What's Happening in YOUR Randomly-generated Apocalypse?

Game Talk The Bunker
10921

My character, an unabashed Gordon Freeman clone, is doing pretty well. His undead genocide has been going well; I’ve cut down around 3 1/2 or so towns of them by now. (Still haven’t found any hulks to test my skills against ;_:wink: I’m also trying to come up with names for his car; it used to be named “The Freevan”, but it’s not so much a van anymore so much as it is an armored RV with a workshop in the back.

This is completely unrelated, but there’s apparently a TVTropes page for the game. It’s more up-to-date and informative than the wiki. o_o

10922

Oh, thats beautiful.

10923

I have discovered that I can shoot walls down with a shotgun.

10924

How many shots does it take? What kind of shells?

10925

Since I did basically everything there is to do with my last survivor, I updated to the latest experimental and started a new one.

It’s morning, Spring Day 1. It’s been a year.

So, broken cyborg, robust genetics, and I went with pacifist, just to shake things up. Also, I turned on the arcana mod to try something different.

My starting lab had EVERY mutagen recipe in it (and all the other lab recipe books, too, actually) - CRAZY.

Unfortunately, it also had none of the usual ways out AND it was extra-short on food… I started working on my trapping skill, getting ready to disarm a teleport pad, but I didn’t think I could do it before I starved. What to do… well, I hadn’t checked the loot room (didn’t really have a good way to deal with secubots), so I gave it a shot. Lucky me, the secubots had destroyed themselves on the dissectors, and the loot was mostly undamaged. PILES of mininukes. OK, I’m out then.

So, there are mansions in sight (at least partially), so I check them out and get some more immediately useful books. There’s also a very small town that I find just outside of default sight range to the northeast. 4 houses, a grocery store (shopping cart, yay!), an abandoned store front, 2 pools, a parking lot, a dojo (4 martial arts books, and I got Niten in one of the mansions, and a katana in another one), a bookstore and 2 libraries… wow again. So, more useful books - including finally some computer stuff, so I can get a larger map. Another mansion…

I managed to get some thyme planted in the summer, made thyme oil, and crafted a bunch of first aid kits. Got the last bad bionic out in early winter. Also, I got all the basic CBMs that you find in labs, and they’re installed. Yay.

So, one year in, and all I need is a hackpro, a portal, and some general collection (no cargo carriers yet, for instance), I’m already almost back where I was before. Kinda crazy.

10926

Ooh, nice. Found any of the arcana books in the mansion? X3

10927

One of the houses in that amazing little town had a survivor basement, and I got one of the books and several relevant items from them. I got a couple of other books, too, but I don’t remember exactly where, so I’ve got arcana up to 6 and several essence-using items, but I haven’t made or used anything yet.

I’ve never played aracana before, so I have no idea what else there is… I assume there’s some stuff to do with “dull essence” and such? Another book or two? I’ve got the level 1 with no recipes stuff, the level 3 with potions book, and the level 6 with equipment recipes book.

Is there a convenient way to get blood or bloody rags, other than taking off your armor and letting zombies chew on you? Also, is there a way to get essence other than by creature drops? I’ve got a slime pit nearby, so I could probably farm it that way if I wanted to…

10928

One of the houses in that amazing little town had a survivor basement, and I got one of the books and several relevant items from them. I got a couple of other books, too, but I don’t remember exactly where, so I’ve got arcana up to 6 and several essence-using items, but I haven’t made or used anything yet.

I’ve never played aracana before, so I have no idea what else there is… I assume there’s some stuff to do with “dull essence” and such? Another book or two? I’ve got the level 1 with no recipes stuff, the level 3 with potions book, and the level 6 with equipment recipes book.

Is there a convenient way to get blood or bloody rags, other than taking off your armor and letting zombies chew on you? Also, is there a way to get essence other than by creature drops? I’ve got a slime pit nearby, so I could probably farm it that way if I wanted to…[/quote]

Huehuehue. Big old spoilers ensue…

There are multiple arcana books. A basic “up to first level” note item, the potioncrafting one, one for scrolls, a blood magic one, the one for putting dull essence to use, the chalice-centric one, and the summoning book.

Dull essence is used to fuel magic items crafted from the book The Cleansing Flame. If you can get a hammer of the hunter, most magic items need one for dismantling them into dull essence.

And for blood? That’s what the silver athame’s for. How delightfully morbid. o3o

EDIT: Another couple recipes in Oaths to the Chalice include making essence by sacrificing various things.

10929

I did some testing. At point blank range it seems to take roughly four shots on average with any gun+round combination that can do 50ish damage on a hit, not just shotguns. Skill doesn’t seem to matter. Higher damage might increase the odds, but I didn’t notice a difference.

So far as I know, most terrain doesn’t have hit points, just “destroyed” and “not destroyed”, so you’re as likely to blow down a wall with your first shot as your tenth.

