Tips, Tricks, and Newb Questions!

Game Talk The Bunker
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I think we all could help the newb playerbase, so I’m going to post this forum up before Darkling removes my posting rights. My computer is broken so my IPad is my only Internet device I have so I don’t have up-to-date tips.

Try and remain quiet, anything with a noise value of over 40 in the code spawns more Zeds and any other value attracts already spawned Zeds. Also vehicles are rather buggy ATM, they are basically teleporting buildings ATM. But then you can build a mobile base with the system too! Just also as you have enough engine to pull it. Also electric engines are completely silent for the most part. Also you can drop ammo on turrets on vehicles to reload them.

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Reserved(?) I guess.

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Biggest tip I have for anyone new to cataclysm is 1 tile wide windows. You can fight 100 zombies easy with an ok melee wep at a 1 tile wide window, you just hang back and batter them as they try to crawl through.

For other stuff, MP3 players are great to build xp when running about the place, always carry some painkillers and a molli or 2 incase things go wrong.
Its smart for your loadout to include a powerful handgun, to deal with hulks and other annoying specials, even with a melee char. After a few days I generally try to have 2 redhawks in my pants as they are small, powerful and have single shot reload.

And mark anything of interest on your map. Traps, mines, good loot you cant carry, water, military/doperunner/scientist corpses, vehicles etc.

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Unless you are in immediate danger, DO NOT use a shotgun. They are the loudest firearms in the game, and can’t be fitted with a silencer (no Call of Duty “logic” applies at all in this game*). Meaning, a shotgun blast that kills one zombie can attract a dozen more with current spawning rates. Shotguns are recommended for emergency use only, and try and save them and their shells** for that purpose.

Starting with at least one creation point in mechanics and firearms can really help in the early game, especially if you find yourself using guns very often. Both skills allow you to craft a silencer from a pipe and 4 rags OR a muffler (although the latter is often much wiser installed in a vehicle). The mechanics can also allow you to craft a crowbar from a rock and a pipe, and the crowbar itself is very useful; you can QUIETLY open a locked door without destroying it, and it is also a fairly useful weapon in melee combat.

If you plan on concentrating on melee, keep in mind how much you are encumbered, especially your torso. If you have 2 skill in melee, and are wearing a backpack AND a trench coat, you’ll have 3 torso encumbrance, which, with 2 melee, makes you fight with -1 melee skill, meaning you’ll miss very often. If you can get your melee up high enough, such as to level 5, the 3 encumbrance will make you fight at lvl 2 melee skill, which isn’t half-bad.

If you need to raid the city for supplies and ammo, try and limit your city raids to night time. Zombies can’t see you at night, which can really help. Noise is still an issue, though, so just because its dark doesn’t mean you can make all the noise you want; zombies will still find you.

And, most importantly, this:

[quote=“jimboblordofeskimos, post:3, topic:42”]mark anything of interest on your map. Traps, mines, good loot you can’t carry, water, military/doperunner/scientist corpses, vehicles etc.[/quote]Fix’d any grammatical errors, by the way :stuck_out_tongue:

[sup][sub][sup]* the only time CoD logic comes into play is when you reload with a partially-empty gun
** if you find a kinetic bullet puller and want to try making your own bullets, shotgun shells (and any other round you won’t use) can provide you with the required lead and gunpowder[/sup][/sub][/sup]

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I’m fairly new to the game and most of my games ended really soon because of a lot of zombies chasing and killing me. I don’t know why, but after like 2 or 3 ingame hours passed they appear. I’ve read you shouldn’t be too loud because it attracts and spawns zombies but how do I get items then? Is there a proper way to open lockers? I always smash them open and I guess that’s too loud? Usually lockers aren’t locked in a locked house…

A newbie guide would be appreciated!

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Rumpel:
Firstly, which character would you prefer? Melee fighter, scientist with bionics and hacking skills, hunter (knife, bow and arrow, maybe crossbow), cowboy (handguns), standard gun nut in the apocalypse (assault rifles + handgun), car nut (think of a truck. Now add spikes and blades)… There are many choices. Which one would you prefer?

General tips are:
Use the “=” key to reassign items’ letters. For example, using “f” for “flashlight”, “w” for weapon, “s” for sewing kit, “A” for Adderall, and so on might help a lot.
Try getting a vehicle early on (just after the backpack, if possible). With a vehicle, you can easily outrun/run over anything. Just don’t try to run over a hulk with a motorcycle.
Pay special attention to military surpluses (supplies, army helmet, army pants, utility vest, and maybe a kevlar vest ), parking lots (cars, trucks, and motorcycles), sport stores(binoculars, flashlight, lighters, frying pans, sunglasses/safety glasses, maybe a baseball bat), and pharmacies (supplies, Adderall, Oxycodone, Tramadol, and Codeine).

