Should I replace my armored wheels with tank treads? At least I can make the treads myself, the wheels I have to loot.
EDIT: So the horde outside the cathedral was looking pretty thin, so I decided to take it head on. That horde died easily, though the hulks were a help. They were why it was so thin. They killed all the other zombies while they were bashing cars.
But then another horde arrived. I’ve never seen so many hulks at once. Thankfully there are only a few corrosive zombies. Wish me luck.
I am making an effort to teach my groupies some cooking. Lye is too slow to make myself, and bleach is barely manageable. I made myself a folding shopping cart type Loot Hauler. Only 200 volume, but given my own storage volume, and the stuff I always carry around, that is +200% looting potential right there.
I have to look into removing some useless crap from my cargo dimension, like those empty gallon jugs left behind from my mutagen crafting efforts. Also, some powder type things should not need containers so I might get them to stack properly. Inventory management is what I hate in (and out of) this game…
The first encounter for the current winter expedition is finished, I think. Most of them are. Around 500 steel rails used, about one kill per shot, with the exception of zombie hulks which need two shots most of the time, and smoker zombies which need 1-3 shots through the smoke, so it’s about at least 400 zombies dead, and all I have to butcher are the hulks.
Not exactly a flawless fight, as the zombies were everywhere. Probably a horde since this was a small town. Survivor is damaged, but that’s what all the bandages she brought are for. The bike where the hypervelocity driver is mounted is quite battered though. Need new foot pedals, which have multiple replacements because those things are fragile. Need a new cargo carrier as well.
In general, the explosion from the driver seems mostly harmless, but the shrapnel from the blast does quite a bit of damage. Not reliable enough to kill zombies standing next to each other, but it lucks out sometimes. Unfortunately, that means that the shrapnel can also damage the bike - and it did because there were zombies everywhere. The fact that the driver produces a stream of smoke when it’s shooting doesn’t help with the field of vision when there’s already a ton of smokers and bloated gas obscuring the horde.
I started a new survivor. It is not yet nightfall, and I have already crashed my suv into two gun stores and a fenced-in hardware store. The beetle I was driving before that died before it managed to breach the wall. The other car got mobbed and destroyed while I was looting a grocery store. It’s a bigger city, with a higher spawn rate and faster evolution. I’m in a tight spot now, since a grabber managed to pull me out the window while I was driving through a mob, but I’ve moved beyond completely defenseless, so there’s still a chance. Who knows? Might even get my loot back.
Well, I killed the horde, got out with the Solar Roller, made a new ram out of a whole wrecked car, stuck some tires on it, and now I’m home free. The future will probably contain a higher-than-normal amount of looting car parts, but otherwise back to business as usual.
Also I just noticed that Integrated Toolset is now an activateable bionic, meaning I didn’t have to loot that welder at all and now I feel stupid.
I made another train and once again made the mistake of placing the fuel tanks on the outer perimeter of the vehicles body. Plowing through zombies, the last thing I expect is a zombie brute to, once again, completely bypass the military armor and the board, to hit the fuel tank directly like some kind of ethereal being. I also don’t expect the tank to go from perfect condition to unsalvageably wrecked in a single blow without doing so much as a scratch to the armor and board. What I do expect when such a thing happens, realizing that RNGesus has become determined to screw me, is the resulting explosion setting off every bit of ordinance I am transporting. I was not disappointed, so now I am short the interior of a battle train, a huge amount of valuable food, tools, clothing, materials, and a perfectly good character.
I got my hands on an M1911 from a mansion, so I tore all the mods off of my Glock 19 and put them on it.
It’s now armed with a brass catcher, a rail laser sight, improved iron sights, an extended magazine, a spare magazine, and an ergonomic grip; additionally, I keep a suppressor on me at all times.
Day 24: looking good so far. I’ve got a few guns picked off of zombies and ammo out of houses, but the most plentiful I have is just some small fry for my pimped out MP5. It’s enough to take out something like a zombear or anything else basic if I’m in bad shape and not willing to roll dice in melee, but zombie soldiers are completely immune and there’s no way I could take down a hulk with it. Anywhere with a Hulk remains completely off-limits and hordes are still scary-looking, even if they trickle in.
The cave is looking to become a more permanent base. It’s a bit of a pain walking through the woods constantly and I dislike the constant dancing around ants based on which ones are angry, but the woods themselves provide good cover from the random Z that wanders over. Anything too tough to handle can be lured out to the nearby fungus tower to either be distracted or mold-ified.
Interestingly, fungal towers do not spawn fungus on their own and don’t seem to have any kind of defenses, despite the description saying it’s constantly growing and regrowing new ones. For this reason it’s becoming a bit of a challenge to kite zombies into a fungaloid to mold themselves into something squishy. I might run out of fungaloids by the time winter shows up.
Anyhow, I’ve got a forge up and running and there’s some storage in place, as soon as I get around to finishing it and arranging things. It’s kind of weird without walls, but I think it’s fine to leave it open. Eventually I’ll roof off the entrance completely and that’ll be nice. Maybe I’ll put in a window and have a reading spot.
I also took a road roller and blasted a nice vehicle-sized path through the forest for a while. Unfortunately I didn’t keep track of where I was plowing, so the path I made leads effectively nowhere, but it was fun at least. The vehicle is still technically drivable, even with a tattered front barrel, but there was a horde right behind me as I quickly yanked my hand jack out of the back and scuttled off from my little adventure. This had the unforseen benefit of luring half of the town out into the middle of the woods, so looting has been relatively peaceful for the last few weeks.
I’ll just pretend it was intentional and roll with it. Working up the courage to use a similar tactic to bowl down a gun shop wall.
EDIT: Neeevermind, some bloke found a minefield in the middle of a road. God, who looked after these streets? Explosives on the roadway can’t pass city ordinance, surely!
