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What is Cataclysm?Vengarr posted:Despondent, I ran through an anthill, snorting meth and training the biggest swarm of giant ants I could possibly amass. Then I turned around and started blasting my Scar-L on full auto, tossing in a few 40mm grenades for good measure. Now I'm knee-deep in ant viscera, coming down off a meth high and wondering what I'm going to do with my life.  Capilarean posted:If your vehicle goes faster than 100 mph, it's not heavy enough. Slap on more armor and rollers, then you can just ignore minefields and other vehicles, as well as most buildings and smaller patches of forest.  Moridin920 posted:Ya'll can be inferior meat if you want, my character is slowly transforming into a tree.  Nastyman posted:Then, for the first time this entire evening, I remember that Android comes with a pair of free bionics installed  girth brooks part 2 posted:
 girth brooks part 2 posted:I just found a money bundle in a gas station. Completely at loss as to what to do with it, I threw it at the feet of Shrieker and lit a match. Then I cooked my lunch over it's smoldering carcass.  Frog Assassin posted:Roasted triffid stamen and ant pincher casserole with a potato chip crust and a blueberry glaze. Fried spider palp as an appetizer. Serve hot with tequila and purified sewer water. Some soupy green ooze I found in the dumpster of a liquor store for dessert. I'm pretty sure that when I turn my back on it it moves a little, and sometimes I think I hear it whispering things to me.  Tiler Kiwi posted:So thanks to run ins with various sources of mutagens, I've gone from a hallucinating naked recovering alcoholic hobo to a slimy rat-bug-man-freak in surplus military gear zipping down the road with a shopping cart and one shotting bears with nipponese steel. Its not really the direction I was expecting this game to go but I'm still on board with it.  Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is a post-apocalyptic, procedurally-generated roguelike survival game with zombies and crafting. If that storm of indie game buzzwords hasn't caused your mouse hand to instinctively flail towards the close tab button, keep reading. Originally developed around 2011 by a lone developer named Whales (development stopped by late 2012), Cataclysm was picked up by Kevin Granade (among others, but his name is on the title screen) in early 2013 and turned into the game as it is today. There's some assholery and drama in there, but the game is free, which excuses a lot most of the time. There was, however, a kickstarter that appears from several accounts to have been wasted money. Hordes of peripheral coders and fans (Including a short-lived goon fork that helped hugely with feature expansion and quality of life, and was later merged back into the main branch) have added hundreds of minor items, tweaks, and mods, so that now the game can simulate a wide variety of apocalypses, although some are still slightly out of reach. the player character is a survivor of an apocalypse that has unleashed zombies, mutated animals, and stranger things upon the New England landscape. Survival relies not just upon being able to kill zombies, but being able to find food and water, maintain a comfortable temperature, and stay happy in the face of disaster. If one can manage all that, one might be able to piece together a few scattered scraps of what happened, establish a secure base, or advance to the next stage of human evolution. More likely, however, one will go out in a blaze of glory, surrounded by fire and zombies. Or alone, in a hole, with two broken legs and a rat gnawing on one's face. What the gently caress are all those things in your screenshots? Being an indie roguelike, the game is primarily text-based tiles. Fortunately, a number of tilesets exist, and I am using the RetroDays one. Partially for the NES-reminiscent design, and partially because the 10-pixel-square size gives me a good field of vision. Go left! Get the nail bat! Kill the zombie! Hang on, hang on. This is going to have a lot of audience participation, but I'm going to be doing most of the driving. However, you will have input at the beginning and the potential end for sure, as well as input on where to explore when I run out of things to do in the immediate vicinity. There are a near-infinite multitude of builds, especially now that new challenge starts are available. Take a look at the wiki and the SA thread, maybe play the game a little until you're ready to suggest:
Please note that I am not very good at this game. The only characters of mine that have lasted beyond a few days have either cheated horribly or had no zombies to deal with. So you will be getting to suggest/vote on builds fairly often. I'll keep track of what's been suggested and by who, and post the list whenever I die. You can then vote for one of those or suggest another build. Only one build allowed per poster. Also note that there are a few options I am playing with that make the game slightly easier and significantly less annoying. I have skill rust turned off, and the maximum trait limit, both positive and negative, is raised to 1000 for more flexibility in character creation. I can make Batman, but he'll be asthmatic, schizophrenic, astigmatic, lactose-intolerant, and crumple in a stiff breeze. Additionally, I will be playing the latest stable release, 0.C. Unstable builds have added many more items and features, but at such a rapid pace that as soon as one run is done it would be a dozen builds behind. Useful Links Game Website Github repo, get the bleeding-edge latest version here. Wiki (Heavily out-of-date, most pages aren't even updated to 0.B) Item Browser SA thread, discussion is most useful from page 80 onward. Anything before that is from times when archery was in a quantum flux of being nerfed or buffed, bears would spawn with submachine guns, NPCs would hand you ticking bombs as payment for services rendered, and you were actively penalized for wearing socks with your shoes. If you want to get started playing and want pro strats, page 101 has a very thorough starting guide, brought to you by ducttape.
