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A working vehicle is a big big step up in survivability, even if you mess up, if you can get to the controls, turn it on and drive free you can generally survive Note that zombies can totally get into the vehicles while you are driving if there is an open door/hole in your windshield etc. Vehicle modding is great, absolutely great, you can waste SO much time in this game on a vehicle
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Feb 22, 2022 12:48
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PurpleXVI posted:Huh, the game seems to have more not-immediately-hostile things than I remember. Yeah, just like the description says you can pay them to follow you around and carry stuff. I'll try to show the mechanic off soon, I was so sad that I couldn't catch him. Drakenel posted:A fine escape. You've really come far with these two, huh? Kind of got the impression we might be dying fairly often with an intended fast and loose style, but this is good as well. I've been playing for like a decade so I didn't expect to faceplant immediately, but I'm still sort of shocked we cleared a lab in our first month with leather armor and a stick. Goes back to what I was saying about those labs and their quantity over quality approach being subpar. If Gray continues to refuse to die I may do intermissions just so we can show off other starts. AtomikKrab posted:Note that zombies can totally get into the vehicles while you are driving if there is an open door/hole in your windshield etc. I saw a screenshot where a salmon jumped into a guy's car and was stuck in there for like a week until a zombie got it.
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Feb 22, 2022 13:42
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Good stuff! You're much better at this than i am! I'm too gung ho and don't pay attention to pain, which is a drat quick death
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Feb 22, 2022 14:58
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I think you also mentioned something about one of the monsters' descriptions being related to some deprecated lore, is it too spoilery to tell us about for now? Because I'm curious whether it's some lore I remember that's gotten changed, or some before-my-time-playing lore that might be interesting to hear about.
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Feb 22, 2022 15:39
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Whoa things ramped up real fast. Lots of new types of zombs were seen and I share the sentiment about proper electro zombs. They are assholes that have often killed me because I walked around a corner and got insta-zapped which trapped me in a cycle. Devourers are also kinda assholes but seem more dangerous than they really are. Don't wanna meet one in a basement though after it has been munching on the other zombs around it.worm girl posted:Yeah, just like the description says you can pay them to follow you around and carry stuff. I'll try to show the mechanic off soon, I was so sad that I couldn't catch him. Oh and chuckle
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Feb 22, 2022 15:59
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Thank you for doing this. I haven't played since the whalesdev era so it's really interesting to see (with tiles, thank christ) how much the game has evolved. Vehicles confusing the poo poo out of me seems to still be the same though. I'm too impatient to learn anything with a curve nowadays, but I'm really interested to see where and how far you can take this.
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Feb 22, 2022 16:05
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I hate those shocker zombies. Can't beat them up close and usually you have to take them down with guns, which means you're going have a lot of friends joining you in the brawl. I'm still really glad OP made this thread, I've learned so much new strategies! I don't know if you mentioned it on world gen, but are you running any mods or is it straight just CDDA? I just run the SkillsToStat mod, that I tweaked that makes it take longer to gain stats. Lady Jaybird fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Feb 22, 2022 |
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Feb 22, 2022 16:16
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Wow, this game has changed so much since I played it a million years ago. Thanks for doing such a great job showing it off.
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Feb 22, 2022 18:47
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Oh, you play with vertical view on? What setting do you use for it out of curiosity, didn't play with it enough to get a feel for what's a good value for it. I played with it for a bit but found that it made made zombies really really really bad at pathing specifically up stairs compared to having it off. And it felt real cheap to be able to stand on the edge of a roof with a reach weapon and be able to clear entire hordes risk free by holding auto-attack and stabbing downwards. Funniest thing that happened when doing this is a zombie from an adjacent roof managed to literally bodysurf it's way over to my roof, which was a neat interaction. Oh, and from way earlier, but people shouldn't sleep on attaching a knife to your rifles/crossbow, it counts as a reach weapon if the guns big enough, which can be useful for economically and safely finishing off small groups; shoot to wound, kite them as they bleed and stab from a safe distance. The way the game handles diagonals means reach weapons have a bit of a learning curve to them though and it makes you do a weird combat dance.
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Feb 22, 2022 20:00
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Jawnycat posted:Oh, you play with vertical view on? What setting do you use for it out of curiosity, didn't play with it enough to get a feel for what's a good value for it. I played with it for a bit but found that it made made zombies really really really bad at pathing specifically up stairs compared to having it off. And it felt real cheap to be able to stand on the edge of a roof with a reach weapon and be able to clear entire hordes risk free by holding auto-attack and stabbing downwards. Funniest thing that happened when doing this is a zombie from an adjacent roof managed to literally bodysurf it's way over to my roof, which was a neat interaction. I just leave it on 4 tiles and don't notice any problems with zombie pathfinding on the latest experimental build. Roof edges are dangerous because grabbers can pull you down and then you take fall damage and get sucked into the horde, and zombies will bash the walls of the building down if there are no grabbers around. There are also flying and leaping enemies, and being on the roof at all attracts so much attention because everyone can see you. I sort of poo-poo'd the idea of a bayonet because it turns a perfectly good knife into an extremely heavy spear and weapon weight is what determines stamina drain, but there are plenty of times when reach is a huge advantage. Fences are a big one, as is kiting a tough enemy. If I'm going to be using a reach weapon as my bread and butter though, I'd much rather have an actual spear. dervinosdoom posted:I don't know if you mentioned it on world gen, but are you running any mods or is it straight just CDDA? I usually always run Stats Through Skills or Stats Through Kills just because I find static stats to be a little inflexible, but for this run I'm not using any mods. PurpleXVI posted:I think you also mentioned something about one of the monsters' descriptions being related to some deprecated lore, is it too spoilery to tell us about for now? Because I'm curious whether it's some lore I remember that's gotten changed, or some before-my-time-playing lore that might be interesting to hear about. It would be too hard to explain without spoiling. The main lore of the game hasn't substantially changed, but now the black goo in zombie descriptions is just corpse goo and not anything related to their zombification. Sorry if that's too vague. people posted:shocker zombies If you raid at night it helps a lot that they glow in the dark, but you still get those bullshit moments where you turn a corner and they lay down a perfect lightning bolt that gets like five hits on you before it dissipates and now you're too slowed down from pain to escape. I hate them very much. Always keep a gun handy. worm girl fucked around with this message at 21:23 on Feb 22, 2022 |
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Feb 22, 2022 20:19
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Can't imagine beating old style manhack and acid scientist zombies for that lab. Even if it gave enough glass bottles for a whole bunch of molotov cocktails. Amazed you didn't make those earlier, rubber hoses are easy to get out of fridges.
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Feb 22, 2022 21:43
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Though that all does give me an idea for a challenge run of sorts if we ever do die. Bit to show off the various mechanics. But I'll wait to see how we handle the refugee center.
