Tips, Tricks, and Newb Questions!

[Random_dragon]

Welp, you’re fucked.

Feathers and fur are good for you. owo

I think the Medical and maybe Slime categories also have disease resistance, so that’s good for not catching the flu.

[secretfire]

Another question. I think this one is partially my own fault.

How useful is stuff like the Cephalapod Prime Intelligence or the slime doubling of intellect? I usually try to start off my characters with the highest intellect I can afford anyways. My current character has a 14 Int, and I’m on day 11, and I’ve gotten chemistry from 0 to 8. By the time I manage to get past the Cephy threshold I’ll easily have gotten Cooking to 10, and from what I’m reading, 10’s are either the max skills or will be shortly. Part of this may be/is my fault for turning Skill Rust off, but I honestly find skill rust to be annoying and unrealistic over the game’s timeframe, the only time I turned it on (back when I first tried CATA: DDA) I had skills rusting faster then I could practice them … while I was using them. It was crazy. I think the only skill I’ve rusted IRL is programming, and thats because its been -10 years-. And I mean, its not as if I couldn’t relearn it if I had free-time and didn’t have to work so much. (Edit: Man, it’d be awesome to program CATA stuff. Alas.)

So, you know, if I get Cooking to 10 and then get past the cephy threshold, what good would that huge bonus to int do me? Do I just ‘need to turn back on skill rust’ to balance the game? I kinda like the thought of playing a super-intelligent character, but looking at the wiki it doesn’t look as if there really is a difference between a 28 int Threshold Slime, or a 20 int threshold Cephalopod, and a 10 or 12 or 14 int normal human. Both can max their skills from 0 to 10 in everything non-combat just by reading books for a season…and practicing is actually pretty damn inferior to reading books, I’ve found. IRL, reading books and studying is inferior to doing, but in game, almost nothing you can ‘do’ gains your skill, everything is ‘too simple’ or whatever, and you practically need to have coded the game, I guess, to figure out how to practice anything by any way other then reading.

[deoxy]

almost nothing you can ‘do’ gains your skill, everything is ‘too simple’ or whatever, and you practically need to have coded the game, I guess, to figure out how to practice anything by any way other then reading.

To avoid the problem of disassembling and reassembling flashlights to get to 10+ electronics skill (and other such silliness - making clean water getting you to 10+ cooking skill, etc), the only thing that trains a skill is the hardest stuff you can make - for instance, to train level 5 skill, you need to make stuff that requires a 5 skill to make. Once you know that rule, it’s pretty easy to know which stuff to make…

…except for those levels where you can’t find anything to make. Getting from 8 to 9 on construction, for instance, is a real pain (I found that making and smashing metal doorways near a zombie-smashed car is pretty good).

And I COMPLETELY agree with you on the skill-rust thing. Yes, conceptually, it’ a good idea, but the execution is… very, very lacking.

I beat 997 zombies to death with my bare hands, YESTERDAY, and this morning, I’m getting unarmed combat skill rust. Uh, sure. :-/

Books vs doing: some kind of split between “knowledge of what to do” and “skill at actually doing it” would be really nice on this. Might also fix the skill rust problem, actually, too.

[Noodles_of_Doom]

[quote=“deoxy, post:7283, topic:42”]And I COMPLETELY agree with you on the skill-rust thing. Yes, conceptually, it’ a good idea, but the execution is… very, very lacking.

I beat 997 zombies to death with my bare hands, YESTERDAY, and this morning, I’m getting unarmed combat skill rust. Uh, sure. :-/[/quote]

I wanna just pipe in and voice my approval for this. Skill rust is kinda wacky and really frustrating.

[deoxy]

[quote=“Noodles of Doom, post:7284, topic:42”][quote=“deoxy, post:7283, topic:42”]And I COMPLETELY agree with you on the skill-rust thing. Yes, conceptually, it’ a good idea, but the execution is… very, very lacking.

