I stick to the shelter because I can smash benches to make bow/arrows and splintered wood for fire. plus the lockers for metal. Please of trees nearby and rabbits to kill for food. plus basement to sleep in during lightning storm. It is a hassle to haul stuff back from town and dump it. even though i ca nget 2-3 jugs of water a time, this becomes a bit of a hassle. There are not that many houses in town that have basements that are safe to sleep in during storms.
where do you go?
I too stick with the shelter due to the computer and being able to read at night. But once I get the vehicle headlight fixture set up I can go anywhere, usually meaning that I set up a dump truck and carry loads of logs into town and build my own house in a park. The plus side to building your own house is that you can choose the best anti-invasion layout.
As far as i know , lightning storms don’t do anything.
Otaku, could you write a guide on how to build your own house?
I’d like to attempt it, but I don’t know where to start.
my undrestanding was that lightning strikes can hit you or your shelter if you are above ground.
btw, the computer in the shelter does stuff? I remember reading it was just background. so i never looked at it. what do you do with it?
I think that Kevin Granade or The Darkling Wolf removed the lightning strikes due to their ridiculous nature of striking next to you while you’re sleeping and burning everything you worked your ass off trying to find. Right now AFAIK lightning storms are just the same as thunderstorms for the time being.
And the working computer in the shelter constantly emits light, letting you read by its light at night.
Back on topic: I usually try to run out of town after grabbing some supplies, and I usually try to find something like a house, cabin, or public works building as a base to dump all of my stuff. If I can’t find a base, I generally camp out in the wild until I find such a building.
And if you want to build your own base from scratch, you’re going to need a TON of nails and a lot of logs or 2x4s.
There’s an emergency message there, nothing actually useful though.
I didn’t know the computer emitted light, that’s pretty cool. I found a public works in my current game, they are awesome! It has a main building with a kitchen and an office, which I refitted into a bedroom, and a couple garages. Tthe entire thing is protected by a metal fence. Also, tons of tools and crafting supplies lying around, and lockers and racks to store stuff. It also has a road leading directly into the compound, so it’s really easy to take out a vehicle, raid a city, come back.
Whenever I try to set up in a public works, it’s either too close to town, and a few zombies come in and rape me up while I sleep, or, by some fluke of nature, a billion fungaloids have spawned just close enough to give me trouble when I try to leave. In the case that you’re not under siege, they’re fantastic places to build a car, what with the tools and engine blocks that you find in the garage.
Most of the time I stay on the shelter, easy to reinforce and barricade, and the light emitted from the computer is just too good to pass. And if it’s raining outside and I don’t have a hotplate I just go downstairs, put on a gas-mask and light up a rag/2x4/anything else to be able to cook meat. Plus it doesn’t take much time for me to arrange the place in a way I like.
I love customizing cars and traveling with them , using them as houses.
I hate the process of customizing the car , it takes very much time and by the end of the day im starving and parched.
From what I understand about lighting/thunder storms is that they are the same thing. Until Z-levels are installed and we can start putting up lightning rods made of either rebar or pipes they are the same thing. Meaning a lot of rain, low visibility but no lightning strikes creating fires. But what I am curious about is if thunder storms actually create thunder? are there random bursts of sounds in random locations, drawing zombies closer or spawning more mosquitos to go there?
Back to the topic at hand…
To get the supplies I need I usually slice down swaths of forest area, cut up the tree trunks into logs which I pile in the back of a cargo machine (almost all tiles are storage space, except a few for wheels and controls. This process usually take a few in game days, so I prepare a short excursion package (tent, lighter, pocket knife, 6 feet sting is always useful, water purifier if there is water nearby, a funnel, a few containers to hold water in, maybe a few prepackaged food stuffs if you don’t think you can hunt (you always can), a book or something to do while it is raining (I like tying my threads into 30 feet bundles), just toss this all at the feet of the seat and controls space for the car (it actually works now, thanks devs.). Set it up on the outskirts of a patch of forest, (preferable far away from all swamps, rivers, and fungoid things. Bring a raincoat if you want to work on the project even while it is raining. Collect all the logs that you can and haul them back to the town you want to set up base at. Or anywhere really. distribute them roughly to about where you want your walls to be, so that it makes that crafting process easier. Now depending on the type of construction you want the process may vary. I am not sure about all wall types but I believe there are at least 3 options: walls, log walls, palisade walls. I personally perfer palisade walls because of their useful shoot out of benefit, but they come at a high construction cost as well as a high demand on string, especially with a larger base. Therefore walls are the way to go for an easier trip. So you may need a wood saw. I should have had you make the decision first and then distribe the items but, oh well. The last thing that is highly important to all wall constructions is nails. So raid the local hardware store, and you will come up short. Burn down a few house if you want, still might be a bit short. So I personally edit in a few crafting recepies whereby scrap metal along with a hammer and hacksaw make nails (IIRC there are a few recipies on the forums). This should bring up the total nail count to reasonable finishing levels. Afew a few days of construction the house should be ready. If not go back and bring back a few more logs, or nails, or books if you lack the startup skill. The design is entirely up to you, test things out and see how you like them. I also like to install a few car lamps and a kitchen set, if you have the time and pacience. And dont forget a roof so that you acan keep the rain out.