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Feb 22, 2022 21:47
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The flipside to enemies like the shockers is that they also add memorable experiences to the game. I distinctly remember going into a police station and almost getting overwhelmed by enemies in the dark inside. When I thought it was over I was battered to hell but wanted to loot so I pressed on and found a dang shocker just chilling around the next corner. It's moments like these in turn-based games where you stare at the screen for a minute or two and weigh your options before touching the keys again. I knew I wouldn't get away before it got its shock of, decided to drop my melee weapon, unholster my pistol, and desperately hammered .45 rounds into it while eating zaps. Survived with a sliver of health on my body and head left  In contrast to that I've been killed by going into an armored van to search it and stumbling over a shocker when I exited through the rear door. It was just right there and fried me after I stepped into the door tile....bullshit but hey at least it's a memory Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Feb 22, 2022 |
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Feb 22, 2022 23:07
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 The entrance is fortified, and the fortifications are intact. Shuttered windows, barbed wire, and no corpses in sight. We pass a statue of John Langdon on our way into the building. This place is much nicer than the shelter, with solid brick construction and  People! The first we've seen in over a month. We're dumbstruck by the sight, and find our eyes getting a little misty as we struggle to take off our gas mask. Five people are camped out on benches here. There's a sickly-looking woman shivering under a blanket, a spaced-out man in a dinosaur costume, an older man in a bathrobe and slippers, a woman wearing one of those lovely jackets from the emergency shelters, and a guy who seems to be covered in fur - it's like there's a short, bristly beard growing all over his body.  Two armed guards flank the double doors heading further in. They don't look military, but their gear's in way better shape than ours, and unlike us they don't look like they've spent the last month getting chewed on and spit out over and over again. At either end of the lobby, there's someone seated behind a bulletproof glass window. They're both busy with paperwork and glance up only briefly as we enter. In fact, nobody here seems happy or even surprised to see us. Suddenly feeling awkward and out of place, we take a few tentative steps inside. Someone waves us over to one of the windows.  "I haven't seen you before. Welcome to our little homely house." "What's going on? Isn't this the refugee center?" "Before you ask, we're full. You're right about the refugee part, but we're way over capacity right now." We look over our shoulder at the sorry-looking collection of people squatting out here. Were they late getting here, too? He softens a little. "As for me, I do a lot of things here, but I mostly keep tabs on our supplies. You can call me Smokes, or Gavin; whichever you prefer. I also trade with people from outside, like you. If you're in the market for hardware, we're selling, and if you have food, we are very much buying. Anyways, uh, what can I do for you?"  "Just like that? You're full?" "That's just the way it is. This place's address was broadcasted to every shelter in the county. A fair few people have come by wondering why the buses didn't come get them and now I'm telling you: we ran out of room. We are packed to the gills right now, and the only way we're going to stay alive is if we keep our gates closed fast."Earnest's grip tightens on the handle of his axe, drawing a look from the guard, but after a beat he huffs out a sigh. What's one more crushing disappointment, after all we've been through? "Well do you have any news about the rest of the world?" "Not as much as I'd like, I'm afraid. Most of these shelters seem to have been designed to make people feel safer, not actually keep them safe. Our radio equipment is terrible...I don't think it was even meant to be used seriously. There's been some chatter but it sounds like it's bad all over, and getting worse." "So there are other people around. Are there any other groups we could talk to?" "Well, we had an odd group come by maybe two days after the power grid went off. Two armed guards wearing brown uniforms, and what looked like a government doctor. Had a hazmat suit on. Everyone had masks they never took off. They looked organized, maybe a military remnant from somewhere close by." "What were they here for?" "The doctor paid us in advance to get some old FEMA info from our computers here, and told us to deliver the data to some isolated building afterwards. We still haven't done that, I'm half worried it might be some kind of a trap."Doctors in hazmat suits, soldiers...we think back to the secret laboratory we found in the tunnels, and the bizarre cube we found. Someone out there might still know something about what happened to the world. "Where's this building at, exactly?" "I could share the dropoff location if you want to bring the drive there for us, but whatever's there, I'm not sure it's worth all the trouble. I'll pay you if you want to take care of it."Earnest pipes up suddenly, surprising us. "We'll give it a shot. "Smokes hands over a thumb drive, which Earnest tucks away. We then have a look over his stock - it's a lot of power tools, batteries, and a few odds and ends we'll want once we've established ourselves somewhere. There are also a few gun mods - a rifle scope and an underbarrel laser sight. The former would go great on a sniper rifle if we had one, the latter we could throw on one of our handguns. We decide to trade in the CZ 75 B for the scope, the sight, a cordless drill, an acetylene torch, a hacksaw, a pair of kevlar shears, and a can of Coke. That leaves us with some credit, which Smokes pays out in some kind of homemade paper money. merch posted:The Free Merchant Certified Note, also known by names such as a "c-note" or "merch", is a currency based on old American bills. Fifty dollar bills and larger are printed with a promissory note signed by the treasurer of the Free Merchants, along with a complex design. The note explains that this can be exchanged for food, water, and other services through the Free Merchants at the Refugee Center. "Plenty of people come through looking to trade with us. If you run into anyone out there and they know about us, they'll know that's as good as legal tender. If not, send them our way and I'll sort them out." "So you're in charge here?" "Oh, no. No one's really in charge. We're just a bunch of like-minded folks doing our best. There are some old government people renting some office space from us, you might want to talk to them, but they're just guests here, same as you. Hey and...if you're going inside, I do maybe have something else you could help out with." "Yeah?" "As long as you're paying." "Yeah, of course. OK, so...most of the people here are staying in the vaults down below, but it's pretty crowded. We've been using the upper levels for overflow and extra workspace, but we've got a problem. Before we understood what was going on, we were storing our dead in the back bay. You can guess what happened next, right? We've got the place sealed up, but it's full of zombies. If you want to pitch in and help clear them out, go down the hall to the back and talk to the guard there. Clear the barricade, kill the zombies, and make sure they won't bother us again."He produces a stack of bills, and after some discussion, we agree. One of the guards stops us on our way in, having overheard that we were going to go talk to the "Old Guard" - his word for the presumably defunct federal government. He offers to put in a good word for us if we bring him a carton of smokes, and we oblige with a hoard of loosies we've been collecting in anticipation of their trade value. Cigarettes, pills, bullets, and other little items like that are easy to carry and great for trading, and this guy wants them for a quest anyway.  We pass more guards in the hall. They keep a wary eye on us.  Further in, we find rows of bunks like you'd see FEMA setting up for hurricaine relief. Everything is kept tidy in the way people do when they've had to shrink their whole life down to ten square feet. Other than the cramped conditions, these people seem almost untouched by the Cataclysm. Unlike the beggars out front, they're clean, they're wearing nice clothes, and they almost look as if they're waiting for someone to come and tell them they can go home again. Any day now. They stare at us, beat to poo poo, hard-bitten and covered in dried gore. Somebody wordlessly points us to the back bay. They know what we're here for.  We pass through a wide loading dock and finally come to the barricade. The guard introduces himself as Robbie, and, seeing our weapons, suggests we flank the doorway and let him provide supporting fire. We agree, and brace ourselves for a fight.  We get to work shifting the barricade, and the zombies immediately bring the door down. A thick cloud of smoke swirls around them with no discernable source.  We barely have time to mask up before they're on us. We hear Robbie's 9mm going off, but lose Earnest in the smoke. Here goes!  One of the zombies crumbles apart, releasing yet more smoke as we put it down. Was that the source of it? Like the zombies we burned? smoker zombie posted:A blackened and twisted naked human body. Strips of flesh hang from its frame, and it emits a constant haze of thick black smoke. No screenshot, sorry! It was literally on screen for one second. We move forward as we spot sparks through the smoke. The shocker needs to be put down ASAP. We can only hope Robbie doesn't shoot us in the back by accident. Robbie can and will gently caress you here.  More sparks! But that's not... incandescent husk posted:This zombie is visible only as a glowing white silhouette that you have to squint to see, cloaked in a crackling field of lightning that pulses like a beating heart. It walks slowly and deliberately, the thunderstorm surrounding it eagerly jumping to anything conductive within its grasp. There's a constant field of lightning around this one, like one of those balls you get from Spencer's at the mall, except way brighter and louder. We stumble backwards, trying to give it some space. Distantly, we hear Earnest shouting.  We make it to the edge of the cloud and are relieved to see Earnest. Our little group fans out, ready to take on whatever comes out of the smoke.  The zombie, practically a column of electricity, emerges. Several guards charge it at once, but they can't get close without being lashed by bolts of lightning.  We draw our handgun and aim down the sights. It's risky with people in melee, but someone's going to die if we don't kill this thing. One breath, two breaths, squeeze. The first shot hits, and the second...  This Sikh dude isn't even a guard, he's just going ham on it with his knife because his family's in the other room. We wish our dad was that cool.  