Especially this:

Get 18 mechanics and make a vehicle with THREE ENGINES, promptly crash into a house and die.

Since i use unarmed Krav Maga can i use spiked/steel knuckles or does that count as a weapon and consequentially lower my damage?
From what I can remember, weapons like knuckles count as unarmed.
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What’s that red dot on your center of mass, Ninja? I didn’t know you followed Amaterasu…[/quote]

Ugu, motherfucker…

9

Sup, dude.

You look like you are doing great and I hope you continue to enjoy the game (Welcome to the forums!)
I would recommend, however, you turn on NPCs. They CAN be pretty buggy but they can be hilarious in an IVAN/SS13 death way if you like
death by shotgun to the face (personally I love the NPCs but you may chose whatever).

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I was very angry at the NPCs in my game because they were stealing items… But a few in game days later I was finding them dead all over the place dropping guns ammo and CBMs like pinatas, so they aren’t all bad…

11

Looks like your well on your way to becoming a survivor of the dark days ahead my friend. I would recomend trying the experimental versions and play with static NPC’s. There are NPC camps now and I really enjoyed it. Plus there are vibratores in it lol, huge moral boost!

But beware the MI Go’s.
Welcome to the forum :slight_smile:

12

Temperature in the recent experimentals has been fairly broken for a while now, start in summer if you dont want to freeze to death.

13

Time for an update.

My equipment.

It’s all very well layered.

My character.

My bionics.

I noticed that making lye powder doesn’t consume charcoal(maybe i’m bugging out), it says it needs 10 charcoal as a component but i don’t have any charcoal except a charcoal filtration jug 50/150 charges left and inside 2 of 3 charcoal smokers(one with 20 the other with 40 charcoal loaded and one empty), so where am i getting charcoal from…scraping the fireplace?
I had the chemistry set equipped for easy reloading when all of a sudden a zombie dog interrupts me and i hit it with my set breaking it…can’t make a new one cos i don’t know hotplate recipe, oh well it’s not urgent.

You can make dehydrated meat from tainted meat?
I also dump all my rotten food(liquids turn off my fire?) and various other useless stuff into my fireplace and i dump rotten/tainted meat there as well.
After i dumped like 20 chunks of tainted meat they disappeared(i assumed it’s cos of rotting) and it wasn’t on the ground/fireplace anymore, but i could still craft Tainted Tornado(what does it do anyway) so i did.
Now i have a jar of alcohol soaked zombie flesh, 2 portions in a 3L Jar yum!

I trained tailoring by collecting clothes from enemies and repairing them then cutting them up into rags and keep going until i could craft my endgame gear(mostly survivor, pouches are great when you don’t wanna waste utility vests & rigs).

Pretty soon i’ll start building a gasoline generator since there’s a gas station nearby and i thought why not.

Very disappointed i can’t install auxillary flamethrower/shotty in my hand or anything other then a gun for that matter.
Doesn’t seem like spike/steel knuckles work with Krav Maga( i had fun sticking the nail knuckles into enemies though).
Telescoping Umbrella is pretty nice, when you put it in your hand you can walk in acid rain…now i wonder if it will break easily when i use it to attack.
Those light strips literally last 2 weeks, i’ve had mine with me all the time for about 5/6 days.

Thought about an end goal to the game, building a rocket to go into space.
There’s so much metal around and i read silo’s exist, with some chemistry & mechanics you can make rocketfuel and with a PDA + high int+computer you could basically write a navigation software in 200 hours or so.
There’s food and drink but no pissing or shitting, you could make ammonia from bottles of piss and dig a latrine and cover your shit with lye powder, or make fertilizer(bombs?) for the farming feature.

EDIT : someone tell me how in gods name i change that green background color in recipes, i can’t see shit captain.

14

You can install auxiliary weapons onto crossbows and guns. I’m not sure what else you expected…

In your HAND? They aren’t bionics. If you want built in weapons then there’s a finger tip laser gun and a fusion blaster (replaces your arm).

15

Green background? Never seen that before, care to post a screenshot?

For reference here’s what mine looks like:

4EYTrbH.png959×736

16

You should go raid some labs now. And rob some banks. You’ll find much more interesting things in them.

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I meant dark green coloring for components you already have, i literally have to lean into the monitor to see it half decently.
It’s even worse to see if i don’t use a black low light background behind my game window so the light doesn’t reflect back into the screen(i use foobar lol).

Everything else is pretty legible except the green text, how hard would it be to change the color?

18

It doesn’t look that bad…

19

I can’t imagine why that green is a problem.

What I find to be a problem is the dark blue. It’s EXTREMELY hard to read my bionic power level sometimes.

20

I got “pleasently” suprised when i got mugged by an passing npc… stole most of my stash. “People, what a bunch of bastards”.

But i must admit that it happend while i was smiling about how this game got it all.