What is your raiding gear?

What do you carry when you are raiding towns? I tend to reach this state after a while of searching.

Weapons:

  • melee weapon (crowbar at first, then later a nail bat or similar, then hopefully a sword)
  • gun (sometimes doubling as melee weapon}
  • 3-4 knife spears

Tools:

  • crowbar
  • hacksaw (sometimes)
  • shopping cart (if I find one)
  • extra ammunition
  • pocket knife
  • bone needle/sewing kit
  • matchbook/lighter

Clothes:

  • backpack & duffel bag
  • helmet
  • reinforced EVERYTHING

Food:

  • a ton of food and drink I found
  • empty bottles & waterskins for water

Drugs:

  • bandages
  • pain meds
  • a ton of cocaine (very useful)

Extra junk:

  • a few rags (I usually have to close to melee, so I need to re-reinforce my clothes)

Heavy survivor armor
Survivor helmet
100% coverage armored boots and gloves
A tiny gun, preferably accurized pistol
Sewing kit, soldering iron, all drugs that don’t take space
Tiny amount of food, there’s enough in houses. A bottle of atomic coffee in case of tiredness.

By early midgame, I start using fists or unarmed weapons rather than huge axes and nodachis, because by then I can punch hulks to death just fine.

My very early game loadout is similar, but I will as soon as I have food for a few days, a few tools, a few books, and at least a temporary base, I’ll switch to a ranged build. I tend to find that going with a primarily melee loadout (even a throwing-focused one) is too risky until you get some better armor (some flavor of survivor.) YMMV, of course.

Which type of ranged build I switch to depends on what I’ve found. If I have very little in the way of tools/skill books, I’ll go to an archery build. You’ll need to grind up your archery skill before it’s even remotely useful, but it is worth it. Even if you’re stuck in a very resource-poor portion of town with no skill books and no hacksaw, if you can work up to a longbow and heavy wooden arrows you’re in pretty good shape. If you have a hacksaw and can find a certain skill book or two, you can rock a reflex recurve bow with metal arrows, which are pretty formidable.

However, if I’ve found a wrench, a hacksaw, a welder, and a copy of Under the Hood, I will go in a different direction. See, once you have Mechanics at 2, you can disassemble cars to train mechanics up further. Once you get to a fairly high level in your Mechanics and Fabrication skills, there are some very nice weapons that you can craft with infinitely craftable ammunition. This means that you can train up your rifle (and handgun) skills a little before heading out to use them in actual combat. Moreover, a lot of the fancy end-game weapons use the rifle skill, so it’s nice if you’ve been practicing for a while by the time you find them.

By midgame I’ll sometimes switch back to a melee loadout just to boost my various melee skills. (Of course, this is pointless if you play with normal skill rust. I usually go with IntCap.) As Coolthulhu mentioned, once you get good armor with 100% coverage, your loadout against garden-variety Z’s doesn’t matter as much.

Right now

Leather touring suit
Leather corset
2 leather belts
MOLLE pack
Military rucksack
Tactical dump pouch
Leather gloves
Armored fingerless gloves
Gas mask
Balaclava
Compression shorts
Holster
2 sheath’s
Drop leg pouches
Knee-high boots
Ankle holster
Wool socks

M4a1 with a sling and under barrel shotgun.
Colt 1860 (holstered)
Flint lock pistol (holstered)
Plastic canteen of whiskey
Butcher knife (sheathed)
Survival knife (sheathed)
hack saw
rubber hose
lighter
pot
screwdriver
wrench
bandages
cigarettes

I tend to keep most of my tools on the back of my car, a long with a pair of Duffel bags for the loot to go in.