For most part, the initial wave at the small town seems to be most of the zeds in the area. A few others here and there, but for most part 90% of the remaining zeds were the ones killed from some other reason; basement dwellers, and zeds revived after an exploding car/collapsed house killed them. Very peaceful raid, middle of the night, heavy duty flashlight lighting the area up, and barely any encounters on foot.
That said, the hypervelocity driver isn’t perfect. After the raid, went to a lab where a small horde was waiting. Got badly damaged on melee due to several hulks launching my survivor through trees. After going through a tree the third time, got the rifle out and shot them all to death. Can’t really use the hypervelocity driver on situations like these, as the horde is too close and setting up the bike to mount the driver on requires a lot of parts.
Yeah, it appears they’ve made some effort to make fungal tower and fungal bloom more different than just “how big is the area of funaloid spawn” and taken away any spawned fungaloids from the tower. I took out a nearby fungal tower with my new survivor, and it was pretty easy… but there were fungal sporelings spawning, so there would be fungaloids if you hung around long enough (fungal bed produces them).
The fungal bloom off to the west was still surrounded by fungaloids in a wide area, so the bloom continues to be the most annoying of them by far. Get a bloom near any kind of body of water, and you’ll NEVER get rid of them… :-/
For one thing, I’ve looted three labs. I got another 10 mininukes and two quantums, though I broke one ramming sideways into some wreckage. I have two spare now. I also got a hydrogen engine from a bank and minutes later a minireactor from a bubble car, miraculously parked the next street over. But I haven’t been sleeping well, since I’ve been spending nights butchering corpses. Once I got to dead tired I stopped off at a farm. I collapsed the barn trying to fit the Solar Roller in, so I slept a full 24 hours in the farmhouse.
Also apparently the new child zombie variants have their own guilt counters, so after killing a whole school I was at -150 morale. It faded in a few hours, luckily.
EDIT: I also found the One Ring in a mine, guarded by a thing. It gives invisibility, an evil presence, seeing through walls, and -3 strength and intelligence.
Did it before going on the winter expedition, but man, the creation of atomic coffee/regular coffee can really be stretched out if one converts the coffee powder into coffee syrup. A cup of coffee requires one powder or one serving of syrup, and coffee syrup requires one powder and ends with five servings.
Basically got one standing tank each for coffee and atomic coffee. Also got a wooden barrel of atomic coffee, used to fuel my survivor so she can craft the thousands of steel rails without the need for sleep. Kinda wish I remembered to bring some on the winter expedition. Less sleep, more time to explore.
Was exploring the woods, then a Mi-go that was hidden in the trees suddenly tried to attack my survivor. Keyword tried, because on the first hit survivor countered with the rapier+fencing and killed it in one hit. At this point in the game, my survivor is not threatened by mi-gos at all, but it’s still a badass image to one shot something that the survivor couldn’t see until the last moment with a counter via fancy fencing skills.
Also butchered a zombie hulk while a horde of zombie children rushed in. 20+ children, all dead and my survivor hasn’t finished with the butchering.
Upon testing, it’s possible to kill zeds via waiting and using the rapier+fencing counter while blindfolded.
Last game was getting to easy with only mundane zombies but also too annoying with the hordes plus the season glitch I experienced put me off of it. So new world with tweaked settings.
So, 16 sized cities, 4 city spacing all the mobs but no hordes. I got tired of constantly finding hordes accumulating around my base despite having cleared out the area in totality for 3+ months. I think that has to be my only complaint about hordes, they just kinda come from nowhere and are triggered by the slightest noise. If they came from a source like a town swarming with zombies sure. I kept the 5X spawn rate.
Started out with the sheltered scenario, I thought it was supposed to be out of food and supplies but i had plenty of food… oh well. Actually started with another shelter just down the road. Playing in winter is nice, all the meat i hunt for gets stored outside the shelter door. Basic tools have been hard to come by and my biggest issue is lack of fire starting gear. Im almost out of matches and i cant make any fire starting tools yet. There is a odd amount of soldier zombies out in the woods around my shelter they are tough to kill but have provided me with great winter gear and some decent armor. i’ve met 2 other survivors one showed me a tiny 4 house hamlet a couple hours walk down the road and wants me to kill her reanimated mother. Going there the first thing i encountered was a shocker brute, that was a tough fight for my first week, and no cbms from it either not even burnt out ones. On the way back I encountered the other survivor and he tried to mug me, he got a face full of lead for his troubles. Im heading back to the hamlet, I hope its not swarming with high level undead.
Oh dear. During the winter expedition, I found a small ice lab. One floor, 3x3 map tiles in size. There’s a mansion right next to the lab. In a way, it’s the perfect area for a base. Like, I dunno, I may kinda want to make another base here, perhaps this could even be the area where I make the underground city I’ve been planning on.
Get survival skill to 3, a butchering tool with a positive butchering value, and dex of 12 or higher, and you’ll always get bionics (though they may still be burned out - that’s random, nothing helps with it). If any of those aren’t met, then having the other 2 higher will help, but it won’t completely get rid of the chance of not getting stuff.
Well. I updated and went off to try the changes I made. I know they should take a few days to start kicking in, but in the meantime its hard enough to escape a burning building surrounded by zombies with a partner who wants to shoot first and die later.
Several deaths were had; but I didnt make them that much better. Maybe a little. I noticed that starting mob comp wasnt 100% vanilla like in recent expis. Not a bad thing. Z+5 after all.
My current survivor found some thorazine that will help with the hallucinations of alcoholism, traded away for a great coat and ballistic mask, found a flashlight and some batteries, and got some nifty giblet bits like a hockey stick. And crossing over to the far side of the outskirts of the city he is in this:
