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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO
May 8, 2006
Latest trick attempt: use rollerblades to lure thousands of zombies into a magma pit without taking damage. Without getting killed by Shock Brutes.

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tweet my meat
Oct 2, 2013

yospos
Uh oh, I found something weird. What the hell is this thing? It drains my health if I get close to it, so it's clearly dangerous, but does it do anything useful?

GlyphGryph
Jun 23, 2013

Down came the glitches and burned us in ditches and we slept after eating our dead.
If you pick it up it grants you superpowers. Potentially. The more powerful the negative effect on approach the more power the beneficial effect for carrying or using it. Maybe.

Also holy crap are my musical instruments back in? Sweet! They've been in at various points since the whales days but always got quickly accidentally reverted every time they got merged. Like three times at least it happened, I think.

Ignatius M. Meen
May 26, 2011

Hello yes I heard there was a lovely trainwreck here and...

Sergeant_Crunch posted:

Uh oh, I found something weird. What the hell is this thing? It drains my health if I get close to it, so it's clearly dangerous, but does it do anything useful?


It's an artifact, most likely the non-random kind that has the upside of chain lightning on demand (like what shocker zombies use) for the cost of zapping you for a couple HP every so often if I recall correctly. The random kind can have any upside and any downside (possibly even in any numbers), but from what I hear they are generally garbage (the non-random kind are generally just impractical).

Dareon
Apr 6, 2009

by vyelkin
Going off the wiki, that particular artifact's effects could be one of: invisibility, clairvoyance, extinguishing fires around you (slowly), leeching health when you attack, causing blood to seep from the floor and walls, or punching everything around you for a miniscule amount of damage.

tweet my meat
Oct 2, 2013

yospos
Will it keep leeching my health while I carry it?

silentsnack
Mar 19, 2009

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is the 45th and current President of the United States. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality.

Seem that the bullwhip is kinda crazy. Ranged attack that uses Melee skill and stats(?) and stuns enemies on hit (even stuns robots) and can disarm NPCs. Also fast enough that by constantly switching targets you can keep several mobs stunlocked. Spitters don't spit, shockers don't shock, and boomers still boom but they do it at a safe distance.

Sergeant_Crunch posted:

I think I'll probably go with Taekwondo. A more defensive style seems like it would be a little more useful in the long run since I'm running a black belt character and already have enough unarmed skill to do good damage no matter the style.

So what kind of outfits are you guys usually running? I usually just beeline for some heavy armor and a duffel bag on my ranged characters, but now that I'm using an unarmed character I've enjoyed actually having to put some thought into balancing encumbrance, storage, and warmth. I've been really lucky with the loot on this world because I managed to find chainmail sleeves and leggings which can provide great defenses and be fitted, plus a survivor runner pack off a survivor zombie which gives decent storage for almost no encumbrance.


Despite what it says (sometimes... it appears to be inconsistent) arm encumberance doesn't seem to interfere with melee at all. There are a few items that give decent storage and only encumber your hands/arms. My current punch-the-poo poo-out-of-everything Krav Maga user has been running around since day 1 with two briefcases, two bindle, two plastic shopping bags, metal arm guards and a pair of fire gauntlets for a total encumberance of 25 hand and 11 arms. Somehow using a pair of brass knuckles in spite of all that.

It's a pain to switch to ranged combat, but grenades/flamethrowers still work fine. Also paints a strange mental image.

tweet my meat
Oct 2, 2013

yospos
So I had a dumb idea for learning new combat styles. What if you could learn the various kung fu styles and the venoms by fighting specific creatures while having a high enough unarmed skill? Like say you have some arbitrary level in unarmed and you fight a giant centipede. Maybe it gives you a chance to observe it's movements and have a revelation that leads to you developing the centipede style. I would think this would be a bit more fun than just locking it behind a skill book which is how it is currently.

Maybe you could even lock some new elite combat styles behind battling high level creatures like nether monsters for some crazy hell kung fu thing or robots for some kind of super armor piercing iron fist type style. It would add a lot more depth to unarmed combat and give you a pretty good endgame goal of taking on extremely dangerous creatures in unarmed combat to master top tier styles that would be equivalent to melee's diamond weapons or the high level fusion/hydrogen/rail guns that ranged has.

