cataclysm dark days ahead- You just cant win

[Super Aggro Crag]

Bottom post of the previous page:

Do they have multi z level maps yet, and if so are you able to use your wing mutations to fly onto roofs? What about a jet pack? What about using a grapple hook to get up there? If not, wasted potential imo.

Demonforen, I think dragons are cool.

[Wyzack]

They do have multi Z buildings and stuff, as well as experimental Z levels that simulate all Z levels around you. This however is still really buggy and in places with lots of underground enemies like the vault towns it is entirely unplayable due to massive lag. Also there was a thing about enemies below you being able to fucking shoot you through the floor, but i dunno they might have fixed it. I don't know how flying works with Z levels, i don't mess with mutagens much

[lntigracy]

Pretty sure they fixed shooting through the floor.

It's always fun setting the basement on fire and going upstairs to a burning building.

[Wyzack]

Have you ever done it with a blob pit? They are extremely flammable, its awesome

[Deitus]

How the fuck do you craft a water bottle

I have the plastic chunks but I don't see it on the crafting screen

Also beginner tips are welcome please

Also also fuck turrets spawning right outside my shelter

[Wyzack]

You probably need a solidering iron or some kind of heatsource nearby. Your crafting skills also might not be high enough. Assuming you are on the experimental build you can search your crafting recipies for "bottle" and it should tell you what you need. If nothing comes up it means you don't know how to make it. Plastic bottles are pretty abundant though, i think you can even find them foraging in the underbrush sometimes.

As for beginner tips, always try to fight as few enemies concurrently as possible. Lure them into doorways or even better, window frames or other rough terrain like bushes. If the terrain is difficult they will move onto it very slowly and give you free hits. Manage your encumbrance if you are having difficulty hitting things. Avoid acid and shocker zombies always, avoid skelleton enemies if your skills are low. If you need to raid cities do it at night, always take the night vision perk on chargen if possible for this reason. Always run when faced with a horde. speaking of hordes, find a decent base and horde everything you find, especially medicine and books. Don't be afraid to pop hard drugs like meth or cocaine if you are in a pinch, being sick from addiction is better than being dead. Level tailoring, but not by trying to repair your own stuff.

[lntigracy]

If a turret spawned outside your shelter, run out to within range of it, let it kill you, press Y to see your last moments, and idle for a bit.

Turrets have limited ammo, and it'll keep shooting your body.

[Wyzack]

Gonna keep rattling off newbie tips since Qbop said he was having some difficulty starting off as well.

Boil all questionable water from ponds, lakes and toilets before you drink it as it can easily make you sick. Water from pumps at farmhouses and collected rainwater for whatever reason seems to be safe even though it is not labelled as "clean" water, i have drank shitloads of both and never gotten ill from it. Never forgo non-perishable staple foods like rice, oatmeal, dried beans and powdered eggs, they are the best way to keep yourself fed once you are a bit established and your canned goods start to run out. Vitamins are everywhere, pop a few every day to keep your invisible "health" stat up. This has several benefits, the most important of which is that is makes you less likely to catch a random cold

[Wyzack]

Oh also never neglect to check zombie corpses for items, even the basic zeds can sometimes have 9mm bullets or even the mythical toolbox

[DemonFiren]

>can't just eat your motherfucking greens
>have to pop vitamins instead
very american game

[Wyzack]

Eating nutritious food also does this, but they stack

[DemonFiren]

actually imagine
if diseases in spessmens were much more common but vitamin buffed your resistance
might actually make the chef useful

[Deitus]

actually imagine
if diseases in spessmens were much more common but vitamin buffed your resistance
might actually make the chef useful

That's... actually a really good idea.

Leagues better than GOOF KITCHEN (TM) anyway

[TheWiznard]

I always turn off nutritious food, literally the worst feature imho

[Deitus]

what should i do for a starting build? is the wiki up to date?

i wanna find something thats completely average in every respect possible

[Super Aggro Crag]

I like starting off completely naked and going xaveman mode and only wearing clothes i can craft and wielding spears

[Wyzack]

If you want a decent starting build go regular survivor, take enough negative traits that you can put a few points into dodging and a melee skill, probably bashing, and maybe a couple into tailoring. If you want an easier start go SWAT officer and take a melee skill like unarmed with a martial art. The armor is pretty badass early game and you also get a gun

[lntigracy]

Take the negative trait that degrades your skills faster over time, but disable skill decay.