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May 22, 2015 15:22
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Game mechanics explanations, copied wholesale from full updates: Inventory: Here is how inventory works in this game: Every item has a weight and a volume. Items that you wear have among their attributes a storage capacity. The weight you can carry is determined by your Strength, and the volume by the capacity of what you wear. Any item can be wielded, and a wielded item has its volume ignored. This can be used to carry engines back to your car without putting on a dozen pairs of pants (Corollary: you can put on a dozen pairs of pants and carry two engines). Everything else is assumed to be in your pockets somehow, regardless of how silly it may be. Crafting: To craft something, you first need to know the recipe. Some are unlocked automatically at given levels of skill (Which can be 0, any boob knows how to stuff a rock in their socks or sharpen a stick), others you will need a book for. You can work directly out of the book, but quite often you will learn the recipe while reading the book and thus be able to craft it from memory. You will also need an appropriate skill level in one or more skills. It's quite possible to know a recipe you don't have the skill to make, although usually anything you can make from memory is something you only need the parts for. Speaking of which, you will need all the parts, either in your inventory or within a few tiles around you. And finally, you will need time. Even if you're carrying your forge and tools around with you, if your broadsword gets stuck in a zombie you can't just whip up a new one, it's gonna take about four hours to beat the metal into shape. In earlier versions, crafting was based entirely on specific items. To make something involving a hammer, a recipe would call for "rock OR stone hammer OR hammer", leaving out earlier entries on the list as needed (A rock is not a good tool to, say, forge a sword with). Once multiple types of various tools began being introduced in the name of verisimilitude, the lists of such began getting prohibitively long. Thus, they switched most tools to a qualities system. Thus, a rock now has level 1 hammering quality, a stone hammer has level 2. Some things require level 3 hammering, so a stone hammer will not serve us for our entire run. The system is still a little odd, as some things have something like -11 butchering quality, which probably just modifies how likely you are to get usable materials from a corpse. Clothing, Encumbrance and Temperature: Clothing is a bit complex in this game. A given piece has certain armor values, occupies one of four general layers (Close to body, normal, outer, or strapped to body), covers certain percentages of certain parts of the body, and, important for this discussion, encumbers and warms those parts. As you might expect, being overdressed for the apocalypse is not a good idea. Encumbering various body parts has various detrimental effects. Torso encumbrance decreases your dodge and melee skills, arm encumbrance decreases accuracy with ranged weapons, hand encumbrance makes it slower to reload guns and throw weapons, and leg and foot encumbrance reduces movement speed. If you're clever, you can already see that you can encumber your torso to hell and back and not worry about firing guns, or wear dozens of gloves or handheld storage containers and still fight in melee. As for temperature, naturally you want to avoid frostbite and heatstroke, so you may at times find that you need to leave some gear at base when you go out in the summer, or just generally change up your loadout every season. It's entirely possible to underdress and overdress at the same time, so you get frostbite on your legs while your feet burn up. Hunger, Thirst, and Food: Being a survival game, one naturally needs to stay fed and hydrated. To this end, food has three specific stats: Nutrition, Quench, and Enjoyability. Nutrition is how much it fills your hunger, quench is the same for thirst, and enjoyability is how much morale you get for eating it. These numbers can be negative, for instance, potato chips will make you thirsty, and you're not going to enjoy eating raw lasagna noodles. Naturally, cooked and prepared food will usually be better for you than raw food or prepackaged snacks, and eating too much junk food will hurt your invisible health stat. The apocalypse is not an excuse to pig out on potato chips. Morale and Focus: Your psychological state affects several things in-game. The most prominent effect of this is affecting a stat called "Focus". Focus is a measure of your applicable brainpower, how much actual benefit you gain from practicing and studying skills. Each use of a skill reduces your focus and increases the skill, and focus regenerates slowly at neutral morale, with higher and lower morale having commensurate effects on this regeneration. Extremely high and low levels of morale also directly affect your stats. It takes quite a lot, at least 100 either way before effects start kicking in, but all four stats and speed can all be affected. Additionally, if you are heavily depressed, you can wind up unable to craft, which can lead organically to lying in bed smoking weed, listening to music, and stuffing junk food in your face because you're too depressed to cook. Health and Illness: Health is a hidden stat attached to the player. We cannot see it directly, but changing it corresponds roughly to what you would assume healthy or unhealthy behavior to change. Eat plenty of vitamins and fruits and vegetables, don't do drugs, The cold and flu are currently the only opportunistic infections in game, and both are technically treated as attacks against your mouth. Wearing mouth clothing with a high "environmental protection" stat, such as a dust mask or gas mask, can reduce your chance of infection or immunize you completely. When contracted, both diseases last for days, reduce stats, increase thirst, and cause periodic coughing. Cough syrup will reduce the penalties for a short time, but time or a semi-rare item are the only healer. Reality Bubble: The game does not simulate every location in the game at once, or even every location you've revealed on the map. Instead, active simulation is limited to a radius of a few map tiles around the player, roughly corresponding to what the player can actually observe. Certain timers, like foods decaying and zombies reviving, technically tick down while the player isn't directly observing them, but only in the sense that they're checked and applied when the object comes back into the reality bubble. Thus, you can leave a merrily burning house fire, and when you come back the fire will still be blazing, as if very little time had passed. Likewise, NPCs will only move and fight while nearby. Interestingly, the game used to count underground as a different reality bubble than aboveground, so you could safely sleep underground without worrying about monsters spawning near your house. That has changed, and it is entirely possible for zombies to wander downstairs in search of that delicious brain scent. They could go up and down stairs previously as well, but only if they had already sighted the player. Cars & Driving: Once behind the wheel of a vehicle, the control and time scheme changes slightly. Up and down now set your speed, while left and right steer the car. You set your speed and simply wait, steering as necessary. Since the game is still tile-based, things get a little weird. 