My character started clearing out a small town of 16 houses, but after eliminating about 30 zombies from two directions I come near the center to see a huge pile of zombies, at least 20, and probably more. The question then is, is this what it looks like in all towns, or did I just happen to take on a town that had a horde in it as well as the “normal” set?
Logically, the number of zombies in a town ought to be lower than the number of people who lived in it (lower because some ought to have been mangled to a degree where they couldn’t be raised), and I’d expect the number of inhabitants to have been somewhere in the range of 1-4 per house.
Towns will always have hordes in them, even “ghost towns” i.e. towns without any buildings at all. So if you plan on visiting towns be prepared.
That said it sounds like you found a relatively small sized horde for a 16 house town. So fighting them is an option if you are confident enough and don’t want to just lure them away.
Well, the ones I’ve killed have been dealt with by luring them away one at a time (with some failures resulting in more than one, of course), which takes a lot of time, but doesn’t result in much need to wait for fatigue to go away. However, that’s about what my character (and companion) is capable of dealing with, and trying to lure a few of the horde members away at a time will probably result in 5 or more, which will probably result in a need to recover from injuries (and, worse, damaged equipment I can’t repair).
Thus, it seems I’ll have to try the “burn down a building and the horde with it” method.
I don’t know if the horde is small, because the 20 or so mass is what I can see without getting too close (there are some annoying zombies in between that don’t want to be lured away), so the size might be multiple times that. As a contrast to that mass, the two roads I’ve been clearing (somewhat) had zombies sprinkled along them.
A further question regarding hostiles: are the danger descriptions static or relative, i.e. will something that’s described as a serious threat be changed into a minimal threat when a character advances in skills? I’m not exactly confident at taking on “minimal threat” creatures such as regular zombies without risk of getting injured, and one of the horde members was described as something like a feral biter (crocodile like jaws) and a serious threat…
Edit: And another question: If I burn down a house with a cellar (in which something went “bump”), would I be able to enter the cellar after the fire has died down? I assume that would be the case as it seems you can hide in a cellar while it’s burning (if time moves on the level above as well) and emerge after it’s over.
I don’t think threat descriptions are relative, since there isn’t that much in the way of linear “power” growth in the game. Even getting 10 additional strength is not as pronounced as it would be in other games, and the effect is even less dramatic for the other stats. You get better tools, weapons, and skills. However these translate into more & better options, not like “Oh, now this attack can’t kill me”.
Generally, you want to have some amount of armor on every part (100% coverage ideally). So for example, for a while I wore a light survivor suit (100% coverage everywhere but extremities) and supplemented with elbow/knee pads (only like 40% coverage but no encumbrance penalty).
Those snappers are as dangerous as they seem btw. I’ve noticed that they consistently succeed at injuring/damaging my gear where regular Zs do not.
Thanks.
Your gear is dream equipment for me currently. I’ve got some fire fighter gear, some leather, and metal arm guards/greaves. I’m switching between exploration gear that’s more aimed at keeping the PC from overheating and maximizing carrying capacity and battle gear that has minimal capacity and maximum protection. I’ve started using the exploration equipment to carry the battle equipment to battle zones, although it hampers my ability to bring stuff back (on that trip, anyway).
Edit: My targeted house is now burning, although it was a royal pain to get the zombies to care. They were lumped diagonally across the house I set fire to, but didn’t care too much, so I circled around and made a lot of noise (with a whistle). I think the bulk of the horde has been neutralized by the fire, but I had to fight two of the three bosses (and succeeded, which I’m a bit surprised about). However, the partner keeps talking about the need to pulp the corpses, but it seems getting close enough to do that causes my character to date damage (3 tiles away from the fire). Also, I’d like to try to dissect the fire neutralized boss (the two others can’t really be dissected, at least not until the fire is out, because of the weird UI that freezes the display, so you can ignore sound, but then you’re completely vulnerable until enemies start to bite you, and the map in the background isn’t updated, so you can’t see anything approach either. So, how will I be able to pulp the zombie corpses without getting cooked, and how will I be able to dissect the target one without it raising?
You don’t nesseceraly need to worry about the corpses if they died on the fire since they will most likely burn up and not revive as a result. This also means that the boss you want to dissect probably also burned up so no luck there.
Dissection is not something I recommend unless you have a specific goal in mind. It’s very time consuming. Also it works best with minimally damages corpses afaik.
And lol if you think that’s dream gear you should see what I have now.