[Wyzack]

I honestly usually just use freeform character generation and avoid making myself too OP. Min maxing like that is basically cheating anyways so why not make the character you want

[Deitus]

does what type of point pool i pick matter? if so, how?

[GarlicBread]

I believe it goes

Single pool: you get a single set point pool to use for everything; skill, stats, whatever

Multi pool: you get a separate pool for each category

Freeform: infinite points to do anything

Some people complain you don't get enough points in multi pool but its just whatever you prefer really

[Deitus]

which one is the more common option used?

[GarlicBread]

Single I believe is the most "vanilla" experience

[TheWiznard]

managed to finally get a reply from some guy's three year old throwaway account on le digg for cdda controller binds. after a few messages back and forth he tells me how to access his profile for cdda through steam by adding it to steam and renaming it in steam to "Cataclysm DDA" which then enables us to share steam controller profiles on the community page, honestly it's everything I've hoped for and while I may not be proficient at it as I've only played for a bout 2 hours with it I am loving it so much more in my case than using kb+m

Left touchpad and the analog both do movement, but the touchpad is the numbers and allows the diagonal directions. It also allows easy use for advanced inventory because you can easily select the tile. It's also numbers so anytime you need to press a number it's right there.
The default layout has the most used keys, but the entire controller layout will completely change while you hold one of the triggers into an interact mode or a look mode (depending on which one you hold). That changes the buttons but ALSO the touchmenu. Right touchpad is always a touchmenu, but will change to relevant items if a trigger is held.
A lot of buttons have long presses and double presses if they seem related. For instance, the "B" button on the controller cancels a lot, so I made a double tap ignore a monster warning, and a long press turn off safe mode. Same with the left shoulder button: a single press does the short "." wait, while holding it brings up the extended wait menu. Right shoulder is similar, a press does f for fire and a long press changes fire modes.

also I don't actually own a steam controller yet but it translated to xbox controller fully in my case without hitches

[Deitus]

>read to forage bushes to raise survival
>(e)xamine a shitton of bushes but get nothing other than frostbitten hands even though i made gloves and handwraps
>moose kills me

is my rng with bushes just terrible or what am i doing wrong? also, how can i protect my hands from the cold early on?

[D&B]

You're supposed to forage underbrushes

[Deitus]

You can examine underbrush to forage for items and practice your survival skill. Underbrush tiles can be foraged once each, regardless of success.

so then i assume it was changed

[RandolfTheMeh]

You can examine underbrush to forage for items and practice your survival skill. Underbrush tiles can be foraged once each, regardless of success.

so then i assume it was changed

Downloaded this less than a weak ago and it still works. Go to the bushes in forest areas, they'll be brighter or whatnot. Examine them, get a bit of survival, then they'll turn grey.
On another topic, I found an encampment, and that shit was decked out with floodlights, forges, electric bikes, tons of shit. Feel kind of bad camping in it, but I took black belt, so I can pretty much camp wherever.

[Deitus]

i always examine them and it just says they're empty. they dont change colors or anything.

edit: never mind im blind.

[DemonFiren]

I forgot where I'm supposed to find lizzer eggs for mutagen.

[Deirun]

You can find them if you forage underbrushes during spring and summer.

[Super Aggro Crag]

I forgot where I'm supposed to find lizzer eggs for mutagen.

Lizard eggs are not as tasty as bird eggs

[DemonFiren]

I forgot where I'm supposed to find lizzer eggs for mutagen.