Does this sound like a fun idea at all?

Anticheese
Feb 13, 2008

$60,000,000 sexbot
:rodimus:

Way more fun to do it that way than to either need to burn skill points at the start of the game, or scramble for one-use books (which screws up future runs if you want to reuse a world). That mechanic is already kinda in - brawling is a learned style, and I want to say that there's a style too you lean when fighting with activatable bionic melee weapons.

Million Ghosts
Aug 11, 2011

spooooooky
You can put stuff in things like lockers and dressers right? I haven't played in forever but I swear that was possible, what obstuse key combo is it hiding under?

AceRimmer
Mar 18, 2009

Million Ghosts posted:

You can put stuff in things like lockers and dressers right? I haven't played in forever but I swear that was possible, what obstuse key combo is it hiding under?
Don't think you can do anything but just drop items on the same square as the furniture.
Protip: Dressers and such can be dragged around by grabbing them, which took me an embarrassingly long time to learn.

PiCroft
Jun 11, 2010

I'm sorry, did I break all your shit? I didn't know it was yours

AceRimmer posted:

Don't think you can do anything but just drop items on the same square as the furniture.
Protip: Dressers and such can be dragged around by grabbing them, which took me an embarrassingly long time to learn.

In addition to this, if you find shopping carts in a shop, you can dump items in them and [G]rab them to pull them about. This is essential for building your hoard of crap before you get a vehicle,

Anticheese
Feb 13, 2008

$60,000,000 sexbot
:rodimus:

Million Ghosts posted:

You can put stuff in things like lockers and dressers right? I haven't played in forever but I swear that was possible, what obstuse key combo is it hiding under?

Shift + D allows you to drop in a direction.

tweet my meat
Oct 2, 2013

yospos
Yeah, capital D to drop in a direction. You can also use the advanced inventory management system which is bound to /. It's extremely useful for moving large amounts of items, splitting stacks, or just general organization.

Million Ghosts
Aug 11, 2011

spooooooky
Thanks, I'm now happily dragging around a shopping cart full of liquor and assorted moose chunks.

tweet my meat
Oct 2, 2013

yospos
So that artifact I found earlier was a clairvoyance artifact. It gives me some creepy messages when I have it in my inventory though so I'm gonna toss it in my bank vault's safe until I need to raid a lab or something. In other news I finally found a Taekwondo book and I'm liking it so far. I also have Muay Thai now, which if I understand it right, will basically allow me to kill just about anything in one shot with a well placed knee once I get my Hydraulic Muscles CBM and some power storage installed.

Turtlicious
Sep 17, 2012

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
How do you run now?

chiefnewo
May 21, 2007

Aren't you always moving at your maximum possible speed?

tweet my meat
Oct 2, 2013

yospos
Wow, apparently worldgen can generate entire prebuilt chunks of city now. I found a small town filled with buildings that all had layouts I had never seen before and there were these giant craters of ash everywhere. It was really cool to explore. I hope they start rolling out some of these more varied building designs with basements and multiple tiles soon because it really does wonders to stave off tedium when you aren't looting the same square store over and over.

tweet my meat fucked around with this message at 12:17 on Apr 7, 2015

geeko55
Jun 11, 2013



For sure. My favorite building design is the new grocery store. It has a cart corral out front, and an aisle for utility/meds, fruits, boxed goods, fridged items, and a small storage room with a back door. It's infinitely better then the old square store. Also, there are some nice house redesigns, too. I hope the trend continues, because frankly most all the buildings could use a good face lift so everything isn't a square. Hitting zombies off the railing of a 2nd story motel or through the window at the top of an office building never gets old. :allears:

PiCroft
Jun 11, 2010

I'm sorry, did I break all your shit? I didn't know it was yours

My first vehicle on my current play through was a car in pristine condition sitting in a house garage. Up until this point I'd never encountered a house with a garage. I thoroughly approve of the efforts to make buildings less generic.

