Certainly sounds like fun Roleplay scenario.
The only clash to your run and my own would have to be that my run is Hardcore with a 1-and-done attitude with absolutely no exceptions to debug, squirl-scumming (Closing the game out via console to avoid death or bad muta), or mismatch gaming.
As to where levels and unarmed are concerned, they were both vastly overhauled to prevent untamed leveling of either. My Unarmed appears almost entirely hard-capped around level 12 whereas it could level into infinity once upon a time. Furthermore, the damage of unarmed is almost entirely based upon critical damage and martial stances now moreso than the level of the technique. At base levels, you’ll be looking at only around 2-9 damage for a 10 STR character.
In order to accomplish a Hardcore unarmed run that worked I needed 5 previous attempts with two different scenarios until I found the one by leaving myself in a mall surrounded by about 36 zombos. Made it out of that by well timed sprints, use of shelves & counters to restrict and slow the zombos, and then not being afraid to retreat to recomp stamina.
Your base stats also don’t appear to have been very specialized, close to base with a few buffs added to them with some of your points. My build entirely rejected that and focused entirely on pure muscle power.
What draws my attention the most is that you allowed your character to use a gun to escape the lab, and that you apparently managed to kill 32 zombie burners with your bare hands. In general, if you are playing ‘True’ unarmed_only, then needing to use a gun to continue a run is an automatic restart and you would think that the zombie burners that splash out Raging_Fire-tier fire tiles upon death wouldn’t be more of a topic to discuss considering your character is effectively naked nine/tenths of the time. The same can be said about the Incandescent Hulks, who you slew over a hundred of with your rather modest 16-base health stat. Being nude and wrestling an AOE_shocker should normally cost you almost half of your overall health and send your pain sky high every single time. Granted, likely something to do with your time-space CBMs more so than anything else.
My stance, and only stance, is Tiger. My Stat, and only stat, is Strength. The only tools at my side are grenades which almost always go off on my person if used, a pair of knuckles, and chems. All else is forbidden without exception. I have but a single headshot, and it comes from accidentally picking a rock, and deciding to throw it instead of dropping it since hitting anything with (4) perception would be impossible only for it to scar my perfect record by actually hitting a zombo in the nose. Almost reset the run right then and there for breaking the rules but rationalized it away as the comedic event of the run instead.
Overall? Your run is extremely impressive, but by the sheer fact that you have Bashing weapons, handguns and marksmanship leveled to -over- level 10 means that we are playing entirely different games. Not so much in terms of patch or game state, but in what we prefer to play.
In your next run, I highly recommend a full_unarmed run, it’s enlightening as to how much we find ourselves dependent on other tools. When its just us, our fists, and the gear upon the fist, the world of the Cataclysm is much, much more dangerous. That thrill is what gave birth to this post in the first place.
My declaration to the Cataclysm with this run is that you can overcome it with nothing but your own body and your wits.
The only run left after this one finds it’s inevitable conclusion would be really_bad_day, no_mutations+no_cbms, 50 NPC faction, 4-base_all, unarmed_only, no_skill run.
The legitimate hardest run I can think of save the ones where you are counting down to zero and doing this. Granted, those runs have a touch more rng when using this setup, so really bad day would be where I draw the line.
Anyhow, I’ve said my peace. All methods of playing CataDDA are viable as they are equals, and I have my preference for when I RP_Run on Hardcore.
To all others,
“The Cataclysm has come, And We Will Survive”