The boss zombie lies two or so tiles away from the house, so I suspect the body might not be completely destroyed. However, I’ve seen signs that bodies inside have been started to get destroyed, as described.
Dissection: I’ve dissected a number of regular zombies and managed to get two Zombie Pheromone glands. At that time I also used it as a very slow way to train First Aid (I’ve since gotten a book that provides better training for the time spent). Otherwise, the purpose of dissection now is to find any special stuff the special zombies might have, but if they don’t have anything that’s completely wasteful. Thus I had a specific goal, but it might not a useful one…
I’ve dissected 5 (I think) scientists and extracted broken cyber gear that will have to sit on the shelf until I’ve gotten enough skill not to break most of it when trying to take it apart. The lab the scientists were lured away from (I’ve never entered the parking lot) seems to be a very bad place to visit without the means to carpet bomb it with napalm, though, so I keep away from it.
My comment mostly indicates the level of equipment my character has at his disposal currently…
And yet another question:
How do you move a broken vehicle out of the way? I’ve seen you can install yokes and harness horses to a vehicle, assuming you have enough skill, which presumably means you can move a vehicle with a broken engine that way, but what about one with broken wheels? Do you have to replace enough wheels first? Can you tow or push vehicles with other vehicles?
The smaller ones can be grab. The ones w/o wheels, my first choice was to put wheels on em and then either tow em or check if the engine and controls is still working. If not, my last resort is to push or destroy them out with another vehicle. And yes, a vehicle w/ or w/o engines (be careful on not driving over your horses if you do have wprking engine on the vehicle lmao) can be use with yoked and harness.
So it seems I’ve found out something in one of the recent experimentals. Shovels can’t be used to clear wreckage. All I get is “If only you had a shovel…” message.
Tested with basic digging stick and plastic snow shovel. Or does wreckage require higher end digging than 2?
Edit: I found an Entrenching Tool which has Digging 3 and I could clear rubble normally. It seems I was right.
So do Mouse mutants have any options for wearable storage like backpacks? Or do they have to basically rely on vehicles to carry around anything substantial?
New question:
Are companions assumed to be the same size as the PC? Tailoring allows you to refit clothing to fit your character, and I currently assume that will also make items fit the companion(s). Is that correct? If not, is there any way to adapt things to fit them (and to find out which items found fit them)?
What happens if the PC changes shape (as far as I understand mutations can do that), with regards to fitting clothing/armor for companions?
Currently clothing either has the FIT flag or it doesn’t. Yes, that does mean that the pair of cargo pants that you tailored to fit your male, ST 17, 6’7", 350 lb pre-threshold bear mutant can be given to his female, ST 4, 5’1", 90 lbs NPC ally and it fits her just as well as it fits him.
Yes, the devs know this makes no sense.
There have been some proposals to fix this but nothing has been done yet.
There are many things (in games in general) that don’t make logical sense, often because it’s either been overlooked, or the effort to improve it so it does couldn’t (yet) be justified (competing with everything else that beckons for improvement).
I’m fine with knowing how it works (not saying I wouldn’t like it better if the system was improved), so I know that equipping fitting items on the companion doesn’t result in unexpected penalties.
And, by the way, thanks for working on this rather interesting game.
A couple of new questions:
Dishwasher or washing machine, which items go where? The luxury RV I was lucky enough to find has both, but which do I use for which items? I’ve used the logic that softer stuff go into the washing machine and harder stuff go into the dishwasher, and so far it seems to have worked out, but I think I’ve throws some jewelry into the washing machine as well.
It wouldn’t make sense with a hard division based on category, as clothing is one, and the spare parts resulting from clothing through cutting/disassembling is another.
I found a desk fan and hauled it back, thinking it might be useful when it’s hot, but it doesn’t take any batteries and it can’t be activated. Am I right in guessing that it’s only a source of some spare parts (web searching indicates it once was used as a component in a nonsensical way, but no longer is)?
Both of your assumptions are correct. Washing machines clean clothes and soft objects while dishwashers are for hard objects. And desk fans are among many other items thats only use is getting scrapped for parts.
I’m not sure if a washing machine can wash jewelry because all non gold jewelry is pretty worthless so I usually don’t bother washing any I find.
My attempt to wash jewelry and binoculars seemed to work OK. I’d sort of hoped copper could be used as copper, silver as silver (a number of real world usages), gold as gold, and platinum as platinum (used e.g. as a catalyst).