Rrussom
May 13, 2009
I wish more games featured women turning into toilets. I want toilet transformers.
My favorite is a mix between the new Electronics store and the new gunshop usually complete with smithing equipment

AceRimmer
Mar 18, 2009

Turtlicious posted:

How do you run now?

chiefnewo posted:

Aren't you always moving at your maximum possible speed?
You need to be playing one of the new experimentals to have the run toggle. Think it's pretty clever, especially with how it makes mouth encumbrance more important, since it controls your running stamina.

acidia
Oct 31, 2012
Craters of ash you say?

That town is one giant special place... try exploring the sewers.

Angry Diplomat
Nov 7, 2009

Winner of the TSR Memorial Award for Excellence In Grogging
I made a lumberjack and started in a cabin. Screamy the Lumberjack immediately discovered three zombies in her shed, so she murdered them with her axe and dumped their corpses in the woods. While there she came across a bunch of dead people with a shitload of cocaine, cigarettes, and pot. She brought all of this back to her house, drank some beer, went into the woods, got into a fight with a coyote, and snorted some coke to deal with the incredibly bad head wound it somehow managed to inflict. Then she looted a building next to an abandoned mine and found a vibrator with a fully-charged battery. Before she could bring her new acquisition home and add it to her post-apocalyptic chillzone stash, she encountered another coyote, which immediately bit her in the head and killed her. A+, would die again.

Spoggerific
May 28, 2009
Will I get the new structures and layouts if I go explore new areas after upgrading versions with an old save? Or do I have to start an entirely new save to get all that stuff? I know mechanics changes like the running thing carry over.

tweet my meat
Oct 2, 2013

yospos

acidia posted:

Craters of ash you say?

That town is one giant special place... try exploring the sewers.

Oh poo poo dude, I found a vault! I've never seen this type of structure before so it should be a fun time.

tweet my meat
Oct 2, 2013

yospos
What's the best explosive for breaching walls without damaging goods on the other side of it? Specifically I need to breach a reinforced glass wall but all of the loot on the other side is in glass vials, so I need to minimize the explosive radius so I don't spill it all. I could go find a weapon that's strong enough to break it, but explosives is what I have a lot of right now.

nftyw
Dec 27, 2006

It is a game... where you will put your life on the line.
Lipstick Apathy

Sergeant_Crunch posted:

Oh poo poo dude, I found a vault! I've never seen this type of structure before so it should be a fun time.

Once I tunneled from a lab into a nearby toxic waste dump basement. That was certainly something.

Million Ghosts
Aug 11, 2011

spooooooky

Angry Diplomat posted:

I made a lumberjack and started in a cabin. Screamy the Lumberjack immediately discovered three zombies in her shed, so she murdered them with her axe and dumped their corpses in the woods. While there she came across a bunch of dead people with a shitload of cocaine, cigarettes, and pot. She brought all of this back to her house, drank some beer, went into the woods, got into a fight with a coyote, and snorted some coke to deal with the incredibly bad head wound it somehow managed to inflict. Then she looted a building next to an abandoned mine and found a vibrator with a fully-charged battery. Before she could bring her new acquisition home and add it to her post-apocalyptic chillzone stash, she encountered another coyote, which immediately bit her in the head and killed her. A+, would die again.

Cataclysm: British Columbia edition.

tweet my meat
Oct 2, 2013

yospos
Man, vaults are really something. I wound up having to to wear a duffel bag to carry everything out even though it hampered my unarmed combat. In other news I'm finally fully set up at my new bank base, complete with 2 aluminum kegs of clean water and gas, a light source, an atm, and a sick rear end bank vault to store my high end loot in which is pictured below.

I got power armor, regular armor, artifacts, top tier skill books, diamonds, mutagen, cbms, fusion guns, plutonium cells, melee weapons, hundreds of explosives, and a mininuke to top it all off. I think half of the fun in this game is just browsing through your ever growing horde of treasure after a big haul.

I also finished my little pet project of collecting all the martial arts belts and laid them out along with a karate gi and shoes.

nftyw
Dec 27, 2006

It is a game... where you will put your life on the line.
Lipstick Apathy
I finally took a look at how Niten Ichi-Ryu works and discovered it was a sword art. I didn't have a katana with me so I made a cudgel instead. Hoooly poo poo, smashing in zombie heads like nothing now.

