Or track down a sewage plant. In my current game, I’m 4 for 4 on finding vehicles at sewage plants, though one was a bicycle.
Yeah, odds are good at sewage treatment plants. Last one I visited had just a two-way radio and no vehicles though, which is a bit unfair 
How do you get the door open at sewage plants? The one with the computer? I have three of them nearby (and yes, all of them had working(!) vehicles (motorbike, quad, and a bike).
Wandering the countryside is definitely the key in static spawn.
Targets are:
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Fema Camps - These are relatively simple to clear (usually takes an hour or two with a nail board from the shelter). Some have guns. Most have some food. All will have a couple of useful items like batteries, flashlights, lighters, and some storage clothing.
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Car Parks - A vehicle will be a game changer. Anything from a sedan up can be used to keep you safe from the endless wolves and bears of the game, and you can use them for vital storage space or hit-and-run raids. The only problem is fuel.
Mines often have petrol pumps, which are useful for filling up if you can’t get into town.
If you get a flatbed or a semi, you’re sorted. Get to driving skill 1/2 and mow your way through a town until you’ve cleared out a route to a petrol station. You are now basically set for good.
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Random bodies - These will provide vital water supplies early in the game, and perhaps the odd ID card for a few extra goods from labs and bunkers.
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Frying pan/pot - Once you have one of these, water will cease to be a problem forever. You can just boil clean water up whenever you need it!
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LMOE bunkers - Cos y’know. Free stuff!
I had just gone to 2 FEMA camp and found not only a caged hulk in one but 4 CMBs in the other.
Ok. I’ve reached summer in static spawn, without finding a vehicle.
I’ve cleared my first town (nearly).
Here’s how I did it.
Priority 1: Find a frying pan or pot.
This is the most important thing you can do (Other than perhaps finding a water purifier, if you get lucky). With the infinite wood you can get from forests, and the nigh infinite lighters you can find, you will now have no problem making fresh water for yourself. Obviously you may need to find a toilet or river (or LMOE shelter :D) for the water, but that’s generally not a difficult task.
Food will be easy enough to get hold of. Either just survive off meat, or root about for vegetables once your survival is high enough. Whatever you do, you’ll be fine. Food is harder to get than water once you’ve got a pot, but it’s not really a challenge.
Priority 2: Get throwing skill up
Again. You want to work with what you’ve got available. Throwing is perfect for this, because you’re basically guaranteed to be able to make wooden spears, which are an expendable and reasonably strong throwing weapon. Make yourself a stack of 20, ride to the edge of a town, and you should be able to clear a couple of houses with throwing at about 4/5ish.
Throwing also gives you a way to deal with the CONSTANT cougar and wolf attacks. Seriously. You need a decent way to kill them off without having to stop to lure them into a bush every time.
Wake up every morning and chuck everything you have against a wall (excluding glass items) until you’ve run out of XP. Seriously, make this your only priority, and you’ll have 5/6 throwing by the first week, easily. That’s more than enough to deal with wolves and cougars, as well as spiders and even bears if you get some lucky shots and have good items to throw.
Eventually your throwing will be good enough for stage 3
Priority 3: Vehicle/take a town
Eventually you’re going to need to be mobile. There’s just not enough resources/ interesting stuff in one location to keep you there for more than a year or two. You want to be able to move your base somewhere new, and you will want a vehicle with lots of space to help you carry this around.
Taking over a town can be a good way to get vehicle spawns, since there’s usually a car park or two. Otherwise wander the countrying systematically until you find a sedan. You can upgrade them fairly easily with crap you find in the street and helicopter crashes.
What has worked well for me is using the trap fields to my advantage. Lure the zombies into it, then use the bear traps to kill off lots of zombies. After your traps skill gets up you can make more. Also most trap fields will give you a crossbow.
Yeah, trap caches are pretty nice. You really don’t need much skill in traps to make a beartrap though, think it’s mechanics 1 traps 1, or maybe M1 T2 can’t quite remember.
They’re lighter than spiked boards though, which is weird.