A vehicle: Storage, somewhere to sleep comfortably, reliable transportation. Keep it fueled, beware of mines and traps on the road (driving at 20 mph on streets/roads you’ve never been to might save you from running over traps and losing wheels).
Army Helmet: Well, being headshot usually means game over. Keep your brain safe.
Kevlar Vest: will encumber you and has a considerable weight for weaker characters, but it’ll protect your most attacked area: your torso. I usually leave it in my car’s trunk, only taking it out when I intend to fight something or someone.
Army Pants: They somewhat protect your legs and give you some storage. You might prefer cargo pants (24 storage, but slow you down a little bit).
Binoculars: Doubles your mapping range. That means you can explore that town twice as fast.
Lighters: Need for starting fires and throwing molotovs.
Frying pan: For cooking that delicious squirrel meat.
Sunglasses/safety glasses: Protect your eyes from momentaneous blindness caused by damage. Wolves are particularly good at blinding then eating you. Sunglasses also protect you from the perception penalty in sunny days (also known as glares).
Baseball bat: I’m not a melee expert, but this sounds like a decent melee weapon for starters.
Adderall: This is one of the most important things in PZ. It’s a great stimulant, and not THAT addictive. That means you can (and should) always use it when you’re raiding town for a 25% speed boost (25% speed boost means you can outrun almost anything).
Oxycodone, Tramadol, Codeine: In order of painkilling capabilities. Do you know when you’re so slowed down by pain that you can’t outrun common zombies? I don’t. That’s because I use painkillers. Use your brain, use painkillers.

Get books. Books like Under the Hood (allows you to start messing with cars) and The Big Book of First Aid are an easy way to get some starting skills. If you’re going for bionics, get books on electronics and computers as well.
Garages have everything your car will need. Welders, wheels, steel frames. If you need those, look for a garage.
Explore during day, raid during night. Run through town with your car and binoculars. Once you’ve got it mapped, wait until night and calmly choose which buildings to raid. Night Vision trait or a flashlight will be useful. Adderall will help you outrun occasional zombies. Keep safe mode on.
Swamps are dangerous. Don’t even think about living near swamps. Giant mosquitoes and dragonflies will outrun and kill you before you can even blink. I’m serious. If there are swamps close to the Sciene Lab you’ve chosen as home, you rather move before swamp monsters start spawning and besiege you.

That’s basically it. You’ll learn more as you play (which skills you want, which weapons to get). I could write a FAQ if that would help.

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(sorry for possible language mistakes)
So, kind of my every game character is:

8-8-14-8 (all basic, except Intelligence - is needing for crafting, bionics, reading, etc)

good traits
Fast Healer (incredibly wounded before sleeping - brand new after it)
Fast Reader (read books fast, obviosly)
Fast Learner (learning skills faster - great for me)
Robust Genetics (gives you a bigger chance for good mutations)
Night Vision (possibility to mutate futher, good for night raiding

bad traits
Heavy Sleeper (i didnt see a matter with and without this trait, so i get it)
Poor Hearing (i dont rely on hearing at all)
Glass Jaw (3 points for -15% head hp, lol. get it)
Trigger Happy (usually i’m into rifles and handguns, so i get it)
If you dont like this one, you can take HP ignorant instead. Not big gameplay effect
Weak Stomach (dont eat bad food, and you dont get any problems from this)
Truth Teller (i dont need any conversations with nps’s relyed on lies, so i take it)
Ugly (no comments)

Last two points i usually throw into Dodge and Firearms.
When i spawn, firstly search for Sport Stores (backpack, water purifier, knifes, goggles, hotplate, binoculars, pans)
Military Supplies (food, water, helmet, army pants, backpack, maybe books and flashlights)

If you got all from these shops - get out of town, find a shelter (sewage treatment or laboratory is very good), vehicle, start raiding citys at night, explore.
High Intelligence makes installing bionics, hacking, crafting possible, reading much faster.
All other are based, so you do not suffer from any minuses.

For me, this one is most playable character set.

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Thanks for your help! So that’s what I am basically doing already… trying to get food, clothes and weapons and then other useful items. Though if I walk around in the city zombies appear and chase me. I always thought zombies are night-active. :stuck_out_tongue:
So how do I handle this? Go to the city at night?

I think I like the standard apocalypse thing the most.

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Yes, night-raiding is what feed you. During the day, dont even think of getting into city.
(but if you have a moto, for example, you can grab a binoculars and ride thrue the city for spotting places to raid, when the night comes)

Dont try to get everything you need in the first day.

You spawn in 8.00, Z’s start spawning in 9.30.
If you uzed this time to spot much interesting things, but won’t able to pick them all up, simply, get out of the town and wait until the night comes.
Darkness is your friend.