9 miles per hour roughly translates into one tile per turn, and at higher speeds you essentially begin teleporting. Steering winds up making cars moving diagonally into oddly disjointed collections of parts that are still perfectly navigable, just not pretty. While vehicle speeds can go ridiculously high, especially when you start putting multiple engines in, most casual driving winds up being below 40 mph. Low skill in driving will cause you to fumble with the controls occasionally, knocking the steering off-kilter in one direction or the other. You're also more likely to lose control and go into a skid when running into things at low skill. But, in spite of the difficulties, driving is one of the best things to do in service to survival. Your radius of exploration increases to practically infinite, and you have a nice big blunt weapon in case of zombies, moose, or rear end in a top hat NPCs. Martial Arts: Basic unarmed combat is simple. You punch, roll Unarmed+Melee, and deal rather pitiful damage. Generally only useful if you can't find a 2x4. But with the world of punchmans, many more things are possible. Martial arts styles are divided into four groups of five (Plus an additional group of three for weapon styles), each group accessible through a specific trait, and a single basic style unlocked by having 2 or higher Unarmed skill. Each style provides different bonus moves you can do that are unlocked at given levels of unarmed skill. You can know multiple styles easily, but you can only use one at a time. Books exist to train each style specifically, but aside from the most common styles are vanishingly rare or not on loot tables. This is about as much as can be said about martial arts in the broad sense. Many (but not all) styles increase the damage you do when fighting unarmed, and many (but not all) styles change parts of the damage formula or provide benefits in certain situations. An in-depth explanation of exactly what benefits each style gives is beyond the scope of this document, but those interested can find decent details on the wiki. -Martial Arts Training teaches Karate, Judo, Aikido, Tai Chi, or Taekwondo. These are also the styles it is easiest to find books for. They are fairly basic as far as martial arts go, with Taekwondo being the most obviously useful, decreasing damage from blocking based on your Strength score. -Self-Defense classes teaches Capoeira, Krav Maga, Muay Thai, Ninjutsu, or Zui Quan (Drunken Boxing). These are all very good styles, with Krav Maga getting the most techniques from Unarmed advancement, Capoeira working well for mobile fighters, Muay Thai dealing more damage to larger enemies, Zui Quan allowing infinite(50) dodges without penalty after you attack, and Ninjutsu's attacks being entirely silent (including with melee weapons). -Shaolin Adept teaches the Tiger, Crane, Leopard, Snake, or Dragon Style. Each of these changes which stats are included in the to-hit or damage calculations, among other benefits. Perhaps the most interesting one is Tiger Style, which increases your damage over repeated attacks. While Denese Monk was making 30-40 damage critical strikes, an actual monk with Tiger Style and high strength could see the same damage range without criticals after a few attacks. -Venom Mob Protege teaches Centipede, Viper, Scorpion, Lizard, or Toad Style. These are all very situational, with Scorpion and Viper Styles both relying on critical hits, Lizard style boosting your capabilities when near a wall, and Toad Style granting temporary armor when you hold still. Perhaps the most universal is Centipede Style, which speeds up your attacks for each one you land. -Melee Weapon Training provides Escrima, fencing, or Pentjak Silat. Unlike pure martial arts styles, these enhance your functionality with a specific list of weapons. And yes, Escrima works with an umbrella. Not much mechanical is known about these styles on the wiki. Additionally, there is a secret weapon style, available only via rare book: Niten Ichi-Ryu Kendo, which enhances the functionality of katanas, because of course there are katanas and they have to be the best. Mutations: One of two main means to alter your character's basic capabilities after character generation, genetic modification, colloquially referred to as "mutation", entered the world before the Cataclysm, although it was restricted to top-secret government laboratories with pilot programs in the armed forces. The math on how a mutation is assigned to the character is complex, but in basic gameplay there is a 2/3 chance to gain a mutation that could be either positive or negative, and a 1/3 chance to obtain a mutation that the game deems purely bad. The Robust Genetics trait changes the formula so that the 1/3 chance of a bad mutation is instead a chance to gain a purely positive mutation. Most mutations belong to at least one themed category, and gaining mutations in one category can result in a snowball effect where you gain more mutations in that category than any other and eventually cross a threshold into a new form of life. Targeted mutagens can increase your progress in a given category much easier than just randomly mutating, but are commensurately harder to find and make. Stimulants & Depressants Another hidden stat on the player is "stim". It effectively ranges from 250 to -200 and tends to drift toward 0. Movement speed, intelligence, dexterity, and perception are all affected by the level of this stat. Taking stimulants raises the value, with diminishing returns above 30. While the wiki doesn't explicitly say this, I would assume taking depressants would logically lower it. Death through this stat is possible, a heart attack threatens if stim is over 250, as does apnea when under -200. Dareon fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Aug 4, 2015 |
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May 22, 2015 15:23
