How can I say no?
So, continuing on from before, I start the day by gathering some planks of wood from a local forest. Still not much food, but now I can cook it if I find it, at least. Time to explore a bit more. Despite rational thought’s courageous attempts at convincing me not to, I decide to drive north in my open-air humvee, directly into the fungaloids I saw earlier. No idea where their tower is up here but upon closer inspection of the area the infestation seems fairly light. I decide to punch through their lines and see what’s further ahead. I’m quickly rewarded with another six-building hamlet that I recognize from a very short playthrough I did earlier. I know there’s books in a shelter to the north, and a mansion further on, so I gather all I can from my former self (suck it, past me!) and make my way to the mansion with the clear goal of sticking it to the 1%. Upon arrival I realize there are a disturbing number of disturbingly-large wasps disturbing the local zombies. I carefully disturb everything in my path with my nodachi and make a bee-line for the library, where I am rewarded with deliciously high-level Mechanics books and some food. Time to build a deathmobile and not starve. But first, I decide to raid the fungaloid-infested town on my way back, including a sporting goods store I’d had my eye on. I skid onto the main road from around a house doing about 40, then notice there’s about a dozen shamblers and half as many fungaloids in my way. Acceleration intensifies. Once there’s a good slurry of monster parts pasted all over the road, I back up and start looting the store, which winds up yielding four refillable lighters and an ice axe! Definitely worth the effort. I’m really set now; all I need to do is replace my swiss army knife with a multi-tool and I’ll be living large. Okay, enough playing around - time to go set up the car! Read, eat, read, eat. No atomic lamp, so I have to read up against the warm glow of the shelter’s working console at night and stand in the open door during the day, but after a few days I’m at 9 Mechanics and ready to get to work. There’s an abandoned APC just down the road from my shelter, and I have…plans.
Commence plans.
Three days later I have an APC with 40% diesel, a military composite ram plate, four storage bins, a full solar panel/swappable battery suite, a cooking station, a welder, a UPS recharging station, and a bed. Only four wheels though. We’ll need to fix that soon. I return to my shelter and start thinking how best to source the parts I need. Soon, however, sleep comes, and I nestle into my little makeshift bed in the corner. The next morning I decide to tidy up the base a little more before leaving on Operation: Wheel Get. I start by reordering my smithing setup. First is placing the anvil. Unfortunately, a bug in experimental causes construction projects to build the wrong things, so I assemble a wooden wall instead. Odd. Doesn’t look like an anvil. No matter, I have an electric jackhammer. Cue removal of misplaced wall. Cue total roof collapse. Thankfully I make it out unscathed, but my priorities have very suddenly shifted. I dig out all of my gear and supplies over a few hours, then start looking on my map for likely locations to build a new house. Somewhere with a forest so I can source the materials easily, not too close to dangerous stuff, somewhere that will let me go in at least three of the cardinal directions easily. After much though, I’m still undecided. Killing things is usually fairly zen. Time to go kill stuff and find wheels.
I decide to revisit the town where I fought off the shocker brute and see if there are any military/paramilitary vehicles sitting around. It’s open field all around the town, it’s reasonably small, and I’m in a much stronger vehicle now, so I can dive in and out to look for parts without much hassle. I hit a garage on the western side and find a folding engine crane for jacking up vehicles. Perfect! I had made a steel boom crane earlier, when I was building my deathmobile, but this makes it a lot easier. After a bit of circling, I come across an abandoned APC in the northern side of the town. No wheels, but its security cameras are intact. I pull them off and weld them to my rig, removing what blindspots I have left, including the one to the front-right that nearly caused me to drive into a lava fissure a day or two ago. Take that, ninja-fissure! You won’t take me now! This town turns out to have been a great choice as I soon discover another armored vehicle just down the road next to a clothing store with a layout I’ve never seen before. It has working armored wheels, so I pull out the folding engine crane I just found and put it to work. Eight wheels now! Looking good. I duck into the clothing store through the back and have a look around. The back door leads to a back room with reinforced windows with steel bars welded to them, and a series of tables with scissors on them. Wait, did I stumble into a sweat-shop? I go out into the front and realize it’s actually just a boutique. Lots of fancy clothing here that I don’t need, but I do find some white opera gloves. Completely useless. I love it! I take them with me. I also find an advanced Tailoring book. I take that too. Pretty good haul, so far. There’s also a museum nearby, so I have a look and find a suit of plate armor, which I can’t craft yet, due to an alarming lack of armorsmithing literature. Good stuff if you can refit it. I somehow stuff the entire suit into my pockets, along with a suit of ornamental plate armor just for funsies, and flee before all the glass breaking summons something nasty. I raid a few of the nearby houses for food and firearms before heading back home, lucking across an M1 Garand in one of the basements, along with some ammo. Great! I really needed a high-powered rifle to help clear the Fungal Towers/Blooms that are nearby. I decide to put my house plans on hold - there’s something else I need to do.