Dont use flashlights in the city, they will attract Z’s.
Night Vision trait, or amp goggles might help a lot in this

Dont sleep in the city’s. Horde will spawn and wait for you.

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Actually the logic for a reload of a gun with a partially-loaded removable magazine is eject magazine, insert more rounds, re-insert magazine, what you’d call a non-tactical reload. It’s just that due to game balance this operation is much shorter than in reality (about 18 seconds for a Glock 19 instead of something like a minute).
The only way to get a tactical reload is to obtain a “spare magazine” gunmod and have it loaded. When your gun has 0 rounds and you reload, the spare magazine is swapped in and it’s 10x faster than a manual reload.

I’m still pondering making reloads take a more “realistic” amount of time, and balancing it by making spare magazine gunmods more common, and possibly allowing more than 4 gunmods to be applied to a gun. Other mitigating factors would be a separate speedloader item and allowing multiple spare magazines on a single gun.

If reload times were adjusted, non-tactical reloads would be, well, like the name says, non-tactical, you can’t do them in combat because they take a prohibitively long time. This would also serve to widen the variation between removable-magazine guns and single-round reload guns. From a realism POV it’s a clear win, but I’m on the fence from a gameplay POV, I’m still debating it with myself.

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Actually the logic for a reload of a gun with a partially-loaded removable magazine is eject magazine, insert more rounds, re-insert magazine, what you’d call a non-tactical reload. It’s just that due to game balance this operation is much shorter than in reality (about 18 seconds for a Glock 19 instead of something like a minute).
The only way to get a tactical reload is to obtain a “spare magazine” gunmod and have it loaded. When your gun has 0 rounds and you reload, the spare magazine is swapped in and it’s 10x faster than a manual reload.

I’m still pondering making reloads take a more “realistic” amount of time, and balancing it by making spare magazine gunmods more common, and possibly allowing more than 4 gunmods to be applied to a gun. Other mitigating factors would be a separate speedloader item and allowing multiple spare magazines on a single gun.

If reload times were adjusted, non-tactical reloads would be, well, like the name says, non-tactical, you can’t do them in combat because they take a prohibitively long time. This would also serve to widen the variation between removable-magazine guns and single-round reload guns. From a realism POV it’s a clear win, but I’m on the fence from a gameplay POV, I’m still debating it with myself.[/quote]I was talking about the ammo count during reloads. Take, for example your Glock 19, with a 15-round magazine. You fire 7 shots into the zombies, leaving you with 8 rounds left. You reload with a half-empty magazine, but neither CoD nor Cataclysm takes into effect that extra round in the chamber; you always end up with as many rounds as the magazine size listed–in this case, 15. Normally, you’d see somebody fill the magazine leaving the extra round in the firing chamber. A full magazine (15) plus the extra round in the chamber (1) would give you 16 rounds total. Neither game looks at that one extra round.

Either this or Cataclysm characters eject that extra round before reloading :stuck_out_tongue:

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That’d be nice I guess, but doesn’t seem worth the effort :stuck_out_tongue:
(believe me, this would be way more effort than you’d think to implement properly, the reload/unload code is already quite complex)

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There was a way (ages ago) to light the tainted meat on fire, thusly masking your scent… But i see that this option is out of the window, because you cannot light the meat. How do we do that now?

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Clothe yourself with wolf pelts and pray the RNGods let the zombies stop chasing you. But don’t fires mask scent?

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Zombie pheromones [?]

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[quote=“Master Darius, post:15, topic:42”][quote=“Kevin Granade, post:12, topic:42”]That’d be nice I guess, but doesn’t seem worth the effort :stuck_out_tongue:
(believe me, this would be way more effort than you’d think to implement properly, the reload/unload code is already quite complex)[/quote]
Zombie pheromones [?][/quote]

Should have quoted, I was replying to the comment about the mag+1 gun capacity thing.

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Again, the easiest way to deal with hordes, especially earlier on when you wont see nasty specials, is once you get a decent amout of zombies chasing you, find a 1 tile wide window, smash it, then kill all the zombies one after the other, they usually cant hit you at all if you kill them in 2 or 3 hits, which isnt hard with an ok melee wep, I like the hammer for this, but pretty much any basic hand to hand wep will work.

Later on, you will want a powerful handgun for dealing with Hulks and the like, but for normal Zs, boomer, shriekers and grabbers, nothing beats a 1 tile wide window.

And if things get too ugly, hammer down drugs like a fiend and run like hell.

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How often do you have to take vitamins to get maximum benefit? I can’t find it in the source code, but I remember reading somewhere that it’s once a day.

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I can’t really remember, I think it’s twice a day. For the first week you want some vitamins, unless your disease resistant you might catch The Cold or The Flu. Every week there is a chance of infection.

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What happened to debug mode? This NPC is crashing my game and I can’t use Z8 to blow his head out.