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Run 001 - *cough* In order to dive right into the gameplay, let's start by making a random character. This is a thing you can do easily, just let the game pick a profession, skills, and stats for you. Rest assured I'll get my face chewed off in short order and we can get to the actually interesting things. We begin with the process of creating a new world. First, we decide which mods to use.  Most of you should be familiar with what mods do. They add, remove, or change things that people find useful, unbalanced, or annoying, as it goes. Here I am adding dinosaurs, an expanded array of vehicle weapons, and aboveground buildings (Basements exist in vanilla, but not upper stories. This will probably change with the next version or two.) and changing the zombies to be slower, shambling types. Vanilla zombies are a little slower than a baseline human. An opposite mod is also available to turn them into runners. Next is the actual worldgen parameters.  (I didn't leave out any options when I cropped those together, it's just a weird artifact of how the scrolling works) I will be playing the same world until the thread or I decide otherwise, which will result in possibly stumbling across old corpses, bases, and vehicles used by previous characters. The spawn rate scaling affects how many monsters or items show up in a given point. High item spawn rate results in large clumps of junk along roadways and houses stuffed with goodies. Enemy spawns can go down to 0, resulting in only wildlife showing up. Useful if you just want to learn how the game works without worrying too much about dying. It can also go up to 50.  Feel free to suggest these settings as well.Region type used to have an experimental desert setting, which has since been removed. Season length is measured in days, and is set to twice as long as vanilla. Setting it to 91 gives a year length approximating reality, but can make it really hard to survive in summer and winter, just for how hard it can be to lay in adequate supplies. Monster spawns are set to be challenging, but not overwhelming. Static spawn means that once we clear out a section of town, we're not going to get new zombies showing up unless they physically wander in. On the other hand, we may get hard-to-kill endgame zombies just chilling on someone's patio. Wander spawns are an emulation of horde behavior, an overwhelming amount of zombies that tracks towards noise. Every time I've had it on, I've died to a horde except when I cheated myself new ammo every time I ran out. With our options set, the only remaining step is naming the world.  There are a lot of random names available, or you can just enter your own. I hit random a few times until I got that. We can hop back and forth between tabs as the need strikes, but honestly it's easy enough to go mods > options > name > done. With that done, we hit New Game > Random Character and get this:  I'll go over actual character creation in a later entry. Suffice to say this character will not be slugging it out toe-to-toe with a lot of zombies. Fragile is practically a death sentence, and Albino is going to be a major pain. I've never actually played an albino, so this is new to me. But we can run like the dickens, slipping across terrain that will slow down the majority of enemies. We can also swim, which is another thing I've never done.  And so we begin! We are the little white guy in the middle of the screen. We stand next to a set of gray lockers and brown benches. Over on the right are a pair of blue counters. In the upper right corner is a functioning computer console (For given values of functioning, it is mainly a nightlight), in the lower right is a nonfunctional computer. In the middle of the room are stairs down to the basement. The windows of the shelter have curtains, which are currently closed. We would otherwise be able to see out, and monsters to see in. We can see that there's not much in the way of features around us from the minimap at the top of the screen, next to our health bars. There usually isn't, evac shelters are generally pretty safe starts. This is, however, on the edge of a swamp, which can make things difficult. In some starts, as determined by you guys, I will be cheating to spawn some items or gain mutations that you determine are necessary to the build. But since nothing really goes with this build, let's just look at our inventory.  As a Survivor, we begin with a decent selection of clothes (But notably no gloves or hat, which can be a problem in the chill of early spring), a matchbook, a knife, and a bottle of water. Thanks to our Albino trait, we also have an umbrella to keep the sun off. And, coincidentally, the rain. Inventory: Here is how inventory works in this game: Every item has a weight and a volume. Items that you wear have among their attributes a storage capacity. The weight you can carry is determined by your Strength, and the volume by the capacity of what you wear. Any item can be wielded, and a wielded item has its volume ignored. This can be used to carry engines back to your car without putting on a dozen pairs of pants (Corollary: you can put on a dozen pairs of pants and carry two engines). Everything else is assumed to be in your pockets somehow, regardless of how silly it may be. While we have a knife (Perhaps the most useful tool available to us), there is always more we could have. With that in mind, let's check the basement of our shelter. They were supposed to be stocked for months of multiple occupancy, surely they'll be a treasure trove for one man?  Oh. Light is a thing that exists. Or needs to exist, in this case. If we had a flashlight, we could use that, but for now we'll just have to stumble around in the dark. Turns out, this place is a treasure trove. After a few steps, stumbling over pairs of boots and cans of food, we find a flashlight. We (a)ctivate it...  ...Oh dear. Yes, occasionally zombies will spawn in shelter basements. Not only that, but that area of grey swirls is a cloud of smoke, indicating one of these zombies is a smoker. Like every single other thing in this game, a smoker zombie can mean swift death to the unprepared. As can be gathered from the name and the cloud, smoker zombies are surrounded by a pall of smoke. This blocks vision and if we walk into it, will hurt us via smoke inhalation. The regular zombie, visible six tiles north of us, is less of an issue. We need to take these out in something like a safe manner, but we are incredibly unprepared. The best weapon we have is the flashlight, which deals 1 bashing damage and has a to-hit bonus of +2. Our pocketknife does more damage (7 stabbing) and is slightly quicker to attack, but has a to-hit penalty of -4. If we walked all over trying to find something better to hit zombies with, we'd choke on smoke, get bitten by zombies, and die. Fortunately, we can see nearly everything in the room from where we stand with (V).  There are two hammers visible. That one next to the zombie is probably the better choice. We'll go for it.  We have our hammer, at the cost of a lungful of smoke and some teethmarks in our boot. Notice that up in the top right, our Str and Dex have turned red and gone down. That's the smoke inhalation. We really need to get out of this cloud. Carefully, I back away towards the door.  We inhaled some more smoke, but we're safe for the moment. I turn the flashlight off and wait for a bit. Fighting zombies is really about patience more than anything. The best way to fight them in melee is to kite them across a terrain feature they'll need to slowly struggle through, then get a few hits on them while they're distracted. Not an option here, but we can wait for them to come pound on the door so I won't have to wade through the smoke.  Guess what I didn't do? If you guessed "Wait for the zombies to start pounding on the door so I wouldn't have to wade through the smoke," you're right. I told you I'm not very good at this game. We've taken a couple bites, but nothing serious.  