Lizard eggs are not as tasty as bird eggs

of course not
but i don't wanna be a bird

[Super Aggro Crag]

Eat the bird eggs for nutritional power use the liaard eggs to scale up

[Wyzack]

Finding lizard eggs is fucking annoying. I cheated them in with the debug menu for my lizard mutant

[Deitus]

after trying multiple times to forage bushes and getting dunked by forest creatures each time i've finally crafted a knife spear

still sucks that my head and hands are always getting cold despite me making stuff for them though

ONWARDS TO GETTING DUNKED IN TOWNS

[RandolfTheMeh]

after trying multiple times to forage bushes and getting dunked by forest creatures each time i've finally crafted a knife spear

still sucks that my head and hands are always getting cold despite me making stuff for them though

ONWARDS TO GETTING DUNKED IN TOWNS

Usually you want to get fabrication, survival, and tailoring to level 3 before you do much. Rip through clothes with a knife (craft from stone, some wood you smashed young trees for, and some thread you got from wherever) and practice your sewing on throw-away clothes to get skilled enough to make things like gloves, legs/arm warmers, balaclava, etc., so you aren't constantly chilly. High enough fabrication and survival skill lets you build makeshift versions of most tools you have trouble finding. Raid the outskirts of towns unless you're a true all-American badass. You can do whatever, really, but I find that getting that shit down right away improves your survivability.

[Wyzack]

Also in case you don't know you can (f)ire most spear weapons to hit non adjacent enemies

[D&B]

If you have mansions in your map they're pretty good for weapon looting.

[Deitus]

god fucking dammit

i really, REALLY want to like this game but 9 games out of 10 when i go outside to forage i always get fucked over by a wolf or moose or something and very rarely get to the point where im even able to go into towns

getting really goddamn frustrated here

[D&B]

Press V and it should show monsters and creatures nearby.

If a wolf is getting near just position yourself so they stand in a brush and hack away at them. Roguelikes tend to be harsh at first but that's the fun of it imo

[Deitus]

thats what i do but they always kill me anyway

i mean i like a challenge too but there's a difference between "challenge" and "fuck you over before you can start"

ill keep at it though

[Super Aggro Crag]

Use a bear trap on a wolfe

[Wyzack]

Take animal empathy, or start off with some better close combat skills or a gun. Playing with an easier start is always better than getting pissed and not playing at all

[Deitus]

so on my latest attempt right outside my shelter there's a bunch of scientists with cards on them and a suit of power armor. am i able to use that this early?

[Wyzack]

oh fuck son. The ID cards are always useful, science labs are full of awesome loot. The power armor is a good find, but it will be pretty much worthless without a Universal Power Supply or UPS to power it. You can find them in science labs or rarely in electronics stores. Either way stash it someplace safe and put a note on your map to remember. Its super rare.

[Super Aggro Crag]

Yeah put it on

[Deitus]

oh fuck son. The ID cards are always useful, science labs are full of awesome loot. The power armor is a good find, but it will be pretty much worthless without a Universal Power Supply or UPS to power it. You can find them in science labs or rarely in electronics stores. Either way stash it someplace safe and put a note on your map to remember. Its super rare.

too late already dead

im gonna go get some dinner and then imma come back and try and work out a good beginner's build with you guys

[Wyzack]

If you keep getting killed by low level stuff set chargen to freeform and start as a SWAT officer. Take night vision and Self Defence Class (krav maga). Put a couple points into piercing or slashing as you like, as well as dodging. You should now be able to kill all basic zeds/wildlife that tries to step to you without taking damage

[Deitus]

ill make a build and take some screenshots here in a minute. for now let me know whats wrong with what i usually do so far with my games:
>go outside and forage for shit until i get lvl 1 survival
>go back to shelter and make hand wraps, sock mits, a turban, chest wrap, foot wraps (which do jack shit against cold i might add)
>make knife spear
>use all curtains to make a shitton of foot wraps for fabrication/tailoring (what can i make that would be better for "grinding?")
>try to go to the nearest town and promptly get dunked by whatever
>restart

[Deitus]

double poost:

new build is
>single pool (freeform just feels like cheating)
>evacuee
>swat officer
>addictive personality, lightweight, thin-skinned, trigger-happy, truth-teller, ugly, weak stomach
>animal empathy, fleet-footed, night vision, quick, self-defense (krav)
>strength 2, dex 1, perception 1
>dodging (2)

good/bad/ugly?