So, I just recently started playing again after passively watching the GitHub log for a few months. The game definitely feels…harder. My old strategies still seem to work, but I have to be way, way more cautious, and there seem to be a lot more opportunities for the RNG to screw you over.
Probably my favorite death so far was when I checked the map immediately upon spawning to discover that my starting shelter had spawned about 8 overmap tiles from a triffid grove. I figured I’d roll with it, and that a nice nearby source of veggie chunks might not be so bad. I closed the map, and I had taken one step when a triffid queen’s tree attack broke down the shelter wall, allowing a vinebeast to see me and the starting NPC. I tried to run, but the NPC responded by firing a flamethrower in the shelter which set me on fire while the vinebeast poisoned me…yeah.
I had another character who was doing alright. I had found some reasonably nice gear, and was packing 4 knife spears with throwing at about 6-7, which is a passible early game loadout for dealing with garden-variety zombies. However, I was doing some recon and I wandered a little too close to a mi-go that was hanging around some dead scientists. It was much faster than me, and the thrown spears barely scratched it. Maybe if I’d been packing explosives.
My current character is doing about as well as I could hope for. I spawned near a mansion with a library, so I was recently able to read/grind my way up to a reflex-recurve bow and metal arrows, which makes fighting significantly easier. However, I’ve barely gone 20 map tiles from the starting shelter. (I’ve been to the outskirts of town a handful of times, including one rather close call involving a hulk in a garden supply store.) I’m trying get together the materials and skills to build the bolt driver, after which I’ll be a little less paranoid about scouting the overmap. I need to find a good base site.