Our last shot puts the enemy down and the sparks slowly dissipate, but there's still a zombie or two back there. We holster our gun and get back into the melee.  With that, the back bay is clear. Jesus, what a mess.  "It's done. Time to settle up."Smokes forces a smile for Earnest and hands us a stack of 25 bills. It's hard to put an exact value on these things, but that's about half of what we got for trading in our old handgun. Each Merch is worth $2.50. $ is not a literal dollar value, but rather a general idea of what something is worth in the apocalypse. Each item has its own value and generally makes some amount of sense. Buy and sell prices are determined by a contested social skill check between the player and NPC. I'm not sure what exactly goes into it, it's possible opinion, beauty, and intelligence also matter.  There's currently a bug with Smokes where if you turn in a quest that he pays you for, you can still ask him for money via the hardcoded quest dialog options and he'll give you $500 in credit. I did that here to show it off, but we won't be taking advantage of it.  As we head back inside, the guy in the shelter jacket mutters to us under his breath.  "Don't bother with these assholes." "Yeah, I heard they weren't letting you folks in. Why stay here then?" "Even without them helping, it's the safest place to squat. As long as we keep it clean up here, they don't mind us sitting around the entryway. So kind and generous of them, to let us sit here and slowly starve."The guy in the bathrobe speaks up.  "Survival of the fittest in action."He doesn't look super fit. He's weezing between sentences and hobbles around like he's twenty years older than he is - and he's not exactly young to begin with. "What do you mean?" "I came here with a group. They got in, I didn't. They were young and healthy, I wasn't. What's not to get? Could be worse, though. We got it good compared to just about everyone else. Brandon Garder, by the way."He extends a hand for a shake as we make introductions, then goes around the room. "That's Reena with the blanket there. She's a schoolteacher. Yusuke's over in back there," He gestures to the hairy guy, "Luo here's a doctor, and that there's Dino Dave." Luo scoffs, but Brandon seems genuinely cheerful. "Now I know you folks are busy, and I know times are bad so I'll just put it out there. We're in a bad way here. These people aren't looking to share what they have, and without help we won't last much longer. If you have any food to share we'd all appreciate it, if not, thank you just the same."Earnest reaches into his pocket, then hesitates and looks over at us. We don't exactly have much food ourselves. We've got plenty of Merch, but the Center isn't selling food... "We'll talk it over. If we can help, we'll let you know."Luo looks away, hiding her expression, but her shoulders slump with relief.  We head down the hall, looking for the Old Guard we were told about. Earnest pulls us aside before we head in. "Listen, these Old Guard guys - whatever happened to this country, to the world, we have to consider that maybe they were involved somehow. At minimum, they failed to stop it. Whatever they have to say, we should remember that we can't trust the feds." "Weren't you like, in the army?" "Exactly. I learned my lesson the hard way." The guards back here look a little more professional. They're still dressed in casual clothing, but a kevlar vest, leather jacket, and assault rifle is a pretty killer combo. We can't help feeling kind of silly in our homemade armor and yellow galoshes.  Thi Martin, according to the hand-lettered nameplate on her desk, is cleaning a Walther PPQ when we walk in. The Walther PPQ is another compact handgun. By all accounts the gun is a marvel of tight, no-nonsense engineering and solid ergonomic design. This PPQ is chambered for 9mm and is essentially a lighter and weaker version of the SIG P320 compact we covered earlier, however it is much more durable. She isn't what we expected. We expected a suit, but this woman is rocking a denim jacket and a cowboy hat. We can practically feel Earnest's indignation. Out of place cowboy hats are HIS thing!  "Citizen."We are kind of dumbfounded, so we say something stupid. "You're...the government?" "I'm the region's federal liaison. Most people here call us the Old Guard and I rather like the sound of it. Despite how things currently appear, the federal government was not entirely destroyed. After the outbreak, I was chosen to coordinate civilian and militia efforts in support of military operations." "The guy out front said you weren't trying to run this place. So what are you doing?" "I ensure that the citizens here have what they need to survive and protect themselves from raiders. Keeping some form of law is going to be the most important element in rebuilding the world. We do what we can to keep the Free Merchants here prospering, and in return they have provided us with spare men and supplies when they can." "What's the catch?" "Well...I was like any other civilian 'till they conscripted me, so I'll tell it to you straight. They're the best hope we've got right now. They are stretched impossibly thin but they are willing to do what is needed to maintain order. They don't care much about the looting since they understand most everyone is dead, but if you have something they need... you WILL give it to them. Since most survivors here have nothing they want, they're welcomed as champions." "It's still martial law, you mean."She smirks. "We were hoping you could tell us what's going on out there. Do we still have a president? Is there even a plan?" "There isn't much pushed out by public relations that I'd actually believe. From what I gather, communication between the regional force commands is almost non-existent. What I do know is that the Old Guard is currently based out of the 2nd Fleet and patrols the Atlantic coast trying to provide support to the remaining footholds." "The 2nd Fleet?" "It's an armada of military and commercial ships floating off the coast, they have everything from supertankers and carriers to fishing trawlers. They're even offering cabins on one of the cruise liners as part of a retirement package for citizens who serve as a federal employee for a few years." "You really believe that?" "I haven't shot myself yet, have I? Listen, you two seem like you went through a lot of trouble to get here, and one of my guards says your friend here's a crack shot."They must have told her about the back bay aready. She slides a cheaply printed photograph of two people standing on a grassy hill across her desk. It's taken from a high angle that reminds us of the time that police drone photographed us. Does she have us on file too? "I've got a bounty posted that none of my agents have had time to collect on. These two are raiders - bandits, and they're holed up in a local cabin. They've been luring and ambushing travelers like yourselves for easy loot. The walking dead are one thing, but this is quite another. If we're going to restore order around here, we need to ensure that people who prey on civilians meet a quick end. If you're interested, I'd ask that you track down and lawfully execute them. Return with proof and the Old Guard will consider you an asset in the region."We stare at the photo. The people depicted clearly haven't gone feral like the proto-zombies we've seen. They're armed and armored, sure, but so are we. The thought of someone preying on other humans during this catastrophe is terrible. There are few enough of us left as it is. Are we prepared to bring them to justice? Is it even right? "We'll be in the area for a little while, can we have some time to think about it?" "Every minute those two aren't brought to justice is another they have to hurt somebody else, but yes, of course. It's an open contract. Just remember, the United States will remain a wasteland unless good men choose to save it." We step out into the waiting room to consider the matter. "A loving cruise ship? She thinks they're going to let her retire on a cruise ship?!" His voice is hushed but he still manages to seem like he's yelling. "Why not? If they've got a whole armada, what's one cabin on one boat?" "Oh I don't doubt they have it, I just think they're going to gently caress her over. They always do. Service guarantees jack poo poo. Ever heard of the VA?" "Maybe she believes in the mission, you know? The whole law and order thing. Don't you think people need someone to keep them safe?" "Every time someone says 'law and order' they are just talking about control. There are dragonflies the size of donkeys outside, you really think shooting two dipshit thieves for Uncle Sam is going to fix anything?"We're pretty sure they're murderers, not just thieves, but we don't argue. Earnest seems to appreciate having a few seconds to stew in his political fury. Shortly, he relents. "I consider you a friend, and I'd probably be dead if you hadn't shown up at the shelter. If you want to be a cop, I'm sure you're the kind of person who can do it right. Either way, I'm on your side." "Ooooh, are you guys bounty hunters?" There's a woman here about our age, lounging on the sofa. At first we mistook her for a guard, but now we realize she's not armed. Her ears are furry and pointed, like a cat's. She smells nice, and distracted by this, we immediately ask a stupid question. "Are those cat ears?" "Shh!" She adjusts her hard hat and scarf, trying to hide them better. "Some people around here don't like...mutations." "Sorry, poo poo, sorry, I didn't mean--I meant to ask if you were with the Old Guard." "Me? No, I live here. I just don't hang out in the bay 'cause...well, you know." The ears.We've seen mutants before, but her and the furry guy out front aren't screaming and trying to kill us like all the others were. If the animals are mutating, we guess it only makes sense that the humans would, too... "Anyway, to answer your question, I don't know if we're going for the bounties or not. Why, were you thinking about trying it?" "Nah. I just sell rebar."This is like peeling an onion. We'll bite. "Rebar?" "Yeah, I burn down houses and sell the Free Merchants the materials." Our eyes glaze over. "If you've seen places where there's whole blocks burned down, that's probably me. They keep me pretty well off in exchange."THAT's what we were smelling! Gasoline and wood smoke! We stare at the shuttered window, imagining a whole city block on fire. Eventually, Earnest fills in the the awkward silence. "Who needs rebar?" "Well, there's a guy downstairs who's got a working pneumatic cannon. It shoots metal like...like a cannon without the bang. Cost-efficient as hell. And there's no shortage of improvised weapons you can make. The big thing is fortifications though. Very few of those monsters seem to be able to break through a fence or a wall made of rebar." "Can we help?" "What?" "Huh? Oh, yeah actually. Molotovs are nice for burning down buildings but aren't all that for keeping yourself safe. If you could get me two bags of commercial fertilizer I could make something a lot more potent." "Yes." "Oh man, thanks so much friend. You won't regret it."  