Well, now that the speed run is over, I’m back to my long-runner. Somewhere along the line I might try an illiterate character. The speed run challenge pretty much taught me that the only thing I need is some tailoring and mechanics skills.
Also, one thing I noticed about the RM power armor. Not sure if it’s an exploit or a bug. Unpowered, it’s 20 encumbrance prevents any helmets to be worn. However, powering it brings its encumbrance to five, and then you can wear another helmet. Deactivating it keeps the helmet on, leaving a really defended head.
A quick story summoning up my current character, an Unwilling mutant who escaped the lab.
Day 136:
Hulks, disease, fire, a teleport mishap, starvation. Intruders into my shelter with machine guns. It’s not my fault I’m a hideous, tentacled troglobyte who slowly dies at the touch of sunlight. Why does everyone hate me so bad? They all want to hurt me. They always point sharp things and guns at me, and tell me my home is theirs, or try to rob me. But they don’t count on little ol’ me. All of them have ended up in the cooking pot. I made a cloak from their skins, too. I live isolated…so isolated. A LMOE shelter deep in the woods. Why can’t they just leave me alone? The bad people and the dead people, both want to kill me. I just like to read my books and dismantle old scrapyard cars. I know these woods like the back of my hand…well…tentacle appendage anyways. If you see some lonely little woods, with a little shelter there and cars around, all in states of scraps and dismantle…keep on walking wanderer. I don’t mean harm to folks…but I need some fresh leather for a lampshade. And I’ve almost perfected that human haggis recipe, too.
Sounds somewhat like the opposite of my long runner. A glorious elf-a in a somewhat palatial underground lair, who gets along with NPCs she meets… who just happens to kill them half the time because she adores soylent shakes.
Needed some solar panels for my deathmobile after i noticed a 4% power drop over the night with only the cameras, fridges, and aisle lights running. Decided to take Hogwild since i havent seen many electric vehicles around the edge of the city. Pissed off some hoards getting to close and lost both the wing mirrors off my motorcycle… ohwell they were really just for looks but i dont think im going to replace them for the 3rd time. Found 2 electric cars and salvaged the batteries and panels off them. Even better I stopped to dig up a crash site and found some plutonium cells, I may pack the Deathmobile with every battery I can find and crank up the minireactor until i have a full charge. In the mean time presishable food is getting low and summer is coming, I think its time to hit that saved up spider basement or do some serious food scrounging.
I’ve managed to bait the lizard into a good run around in basement, wasting a magazine of the MP5 I yoinked from my starter NPC, and managing to chuck an exploding veinreaver at it TWICE. The same veinreaver, in fact. >w>
And after much savescumming…I’m still not much closer to killing it. But guess what it took me many tries before I figured out?
Fire breath is way less lethal if you’re standing in shallow water.
Yeah, my character is heaps ugly and weird so I guess they think I’m working for the zambies. The closest I came to death was when I accidentally teleported with a disassembled teleporter pad teleporter into a sealed containment area. There was no way out, and I was slowly freezing to death (because ice lab). I’d been alive so long I was sad that this felt like the end. Then, by pure chance, I was able to use the computer to hack the main doors open, and I escaped. Still a terrifying moment though. I’m not going back to any labs anytime soon, or at least, I’m taking my pickaxe with me.
There’s a house with a basement that led down to a rift. Threw some fertilizer bombs at the ground floor, and explosion created some holes. And now I have a magma disposal area!
Day 12.
Sometime ago, I found a shorter path to the western town, but it goes through a thick forest so I need an axe first. I also explored the town a bit, killing some shadies in the process.
The previous two days were spent mostly puttering around the humvee or commuting to/from there. I swapped all four wheels for the wide wheels the flatbed had and then attempted to start the engine only to discover it was busted. I lack a hacksaw to take out an engine from another car. Picked up CBMs from a waste treatment place and stored them safely in my shelter.
Went back to the town, the luxury RV also runs on diesel, but I still can’t remove the engine or siphon the fuel. I sighed and decided to explore the apartment tower a bit more - the first time I swung by, I didn’t have a crowbar yet so I got in via open door and Zs smashing windows. I picked up quite a lot of books.
2 Days later. 300 more wanderers down. Ive been exploiting the spear-through-the-floor bug to silence the noises from below when I can. It helps keep the spawns on this floor down and in some palces the noise was so bad I couldn’t see where I was walking or even was.
It seems that after you clear the initial horde out the spawn rate is high but completely bearable. Its just those initial hordes; likely built through the noise each on makes. They feed off one another. Many of them are dealt with already.
While Im much stronger than any one wanderer, in groups they can threaten to overwhelm me. I can 1shot them with the awl pike but its so slow that they can walk 1 tile and attack in the time it takes me to return to a ready state. It takes 3-4 steel spear shots to down 1, and it has less range, but the horde is typically more manageable as I act faster and as long as my armor holds out its not so bad. So awl does much more damage at longer ranges, but for fast-mob crowd control the weaker spear will be better if I can stomache the hits.
The charred buggers are annoying but quite rare. I dont recall ever playing with the spawn rates of them, so I suppose this is default plus my buffed spawn rate. Theyve murderated the NPCs it seems. Expected. The loot from the vault is a suprising number of electronics and military gear, and tons of 9mm. Stupid Fallout. And some choice shotguns.
I lost my arms 2ce more. Once to 2 consecutive ammo-cookoffs as I use my bionics to keep the edge. And once clearing out the soldiers last stand area. They seem to mostly not penetrate my armor, but when they do they really dismantle it. At least the cloth articles anyway.