I beat 997 zombies to death with my bare hands, YESTERDAY, and this morning, I’m getting unarmed combat skill rust. Uh, sure. :-/[/quote]

I wanna just pipe in and voice my approval for this. Skill rust is kinda wacky and really frustrating.[/quote]

To be a little more fair, each day in default Cataclysm is basically a week (13 weeks in a season, and there are 14 days in a season, default), it’s more like

I beat 997 zombies to death with my bare hands, [s]YESTERDAY[/s] [b]last week[/b], and this morning, I'm getting unarmed combat skill rust.

So, having been completely fair about it, let me just say… that it’s still just completely ridiculous.

[deoxy]

Is there any way to get things from the ground into a cart (or other container) without picking them up individually? Any little trick? I thought I’d try stanind on the cart and chopping a tree in planks so they’d fall into the cart instead of on the ground, but you can’t construct while in a vehicle…

Picking up all the planks gets REALLY old. Some kind of “get all this stuff one by one and put it into this container right here until it’s full or the stuff runs out”, even if it didn’t save any game time, would be REALLY nice.

[stk2008]

im sure the advanced inventoy manager can do this? but I may be wrong

[Arek_PL]

hey i found awesome bug, when you are cuffed your handcuffs can stuck inside zombie like all other weapons but good luck with hitting zombie with it

[Noodles_of_Doom]

hey i found awesome bug, when you are cuffed your handcuffs can stuck inside zombie like all other weapons but good luck with hitting zombie with it

I like to think you’re choking the zombie with your handcuffs.

[KA101]

On mutations v. skills: IN probably helps if you’ve not read up.

[quote=“Chezzo, post:7261, topic:42”]Kryxx: I talked to firefighters about that scene in Walking Dead, s05e05:

Where they climbed on top of the fire truck, and sprayed the zombies to death with the fire hose.

I said, “No way that works. Hollywood nonsense. You can’t use water to destroy something’s brain. Can you?”

The firefighters were like, “Well, on the show they didn’t turn on the pumper, and it doesn’t work without that, but HELL YEAH YOU CAN. We thought that scene would have been over much quicker than was depicted. If I sprayed this at your head, the flesh wouldn’t melt off slow, like on the show. You would no longer have a head the second this crazy amount of water hit you.”[/quote]

Uh, yeah, if anything the DDA fire engine’s water cannon is a riot gun rather than a master stream (Wiki link). A proper fire engine water cannon should put out 520 or so volume of water, minimum, per turn and apparently is capable of wall-demo. Handheld hoses, though, are not nearly as impressive.

(Cf. the MGS2 scene at the end of the Tanker. That’s a water cannon, not some laser thing.)

[Random_dragon]

I kinda imagined the water cannon was meant to be the riot-control type, yeah.

The wall-shredding deluge gun would likely be OP as fuck if you could keep it supplied with water.

Now if water tanks could be used with nonpotable water…or better yet, sewage.

[secretfire]

So, I’m using the experimental build.

I’m trying to make mutagen. I’ve noticed it has two tool requirements. The first is a chemical-making tool with a quality of 2 or better. The only chemical making tool I’ve found thus far is a chemistry set, and I looked at a hotplate, a still, and several other things.

the OTHER requirement is either a chemistry set, or a hotplate, or a still, or a fire.

Why isn’t it just ‘requires a chemistry set’?

I’m not disputing it should require special tools, I’m just saying, it seems redundant.

[Thwap]

What factors can cause NPC survivors to attack the player on sight?

[Random_dragon]

Why isn’t it just ‘requires a chemistry set’?

Not sure if any other items also have a chemistry quality of 2, but it’s presumably to be consistent, since some items require a chem quality of 1, which the pot provides.

What factors can cause NPC survivors to attack the player on sight?

Bandit NPCs, primarily. In theory enough ugliness from mutations MIGHT, but I think it only affects persuasion checks in dialogue.

[Coolthulhu]

What factors can cause NPC survivors to attack the player on sight?