Once I get home, I dig through my stuff, which is now getting rained on pretty much daily. I was right - I had a filthy Hazmat Suit squirreled away in the pile. My skills are high enough now that I can make an armored NBC suit, as well as some antifungal medication. For added insurance I install a Blood Filter CBM I found on one of my earlier trips. Alongside the vehicle, the rifle, and my ability to craft plenty of molotovs, all of this means I have all I need to go fungaloid hunting. Time to scout them out. But before that, my car needs a name. I decide Growler is appropriate and mount up, driving out to where I saw the thickest groups of mushroom men. It doesn’t take long to find the first one, a fungal spire to the east. I’ve never fought a fungal spire before, so this’ll be interesting. I start by doing donuts around the area, running down the nasty-looking spine tendril things. Growler - 0, Fungaloids - 1. It mostly just batters my car’s ram plate without much effect, since they keep spawning. Okay, on foot then, mano-e-fungus. I wade through the fungal carpet, getting stabbed everywhere the entire time, and line up a shot. The wiggly bastard dodges it! They’re like snakes, or skeletons. Great. I take a few more shots but it’s obvious this isn’t working. I retreat and try a molotov, but it’s raining, so it goes out right away. Fine, the nodachi has never failed me! I stride/shuffle bravely forward while annoying vines poke me, blade at the ready. It takes a few chops before the fungal hedgerows stop instantly regrowing, but eventually I get a solid whack in at the spire. It apparently doesn’t appreciate my efforts because it slams me back onto my ass and infects me with fungal spores. Panic ensues as I likely overdose on antifungal, followed by a course of blood filtering. Eventually I decide I’m as cured as I’m going to be and wade back in, chopping down everything that shows up in front of me. It takes about six more swings, but finally I hack the spire down. Victory! Unfortunately it’s still raining, so I can’t cleanse the area. I run a few of the stragglers down with Growler out of spite and leave a note on my map to burn this place later. On to the north! I find the second one pretty quickly, as I had a good idea of where it was to begin with. Luckily it’s just a Fungal Tower, so my M1 Garand handles it quickly. Still raining. I leave a note, take some antifungal, and go back home.
Well, I say home. Unfortunately, it’s a wreck. I spend most of my time in Growler now. It’s finally time to build that house I’ve been planning for two seasons. I still can’t decided on a good spot, so I pick a decent spot and just go with it. That night I decide to binge on drugs and install all of the CBMs I had laying around, netting me +2 Dexterity, immunity to electricity, an advanced targeting system, temperature regulation, enhanced hearing, night vision, and the ability to power UPS items with my internal battery. I immediately plug my MP3 player into my spine. The future is now. I flub a +2 Strength CBM, which is unfortunate, and hurt myself badly trying to remove one that let me eat batteries, but nothing permanently awful happens. The next morning I move to the build site. Strangely, I find a herd of zombies hanging out in the woods near the location for no apparent reason. Probably a bad sign, but whatever, I’m sure it’s fine. What could possibly go wrong? I start clearing the land, chopping logs, and planning the layout. I wake up on the second morning to find snow on the ground. This character’s first winter! I’ve survived almost 100 days now. There’s plenty left to do. I haven’t ever tried the stuff with the evacuation center, so that could be fun, and I saw a Strange Temple while I was looking for Fungaloid Towers, so that could be “Fun” as well. Beyond that, the house is my immediate priority. We’ll see where it goes.