We slap the laser sight on our most commonly-used handgun. We can put it on something else later. It's a minor difference, but it might make all the difference.  We need to make camp before we make any decisions. We tell Brandon and the others in the lobby that we'll be back shortly. There's a farm just down the road and it might make a decent place to stay.  It's a very short ride. We hop the fence and take a look around. The cows avoid us, warily chewing their cud. Look I get that the tiles are small but that is a hosed up drawing of a cow.  There are rows and rows of milking machines here, far more than there are cows. The herd must have escaped or been killed, or maybe the farmer just went broke.  Oh we are totally gonna do some stupid poo poo with this quad later.  We use Earnest's axe to pry open some crates and find two bags of fertilizer and a toolbox. Makayla's going to love this. We can just picture the explosion...  There's some cow food in here. Let's feed a cow!!!  The cow shies away from us, and we have to chase it over to the fence before it realizes we're trying to feed it. They probably haven't seen humans in a long time.  We don't know a ton about animals, but this is a big, strong beast that could probably support our weight or maybe even pull a wagon around.  We feed the other two cows as well. If you interact with a pet, it will follow you everywhere. It seems like you can only do this with one pet at a time. You can also leash them to tie them up somewhere, useful for making sure they don't wander into danger. Animals do not need food, the fodder we gave them was just to earn their friendship, which lasts forever. "Please do not bring the cow in the house!"The house is small, and since there's no basement or second floor we'd need to spend a bit of time fortifying the place to make it really secure. We could put the cows in the barn at night, and with a little work this could be a decent home. We'd be under the watchful eye of the Old Guard, but maybe that's not such a bad thing, if there really are bandits around...  Of course, there are other places we could settle. Upriver, we saw what looked like a mansion, that'd be swank. And there's a creepy little shack in the swamp - a fixer-upper for sure, but good for a hideout if we don't want anyone finding us.  We've got a decent lay of the land now. Sharon is a decent way to the west and there's plenty there to loot if we need it.  Far off to the west, the mysterious drop point Smokes told us about awaits. Before we can even consider our options, though, we'll need to hunker down somewhere and make some proper gear.  Our experience working with leather tells us that the chitin is going to be a much bigger project. We'll probably need to collect a lot of leather and sewing materials to prepare, and we might have to make a few practice pieces first. Since Earnest needs gear too, that's not such a bad thing - some leather with a few chitin reinforcements would probably do just fine for him. You can see here that we're missing several proficiencies. Those aren't too hard to grind out as long as I do them one at a time, but it means we'll need to go loot a bunch of stuff before we get started. Over on the right you can see what makes the chitinous armor so attractive: 12 bash and 16 cut armor at 10 warmth, 90 coverage, and 10 encumbrance is incredible. The leather body armor in comparison is 4 bash and 12 cut for 2 more encumbrance and it has 15 more warmth. But it's not strictly an upgrade. With chitin, we lose 5 coverage and the ballistic armor is much worse. It also lacks pockets. I think it's still a good choice for us at least until summer's over, as long as we don't go anywhere where we're likely to be shot at. I love that about armor in CDDA, especially these days. There are always tradeoffs and good reasons to wear different combinations of gear depending on season, playstyle, build, and location. Very fun.  Lastly, we want to try making a real bow. One of the books we nabbed, Zen and the Art of Archery, describes the construction of composite bows; bows that are made by laminating wood and another material like horn or bone together. This should result in a short-ish bow with a high draw weight. We're pretty beefy, so we'll be going for something modeled after the Mongolian bows that Genghis Khan was said to have used. We're starting to feel like we understand Genghis Khan a little better these days. The base damage on our short bow was 4, and the base damage on this composite bow will be 12. That's a gigantic step up, and even with primitive arrows we'll be able to pierce most armor. If we can get some proper carbon or aluminum arrows we'll be running wild. Mongolian bows were really beefy, hovering around a 120lb draw weight, which translates to a tremendous amount of force delivered by the arrow. The bow has a minimum strength of 12 which is reduced to 11 by our archer's form proficiency. We have 12 base strength, but pain and other debuffs frequently lower us to around 10, so we'll want to pick up the next level of archer's form ASAP so we can consistently use our new bow. There are only actually two better bows - a compound bow (which is the kind with all the wheels and pulleys on it) and a compound greatbow, which we're not strong enough to use. The basic compound bow is actually statistically very similar, but it has more slots for mods. Time will tell if those are worth the trouble. We also need a new melee weapon, and in my opinion it's a tossup between an ironshood quarterstaff and a loaded stick. They're very similar weapons. The quarterstaff is slower and heavier, but offers more defense and higher max damage. The loaded stick is faster and lighter and offers lower, but more consistent damage. In terms of pure DPS they're similar, with the quarterstaff doing more damage to armored enemies and the stick doing more damage to dodgy enemies. As a quick primer/reminder: Free Merchants: This is what the people in the Refugee Center are calling themselves. They have a safe location and a lot of resources (and also a lot of mouths to feed), so they've set themselves up as traders. They are, loosely speaking, an anarchocapitalist commune. The group pools its wealth and pays out enough to cover the basic needs of all members, but everyone is expected to work, and people who can make more money live better. They discriminate against mutants. We cannot join them, and doing jobs for them will not make us a member. This group includes Smokes, Makayla, most of the Refugee Center guards, and the families we briefly saw living on cots in the back. They apparently have some kind of a vault under the Refugee Center where most of their people live, and it's over capacity. We plan to trade with these folks and might do more jobs for them whenever we come around for a visit. Old Guard: The remnants of the US Federal Government (e.g. military brass, members of congress, the white house, the pentagon, FBI, CIA, NSA, whoever else could be evacuated and didn't go feral or die) are sequestered offshore in an armada made of combined civilian and military ships of all sizes. It's unclear what their numbers are or who's even left alive, but they appear to be trying to create safe havens where they can and are sending representatives like Thi out into the wasteland to restore order. Thi's main priority is going after human criminals and liaising with law-abiding citizen groups. Earnest doesn't seem to like them, but he doesn't know everything. Beggars: The group of five unfortunates in the lobby of the Refugee Center have been turned away, but there's nowhere for them to go. The Free Merchants aren't heartless enough to force them out, but they say they can't spare any food either. They seem nice enough, but we can tell just by looking that most of them are not survivor material. Mystery Group: Smokes gave us some FEMA data that he said a doctor in a hazmat suit and masked soldiers in brown uniforms were after. Earnest can't think of any military branch that uses plain brown for combat uniforms. They didn't seem hostile, but Smokes seemed disturbed by the men. We have several decisions to make! Do we help the beggars or let them fend for themselves? None of them look very capable besides the mutant, so feeding them may only be prolonging the inevitable. We presently only have enough food to keep ourselves going a couple of days longer. Feeding five strangers isn't beyond our ability but it would mean committing a lot of time and energy to foraging and scavenging. Do we join the Old Guard or resist authority? Someone ought to do something about the bandit problem, sure, but is this law enforcement or just rich old men trying to hold onto their power? We are going to craft armor and a bow, but after that, where should we try to set up our first base? There's the dairy farm, which is close enough to the Refugee Center that we might have to consider what our relationship with our neighbors will be. Then there's the swamp shack which is in a dangerous area but seems isolated. Lastly we have the mansion, which will surely take some work to clear out but could be a really chill place to live. Note that even if we don't decide to live there, we will probably visit it at some point. Regardless of which home we choose, it probably won't be our last or only base. The fact is however that we've been on the road way too long and need some downtime to prepare for winter. worm girl fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Apr 9, 2022 |
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Feb 23, 2022 11:46
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Don't help the beggars, we're limited on stuff ourselves. No to the Old Guard, don't need to cozy up to any authority in the super-pocalypse and they'd probably take issue with our pyromania. And swamp shack, being in a dangerous area might make us increasingly more unkillable. Guess it makes sense the refugee center is full up, still a bit annoying. Could get more friendly with that rebar selling arsonist, seems a nice one to have in your corner.
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Feb 23, 2022 12:11
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I don't think we should necessarily join the Old Guard, but I don't see any harm in taking out a couple of bandits. It's hard enough to survive out there without actual predatory fucks making life harder for literally everyone. And take over the mansion. Go big or go home!
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Feb 23, 2022 12:11
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We deserve a mansion. Redistribute that wealth.
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Feb 23, 2022 12:16
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Personally the Farm seems pretty nice, largely because of the cows. Given the game's attention to detail, can you actually milk the cows? I'm not sure what to do with the Beggars really. Feels bad man, but post-apocalyptic and all. Are there mechanics in being able to grow food on the farm, or is that not in?