Also once you have beartraps dear lord don’t neglect training your trap skill. My longest character ever tried to disarm a shotgun trap and got a blast in the face. Thankfully, he survived it and I went back to lick my wounds.
aaaaand I just had a power cut dropping me back a good hour or so. Damn it. Oh well, at least I saved before sniping the turrets…
[quote=“Jaginun, post:12, topic:380”][quote=“Chutney, post:8, topic:380”]I do like the static spawn how ever it would be good if you could merge it with the old one.
Where you still get the free time at the start, zombie spawn, then a day or 2 later the specials start to show. …[/quote]
Yeah, I agree, something …[/quote]
methinks these would break the ‘one world - multiple players’ experience you get, if you were to run a second guy in your world…
with the upcoming stone-knives and pots we should all be able to live well until we come across a few awesome mutations, err, dead mil guys with knives and backpacks. so lets wait and see how a no-contact-with-anyone survivalist-with-one-point-in-archery will play in 0.3 and leave the mechanics so that multiplayer remains an option for the future.
I can give some insight on the viability of your proposed build, as I’ve been playing with the latest version from github for a while now.
To create a survivalist able to be self-sustained at character creation you’d need the following skills as of now: tailor 2, cooking 2, survival 3, construction 3. And either archery 2 or some throwing. Then you’d need to get ASAP: string 3ft x2 (for the longbow, you can’t use sinews or plant fiber for some reason), thread (you can’t craft that from plant fiber either), bandages/first aid (you can’t brew alcohol, so you can’t create bandages yourself), and probably an extra lighter.
You’d now need to find a forest (wood for construction materials and to create tools) next to a river (infinite water), but away from swamps, to start your cabin project, or fight a bear for a cave (also next to a river, and woods). You’d get sinews and fur pelts from cougars and wolves, which would allow you to craft containers (pouches, backpacks and waterskins) and clothes (warmth and protection from rain). You could also try to settle close to a triffid spawn (but not too close) for less perishable food and plant fibers.
As you can see, you need quite a lot of skills to get you started and you still depend on cities and other human locations for essential items. But it allows you to be on your own using less resources than in 0.2. You are still forced to settle down, though, as you can’t risk being caught by acid rain while exploring on foot (you should wait for summer to start exploring for real). And your morale boosts are limited to eating meat, so you can’t go outside without some water proof clothes when raining.
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EDIT: stressed “as of now”, which should be read as “in its current unfinished state”.
It’s still work in progress.
I guess I should have stressed that more. But even in its state it’s more survivorman-friendly than 0.2. I like that.
[quote=“kenoxite, post:30, topic:380”]I can give some insight on the viability of your proposed build, as I’ve been playing with the latest version from github for a while now.
To create a survivalist …[/quote]
lol, that was a really cool post, but how can you spend points on skills man! no way! putting a point into archery is already a character defining move, but only one i could live with if one can knap a crude knife out there too.
here i was hoping to make arrows using stone-knives and then, as you ‘got’, sinews to make bows, while scrounging by, food-poisoned and depressed as heck, lugging heavy sacks made of fur or leather patches while foraging for berry-like-anythings to make anykind-of-fruit-juice while looking for a place with potable water.
what about fire btw? and what about that acid rain? there ought to be something tiny, like a sleeping bag, that lets you get hurt while you’re constructing it from the fur on your back so that there’s a choice between melting on the run home or melting while hunkering down. short of meds, one should be able to make it in the woods, especially with a movable turret like the npc at (or shooting) your back. eventually you’d run out of rags to stop the bleeding you’ll suffer from bears, i’d be ok if that was what forced me into town. other stuff, not so much?
the post apocalypse; a place for the unskilled unintelligent illiterate rock-throwers (with bows) 
at least in my mind. as is, part of me is sticking fingers in my ears while humming loudly so that i won’t hear anything about 03, lest it come with the ‘start-over, your save-files are now incompatible’ nonsense that plagued old versions. still good to hear what’s happening out there! lets hope there’s an artful coder in the mix who can have maps update themselves gracefully between versions.