Aaaand we're screwed. The coughing from smoke inhalation is, in fact, deadlier than the zombies. You may recall that this character has the Fragile trait. That reduces our torso HP by 75%, which is damaged when we cough. If we cough a few more times, we're dead. On the plus side, both zombies (That we know about) are dead now.     Welp. Cause of death No. 1: Nagging Cough. Not actually what I expected to kill us. That was remarkably short, and I didn't get to talk about half the things I wanted to, so let's do that again. Random Character again... Run 002, Part 1 - DIY  Not bad. Well, kinda terrible, but not as bad as Mr. Fragile Albino. Dumb as a box of rocks, which is not great for anyone wanting to learn crafting recipes.  We've actually spawned in a different shelter. I can tell because of the surroundings on the minimap, and there's no coughing corpse in the middle of the floor. Also, notice that instead of a little white dude, we're now a little white dudette. Same deal as last time, stumble around in the dark in the basement and hope nothing kills us.  We find a flashlight, as well as a couple of good shirts and a backpack along the way. The backpack is a great find, as it comes with a storage capacity of 40. I scoop up all this crap, because it's all useful and we've got storage space to spare at the moment. Now, we should take a look outside and see if anything nasty is waiting for us. There are windows here, but they're covered by curtains. We walk over to one and press (o) to open it...  No zombies visible from this window. Always a good thing. Let's check the map with (m).  We're close to town. Most of the buildings in this game are represented on the map as angle brackets, Vs, or carets, with the direction they're pointing indicating the front door. To our immediate north is another evac shelter (white plus). Through the forest to the south is a FEMA camp (black-on-blue Fs) which we will not be visiting immediately. To the northeast is a gas station (light blue) and a triffid grove (pink T). That's a little close for comfort, but manageable. Of course, the town to the northwest is where we should be directing our attention. Most of the houses (lime green) are to the north, but there's a smattering in the south, along with a couple of garages (white Os) and parks (dark green Os), as well as hardware (teal), clothing (blue), sporting goods (cyan), and grocery stores (dark green). The middle of town looks like an area we should strive for. There's a gun store (red) right next to a military surplus store (black-on-grey) and a pharmacy (pink). We'll need to brave a lot of zombies, though. We're set up pretty well to die horribly. But there's always more that can be done. We're going to putter around the shelter for an hour or so busting furniture and making tools from the bits.  The first thing we do is step outside and find a rock. We have a screwdriver, but what we need most is a hammer. A rock will do in a pinch, but we're going to want an actual hammer at some point. I grab two, just in case. Rock in hand (literally, we want to be wielding the rock and not a more valuable weapon for this), we step back inside and hit (s) to start smashing up the place. We smack a locker about ten times before it breaks, leaving behind a pipe and some scrap metal. We also smash a couple of benches, resulting in 2x4s, nails, and splintered chunks of wood. We take the nails, those can be handy later. We rip the curtains off a window as well.  Pressing (&) brings up our crafting menu. Here we see everything we know how to make, with things we have the materials for at the top of the list. It's got multiple tabs and sort categories, but it can still fill up. We hammer the ends flat on a pipe, giving us something vaguely resembling a crowbar. We also batter a piece of scrap metal into a lockpick. A cudgel is also carved out of a 2x4, giving us a handy melee weapon. The string from the curtains is cut into bits and used to tie our rock to a stick, making a better hammer. Crafting: To craft something, you first need to know the recipe. Some are unlocked automatically at given levels of skill (Which can be 0, any boob knows how to stuff a rock in their socks or sharpen a stick), others you will need a book for. You can work directly out of the book, but quite often you will learn the recipe while reading the book and thus be able to craft it from memory. You will also need an appropriate skill level in one or more skills. It's quite possible to know a recipe you don't have the skill to make, although usually anything you can make from memory is something you only need the parts for. Speaking of which, you will need all the parts, either in your inventory or within a few tiles around you. And finally, you will need time. Even if you're carrying your forge and tools around with you, if your broadsword gets stuck in a zombie you can't just whip up a new one, it's gonna take about four hours to beat the metal into shape. In earlier versions, crafting was based entirely on specific items. To make something involving a hammer, a recipe would call for "rock OR stone hammer OR hammer", leaving out earlier entries on the list as needed (A rock is not a good tool to, say, forge a sword with). Once multiple types of various tools began being introduced in the name of verisimilitude, the lists of such began getting prohibitively long. Thus, they switched most tools to a qualities system. Thus, a rock now has level 1 hammering quality, a stone hammer has level 2. Some things require level 3 hammering, so a stone hammer will not serve us for our entire run. The system is still a little odd, as some things have something like -11 butchering quality, which probably just modifies how likely you are to get usable materials from a corpse. Now with our hammer and screwdriver, we can actually dismantle furniture from the (*) menu, getting more usable items from it. We take apart a few benches for the 2x4s. During this procedure, our hands get cold, so we cut up some of the clothes we got out of the basement and make some hand wraps out of rags. Our hands are still getting cold, but it's better than nothing. We carve the 2x4s into some pointy sticks for throwing at zombies. A few strings get tied to our flashlight so we can strap it to our body. Finding ways to strap your most-used tools to you so they don't take space in your inventory is a major part of efficient survival. And finally, the curtain from the window is tied together to make a sling for carrying more stuff. It's very cumbersome, and we won't want to be wearing it when we're actually fighting. Unfortunately due to the way the inventory system works, dropping the sling won't automatically remove items that we could only carry because of it.  So we are now ready to step into the wide, hostile world. I mean, we're not ready, but we're gonna. Some people spend the entire first day in the shelter, carving wood and sewing clothes by the light of the computer terminal. Next time we'll check out the nearby shelter and raid the southern part of town. Possibly, we'll die horribly.
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May 22, 2015 15:24
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Oh dear. Good luck on this. I'm a cheating bastard at this game, but it'll be interesting to watch you struggle with this.