It doesn’t work on advanced walls, but regular wood walls can be easily breached this way.

If you find a Vacutainer, you can activate it to draw blood from yourself or a corpse you’re standing on. They’re common spawns in the little labs in FEMA camps. They probably also spawn in Labs and Hospitals, but I couldn’t say for sure.

10930

Wendy is having a bad day today. She woke up in the middle of summer in an unfamiliar town, no idea where she is or what’s going on, wearing nothing but a towel and soaking wet, and wouldn’t you know it, the house she woke up in is on fire! God, gotta hate when that happens.

She briefly convinced mister dude with a shotgun over in the corner to flee the building with her, only to make the sudden realization that a very large horde of undead appeared to be encroaching on the premises. Wendy booked it, and man-with-gun proceeded to shoot at some stuff and die or something. Wendy had no idea, and little interest. She wouldn’t be coming back to this part of town for a while.

She leap-frogged from house to house, mostly to lose pursuing undead but also to snatch up a piece of clothing or two as she found them. She got some tennis shoes and a bike helmet from one house, then a pair of shorts and an undershirt from another. She got a good pair of cargo pants and a nice t-shirt from a clothing store, whose wall had been conveniently busted down thanks to a hulk busy slamming random crap around, probably other zombies. She had to do some fancy footwork around a zombie skeleton dog to get her final outfit together, thankfully all fitting. The shopping carts in the building all had broken casters, so she didn’t bother. She did steal a leather backpack off a corpse before she legged it again.

She gathered a handful of basic supplies and stuffed her backpack full of whatever she could find - a hammer, a few canned foods, a tarp, some rags, strings, whatever - and tied together a pot with some rags to use as head coverage and also to make full use of her very limited storage space. Once she was full, Wendy popped a few caffeine pills and made a break for the edge of town. It was mostly clear, and she was easily able to leave whatever saw her in the dust.

After a little wandering through a clearing, Wendy found a cave settled neatly in a clearing in the forest, which was not only uninhabited, but quite spacious for one person. This would be her home for a while.

Being a resourceful girl, Wendy has put together some log walls and a door outside of the cave to make it more secure. It has no roof, but she can just go into the cave for cover.

It’s been five days so far, and her primary concerns are more containers for holding liquids, scratching together more tools, and food. She’s made a quick dash to the edge of town and back to loot some un-protected houses, but she’s been forced to cool it after a surprise cougar and a pair of unhappy giant ants gave her what she was almost positive was a broken leg, among other things. She’s quite happy it isn’t broken, because she can’t make a splint yet. She’s going to cool it for the next day or two till she’s healed before making another run.

Her abode has little, and most everything is laying in piles based on some vague sense of organization, but what she has managed to piece together includes a makeshift bed, a stone fireplace, and a smoking rack. Her next priority is a charcoal kiln to get some fuel going for that, and then a stone forge for some more equipment. She has very few hitpoints at max (about 50 I think due to traits and 7 strength), so being very unarmored and having nothing but a stone spear means she’s being very cautious. An early shotgun is a nice find and saved her butt from surprise cougar the other day.

Rough start, but she’s got some progress made. I have high hopes for her. Can’t wait to get her armored though; frail child needs protection from icky dead stuff.

There’s a bunch of fungus things wandering around outside too, and she’s kind of leery about them, but the dead stuff seems to dislike them as well, so they have some uses. They’re quite passive too. Not sure how she feels about that mossy crap they leave on the ground, though. She’ll keep an eye on them, and some distance.

10931

Harvested the non-perishable crops now. I’ll wait until winter to harvest the perishable ones, so all of them will remain fresh as they get stored in the ice lab.

Here’s the numbers for the current harvest:

Handful of dandelions, 3x50 plot: 3190
Garlic bulb, 3x50: 1670
Wild herbs, 1x50: 11280
Cotton boll, 1x50: 2224
Cannabis, 1x50: 2745
Datura, 1x50: …mixed the ones I harvested with the ones I collected, so don’t recall how many was harvested. Total amount of datura seeds is 4874
Wheat, 1x25: 1124
Oats, 1x25: 1124
Hops flowers, 1x25: 1080
Barley, 1x25: 1076

Will probably be up to 4k steel rails at least before autumn ends.

10932

Got my winter exploration supply ready. Most of them are stored in the Sluggernaut.

Two plastic jerrycans each of dandelion and herbal tea.
80% full steel jerrycan of soylent shake.
One large waterskin each of spiced mead, strawberry surprise, fruit wine, wild apple, whiskey sour, and screwdriver cocktail.
Lots of cannabis.
Various cannibal meals, due to it being winter I won’t have to worry about them rotting.
Some first aid kits.
3000 steel rails… still day 38 of autumn so there should be more of them.
A mounted turbolaser in case I’m taking on non-zombie creatures.

