Survivor Caches

[Chaz]

While I’m revisiting suggestions I made on the Draw Your Cataclysms thread, here’s one that was considered a good idea, and I’m just moving it over here so it doesn’t get buried too deep in posts again.

Other survivors may have stored little caches of items across the wastes of New England - possibly weapons or ammo, but as there are already prepper and gun nut basements, it may be more reasonable to have Survivor Caches contain supplies of non-perishable food, meds/FAKs/Bandages, and useful tools that players might have some trouble tracking down such as hammers, saws, screwdrivers or wrenches.

Such caches may be marked out by a unique identifier symbol on or near the spot where the cache is hidden - this was inspired in part by the rebel caches in Half Life 2! The picture above shows the Project Skybreaker logo spraypainted on a stop sign to denote a nearby buried cache that could be accessed if Chaz had a shovel on hand.

Naturally, you may also run into cache markers that are actually traps, so caution may be advised when you think X marks the spot.

[John_Candlebury]

Sounds like a neat idea.

[Pthalocy]

I haven’t found those old caches where it was a pile of loot surrounded by traps in random spots, this would be a much more interesting (and hopefully better-hidden) alternative.

[CosmicKobal]

Agreed, WANT… This would provide a use for metal detectors or the subterrainian sonar CBM

[joxer]

There’s also been a similar suggestion of adding locations of such theoretical ‘caches’ to the survivor notes on occasion

[Straume21]

Occasionally, you can roll a survivor cache in a cave, but that’s pretty rare and it has only happened to me once. It’s far more likely to find an empty cave or a rat’s nest than a cache.

I was happy to see that in the latest stable version, there are now survivor houses that are heavily barricaded and laced with traps, as well as valuable loot such as guns, food, armor, ect.

I like the idea of having buried caches as well, and it shouldn’t be too hard to make it spawn as a random encounter like dead drug dealers or scientists.

I also would really be in favor of implementing a very small chance to spawn a loot-filled chest in random places such as houses, basements, or abandoned storefronts. This could make raiding ordinary locations more valuable and rewarding, especially for the particularly thorough survivor.

[Zireael]

My only problem with this is that ‘the loot filled chest’ as such makes me think fantasy

[Pthalocy]

We actually do have an old chest up in my attic. Everything up there is from another time though.
One of my extended family members has a false panel in the floor trim that reveals a tiny safe for keeping jewellry though. That’d be kinda neat. You’d need high perception to notice something funny about the wall tile, and if you do, it’s actually a different tile that mimics a wall but has storage space and a lock on it. SECRET TREASUUUUURE!

[Azrad]

Secret things on a wall? Well, that explains why one staircase to a gun basement was hidden on a wall tile, haha…

[John_Candlebury]

Keeping weapons hidden behind false panels in walls is actually rather common. Well, in here at least…

[Pthalocy]

I just keep my real hatchet in my closet mixed in with all my cosplay ‘weapons’.

Now that’d be a weird cache to find: hatchet, very bloody labcoat, rorschach blot face mask, foam core saw, foam core baseball bat, solid steel pole definitely NOT foam, wig (5), makeup kit, lighter fluid (20), boots (none of which fit), shoes (none of which fit), prom dress (fits, weirdly).

Sort of back on topic, how entertaining would it be if one of these in-home locked safe stashes contained the deed to some mansion, and reading it revealed the nearest unexplored mansion on your map?

[Chaz]

Oh man, that’d be awesome! I like the sound of that.

Also I’m amused at the thought of forumite shoutout caches, like just a rare cache with an identifying marker on it that contains some items related to a forum member’s custom survivor - for instance my rare custom cache would be a box or crate or wall stash marked with the Skybreaker logo that contains, among other things, leather sandals, a crowbar and a light strip (because I added in the sandals, the crowbar ended up being my sorta tool of the trade, and imma moth, respectively.)

[kevin.granade]

There’s a little bit of a technical issue around burying things, but there are a couple of workable solutions to it, so it should be doable once someone gets around to it.

[Coolthulhu]

I wanted to change the z-level -1 from solid rock to soil to simplify some z-level operations.

After such a change, simply allowing items to be buried in soil would be enough to have a solid implementation of caches.

[Straume21]

That’s definitely a worthwhile and high-priority contribution, Coolthulu.

If this gets put in, would the outside tiles on -1 z-level structures such as basements and labs just have one layer of solid rock, or would the whole surrounding area be rock?

Also, on a related note, I was thinking it would be really cool if some basements could have walls of brick instead of solid rock, in which case (if basements have one layer of wall around them, and Coolthulu’s dirt -1 z-level concept gets implemented) it would then be extremely viable to dig tunnels out of basements to live in, or to move across an area underground with relative safety.