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Feb 23, 2022 12:25
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Don't feed the beggars, sorry guys, once we're in better shape and have stuff to spare maybe we'll see if any of you are still alive. Can we stay neutral with the Old Guard until we know more about them? Do some odd jobs so they don't hate us but don't commit to anything solid right away? Base ourselves at the dairy farm for now, it needs the least amount of work and is the safest right now (and has milk cows and therefore maybe unlimited calories?), but later we'll probably want to tidy up the shack and leave a cache there for emergencies, or hide there from the Old Guard. My understanding is that mansions need a hell of a lot of fortifying and are then amazing, so that should be a lategame base maybe?
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Feb 23, 2022 12:38
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We can milk the cows, we can ride the cows (though they will flee from monsters), we can use the cows as pack animals, we can pen the cows up, we can set them free, we can slaughter and butcher them for massive amounts of meat, bone, and hide, and we can take them with us if we decide to go anywhere else. We can also tie them to a hitch so they don't wander off if we're traveling, or even load them into a cattle carrier on a vehicle. I'm pretty sure we can make cheese and yogurt to preserve the cow milk, and we can definitely cook all kinds of other foods with it. Also we can just drink it as-is. We can also grow crops until Day 1 of Winter. We're a bit late in the year for planting but we can still get a decent harvest, though we don't have any seeds. We don't need to stay on the farm to do our farming/ranching, we could grow crops or raise cattle wherever we want, but doing it here would require the least amount of setup.
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Feb 23, 2022 12:39
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I did not expect demolitionist catgirls, but I'm all on board with it. I also vote for Mansion since that can only lead to hilarity. Help the beggars, I like the idea that we'll be just a bit heroic and bringing some light to this hellhole. Also while we shouldn't join the Old Guard... murderers on the loose are trouble for everyone. I vote we at least dispense some wild west justice to those dickheads. ...plus if they're murderers they've probably stolen a bunch of people's poo poo and we can steal that back. You know, for, uh, justice. Can we pet the cows for a mood buff? Terrible oversight if not.
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Feb 23, 2022 13:27
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Help the beggars. I get the feeling that people with more visible mutations like Yusuke got left on the outside. If RPGs have taught me anything, outsiders shunned over silly prejudices kick a lot of rear end. Also, if we're trying not to be like the Old Guard, we should absolutely help them out. If Earnest has a junk food intolerance, maybe we can give them some of our extra junk food. That mansion's got to be full of it.
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Feb 23, 2022 14:33
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Help the beggars Also Mansion Fought an incandescent husk! Wow man!
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Feb 23, 2022 15:49
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I'd say Help SOME of the beggars, not all as while you're probably right they're not survivor material, some can have uses. Also if we're actually going to go after bandits, better to have numbers. They survive this long, they'll be just as crazy, desperate, and dangerous as we are. Best to have some extra bodies. Plus, you and Earnest weren't that much better to start out. Forge these folk into real survivors. Set up at the Cattle farm, for now. You've got an excess of materials there to do whatever you need. And if poo poo goes south, you can make a run for the shelter. Securing your place and food should be a priority, I'd think. Mansion is good for raiding, swamp place can be a stronghold for later. No opinion on the Old Guard yet, but gently caress bandits
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Feb 23, 2022 15:49
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Help the beggars because maybe one is like a Greek god in disguise or something and you don't want to get struck down by lightning. Set up in the swamp so that you can have a wide view of approaching zombies from your hovel, and also it syncs well with pyromania as you can you burn the hovel down and let it sink into the swamp. Go take care of the bandits, but let them shoot first in case it's just some old rich fucks hiring you for a hit instead of legit. After that whatever seems reasonable.
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Feb 23, 2022 16:52
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Are there mutually exclusive questlines in this game or is refusing a quest just refusing content for role playing purposes?
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Feb 23, 2022 17:27
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Don't help the beggars for now Helping them just makes us at far more risk which isn't good for any of us in hte long term if we can secure a better source of food. We livin in luxury, There's bounds to be a lot of good stuff in the mansion after we deal with whatever zombies or monsters that are likely there with how the cities have been. Take care of the bandits I don't want to be shot at first, but it'd be good to see if this is legit a case of bandits and not something shady.
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Feb 23, 2022 17:50
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I vote for the Mansion! If nothing else raiding it would be a plentiful source of shtuff. Rich people are notorious for collecting all sorts of poo poo just for the hell of it.
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Feb 23, 2022 22:22
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Absolutely the mansion!
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Feb 23, 2022 22:25
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alarumklok posted:Help the beggars because maybe one is like a Greek god in disguise or something and you don't want to get struck down by lightning. I have to echo this because it's the perfect reasoning. Mansion, don't join the Old Guard
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Feb 23, 2022 22:31
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Does helping the hobos entail getting an option to recruit them to make a pike phalanx and/or assign them to Cow Duty?
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Feb 23, 2022 22:35
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Do a highway robbery on the bandits, and fortify the mansion, then maybe help the hobos. But the old guard can feck right off.
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Feb 23, 2022 22:47
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Help the Beggers We aren't that bad off to be honest, we can afford it Also folks, just because you don't have a proficency doesn't mean you can't craft stuff using it, sometimes it can be better to just work on something and suck up the time cost, working on anything using the proficency will raise that proficency over time as well so you would eventually get all of those chitin working things given enough bug armors.
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Feb 24, 2022 05:58
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Help Beggars Resist Authority Mansion
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Feb 24, 2022 08:56
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I cleared out my first mansion yesterday after voting and... I apologize in advance! I do not change my vote however!
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Feb 24, 2022 09:21
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FARM, DON'T HELP, KILL BANDITS we will be freedmen upon the blasted soil of the apocalypse
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Feb 24, 2022 11:52
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 We start our day collecting river water. It'd be nice to get one of those big tanks like we had at the shelter, but we'd have to find one first. We tried taking the tanks down off the milking machines, but they're just too big to make any use of. The oven is basically a big metal box, so we break down some furniture and get a fire going in there to boil our water.  We screw around trying to practice our wood carving and wind up making a big stick with a smaller stick tied to the end of it. The bow we want is going to take some pretty precise carving, so it's important to make sure we know what we're doing going in. This weapon isn't quite as good as the ironshod quarterstaff or loaded stick, but it can make reach attacks and it hits like a truck. We'll use it for a bit. Some reach weapons have the POLEARM flag which means they only do 70% damage in melee, but this one doesn't, so we can use it at either range just fine.  We saw a big patch of spiderweb on the ride up here. We head back and spot the culprit, a man-sized grayish spider who's webbed up the trees pretty good. giant web spider posted:A giant, light gray mutant grass spider, it waits for prey to become ensnared in the vast webs that it weaves between the trees.  We use our flail to clear a path through the webs. You can (s)mash webs to get rid of them. If you walk into them instead, you're hit with a 20% speed penalty (that applies to all actions, not just movement, remember) until you free yourself. Webs can be really useful for kiting enemies.  The spider senses the disturbance in its web and comes running. We are prepared, and can whack it before it even gets close. You use the (f)ire key to aim reach attacks, or you can just press (tab) and you'll automatically swing at anything in range.  It's fast, but we still pulverize it.  Hey, are these eggs? We wonder if--  AAAAAAAAAAH this happened to me in real life one time  We squash three spiderlings and collect a few eggs. We try to collect some web, but it's too sticky and tangled to seem very useful. A couple means two, a few means exactly three, and some means four or more. Tell your friends!  