10933

I have created 50 doses of elf-a mutagen. But I am sort of scared to try them. Getting the right good mutations without the nasty bad ones seems very unlikely. I’d rather not savescum. Making more will have to wait since it is autumn now. I suppose I could settle for tireless for now.

I sort of wish the vaguely hinted R&D feature was implemented so I could design a better variant.

10934

Chug chug chug chug! X3

10935

Should be able to reach 4k steel rails by day 43 of autumn. Might keep crafting until at least one week of winter has passed. By then it should be cold enough above ground that perishable food won’t decay.

10936

[quote=“eternalflame, post:10933, topic:47”]I have created 50 doses of elf-a mutagen. But I am sort of scared to try them. Getting the right good mutations without the nasty bad ones seems very unlikely. I’d rather not savescum. Making more will have to wait since it is autumn now. I suppose I could settle for tireless for now.

I sort of wish the vaguely hinted R&D feature was implemented so I could design a better variant.[/quote]
Make them into serum.

Also, what I like to do is mix and match mutagens. When you get a bad mutation, drink a mutagen that gives the opposite. Like slime for regeneration if you get disintegration. And you get a lot of other positive mutations at the end.

So after reaching the cathedral, I rammed my way in through the stained glass in the back. Backwards, actually. So there I was, inside the cathedral, standing in the former window, fending off the horde. When the sun set I dismantled a lot of benches and began to build wood walls across the gap, which I didn’t finish and I had to spend a second day fighting off zombies while I kept building before I could finally finish. Then I quickly boarded up the doors in the front and sides, which hadn’t been touched, and slept for a full day.

When I woke up (at night) I replaced the doors with wood walls, killed and butchered a few hulks, then went back inside. I started working on on replacing my welding rig, which took a while because I needed copper wire. So I had to make wire, which took 10 hours total. I slept and kept working, finally made the welding rig, which was nice because then I didn’t have to rely on my UPS welder any more.

I removed the broken kitchen unit and chem lab, then built new ones out of the parts. I made a few heavy frames and some sheet metal to replace the broken parts and missing parts. I replaced the broken armor with some spare military composite I had. I took off what was left of the ram, since it was basically scrap. I had rammed a group of zombies just before getting to the cathedral, because who would I be if I didn’t? I also found out that the last wheel on the ram was the only thing that was letting me steer, so I took off some of the armored wheels and made them steerable. Then I just took my welder and fixed up the rest of the car.

So now what I have is a fully intact Solar Roller, minus the ram. Luckily my spare wide tires are still on the base of the ram, which is fine. What I need now is metal, and lots of it. That’s all the ram is, a massive hunk of steel with some wheels on the bottom for minesweeping. I’ve got ~300 chunks of steel, so now all that’s left is to weld them into lumps and see if I have enough.

10937

Actually, they are serum. My mistake saying they were mutagen. I appreciate the tip about different mutagens. I had considered it previously when debating my threshold. Apex predator seems nice but my combat skills are at a level it would not matter anyway.

Getting both glorious and fey nightsight and nothing horrible is just a painful rng fest. Maybe I’ll settle for Fey nightsight and get pretty from alpha. Night vision bionic eats too much power if I also want to power my armour.

I dislike there being an item limit to cargo dimension. I could fit some 40 times the volume, but my blob globs keep falling on the ground. Makes looting ever more painful.

10938

The limit on items seem more a matter of game speed. By the time I reach 2000 different item stacks on one container, searching through an item on that spot becomes real slow.

Anyways, urgh. Day 1 of winter… and game crashed. I already reached the map edge of the east, and I overestimated the distance and the game crashed when my survivor got out of the car. Should have quicksaved in the middle of the trip.

On the bright side, last time I quicksaved I had already finished transferring the supplies to the Sluggernaut, including the 4.6k steel rails, which took a while since my survivor could take only 400 at a time due to weight limits.

Also, 20 map tiles through a city and no zombies in the vicinity. Unfortunately the area I cleared through isn’t exactly a straight line, so I have to watch out for car wrecks and buildings nonetheless. Since the Sluggernaut is 5x15 tiles in size… not quite the size of a moving fortress, but still bulky enough when there’s cars in both sides of the road.

10939

I’m bored. There’s no sense in fortifying the fire station, since the hordes were thin and presented no real threat to my survivor, fully laden in turnout and wielding a fire axe. There was a library next door, so I did some skillgrinding, living on junk food pilfered from the megastore. Brought mechanics up to 6, cutting to 3, cooking, tailoring, shotguns…

Found a motorcycle and drove it around until the engine died. Replaced it with a proper v6, which gave it a respectable 26km/h/6s acceleration. Found a guns & ammo stockpile in a house basement and it just doesn’t seem like a challenge. This character is in danger of imminent suicide.

10940

Find nearest lab/military outpost and have some fun then.