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May 22, 2015 15:39
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Looking forward to this (though that tileset is....ouch. Not my thing. I find the default tileset is pretty good). Gonna make the following character suggestions: [*]Paul Blart, Bionic Mall Cop - uses the Mall Cop starting scenario, with the addition of say....three random bionics. [*]Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle - As many turtle-like mutations as you can get, including Phalloderm and Fey Eyes so you're literally green. Starts with Ninjutsu martial art, and Swimming skill, and high melee skill. Uses one (and only one) of the following weapons: Katana, some kind of quarterstaff, a combat knife, or a hockey stick (RIP Casey Jones). Must make a base in a Sewer. Restriction: Absolutely cannot kill any rats. [*]Tony Montana, Drug Lord - spawns with one stack of cocaine, one stack of heroin, and one stack of methamphetamine, highly trained social skills, stacks of money, and an M16 w/ M203 and a single 40mm frag grenade. Goal: Amass as much cocaine as you possibly can. Introduce zombies to your little friend. First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the Leif. fucked around with this message at 15:54 on May 22, 2015 |
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May 22, 2015 15:48
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This game is second only to Unreal World in bringing out the hoarding psychopathic hermit in me. It'll be fun to see how someone else plays it. And considering how much effort you're putting into explaining the game, I could very easily see this turning into a very handy resource for helping people over the learning curve.
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May 22, 2015 16:51
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The game is now actually surprisingly easy to learn if you use a tileset and stick to the most basic controls: moving, shooting, opening/closing, eating, "apply", and "read". You can expand outward from there as you get more familiar, and learn crafting slowly over time.
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May 22, 2015 17:34
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Industrial pacifist cyborg named "Bob the Builder"
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May 22, 2015 18:02
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A long term one, but an otherwise normal character with genetically unstable and robust genetics. See what sort of monster you mutate into 
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May 22, 2015 18:16
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Tehan posted:This game is second only to Unreal World in bringing out the hoarding psychopathic hermit in me. It'll be fun to see how someone else plays it. I love both. But it's really hard to go from the (relatively) easier UI of finnish badassurvivalry to Dwarf Zombtress. (I also prefer not to have to fight zombies all the time) Although, I probably have most of Cataclysm's key commands down to muscle memory by now. My favorite run was when I was a shambling dumb half-mutant thing from some unlucky mutation rolls, found a really nice katana in a mansion, then went on a quest to restore my mind and humanity, ending up as a powerhouse fully unmutated and only slightly bionically assisted human, robed in samurai armor of my own creation, slicing neatly through zombie hordes on my quest for knowledge and to collect Every Book. Killed by a smoke zombie. Ffffffffffffff But then started a new character right outside the Public Works my Samurai had made a base in, and had a jolly good time experimenting with vehicles. Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 18:42 on May 22, 2015 |
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May 22, 2015 18:18
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I don't have any character builds to recommend right now,but I do have a vehicle creation suggestion when we get to that point-Try to build the Doof Wagon. Unless it's impossible in this build,in which case,never mind.
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May 22, 2015 18:39
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Just like my Japanese Animes: Scenario - whatever Stats- High intelligence, low strength and dexterity, average perception Good traits - whatever fits the theme Bad traits - Flimsy, Clumsy, Lightweight, Nearsighted, anything else you think would be fitting/amusing Profession - Otaku Skills - high computer skills Gender - Male Name - whatever Goals- 1. Become a skilled swordsman and wield a Katana 2. Become a robot 3. Collect as many comic books/animes/other nerdy stuff as possible
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May 22, 2015 18:42
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Sweet, a C:DDA LP. It's a well I dive into every once in a while, and I was hoping someone would show it off. Suggestions for starting characters: -Crazy cat lady: Senior citizen, schizophrenic, frail and forgetful. Lives in a cabin in the woods surrounded by her beloved cats. Spawn a bunch of friendly cats with the debug menu. -Drunken Hobo: A hobo with Addictive Personality and Drunken Master. His goal is the acquisition and sampling of all the booze the post-apocalypse has to offer. Should spend as little time sober as possible. -Show off the 'classic roguelike' classes sometime because those are amazing. And for world suggestions, one world in which city size is set to zero, and one where it's set to maximum. Show off survival in the barren wilderness/Mega-City One. V Yeah, but wilderness survival should be shown off sometime, and also setting city size to maximum almost always results in the entire map being covered in a single gigantic city for me. Inadequately fucked around with this message at 20:52 on May 22, 2015 |
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May 22, 2015 19:37
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Hand wraps are garbage. Just stow your weapon whenever you aren't fighting. Almost every decent coat/jacket has the "has pockets to warm your hands" tag which functions as described but only if you aren't wielding anything. Suggested character/builds: Youtube Faceplant Guy: a clumsy male skater* with average stats to show off how useful speed and evasion are early on, when stats/skills/gear are lacking. If you're playing a version with the run/walk mechanic, sprinting stacks with rollerblades and fleet-footed to give you an insane ~4.5x movement speed. If you want to roleplay it a bit, give him slow learner and fast healer.  Cyberpunk-fu: start as a Razor Girl with an unarmed style and good melee stats and +1 Dodging. Maybe explain how styles work. Octodad: maximum tentacles. Flail around ineffectually and die hilariously. * Wearing a pair of rollerblades/skates doubles your movement speed on smooth surfaces but slows you down on dirt/grass, and if you try to fight while wearing them instead you fall on your rear end and die... unless you have the unique "skater" perk/trait which can only be obtained by starting with the Roller Derby Player or Skater Foo or Hockey Player professions. edit: Inadequately posted:And for world suggestions, one world in which city size is set to zero, and one where it's set to maximum. Show off survival in the barren wilderness/Mega-City One. silentsnack fucked around with this message at 19:55 on May 22, 2015 |
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May 22, 2015 19:47
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Dareon posted:Fragile is practically a death sentence 1. not fighting (that could mean avoiding the zombies and just dealing with the fact that there is less loot, or it could mean sprinting through the towns at night and grabbing all the poo poo you can) 2. Using ranged weapons (spawn with them, or use slingshot/blowgun/thrown weapons/molotovs Dareon posted:The best way to fight them in melee is to kite them across a terrain feature they'll need to slowly struggle through, then get a few hits on them while they're distracted.  Dareon posted:Unfortunately due to the way the inventory system works, dropping the sling won't automatically remove items that we could only carry because of it. Hand wraps aren't *complete* garbage. They're good for Winter spawn Tweakers or similar where your character will be incapable of crafting about 1 hour after spawn, and you don't have time to find a sewing kit. Don't want to get frostibite! Leather hand wraps give you 10 warmth as well, thats not bad for day 1. OP, when you get tired of this world, could you set the item spawn scaling rate to 0.25? I feel like all of the item bloat over the last 2 years or so makes the game too easy with item spawn scaling factor 1. I tried using the [code] tags to insert a template here, but it stretched the forum. I put it up on pastebin instead.