We're not hungry enough to find out what they taste like, but the eggs are about the size of duck eggs, only more spherical. We use our knife to split one of the rubbery shells and the goo inside looks like any other egg we've seen, only with a paler yolk. Maybe the white is a little cloudy. Do you see the Toxins (25%)? Food toxins use the vitamin system, but backwards. Every day, your body can naturally purge toxins equal to what's in 4 of these eggs. If you go up over that number, you start having problems. That means you could safely eat 3 spider eggs a day, though they're very gross (-20 enjoyability!). There are ways to mitigate these issues, which we'll explore another time.  We drag the carcasses most of the short distance home and stop to field dress them - we don't want this stuff going bad in the hot sun. We use a butcher's knife to split open the abdomen of the big one and prepare to consult our Wonderful World of Arthropodology ebook to identify and remove the stomach and intestine. field dressing posted:You crack the beast open like a horrific lobster. Beneath the chitin, the meat is covered in a thick, bristly hair hiding a chaotic bramble of half-formed, mutated organs. Um. This doesn't look right.  We've had crab before, and we've read about how bugs work. Crabs don't have bones and we're pretty sure spiders don't either.  "Hm. I guess it makes sense that they're not just getting bigger, they're kinda evolving. And look at these hosed up organs, I'm pretty sure book lungs aren't supposed to look like fractals." We drag a desk out to the riverbank and spend the rest of the day chopping up spiders.  The meat is almost beyond consideration. It's a slimy and almost gelatinous like raw crab, and getting it free from the shell is a lot of work. Worst of all, it stinks like hot trash and vinegar. If for some reason we weren't put off by the idea of eating spider meat, it would still be a lot of work to get it into an edible state, it's so full of bizarre growths and squirming parasites. The chitin, though, looks like pretty solid stuff. We're able to get some pretty good-sized plates and sheets of the softer stuff, and the smaller bits can be used for reinforcement or articulation. We wash all the bits of flesh off it in the river and set it out to dry overnight alongside the vast quantities of sinew we were able to preserve. Chunks of chitin are what you want. Endochitin isn't in useful shapes for armor construction, though it can be used for other stuff. It's basically just there to explain how arthropods can get so big without changing their body plan.  We decide to burn the meat, eggs, and organs so they don't attract vermin or worse. The only other thing we keep is the fat, which we intend to render. Not for food, but for crafts. Lard and tallow are incredibly useful products to have around. Here's a great video about lard. Tallow is actually the same thing as lard, just from a ruminant instead of a pig, but the game treats them as different materials for a lot of recipes. Lard was the victim of a marketing war and is very unpopular now, but it's basically a healthier(?) version of coconut oil. Here's a video of a finnish lady in stone-age clothes processing sinew. CDDA doesn't (yet) require you to process the stuff, but you basically just wash it, dry it, and then rub it until it comes apart into thread. If you've ever eaten crab legs, the sinew is the tough strips in the joints that hold the meat to the shell. There would be lots of it in a giant bug.  For dinner, a tuna melt. That is to say, a can of tuna and a packet of goopy MRE cheese on a slab of shelf-stable bread. We eat by candlelight.  In the morning, we take the bike out west and run into a pair of pink things like the one we saw in the tunnel. They're even more horrible by daylight, reminding us of nothing so much as undersea coral and anemones. They swing arms like spongy crab-claws at us, but we hit back harder and they scramble away on many legs, trailing clear-gray goo behind them.  They're too fast to run down and we can't be bothered, so we investigate what they were messing with out here. To our dismay we find piles of bloody clothes next to bits of meat and matted human hair, some of it with the scalp still on. "What the hell did they do to these people?" We pass a strange whitish structure in a stand of trees. As we get closer we realize it's a paper wasp nest the size of a house!  There are wasps of all sizes crawling and buzzing all over the thing, some barely bigger than cats and others the size of our chopper. Fighting a spider is one thing, but taking on all those wasps at once would be impossible.  We get too close and one of the little ones buzzes over. It takes us actual minutes of work to try to hit it with our knife. Do not try this with a heavy weapon, you will run out of stamina so fast. Also note how much work our armor was doing here. One time one of these guys got into my car while I was driving and killed me because i couldnt get my weapon out while also swerving through hordes of zombies. Wasps can also spawn in the air. Flying pathfinding isn't really super well coded yet, flying enemies tend to want to stay on whatever Z level they're on. That can be great but it also means sometimes you won't notice a wasp on your sidebar compass and you'll walk right under it and get stung without noticing. Beeware. We're bitten a few times with its big pinchy mandibles, but it doesn't bring out the stinger.  We pull up to the mansion, and it is breathtaking. Two stories and a partial third, a beautiful garden loaded with tasty fruits, and it's right on the river. We could find or even make a boat and travel around that way.  Unfortunately, the wasps are too close for comfort. We'll have to deal with them if we want to live here. We already have a molotov set aside for the nest, but we'll need ammo to take out the bigger ones and a lot of luck and patience for the little guys. One thing at a time though, we're just here for loot. Wasps have a queen, and she lays eggs. The eggs hatch into larvae, and the larvae grow up into the various kinds of adult wasps, so over time the nest will get very dangerous. This is super cool and can be exploited if you can kill them easily and want a lot of bug meat for some reason, but there are easier animals to do this with, for example chickens.  "Wow, what a mansion!"The foyer houses a bunch of statues and even a suit of gothic plate mail. Oooh!  Oh.  It's garbage.People were alluding to this in the thread. A lot of the medieval stuff you find is janky or too old to work, and it's not always obvious. Read the descriptions and check the stats to be sure!  The helmet is legit though. Unfortunately, it partially covers our face, which means wearing it with our gas mask is not a realistic option. We don't get hit in the head very much, so this probably isn't worth it as smoke and poison gas are too common of a threat now.  Holy poo poo, the suit of armor's mace is incredible!  These people had an entire gym in their house. We spend like three whole minutes making incorrect sport references while throwing this football around. That's called a "power play." "Three in the paint. It's a hail mary! FORE!" There's a huge pool on the north side of the property with an outdoor fireplace and even some space to do some gardening. If we wanted to live here, we'd need to replace that wooden fence with something more sturdy and maybe dig some trenches, but it wouldn't be a big job. The #s are deck chairs.  These people have lots of fancy or collectible stuff in glass cases all over the house. Earnest smashes the glass and scores this rosary. Earnest is spiritual, which means he gets a morale boost from wearing a holy symbol or reading a holy book. Any holy book will do, though given his last name I'm assuming he'd have some Catholic roots. NPCs used to not have morale scores, but now they do, and if he's unhappy it can slow down his learning and even prevent him from performing some activities. Earnest is a pacifist so fighting (even against zombies) makes him unhappy. The holy symbol will offset some of that, but really he's much happier at home.  We clear the first floor without incident. It's got multiple rec rooms, a few libraries, a huge dining room and kitchen, massive bedrooms, and of course the gym. The river is just to the south, and other than the wasp nest it's pretty quiet out here. There are a lot of windows to board up, but if we want to make this a home we can secure a small section to live in and work outward from there. The place is big, too, it could support a lot more people than just the two of us. Mostly, we came here to find clothing, and this place does not disappoint. We score tons of cloth and leather, which should help with our armor project significantly.  The basement looks like it's mostly storage and utility, but there's a huge theater down here. Unfortunately TV-watching isn't coded yet. That would be sweet though. Mandatory basement OST  There's a zombie down here, another bloater, but the look in its eyes takes us back to the lab, when we first came face to face with a zombie scientist. As we stare at it in disgusted fascination, something unknowably more than another mindless corpse stares back. zombie necro-boomer posted:At first this creature looks like nothing more than a grotesque and oleaginous husk, bloated and punctured by jet-black pustules. When approached, its glowing red eyes and an aching grin take form; its skin tears and its guts teem with unmatched fecundity, as its gaze inspires fear of nothing less than cosmic, inhuman ecstasy.  We smash the thing and it screams as it bursts apart. Suddenly, the zombies we just killed rise again, their wounds rapidly knitting together! They're easily dispatched, but the idea of something like that happening at the wrong moment is worrying.  We find a couple of workbenches, which should make our projects easier. When you craft, if you're near a piece of furniture with the clean surface quality, you'll get a work speed buff. There are 3 levels of clean surface, things like tarps have 1, regular tables have 2, workbenches have 3.  There wasn't much usable food upstairs, but down here we find enough dry food to keep us going for a week or so, longer if we supplement it with forage. That's exactly what we need to get this armor finished. We've taken quite a beating at this point, but we're almost through.  This is the chillest place in the whole mansion, and it's got some stiff competition. "Gimme a drink, bartender."   "Holy poo poo!" And there's the basement cleared. It's filled with tools and cookware - nothing we haven't found before except a canning pot, which we can use to, uh, can stuff. It's more exciting than it sounds.  We head up to the second floor, which holds a few bedrooms and has a lot of ledges and balconies. We almost get into a bad situation when we step out onto one and see a grabber zombie down below. This is what I was talking about. If we stepped near the edge, this zombie could grab us and pull us down, which would do fall damage and let him hit us. We are at low-ish HP right now so that could break a limb. We do not want to spend the summer in a cast while everyone else gets to play in our pool.  