cataclysm dark days ahead- You just cant win

[DemonFiren]

Will start as soon as I'm out of tai chi today.

Which will be in six hours at worst.

[Drynwyn]

I'll go muffet mode as soon as I figure out a way to get some storage volume without torso items. Already have the compound eyes and the web spinning.

(I can grow extra arms as a post threshold spider but they prevent me from wearing torso items- at least, they do in the early stages. Might not once they become coordinated.)

[Takeguru]

There's a CBM that gives you a free 20.

Internal Storage or something like that.

[Super Aggro Crag]

I am tempted to be a disgusting autist now and start as female.
Get plate mail.
Get the Fish mutation.

Yeeeah...

What RU doing here ssssir
you can also get a a spear

what is this a reference to?

[TheWiznard]

I am tempted to be a disgusting autist now and start as female.
Get plate mail.
Get the Fish mutation.

Yeeeah...

What RU doing here ssssir
you can also get a a spear

what is this a reference to?

blundertale

[Drynwyn]

Turns out that once you max out the arachnid limbs, you can wear torso stuff again, which is nice. I'm gonna brew a whole bunch of spider mutagen and down it all at once in the hopes of getting it all done at once.

[Wyzack]

Bleergh, giant human spider hybrid. You used to be a cool cyborg chick, how could you do that to yourself?

Also what color do you imagine her fur is?

[Drynwyn]

Bleergh, giant human spider hybrid. You used to be a cool cyborg chick, how could you do that to yourself?

Also what color do you imagine her fur is?

I'm actually running two games in parallel, one with the cool cyborg chick, who's been working on a cat,and one with the human-spider hybrid, who's been working on becoming a human-spider hybrid. (I duplicated my save file before I started doing mutagenic stuff.) If more writing occurs (it probably will), it will be about the non-mutated character for the forseeable future.

That said I imagine it as blue-grey, like this dude (spoilered because some people get freaked out by spiders).

Spoiler:

Additional note about the cyborg implants: I read the description for protective lenses. It states that "Protective lenses have been grafted over your eyes, and your tear ducts have been redirected to your mouth. When you cry, you must spit or swallow your tears."


"When you cry, you must spit or swallow your tears."

that's a little creepy.

[Wyzack]

My current character is a redux of my badass full lizard mutant, but in a world with super hard settings. I imagine him looking kinda like The Lizard from the old spiderman cartoons, but in a leather trenchcoat and sunglasses. He chain smokes cigarettes and has a few helpful bionics such as a toolset and glare compensators.

I found a sweet RV that just needed wheels, and managed to hold off the zeds long enough to replace enough wheels to get it moving. Currently travelling with 3 NPCs i recruited, just cleared out a mansion in a remote location. Found an armorsmithing and weaponsmithing book, and salvaged enough electronic parts to make my own electric forge. The plan is to scrap a car to build all the necessary tools such as an anvil and stuff, and then craft a bunch of badass naginata for my survivor buddies.

[DemonFiren]

Why the fuck didn't they just burn out your tear ducts, anyway.

[Super Aggro Crag]

I am tempted to be a disgusting autist now and start as female.
Get plate mail.
Get the Fish mutation.

Yeeeah...

What RU doing here ssssir
you can also get a a spear

what is this a reference to?

blundertale

oh i haven't played that game i've just heard everyone compare hedwig algebra to the yellow dinosaur

[DemonFiren]

Alphys is literally Professor Frink: The Lizard.

[Drynwyn]

Why the fuck didn't they just burn out your tear ducts, anyway.

Because a scientist in the bionics company has a really sick fetish.

[DemonFiren]

Fetishist scientists.

Spoiler:

Suddenly mutagen makes a lot more sense.

[Wyzack]

Fucking furries/scalies caused the cataclysm by fucking with interdimensional bullshit to make irl catgrills

Also i am kind of sad Egoraptor is never going to finish girlchan 4

[Drynwyn]

I drank a gallon of spider mutagen and managed to get coordinated arachnid arms.

I also have Cooking 11, appropriately enough.

However the NPC's don't want to talk to me to buy my baked goods

so i ate them

[Super Aggro Crag]

Alphys is literally Professor Frink: The Lizard.

hedy came first pay me undertale guy

[DemonFiren]

Pics or it didn't happen.

[Wyzack]

My lizard is now a master smith. He is also fuggin ripped, and was able to drag a busted up VW Beetle to my mansion and smash it to pieces with a sledgehammer. Turning this shitty car into metalsmithing tools and traditional japanese weapons and armor for my crew. Once we are geared up we are gonna go on a rampage in the nearby big city and see how much damage we can do

[DemonFiren]

>shitty

How DARE you call that car shitty.

[Drynwyn]

Is there a way to use the debug command to kill something? I ask because an NPC has spawned who keeps causing crashes whenever I get close enough to trigger his dialogue.

EDIT: Aaaand there is a clearly labelled "kill NPC's" option. DISREGARD ABOVE QUESTION I SUCK COCKS.

[Super Aggro Crag]

Is there a way to use the debug command to kill something? I ask because an NPC has spawned who keeps causing crashes whenever I get close enough to trigger his dialogue.