Appropriate values of fear and trust or faction that hates you.
Fear is higher if the player is armed (more if with a gun, even more if the NPC doesn’t have a gun), strong, very ugly or very beautiful or if the NPC is hurt. Lower if the player is hurt, weak, unarmed or drunk.
Trust is higher if the player is unarmed or beautiful. Lower if player is ugly, not sober, armed with a gun or if the fear is high.

If the trust is low, the NPC can be only hostile or afraid. If fear is too low, the NPC deems you pathetic and tells you to go away, mugs you or kills you. If fear is too high, the NPC will flee. Resistance to fear depends on NPC’s bravery (random stat that only NPCs have).

So if you want to avoid getting mugged, keep a gun in hand at all times. Doesn’t matter if it’s not loaded.
Factions that hate you (bandits?) will not be flee when afraid, but they can still want to talk.

[troll_from_behind]

im sure the advanced inventoy manager can do this? but I may be wrong

Yeah, if you want to move ALL the 1000 plus 1 say logs one by one.
There really should be “Move all”-feature with inventory management.

[Arek_PL]

[quote=“Thwap, post:7293, topic:42”]What factors can cause NPC survivors to attack the player on sight?

Appropriate values of fear and trust or faction that hates you.
Fear is higher if the player is armed (more if with a gun, even more if the NPC doesn’t have a gun), strong, very ugly or very beautiful or if the NPC is hurt. Lower if the player is hurt, weak, unarmed or drunk.
Trust is higher if the player is unarmed or beautiful. Lower if player is ugly, not sober, armed with a gun or if the fear is high.

If the trust is low, the NPC can be only hostile or afraid. If fear is too low, the NPC deems you pathetic and tells you to go away, mugs you or kills you. If fear is too high, the NPC will flee. Resistance to fear depends on NPC’s bravery (random stat that only NPCs have).

So if you want to avoid getting mugged, keep a gun in hand at all times. Doesn’t matter if it’s not loaded.
Factions that hate you (bandits?) will not be flee when afraid, but they can still want to talk.[/quote]

drunk deformed guy with crowbar is enought to make someone flee O_o

[Valpo]

[quote=“secretfire, post:7292, topic:42”]So, I’m using the experimental build.

I’m trying to make mutagen. I’ve noticed it has two tool requirements. The first is a chemical-making tool with a quality of 2 or better. The only chemical making tool I’ve found thus far is a chemistry set, and I looked at a hotplate, a still, and several other things.

the OTHER requirement is either a chemistry set, or a hotplate, or a still, or a fire.

Why isn’t it just ‘requires a chemistry set’?

I’m not disputing it should require special tools, I’m just saying, it seems redundant.[/quote]

simply because you need something to heat the substances in a controled fashion. The chemistry set has a hotplate for this purpose. but any other hotplate can double as a substitute for this purpose.Imagine a chemistry set as a set of tools along which you have a hotplate… now you need the chemistry set and its hotplate… or any other hotplate with charges. There are other recepies as i looked last which specificly require chemistry set charges though.

[Random_dragon]

drunk deformed guy with crowbar is enought to make someone flee O_o

If Freeman’s Mind is correct, you should always fear the drugged-up guy with a crowbar.

[Azrad]

Is there a type of house that’s just radioactive? As I was exploring through a city, I entered a house filled with zombies. Inside was filled with rubble, so I guessed the zombies swarmed the place and caved the inside in. I kinda found it strange that none of the outer walls and the door was broken into… and the room with the rubble didn’t have broken windows.

Anyways, I explore the building much later, once I found a radiation scrubber and a hazmat suit. As it turns out, some of the spots in the house are radioactive. Dug through the place to see why it’s radioactive, but found nothing. No broken atomic thingy leaking radiation. Just a bunch of nails and splintered wood.

So… is there any reason why the place is radioactive? Like a few houses that are filled with traps and a lot of loot? There was a crater nearby, but it was a few streets away and that area in-between the house and crater didn’t have radiation at all.