I often have trouble finding the best stuff to equip with my current tailoring level, since I want a good balance between heat, encumbrance, armor, storage, and coverage. I don’t the gear set to go into pink, since by then it starts to get really bad, I don’t want too much heat, and if nothing else I can use my tailoring kit to add some more heat, while I have a shopping cart bike it doesn’t add the best amount of storage still. Especially since I like not needing to constantly switch between the tools I have on me and the ones in the cart.
For more specific into my current level of tailoring, I’m all the way to level 8 (Because books are great). My fighting skills aren’t the best which makes my high encumbrance since that reduces accuracy.
At Tailor 5 and Fabrication 5 or 6, you can start making Survivor gear from kevlar, leather, and duct tape.
Light survivor gloves, light survivor suit, light survivor boots, survivor helmet, and survivor mask give good storage for minimal encumbrance and make you mostly resistant to standard zombie attacks. Throw on a survivor duster and you can’t be (easily) hurt by anything short of an acid zombie, a shocker, or a brute.
You can also make a survivor firesuit, which is warmer and gives better protection against acid and fire but is a little bulkier and less protective.
survivor is the best overall, winter survivor is the high warmth variant. other then that everything else is specialized so you need to just figure what you want.
It’s worth noting that survivor wetsuit armor is acid immune while still being less encumbering than the firesuit. I use a set of that with fireboots and steel plate armor over the top, which makes me pretty hard to damage and makes me more or less immune to acid.
would light survivor mask with kevlar be a better choice than doing a survivor mask? (possibly also with kevlar)
I seriously have found over 100 kevlar so using up a crap ton of that isn’t a problem.
Speaking of which, what skills (or possibly books?) are required for the survivor masks? Last character I had who got to the point of making survivor gear had a survivor duster, survivor cargo pants, heavy survivor boots, survivor rucksack and would have had heavy survivor gloves if I hadn’t been out of kevlar but I couldn’t find survivor masks to build?
You learn to make two kinds of survivor masks at tailoring level 5 I believe. It says it uses fabrication despite that under that it says “Required skills: tailoring (5)” So I’m not 100% certain.
I was at tailoring seven and didn’t see them. And fabrication five or six.
Hmmm, odd. Well, not sure what else to say. Seems to have come automatically to me once I reached the correct level. Did you make sure to look using [F] and type in ‘survivor mask’
Technically I just typed mask. I am wondering if it’s tied to a specific book, some recipes are.
Adding survivor beforehand may-or-may-not help. As far as I know, they have nothing to do with recipes.
This site is your friend for this kind of question: http://cdda-trunk.chezzo.com/
Make sure it’s set to the Development tab, and don’t entirely trust the armour values it gives you, as some of them are either bugged or outdated. For crafting recipes, though, it’s a very reliable resource.
For example, here are the crafting requirements of the Heavy Survivor Mask: http://cdda-trunk.chezzo.com/mask_hsurvivor/craft
TLDR, you need 7 Tailoring, 7 Fabrication. If it doesn’t list where you can find the recipe, then it’s autolearned when you meet the skill requirements.
this question is really open.
my preferences, noting I disable survivor gear:
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lvl 0 is garbage. socks and towels. train with hand wraps.
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lvl 1 is for light gloves. train with arm warmers and wear those and stockings if need be.
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lvl 2 is for cotton hats, which are endgame viable. train survival to 1 and train on balaclava.
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lvl 3 is first viable level. sleeveless dusters, leather boots, gauntlets, hoodies, backpacks, arm guards, leather helm.
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From there i add on leather armors, metal suits, nomex stuffs, etc. greaves, filter masks, holsters.
I don’t think any of the survivor gear recipes are found in any book, you just need to get your skills up to the required levels. Best way to do that without books is repairing items with your sewing kit or going through your crafting menu and finding which items require the least time least time and resources and require the highest possible skill to successfully craft. Craft one item to see how much it raises your skill to find out how many you’ll need to make a batch of for a skill gain. Then go back into your crafting menu and see what new recipes have become available. Repeat this same process by crafting higher and higher skilled items until you reach your desired skill levels.
As for what is the best clothing and armor, this is highly dependent on your personal play-style and the season. Keep close track of encumbrance values and take note of how they affect your combat abilities. Anything over 30 encumbrance may seriously hamper your ability to dodge, aim, swing a sword or even run away.
I always go with the heavy survivor helmet since head encumbrance doesn’t matter. I also wear my light survivor mask pretty much at all times, but like to keep a heavy survivor mask in my vehicle as well.
Chitin armor can be very good, especially the arm guards which can soak up a ton of damage in melee. The boots and gauntlets are also pretty good but I stay away from the helmet because of it’s high eye and mouth encumbrance.
Winter survivor armor I only use for ice labs, it is way too encumbering for regular winter use. Much better to layer on some long underwear.
Used to be, there was always at least one part of a “survivor anything” that you had to go find because it wasn’t craftable.
That was good, I miss that.
I was going to say what about the survivor shotgun but then realized it is actually called the makeshift lever shotgun. (Although it’s item id surv_levershotgun)
I don’t use Survivor gear as I find it to be too overpowered. I just disable it most of the time before creating the world. I also like to create my characters with style in mind. Simply min-maxing it is way too boring.
Fashionably late to the conversation…
It took me exactly this amount of time to figure how this damn site works, yes.