Growing disinterested in the investment Im making for this. Its not bad loot, its just not what I want. I want a hand press and die set. I want Foodco. I would take more utility rooms too, but enh. Ive gone through over 1000 thread since I have begun my raid 4 days ago now. Good thing I have quick healing and superb health, or this would have been over a while ago.
So far, Ive used C4 hacks to some success. Manhacks wont cut it down here, but the c4 hack will moderately damage a whole horde and that lets me finish them in less hits.
Well golden nuggets, I found some survivors of the apocolypse!
“I’m gonna clear this town once and for all,” he thought, tightening the cap on the fourth and final pipe bomb. It was a respectable pile of explosives, ranging from a simple smoke bomb to molotovs and fragmentation grenades, not to mention a pocket of slugs pulled from the otherwise picked-over gun store. Add to that a couple of crude flamethrowers (just spraycans, really) to start the cook-off.
There were some regrets over driving the sportscar into town, when the gas can caught on fire, but there would be other cars. Maybe not quite like that one, but if anything, the apocalypse has taught us to be free from such attachments. The plan was to funnel those undead bastards between his car and some wreckage, where his tools could do their work, and it worked quite well, at least until the rain started, but by then, the worst of it was past. What wasn’t shot or burnt, he’d cleaved with a sturdy fire axe, quickly becoming a weapon of choice.
The liquor store burnt down in an accidental fire, which was unfortunate, but most of the bottles by then had already been smashed. At one point, a survivor wandered into the frey, making jabs with a homemade spear. She succeeded in drawing attention for a while, but was torn down before he could reach her. The sun was setting and the sky fell dark. It had been a long day.
After an extremely long hiatus, I am now playing Cataclysm again! Fumbling the controls, I drove the Solar Roller VI to a nearby bunker, where I looted some medical ampules and TWO Granades, though I don’t use them any more. Afterwards I went to a nearby town and spent the rest of the day clearing out a horde. I burned the bodies and almost got Swiss cheesed by some exploding bullets.
The next day I began cleaning out the town. I’ve also passed 40,000 kills!
Speaking of granades, how rare are they now? I think I’ve never seen one in experimental before, while back in stable a semi-long run would net at least one.
A few more days. Ive had another close call or two, including when my C4 hack failed to recognize a horde in front of us and decided to default into following me as its timer ticked down, but overall meh. Ive been laying down enough flamethrower and using enough electromagnets to warrent a canteen of cheap wine.
Cheap wine if perhaps one of the easiest to obtain boozes that lasts a long time and provides quenching and even a wee bito hunger relief. And since I have leuckocyte breeders anywho its no big deal to take a health loss. And I evne have the blood filter, so Im running on magic. Magic juice in a hydration pack.
Im making frequent runs to the surface because of the heaviness of the stuff I loot. The surface calmed down once the hordes below died down some. I just finished looting the armory for a rocket launcher. Now on to either the offices, the lab, the school, or the housing unit. None of those scream ‘hand press and die’, but I guess I may as well finish up here before questing.
Thankfully cheap wine comes in large containers as making cheap wine must is hard, mainly due to needing grapes as an ingredient which is hard to find and not possible to grow. There’s also brandy, which is somewhat easy to find, but if you’re planning on crafting some you’ll need fruit or cheap wine… using the latter seems silly when you’re making cheap wine must.
Overall, strawberry surprise remains as the best value booze if a survivor can farm strawberries, and wheat/barley for vodka must. Better nutrition and quench, and according to the item browser is actually healthy (though still addictive).
Boozeberry has much higher nutrition and quench, but is not enjoyable, and somehow more addictive.
Currently carving out a path in the city west of my base. Plan to explore what’s beyond there come winter time. It’s autumn and I should be able to get it done halfway through the season. After that it’s going on an atomic coffee binge and crafting steel rails to use during exploration.
Welp, a npc ran past my base running and gunning, woke me up at 3 am i went out cleared the zombies and chased her down to see if she would join us, but she was just gibbering about some scary monster… The next morning while tinkering with the lay out of my deathmobile and a few finishing touches and i start hearing crashes from the NW side of my base. A hoard at least a hundred deep was smashing the garage to smithereens and plowing through my garden… NOOOO my pot… I grabbed my npcs and noped the fuck out of there before the hoard tore the place to bits I am sooooo glad i had just finished moving 95% of my base into the death mobile. Getting this beast to turn in tight spaces is near impossible and i destroyed 2 of my cameras and the exterior gas tank in the process. We headed to the farm i saw earlier this spring, it was full of some tasty looking animals which I am currently working on dehydrating. I wish i could figure out how to strap my motorcycle to this tank of a vehicle so i could use it for scouting while on the go but it looks like that will have to wait for future tinkerings. Should i harvest the farm now? It looks like there is plenty of food in the fields but i bet there could be more if i wait till harvest season.
Still need to name this deathmobile instead of just calling it deathmobile…
Found a moving teardrop, random artifact in rubble on the road, giving me +4 strength and increased hunger. Now I have default 21 strength, and 46 strength with hydraulic muscles and adrenaline rush bionics activated. I’m swole as fuck, now to obtain some strength increasing mutations and I will be the swolest there is. I shall turn this wretched degenerate world into a new golden age of holy muscle revolution.
gdi I tried going into the housing complex, too much char everywhere and too many. Ive made it past the first hallway, earning my right to exist on the floor is I stay completely still. But hordes, hordes, everywhere.
Compare the 244 zombies Ive killed to the amunt of feral zombies irridated wanderers Ive done in.
