So, recently, I decided to challenge a friend of mine to a run of Cata with a bit of a different goal. In the past, we’ve done challenges between the two of us for various character builds, with oddball goals. My personal favorite was the “Tony Stark Extravaganza”; play a hyper-intelligence alcoholic in search of power armor, putting most of your skill points into electronics. This time, however, we went with something a little more direct, and I’m amazed we hadn’t tried it before.
The goal is simple: you have five days. Kill EVERYTHING.
Challenge your friends, come up with stupid character builds, see who can get the most kills. Give bonus points for taking out jabberwocks or hulks. Spice it up however you like. Honestly, I’ve never really had this much fast fun with the game. It recontextualizes it completely. It makes the game a race to track down zombie hoards, it makes the time investment in a vehicle way more important since you’re on a timer, it makes chugging every flask of mutagen seem so much more exciting. If you’ve never tried this kind of challenge before, I recommend you do it right now. I’ll wait. Seriously. I don’t know if I’m the only one who’s amazed by how this simple goal change reinvigorates the game, but I just wanted to share a bit anyway.
I only just joined, but it would be fun to have a thread for different “concept runs.” That’s actually the main reason I joined—to share my experience with what I call Urban Nightmare Mode (city size turned all the way up) which I will post about later since I’m on my way out…
I’m playing a size 6 city and 4.0 spawn density, but I ground my character into the ground while I assembled my repeating crossbows and a vehicle, which i’ve been expanding and reinforcing as I move around.
Currently this character is a year and a half in, and i’ve hit 3000 kills, mostly zombies. I’m aiming for 10K kills.
I think ive managed to crack 1000 in 5 days with char that was already a week or so in. Between drugs and living of redbull I never slept and did nothing but kill zombies and pulp them as I went (spawn rate 1.5 or 2?). Sadly it still doesnt count kills from fire etc. so racking up 100s of kills in minutes is still a challenge.
With another day 100 char I pulled my APC up infront of a slime pit and proceeded to empty out all my ammo supplies on blobs till I got bored. Between thermobaric rockets, mininukes and every other damn thing I could get my hands on id say I probably racked up a few thousand kills in less than a day.
Yeah, the challenge sort of falls off after you’re too well established. That’s why putting a time limit from the very start makes it interesting; you gotta MOVE to get things done.
My personal favorite start is “shower victim”, and you’re not allowed to pick starting skills. My best so far is 910 kills after 4 days (dead by zombie dog. Wow. Such pain.) Starting without shoes or pants makes getting an actual inventory tricky, especially since it would take a lot of time to train up your sewing to actually make armor. Makes some of those scavenged weapons kind of worthwhile.