I can’t play it without cheats. I can’t run fast enough to escape zombies, and if I try to fight I get instantly bitten with melee weapons anyways. I can’t go anywhere near the city or else I get instantly mauled by one or even just a few zombies. How do you people do decent at least?
If you’re unable to outrun regular zombies you’re either running through bushes or other difficult terrain, in pain, or overencumbered, you need to figure out which of these is happening and address it.
Also particularly when starting out, you should rarely need to run from zombies, the key is not to engage with them unless you know you can win, ideally one-on-one. This is especially important for special zombies like zombie dogs, since they CAN outrun you unless you’re exceptionallly fast.
Basically leave safe mode on (toggled with ‘!’) so it’ll alert you when hostile monsters are in sight, and move very carefully any time you have to toggle safe mode off to move.
Ideally avoid combat entirely until you have some decent equipment, and more ideally have built up a little bit of skill.
When you do have to fight, make sure to carefully approach a group of monsters just until one or two start moving toward you, then back off to a safe distance from the main group before dealing with them.
Also bushes, windowframes, and other difficult terrain are your friends, lead zombies onto them, which will slow them down, even while they’re attacking you.
Finally, most zombies are slower than you, for regular ones, you can kite them by waiting for them to move next to you, hitting them once, then backing off, repeat until dead.
If you’re having trouble getting started, get skills.
Stats are great for skilled players who can survive long term through the early part of the game and want higher caps, but newer players should favour skills a lot more heavily. Decide what sort of combat you want to do, and purchase skills to support it! If you want to do melee, put some points in melee, a damage type (I’d recommend bashing or piercing, since most early decent weapons are of those types) and dodge, and also mechanics, fabrication, and survival.
Starting with a strong base of skills to work from makes the game much much easier.
General method I use for survival is to lure a zombie onto a bush, hit it once/twice, and then back away to another bush. Repeat until the zombie is dead, then repeat it until all the zombies in an area are dead.
I also like to toggle on auto-safe mode (you can set it to be on by default in the options) with ", that way if I forget to turn it back on it automatically does so after a while.
Also you might want to consider watching this. It’s a little long, but he does a fairly good job at explaining some of the basics of surviving.
Edit: Developer ninjas! 
What do I do about Zombie Dogs? Their very annoying.
If absolutely possible try to avoid them early. They are faster than you, so about the only way I’ve found is just fo find a bush to give you a free hit or so, and then just man-up and kill them as quickly as possible; running away or attempting to kite them just leads in you getting even more damage then you would fighting (try to not do this when other zombies are around though!).
Once you get a digging stick/shovel you can make a row of pits somewhere, and those should slow down zombie dogs enough that you can use them to kill them without taking damage just as you do with zombies and bushes.
I don’t think this game is for me. Sorry.
Sorry to hear that. Feel free to hang around the forums if you have any ideas for things that might improve the game, we’re always welcoming to new ideas on how to improve or make the game more accessible. And who knows, maybe you’ll find some tactic that you can enjoy and allows you to survive again.
It takes a bit of practice. I used to die alot. I mean, I could see the corpses of my previous characters everywhere. But after a while I managed to get the hang of it.
You can still die easily at higher lvls if you make silly mistakes but one of the fun things about this game is that the world is not reseted when you die so you can still reclaim your stuff and continue what you were making in your previous life, even if that is a bit of a cheat.
Jager, the person to quit Cata after dying a bunch.
Do you want to be the person we (kinda) mock for not having the balls to play cata? Do you give you after a few deaths in a regular video game? No! You keep trying! Don’t be a lazy arse.
Let’s look back: the first few games … omg, I die all the time, WHY?
Now: Come at me, MORE MORE MORE!
-> when your char looks like that, after roughly an ingame year (4x14 days), then you’re quite set, but, well, it’s still deadly.
(yes, I switched off “Skill Rust”, but the “Forgetful” I got through mutation, it’s not a starting trait)
Don’t give up :), learn it by playing. Get better … it’s quite easy.
Yeah, this game is really designed for people who want a game that wants them dead and doesn’t tell them ANYTHING. Recent builds have made the game considerably harder, because that was necessary.
This game has a sort of escape velocity related to time. If you manage to survive the first few days, you have a higher chance to survive the next few days, and so on.
I think the big problem right now is once you’ve survived several months in post-apocalyptia, the game becomes too EASY, because your character is egregiously overpowered and fisticuffs with Hulks for breakfast. And sure, you can ratchet up the spawn rate now, but increasing the number of zombies to kill is not increasing the difficulty. There should be harder monsters and zombies to fight once you get to higher levels, and, so level 0 characters don’t get killed instantly, these monsters should only be triggered to spawn once your character’s combat skills are at a certain level.
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I’m pretty confident that my testicles don’t markedly affect my ability to play Cata.
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If Jager’s not enjoying the game, then it’s not worth xyr time.
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Dynamic Spawn was one method for controlling zed difficulty…
remember, nailboard is your friend
My friend used to be knife spear…I can’t craft him now.
1 survival should be enough to unlock the recipe.
The knife spear is like the only melee weapon I use.
I preferred it when it was called Steel Spear, because it reminded me of the Steel Knights from SaGa Frontier II who also used Steel Spears, and how absurdly powerful they were.
Honestly, the crowbar is my favorite starting weapon. You get easy access to the components right from the start, and it can open doors.
[quote=“Lost, post:18, topic:3411”]I preferred it when it was called Steel Spear, because it reminded me of the Steel Knights from SaGa Frontier II who also used Steel Spears, and how absurdly powerful they were.
Honestly, the crowbar is my favorite starting weapon. You get easy access to the components right from the start, and it can open doors.[/quote]
Hey! It’s The One Freeman.
I prefer to have a rapier as a starting weapon, but that never happens as zombies tend to fill mansions now, and mansion are considerably rarer in recent builds.
So basically, I just start with a stick and bash zombies over the head with it until I get something better. I prefer not to defile the starting shelter for some reason. I guess it’s just asthetics.