Generally with my more successful characters, I work on finding a car and working on it to get a reading headlight. The inside has its heat regulated so I can sleep wherever I want, and I eventually will trick one out to be able to survive constantly. The main problem that I have is that at one point, I am outside of my car, and there is a bear coming out of nowhere to murder me.
Good idea.
Agreed.
I set up my hideouts on the outskirts of city, if not playing on dynamic spawn. Pick up random house, beat everything that moves, barricade what you need and enjoy your first sleepless night in ideas about what horrors can come chew on you while you sleep.
gaw, why does no one set up in a cabin? My first base was in one, very close to the outskirts of a town. Of course then like always after a while the game wouldn’t start up and I had to delete the save. (i’m really desprite to get that fixed T-T)
In all the games I’ve played, I have never found a cabin. My first “base” was an LMOE shelter. I had Full Nightvision so it was pretty sweet.
The first ever hideout I had with my first starting character back when I first started playing cataclysm? Or the first hideout my character usually takes when I play a new survivor?
The first place I hide out in when I first started playing was a house in the woods. This was unmodded cataclysm, but even so, the house itself was glitched. There was no door to the bedroom of the house, but I still lived in it. After a time that character got his arms ripped off and was nearly killed by a wolf pack. I got them to relent at the time because I butchered one of their own after killing it and the the meat stopped them from going after me, although I didn’t know this at the time. At the time I thought it was due to respect actually. The character soon glitched afterward because the program crashed while my self proclaimed one armed gangsta (lol) was speeding down the highway at 120 km/h in a motorcycle while wielding a Ruger Redhawk and snorting cocaine. When I reloaded the game, my character was stuck floating in mid-air, presumably on the motorcycle, but the motorcycle itself was nowhere to be found.
I miss that character, but I don’t miss those times really.
Edit:
More recently however, the situation for a hideout depends on the situation. If I can, as a starting character, make a run for the sewers with some string, large sticks, and a backpack, I usually run for the subway system and look for areas that break from the subway system into the sewers (for water [size=1pt]don’t judge please[/size] and mutagens), and caverns for flashlights, fake porn, lighters and matchboxes, and food. Tons of food. Also jackhammers.
Else wise, a mansion tends to be really good for a set of books and in general being isolated from towns most of the time. Any armor or special weaponry is a bonus for me.
A farm is really good for starting food and drink, with some tools.
A last man on earth shelter is okay I guess. Random books, tools, a water source, a stove, food, and guns are all really nice. I don’t deliberately seek these places out though because they kind of ruin the game for me somewhat.
A Lab is a nice place too, if it has an above ground computer and beds on the above ground floor.
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Rush a school to get a schoolbus (or stick with a small car untill you find a big car) and then i use this design.
I wonder why ppl stick in one area. I found better to run into lab (yes, into, i don’t bother with lab card) or bunker to steal the stuff inside and other area (cave, mine, fungus area …)
not fun to stick in a shelter, it’s to easy.
A car mean also free light, cooked food, boiled water, hudge tank of water, lot of storage place, and, for the best of the best, a nice way to kill squirells.
ps : i avoid sewer because 1) it take ages to move in water, so your hunger/thirst go faster for the same meter you move 2) i’v lost one guy after a long time because i wasn’t able to find a way to go out (each way i took ended by a sewer station, with no way to go out without using computer - no luck- and i didn’t get computer skill at this moment)
Shouldn’t get into this untill you find a map of sewer and/or mutation to move into water
I remember my first character. It was the most epic experience i had in the game.
I was afraid of zombies overruning me so i just looted 2 houses and went down the road to a gas station.
To my fucking surprise , the gas station was merged with a minefield. I as a begginer noob saw a hole in the wall of the gas station (pile of dirt) and stepped on it. I had no idea why i exploded and i thought that maybe some kind of NPC has this as his shelter and set up land mines.
I backed up and went for the gas pumps (I was just learning the controls so i had no idea how to use them) and then out of nowhere a wild land mine jupms under my foot and explodes.
That just made me more afraid to visit public areas , untill i foud out that the NPC’s are retards and there are no dangers out there.