We head downstairs the normal way and deal with him, but in the process it wrenches our arm almost out of the socket, forcing us to drop our mace. It grabs at us again and completely rips our Gambeson to shreds! Our first piece of real armor falls off of us in bloody tatters. Earnest takes the zombie out and we head upstairs to dress our wounds and get some rest. There are probably a few stragglers, but the mansion is clear. If one of your arms is badly hurt or broken, you won't be able to wield heavy weapons. You'll also do greatly reduced damage in combat. At this point we're relying on Earnest to protect us. We get ourselves patched up and start looking for a good book and a place to sleep, and that's when we see it.  Ho lee poo poo. A Sephiroth sword!!! The nodachi is one of the most powerful melee weapons in the game. Just look at those stats! Brutal strike is always a winner, medium blocking ability and wide strike make even a slow weapon like this viable in crowds, and the raw damage on it can easily spike up over 100 on a crit if you have the stats for it. We don't, by the way. Cut's best friend is agility, and at 8, we can't consistently get the kind of crits that make this weapon worthwhile. It weighs twice as much as our mace, which gives it a very high stamina drain per attack. If you're a nimble and skilled swordfighter, you get a lot of mileage out of a weapon like this. For us, the opportunity cost is just too high. That's not to say we can't enjoy swords. If we find a big choppy sword with decent bash damage rather than an elegant slicer like the nodachi, we might be able to apply our brute strength, but here the base bash damage just isn't high enough. Still, it's a treasure, and maybe we'll find someone who can make proper use of it. Historically we don't know exactly how nodachi were used. In anime they're often capable of cutting horses in half, but that's obviously ridiculous. We know that they were used on infantry as early as the Heian period, and I've heard it suggested they were used to get in close to spearmen or cavalrymen and fight at a distance that would be uncomfortable for the enemy while still staying out of arm's reach.  We also snag a pair of binoculars, which give us a much better view of our surroundings. We spot a prison across the river, and just beyond it, some farm fields. If we want to grow stuff, maybe we can get some seeds over there. Binos fill in more of the world map around you, which is awesome.  The second floor.  Ohhh mama. The Saiga-12 is super cool. I love Kalashnikovs and I love shotguns, and this is both. I sang the praises of tube-feeding before and I still believe it's the superior way to run a shotgun, but this mag feeder opens up a new world of possibilities. For most shooters, recoil can make a gun like this unwieldy and inaccurate, but we're strong enough to handle it. Our low perception makes us very slow to aim, but once we sight down an enemy, we have a very easy time controlling our weapon and staying on target. What other game even makes those kinds of nuanced considerations and build options possible? I love Cataclysm. There is one problem with the Saiga, and that's that we only have one mag. We'll need at least one more to make this viable as a primary weapon, until then it's a cool novelty.[/url]  Earnest rushes over to us, having pulled a book off the shelf. "Check it out, a handbook for your mace!"The Montante of Luis Barbarán II is a Spanish martial arts manual from 1528 that details the art of fighting with heavy weapons and absolutely just battering the poo poo out of people with careful application of brute strength. HEMA guys love it. I cannot loving believe our luck finding this. In game terms, Barbaran Montante is a newly implemented martial art that passively grants 75% of your strength score as armor piercing on all damage types. That alone is worth switching out of Brawling for, but it also gives us a defense bonus if we take a step, a version of rapid strike that gives us 66% of our damage for 50% of the move cost instead of 50/50 - this is really really good. It looks like the intended use of this martial art is to try to alternate stepping and attacking to accumulate stacking buffs that improve our defense. If we run into a really well armored enemy, we can pass a turn without attacking to wind up a move that adds AP to our attacks equal to 225% of our strength. Wild! No one martial art fits every situation (except brawling, which is always great), and the key is to know when to switch in and out of them. By learning several different martial arts, you can build a unique fighting style that sees you doing things like flowing from iaijutsu to niten-ichi-ryu to karate and krav maga in the span of a single fight. It's a lot to keep track of, but if you get really good at it you can set up some phenomenal attacks. We pass the day going over techniques. Once we're healed up we feel eager to try this out on the battlefield, but Earnest's noodly hacker arms are way too weak to use this style effectively. NPC martial arts are halfway implemented, but often inadvisable. We can manually set Earnest to use a martial art and he'll do it, but his AI won't understand when to move or pause to get buff stacks, he'll just walk up to things and hit them. We leave him on brawling because that's how brawling works anyway.  When we first got here we were like, man gently caress these rich assholes. But now we have to respect them. These people knew how to party. The bondage suit is decent day one armor, but we're cutting it up for leather patches.  Hey, cool, a Desert Eagle! This one's chambered for .44 magnum, which means we might actually find ammo for it. You know the Deagle. It is a gigantic silver (or sometimes gold) pistol that shoots gigantic bullets and all the noobs try to use it in Counterstrike. It's mostly good for waving around in music videos or letting everyone know that you're in the Russian mafia, but it's well-known for being one of the most powerful handguns around. It loads .44 magnum, which is normally a revolver round, and because the bullets are so goddamn big it can only hold 8 of them. These guns can also come chambered in .50, which is even funnier. They don't seem super useful IRL, but for us they might be good for taking out a close-range armored target in a pinch. Wikipedia says that the only military or police outfit that uses these things are the Polish GROM. Apparently the CIA likes working with GROM because of their " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JW_GROM#War_on_Terror posted:low rules of engagement threshold  Lastly, we discover a compound hunting bow, which means we won't need to make our own bow after all. This bow can be adjusted for a lighter draw, but we're strong enough to use it on the highest setting, and we absolutely will. In all, this trip went way better than expected. We got a fabulous new mace and bow that were better than the ones we were planning on making ourselves, we learned a martial art that feels like it was made for us, and we found enough leather and cloth to start making our chitin armor. We got Earnest some jewelry and a holy symbol, he's looking fresh and faithful, and--  "No way." "That HAS to be decomissioned. There is no way." "It's real dude! It is real and it works! We HAVE to shoot this at the wasps!"There are no cannonballs, but so help me God we will make this happen.  We spend a day moving everything from the farmhouse to the mansion. Suddenly, a pervasive sense of wrongness comes over us, and Earnest points to the window. memory posted:The shade of a human body reaching towards you like it needs help. Though it has no eyes you feel as though it is staring through you.  They call for help in faint voices, clawing desperately up the wall to press their silhouette bodies against the glass. We're reminded of the nukes that hit American soil just months ago, of the human shadows burned into the pavement and across crumbling walls.  Suddenly, the sun goes out, like someone flicked a light switch. The sky outside is absolutely black, and we can't see past our faces. The darkness outside parts like a curtain, and impossibly we catch a glimpse of what looks like the ocean. Something large slides out of the water and is gone, slithering off through the yard as the vision vanishes. We hear a voice:  "Have you considered how lucky you are? So few of your kind have a chance to see the truths being exposed outside right now."Earnest fingers his rosary with one hand and his axe with the other. "Who are you?"The voice makes no reply. Eventually, things return to normal.  We lock ourselves in a room deeper in the house and take turns sleeping. In the morning, we get back to messing with our chitin. AtomikKrab posted:Also folks, just because you don't have a proficency doesn't mean you can't craft stuff using it, sometimes it can be better to just work on something and suck up the time cost, working on anything using the proficency will raise that proficency over time as well so you would eventually get all of those chitin working things given enough bug armors. This is true to an extent, but we're missing three proficiencies and have a finite amount of food and chitin. The base crafting time for chitinous armor is more than 16 hours, and that assumes you're not having any general work slowdown. Three missing proficiencies more than triples the amount of time it takes us to produce this armor and our focus gets instantly tanked if we try to brute fource it because our character tries to learn all 3 proficiencies at the same time. Low focus doesn't just hinder learning, it imposes an additional craft speed penalty. 48 hours of stated work time makes this a five day project at least, but the missing proficiencies introduce another issue: we will periodically gently caress up our project and lose progress and materials. If we burn through too many of these materials, we have to go out and find more bugs, and the wasps are terrifically dangerous. The little ones are very hard to hit and the big ones are incredibly well armored. Fighting one at a time is doable if we're in good shape, but fighting both types together (very likely due to their grouping and AI behavior) denies us the ability to easily use tactics that exploit one weakness or the other. We're stuck in a particular situation here and we're rolling with it, but my advice for making bug armor is to find an easier way to farm chitin and get enough of it that you aren't put in this position. As we've seen, spiders are much easier than wasps, and there are better sources of chitin still. Look around!  