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May 22, 2015 21:10
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ro5s posted:A long term one, but an otherwise normal character with genetically unstable and robust genetics. See what sort of monster you mutate into This sounds fun. I've never played this particular game but I love all these zombie / post apocalypse survival type games, looking forward to this LP.
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May 22, 2015 21:14
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VolticSurge posted:I don't have any character builds to recommend right now,but I do have a vehicle creation suggestion when we get to that point-Try to build the Doof Wagon. Unless it's impossible in this build,in which case,never mind. Giant heavily armoured open-topped truck with a front-mounted saddle, seatbelt, vehicle controls, and about 50 stereo systems and truck horns (for maximum LOUD). Rear-mounted seats so you can recruit NPCs to be your drummers. Put a bunch of rams and spikes on the front. Wield and use a guitar while driving. For authenticity, slap a flamethrower turret on there. For more authenticity, be Albino and wear a blindfold
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May 22, 2015 23:11
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This game sounds really neat. I played the poo poo out of Dwarf Fortress and Crawl, and am now getting ready to jump into this for the first time. I'm not really sure how robust the character creation is, but my suggestion is to make this guy: 
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May 22, 2015 23:24
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Velocity Raptor posted:
Totally doable with existing traits and professions. At least on the current experimental builds.
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May 22, 2015 23:28
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Very excited for this game to get an lp finally. I recommend taking Self Aware as a trait and making a beeline for a watch just so the UI is a bit easier to read. Also I recommend an explosives based character if you want something that mixes things up a bit.
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May 22, 2015 23:35
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Man I actually considered LPing this game a few months ago but decided against it because I couldn't think of a good way to carry it past "look how hosed up I can make the PC". I've been playing it on and off for about two years now and it's easily my favorite game in it's genre, last time I stopped playing because I plateaued in power becoming far too strong to die to 99% of encounters and unable to find the last 1% for a challenge. Hunting around for ingredients to the Alpha mutation serum was just plain boring for a pay off of eating a few less bags of chips per game day. Still getting to that point was a lot of fun and I did it without cheating, I had never even seen the cheat menu until I got bored at the end. The best advice I can give and something that will carry you from start to finish is: Line of sight is king. Take the night vision trait and never do anything during the day or in well lit areas. Some stuff can smell you, most can hear you and so you can be tracked even if they can't see you but in almost every situation if it can't see you it can't hurt you. Conversely, if you can see it you can hurt it with impunity if it can't see you. Other than that? A sewing kit and a cutting tool are the most important equipment you need early on, the difference between a T shirt and a reinforced leather jacket is the difference between an infected bite and survival. You can also reinforce tool and weapons for damage/durability using soldering irons and basic repair kits. Suggested character build/goal: No fun allowed My go to minmax build for the kids who want to play along at home. Nega-traits, all chosen for lowest possible negative impact. Ugly + Lactose Intolerant Truth Teller + Heavy Sleeper Wool allergy + Light Weight Positive traits, just my preference. Night vision + Stylish Robust Genetics Can't recall how many points that leaves but stats should look something like STR12 DEX12 PER7/8 INT10/11 And finally ballroom dancer profession. Theoretically the only thing that can kill this character is a lack of caution (such as going into town during daylight) or really bad luck (like a bear spawning outside the shelter door). Your goal is to find an Icelab and fully map at least five levels.
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May 23, 2015 00:20
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Angry Diplomat posted:Giant heavily armoured open-topped truck with a front-mounted saddle, seatbelt, vehicle controls, and about 50 stereo systems and truck horns (for maximum LOUD). Rear-mounted seats so you can recruit NPCs to be your drummers. Put a bunch of rams and spikes on the front. Wield and use a guitar while driving. For authenticity, slap a flamethrower turret on there. For more authenticity, be Albino and wear a blindfold Then what about the Bullet Farmer's tank-car?
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May 23, 2015 01:39
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Character suggestion: SNOWFLAME: GOD OF COCAINE Stats: 8 STR 18 DEX 8 INT 8 PER Traits: Any number of your choice of hand to hand fighting styles, robust genetics. Profession: Crack addict, or failing that, cheat yourself in some coke and snort it until you develop a serious addiction. Mutations: Genetically Unstable, and inject yourself with enough Alpha serum to put you past the threshold, keep anything else you get too. Objective:   GET COKE FIGHT MONSTERS. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:44 on May 23, 2015 |
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May 23, 2015 01:41
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CheeseThief posted:Can't recall how many points that leaves but stats should look something like STR12 DEX12 PER7/8 INT10/11 Wouldn't this build have a chance of failing to spot a land mine and just blowing to pieces? I am VERY inexperienced at this game but the guide I read said that 10 PER was the minimum to avoid that stuff.
