It’s been a while since I’ve been around here, but I still play Cata regularly. Well, something very curious has happened in my current game.
I started in the “bottom of a mine” scenario with little on me, long seasons, and reasonably hard difficulty for a veteran. I’ve done this start several times and usually find not much of great use in the mine. Sometimes, shitty artifacts.
Directly on the floor in front of me I see this thing.
Hmm. Pretty nice combat stats…
When you wield it: -3 str, -1 dex, and a prickle of insanity. I like to think of it as a weird, ghostly whisper of all the shitty artifacts that disappeared into the void before this one.
So, carrying this thing around and going about my way, I notice some very peculiar behavior. Everything was so… passive! Was it a bug?
Then I noticed this:
Yes I play in plain ascii
Why was my icon black?
Oh shit.
Then I realized what I was holding in my hand.
An artifact that, when carried in the inventory, grants permanent invisibility cloaking.
What should I do with this mighty power? I was thinking of building the heaviest vehicle possible given the game’s limitations. Something like 90 asphalt rollers on heavy duty frames? Turn a city into a huge fortified base with hundreds of NPCs?
I’ve been carrying it for a few days with no ill effects, so I doubt it’s radioactive.
Learning to fish? That’s it? The sword makes me invisible to anyone but triffids and giant ants (who use smell, apparently). This means robots, turrets, portal creatures, zombies, everything. I can’t waste this awesome power by sitting around fishing!
Stroll around some zombie-infested city with impunity, read all the books, gather all the goodies, and build a mighty deathmobile. Raid labs and bunkers with equal impunity until you’re so decked out in plutonium and power armor and laser rifles and shit that that you could kill the Terminator.
Then build a mighty fortress studded with auto-turrets of death and lined with barbed wire and pits full of spikes. Dig deep deep underneath it, level after level downward until you can dig no more. Then dig out a big hollow room, fill it with candy and drugs and Playboys and booze and whatever else you like, and roll around in your pit of depravity going “Fuck you game, I win!”
I’d watch out for blobs too. What do they use, sound? Not that they would be much of a problem to someone so equipped.
If only we could strap some chainsaws to it.
Find a local dojo. Learn a martial art for staves. Wear only armored gauntlets/shinguards + dojo clothing.
Become Mister Miyagi.
Failing that, Ryu.
Hire all NPCs, construct new dojo. Once complete, enable hordes, activate noisemaker.
I play almost exclusively in ASCII, much love to the guys using tilesets but I learned to play the game in ASCII and I simply am not able to make the switch to Tiles, it just doesn’t work for me, I’m practically overwhelmed and blind when taking Tiles (which is the exact reaction people have going from Tiles to ASCII, really).
Train your unarmed combat up to as high as possible and become a nightstalker that can punch out a Hulk in one blow.
[quote=“deknegt, post:11, topic:10918”]I play almost exclusively in ASCII, much love to the guys using tilesets but I learned to play the game in ASCII and I simply am not able to make the switch to Tiles, it just doesn’t work for me, I’m practically overwhelmed and blind when taking Tiles (which is the exact reaction people have going from Tiles to ASCII, really).
Train your unarmed combat up to as high as possible and become a nightstalker that can punch out a Hulk in one blow.[/quote]
My big problem with ASCII is the sheer amount of green/brown dots on the screen. It’s quite painful to look at for more than about a minute. I still play ANGband in ASCII, I’ve tried in tiles and it’s just one big disorganized mess.
Also I suggest boxing for the invisible hulk puncher quest. Get boosts to dex/per, maybe get some lucky granades…boxing gets pretty broken once you have above 20 per and dex.
Build a temple fill it with booby traps and lots of monsters then place the sword on a pedestal in a room locked behind a door that needs four special keys from over all the land to unlock.
Currently have a sword on display at my survivor’s base. Wielding it reduces strength, degrades genetic makeup, and allows to see through walls. Using the skill creates a flashbang effect, causes the sky to dim, and makes the survivor unhinged.
However, merely having it in the inventory has no drawbacks and grants invisibility.