Drunk in Space
Dec 1, 2009
Playing this for the first time in a while and it seems like there are a lot more working vehicles lying about now. I did a burning building start and there were two cars in good condition right outside, engines humming away.

I also just found a go-bag. It appears to have . . . everything?

Solid Poopsnake
Mar 27, 2010

by Nyc_Tattoo
Nap Ghost
After striking down a zombie with a wood axe, I pulled a saxophone off his bloated, rotting body, and am now standing in an intersection outside the fitness gym playing Baker Street. This is what it means to be a survivor.

Wild T
Dec 15, 2008

The point I'm trying to make is that the only way to come out on top is to kick the Air Force in the nuts, beart it savagely with a weight and take a dump on it's face.

Sergeant_Crunch posted:

What's the best explosive for breaching walls without damaging goods on the other side of it? Specifically I need to breach a reinforced glass wall but all of the loot on the other side is in glass vials, so I need to minimize the explosive radius so I don't spill it all. I could go find a weapon that's strong enough to break it, but explosives is what I have a lot of right now.

Sonic Resonator is my go-to for B&Es on high security buildings. It has a low radius but will smash any walls to rubble, including lab entrances or armory doors. Of course you've gotta find one, plus a power source but once you do nothing can keep you out for very long.

Drunk in Space
Dec 1, 2009
Does damage to ranged weapons, e.g. firearms, lower their ranged effectiveness, or is it just for their use in melee?

Angry Diplomat
Nov 7, 2009

Winner of the TSR Memorial Award for Excellence In Grogging
The OP says skills are mostly a newbie trap. Is that still true? I made a generic survivor with no skills but good stats and traits, and I've just cleared out a peaceful, isolated farmhouse within hiking distance of a city, so I think I'm going to set up shop here. I'll raid a library or something to gain some basic skills.

Also: parkour is really good. Being able to instantly traverse fences and the like can reliably stall a huge mob of zombies and give you some breathing room. gently caress those leaping Hunter guys though.

Million Ghosts posted:

Cataclysm: British Columbia edition.

I laughed so hard at this that I nearly hurt myself. Probably helps that I have a couple of friends from BC.

Slaapaav
Mar 3, 2006

by Azathoth

Drunk in Space posted:

Does damage to ranged weapons, e.g. firearms, lower their ranged effectiveness, or is it just for their use in melee?

recoil goes up chance to hit goes down.

OwlFancier
Aug 22, 2013

Killer-of-Lawyers posted:

You're all wrong. The best martial arts is Fencing with full ornamental plate armor and a diamond broadsword. Jeeze.

edit: Although seriously it is. You get free blocks that turn into attacks, which makes being swarmed a lot less of a problem.

I am extremely fond of the melee weapon ones also, though I prefer Silat or Eskrima because they make you very good with knives. Being able to stab everything to death in half a second is useful.

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Strumpie
Dec 9, 2012

Angry Diplomat posted:

The OP says skills are mostly a newbie trap. Is that still true?
Also: parkour is really good.

Skills are a valuable investment, if used appropriately. The risk free and easy to level skills won't be worth it outside of a particular character/playstyle while skills like Dodge are a solid starting investment if you expect to do any amount of melee. Tailoring can also massively accelerate your collecting/crafting of starting gear, especially if you start in winter or with some other mostly clothesless profession. Some professions already include a mix of starting skills and putting a single point into something you know you want for that particular character is wise.

I hear a lot of people suggesting certain *must have* traits but Cataclysm really is open to whatever you can make work. Depending on your skill level/spawnrate/mods some traits are invaluable when others are worthless. For me, Parkour and Packmule are the only positive traits worth getting on characters that aren't otherwise following a gimmick. For my playstyle and high enemy spawn rate no traits come close to benefit/cost of those two, but for someone who doesn't utilise terrain intelligently or manage their encumbrance due to differing playstyle then they could diminish in importance.

If you can make it work, then it works.

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