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May 23, 2015 01:53
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OwlFancier posted:Character suggestion: SNOWFLAME: GOD OF COCAINE I second this motion.
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May 23, 2015 02:05
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Mzbundifund posted:Wouldn't this build have a chance of failing to spot a land mine and just blowing to pieces? I am VERY inexperienced at this game but the guide I read said that 10 PER was the minimum to avoid that stuff. You can actually tell what map squares (on the world map) have land mines scattered around because they'll have mounds of dirt and random dirt patches inside of roads. If you avoid those areas you won't have to worry about land mines. Except maybe if you're raiding a military structure, but by then you can get armor strong enough for you to survive the occasional explosion.
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May 23, 2015 02:21
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Mzbundifund posted:Wouldn't this build have a chance of failing to spot a land mine and just blowing to pieces? I am VERY inexperienced at this game but the guide I read said that 10 PER was the minimum to avoid that stuff. Not really, sure this build won't auto spot landmines while walking about without some ranks in trapping but minefields have huge visual clues even before that. Just err on the side of caution and give any mounds of earth a very wide berth, it's either a minefield or a worm every time. Also, land mines are surprisingly non-fatal.
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May 23, 2015 02:27
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VolticSurge posted:Then what about the Bullet Farmer's tank-car? Oh, that's easy. Make yourself some treads, find a good car (ideally a muscle car or sports car), take the wheels off, put the treads on, remove the roof, replace the headlights with a floodlight, go.
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May 23, 2015 02:42
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ro5s posted:A long term one, but an otherwise normal character with genetically unstable and robust genetics. See what sort of monster you mutate into I'm thirding this, though I'd also suggest you crank up your mutation rate to high so we can get some fun stuff as soon as possible. If that's actually a thing you can do? There must be a gauge or mod somewhere to turn you into The Ultimate Lifeform.
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May 23, 2015 02:48
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Even with robust genetics you're more likely to turn into a cthulian horror than the ultimate lifeform, but it can certainly be an entertaining run if you have strong enough stats to handle the various health problems that tend to result from mutation.
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May 23, 2015 02:55
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ro5s posted:A long term one, but an otherwise normal character with genetically unstable and robust genetics. See what sort of monster you mutate into I would also like to see the ultimate lifeform.
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May 23, 2015 02:57
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Night10194 posted:I second this motion. Thirded! There's also a Snowflame webcomic. It's pretty... weird. http://www.snowflamecomic.com/?comic=snowflame-01-01 He does litteral handfuls of coke. I can't decide if this comic is terrible or amazing. Suspect Bucket fucked around with this message at 03:21 on May 23, 2015 |
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May 23, 2015 03:00
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I like this quote from the main thread:Motherfucker posted:I mean poo poo just does not bode well when the first words you read after opening the curtains are 'You are being laser targeted!' For thread goals, I'd like to see you actually eat a vibrator at some point, assuming it's possible.
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May 23, 2015 03:14
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Challenge: Les Stroud, EXTRADIMENSIONAL SURVIVOR MAN Rules: Wilderness start, use the naturalist build from that and NO traits or stat boosts, 8 8 8 8 etc You can only use what you make goals: Full load out of heavy survivor equipment Die gloriously ramming a spiked death car through a fungal tower at 500 mph.
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May 23, 2015 03:32
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OwlFancier posted:Character suggestion: SNOWFLAME: GOD OF COCAINE I approve, but also needs the Addictive Personality trait.
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May 23, 2015 03:42
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I don't have any suggestion at the moment, but just wanted say best of luck, and I'm such a sucker for this game. It honestly has to be one of my most played games at this point, and the thing that does it for me is that it's not so much a zombie apocalypse survival game as a everything plus three different types of kitchen sink apocalypse survival game. It's such a celebration of post apocalyptic and horror media that I just love it to bits. I mean building the Landmaster from Damnation Alley is just a thing you do in this game.President Ark posted:I like this quote from the main thread: That is entirely doable. Technically you should be able to eat an entire mall down to the foundation plus the cars in the parking lot for dessert if you felt so inclined.
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May 23, 2015 04:33
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President Ark posted:For thread goals, I'd like to see you actually eat a vibrator at some point, assuming it's possible. There's a bionic that lets you eat anything remotely flammable to power your other bionics. The downside is that most useful things are flammable. On multiple occasions I've absentmindedly tried to drink from an empty canteen and ended up eating it. It's a hugely fun bionic for the mental images it evokes, from drinking straight from the petrol bowser to munching your way through a car seat to felling and consuming an entire tree. Solar power is for chumps.
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May 23, 2015 05:09
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Tehan posted:There's a bionic that lets you eat anything remotely flammable to power your other bionics. The downside is that most useful things are flammable. On multiple occasions I've absentmindedly tried to drink from an empty canteen and ended up eating it.  why am i not already playing this gamee: Challenge: Pica: Get/start with the above bionic. You must eat/drink at least one of every single thing you are capable of eating without dying. If you pick up something you can eat and haven't eaten one of it yet, you must eat it immediately. President Ark fucked around with this message at 05:19 on May 23, 2015 |
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May 23, 2015 05:14
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| # ? May 28, 2024 03:46 |
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Someone once did a tin woodsman. Heavy power armor, augs to power it from the body ,and an internal furnace, chopped down trees to fuel his rampage.
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May 23, 2015 05:31
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