It's hard to stay focused. We can't stop thinking about the sun just going on like that. We need fire - at the end of the day fire is humankind's only tool for defeating the dark. We feel totally hopeless without it. Gray is a pretty annoying character to play during downtime. The mood buffs from starting fires don't last very long at all, and you are constantly taking mood debuffs if you don't. The mood swings are much less frequent, but as you can see they give much larger penalties when they hit. That would be manageable, but we only have 8 intelligence, so we have a fairly slow learn speed and even slower reading speed that only compounds the issue. This is offset by our Fast Learner trait, but I don't think that applies to proficiencies, or if it does it isn't enough.  We run out of chitin, so we whip up a quiver and some primitive arrows with metal tips. Time to go hunting.  The little wasps are hard to hit with our bow, but we can do it if we take our time and get uncomfortably close. The big ones just shrug off our arrows, and we're not good enough to reliably hit their weak points yet. We wind up getting stung, which suuuuucks. The poison sends burning waves through out body that leave us feeling wiped out. We limp home with a few carcasses and pop some codeine before getting them processed.  We work feverishly, forgetting to pace ourselves in the rush to just get the project done. Here's what happens on these projects a lot of the time: You bring your materials and your stockpile of food in and just try to grind it out, and you wind up burning shitloads of calories and eating all your food in the process. We are a bit underweight, which is totally fine for summer, but we're extremely weary from boring holes in giant bug chitin and lashing it together for 12 hours nonstop. When you see that red text up there, it's best to go rest, all actions take a massive speed penalty which only drags the project out longer. For me, this is how Summer usually goes. Spring is for getting started, scouting locations you want to travel to, gathering materials and books. Summer is project season. There's food growing everywhere, it's too hot to do a lot of fighting, and the long daylight hours give you a huge window to work in. Whether you're building a base, a car, or your kit, it's much easier to get it done from June to September.  Chitin is a strange material to work with. What we have is pretty much identical to crab shell, but the pieces are bigger, thicker, and in some places, much more rigid. The hardness varies wildly, some pieces feel like plastic, others leather, and some horn. It seems like whatever piece we grab to work with, it never has quite the properties we wish it did for the part we're working on. There's no way to shape the pieces, and they're so tough that it's hard to even trim them, but that turns out to be the whole trick. The secret of chitinworking is to try to feng shui all the pieces into an arrangement that works rather than forcing it. We strap ourselves in to our new kit: A suit of chitin armor and arm guards strapped on over a brand new cloth gambeson. The whole arrangement looks like a demented lorica. Our shoulders bristle with gray-brown fur and our sides bear the black and yellow warning stripes of the wasps we're at war with. Combined with our army helmet and gas mask, it's pretty imposing. Lorica segmentata is the iconic roman legionary armor. Rome is a hot place and the Romans loved to conquer hotter places, and the armor prioritized protection of vitals without being too hot or restrictive. I've never been impressed with the way chitin armor looks in video games, honestly. It's a super cool idea but you always wind up with artwork that's all vibes without a sense of mechanical realism. That Morrowind armor looks neat, but how do you put it on? What design considerations did the chitin impose? It doesn't look like it would deflect shots away from your vitals. How is it conformed so tightly to the body? What do you wear under it? How many pieces is it if you take it off? These are the things I think about.  We strap Earnest into our old leather armor, as his SWAT armor was on its last legs. We're going to head out to grab some supplies, but this time we'll leave him to watch our new home. We've decided the Mansion is where we want to be. It's so hot! We're getting a high heat score from our gambeson, which makes sense as it's a thickly padded coat. We could take it off, but I'm on the fence about trading protection for speed. In any case I'll try to avoid doing any serious fighting while the sun's out.  There's a dog in the field out here, doing battle with a squad of zombie soldiers. He doesn't look so good. We rush in to help.  We manage to save the dog, but it runs off into the weeds. There are actually a bunch of dogs out here! We head back to the mansion and come back with a can of dog food, which one of the dogs seems very happy to see. It devours the stuff and starts following us around.   "What are we going to name it?" "I dunno, you think of something."We'll think about it.  Back in the field, we look over the loot. See what I mean about the M4s? They're everywhere. There are 3 more offscreen, and these enemies were no big deal. One of these is an M16A1, the predecessor to the M4A1. It's pretty much the same gun, but a bit bigger, and with a three-round burst option instead of full auto. The longer barrel means it'll hit a bit harder, and we can handle a bigger gun, so we just snagged an upgrade. The rest we can sell to the Refugee Center.  One of the zombie soldiers appears to have mutated into an acid spitter. It seems a lot more dangerous than the usual kind. Its mouth has fused with its gas mask and that seems to be compressing its spit into hardened darts that liquify and burn on impact. bilious soldier zombie posted:This staggering soldier wears a burnt gasmask, now fused to its face. Through the melted, bile-encrusted ruination of the mask protrudes some sort of hardened, fleshy proboscis, with steaming corrosive fluid leaking from the end. His spit does fairly low acid damage, but he's quite accurate. Most of our armor doesn't protect against acid well, so we need to get rid of these fast if we want to avoid taking chip damage.  No problem. We may as well cut our foraging trip short and just try to trade for the supplies we wanted. We swing back and grab Earnest, then head up to the Refugee Center. Smokes gives us some tools and a book we are very excited about in exchange for the rifles.  Makayla boggles at our wasteland bug armor.  Our knees go weak and we can't think of anything to say.  Sensing weakness, she moves in for the kill and offers us a book of recipes for homemade explosives, as well as a few supplies to get started. A steal of a deal at only 25 merch. She's going to blow up a bank with the supplies we brought her. She's going to blow up a skyscraper...  "You're back. Here to take the offer?" Her lips purse as she sizes us up in our new kit, but her aviators belie no reaction. "Dead, right?" "We don't have the manpower to operate a prison. It's frontier justice, sorry to say." She doesn't look particularly sorry. "Alright. We'll do it."But we're not doing it for the Old Guard, we still have our reservations about the pre-Cataclysm oligarchy. No, we're doing it for the people. "Contractor, I welcome you aboard. Here are the coordinates and photos of the targets, just watch out for traps when you get there. They'll be expecting you."The mansion was a clear winner, so we'll be setting up there over the next few updates. We can still play Stardew Valley there, don't worry. People were more iffy on the Old Guard. We have decided to investigate the job, and if it turns out to be legit we will kill the bandits, but mostly out of principle. After that, we can decide if we still want to work for The Man. As for the beggars, while it was 2 to 1 for helping them, some of the yes votes came with sensible qualifiers. We didn't get to it this update, but we will compromise and help the beggars a little bit. We're too busy fighting a war against bandits, ghosts, and demon wasps to fully commit to taking care of these people, but we'll take some time to get to know them and spare what little we can.
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Feb 24, 2022 13:20
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...I mean does the game now support real, actual mortars? Are we going to clear out the wasp nest with artillery? Because that would rule so hard. Also goddamn an actual steel Nodachi? That's a loving score. Good luck with that mansion basement, too, for some reason they always give me a hard time, more than the rest of the mansion, not sure why. I don't think I've ever bumped into a prison, myself... I feel like I might just have skipped them over, because in my mind I can't really imagine them containing any good loot, but I can imagine them containing a lot of undead. Probably easy to fortify, though. And because I'm a doofus and completely dense when it comes to any sort of subtle content, are the "supernatural" interludes actually stuff the game springs on you these days or original writing?  I like them either way, but I actually can't tell.
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Feb 24, 2022 13:55
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PurpleXVI posted:...I mean does the game now support real, actual mortars? Are we going to clear out the wasp nest with artillery? Because that would rule so hard. There are no mortars (that would be so dope), but we do have a civil war cannon. I have never used one before, so I'm expecting comedy. The mansion in general really didn't have very many zombies. I don't know if we got lucky or if this type just doesn't have big spawns. Basements can be bad because it's tight confines and zombies love poison gas and acid puddles, but we're immune to those things. The supernatural-seeming stuff is really, actually happening. It's new with the portal storm weather type.
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Feb 24, 2022 14:07
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I hear portal storms get pretty nasty later on. I usually don't survive that long though, I get greedy and die a lot. molotovs are fun! I'm playing a character with a starting strength of 4, holy hell is it a rough start. can't even bash apart a locker with a rock. High agility & perception so I'm going all swords and ranged.
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Feb 24, 2022 14:23
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