EDIT: Aaaand there is a clearly labelled "kill NPC's" option. DISREGARD ABOVE QUESTION I SUCK COCKS.

ur a dope

[Wyzack]

Found a nice small town. Big horde in the middle but no hulks. Figured i could clear em out and make it my base. Saw fungaloids, with a bloom in the distance. Kinda sucked. Decided i was not gonna put up with their bullshit. Trekked back to the missle silo i found and blew a military ID cracking it open. Got all the sweet loot. Hacked the console. Nuked the fungal bloom. GG fungus motherfuckers, humans win

Or i guess posthuman lizard cyborgs

[TheWiznard]

Found a nice small town. Big horde in the middle but no hulks. Figured i could clear em out and make it my base. Saw fungaloids, with a bloom in the distance. Kinda sucked. Decided i was not gonna put up with their bullshit. Trekked back to the missle silo i found and blew a military ID cracking it open. Got all the sweet loot. Hacked the console. Nuked the fungal bloom. GG fungus motherfuckers, humans win

Or i guess posthuman lizard cyborgs

the first time I found one of those silos and hacked the pc and it brought up a map screen I was like
"yeeeaaaaahhh booooiii : ^^^^^^)))))) "

proceeded to nuke one of the giant office towers in a big 7 city
pretty much ruined the whole center part of that place

[Drynwyn]

So I've accumulated 1600 bionic power storage on my cyborg lady and a whole shit ton of fun bionics.

Time Dilation, though, is probably my favorite. Activating it immediately drains all your power and gives you free turns (in the form of move points) depending on the amount of power expended. Drop 1600 power, and you get to take around 20 uninterrupted turns worth of stuff in a row.

This lets you do things like sprint up to a turret and smash it with your bare hands before it has time to fire a bullet at you, or take out entire groups of shocker brutes in the blink of an eye. It's amazing (provided you have a way to get a lot of bionic power- ethanol burner + blood filter has worked well for me.)

[TheWiznard]

So I've accumulated 1600 bionic power storage on my cyborg lady and a whole shit ton of fun bionics.

Time Dilation, though, is probably my favorite. Activating it immediately drains all your power and gives you free turns (in the form of move points) depending on the amount of power expended. Drop 1600 power, and you get to take around 20 uninterrupted turns worth of stuff in a row.

This lets you do things like sprint up to a turret and smash it with your bare hands before it has time to fire a bullet at you, or take out entire groups of shocker brutes in the blink of an eye. It's amazing (provided you have a way to get a lot of bionic power- ethanol burner + blood filter has worked well for me.)

are you sure it wasn't dio?

[DemonFiren]

It's a CBM that did that.

Clearly, what we have here is tranny Flash Man.

[Xhuis]

I finally started trying out this game. Upped tailoring a bit plus melee and ran with stats around the same.
I keep getting crushed within the first five minutes because I either spawn in a really bad spot or the first place I go to is infested to hell and I can't fight anything with my pocket knife. The one time I managed to kill something I immediately got eaten by a zombie master in a pizza parlor.

Edit: I went as a lumberjack and actually made it into a town before I was killed by a soldier zombie who only took three damage per hit, compared to normal zombies which were taking thirty or so. This game is brutal.
Edit 2: So a pocket knife is sharp enough to butcher but not a woodsman's axe. Right.

[Amelius]

> Build a mobile base.
> Get on the road, ha ha time to explore my first side path.
> Fully-functional MBT with automated turrets behind it.
> Decide to use it as cover and toss an EMP grenade around a corner to disable them. S-surely they can't see me behind a gigantic fucking MBT.
> They shoot straight through the MBT with laser-guiding (HOW, I'M BEHIND A SOLID OBJECT), cutting it in half and killing me in a single turn.
> Ded.

Didn't see that coming. Christ. Fortunately, since I'm so fucking far in I'm savescumming the OHKO deaths away (aka alt-F4 on the ur ded screen). I've seen the foraging phase many-a-time with little issue on most of the starting modes, and very rarely the mid-lategame because of it. Being almost in my third year, fuck it.

I finally started trying out this game. Upped tailoring a bit plus melee and ran with stats around the same.
I keep getting crushed within the first five minutes because I either spawn in a really bad spot or the first place I go to is infested to hell and I can't fight anything with my pocket knife. The one time I managed to kill something I immediately got eaten by a zombie master in a pizza parlor.

Edit: I went as a lumberjack and actually made it into a town before I was killed by a soldier zombie who only took three damage per hit, compared to normal zombies which were taking thirty or so. This game is brutal.
Edit 2: So a pocket knife is sharp enough to butcher but not a woodsman's axe. Right.

Git gud. No seriously, if you aren't playing with wanderspawns/wandering hordes the game isn't that hard. If you are, then it's kinda bullshit earlygame since many of the non-evacuee spawns ARE nigh unwinnable (the burning building one is a great example). Also, if you aren't on the most recent experimental, get it, since it introduces stamina and soforth that lets you escape from many previously unwinnable situations and play a bit riskier.

Protip: stay away from anything but small skirmishes until you have okay melee skills. Stick to night raids, and stick to evacuee until you get shit down. Sheltered survivor may, at first glance, look beneficial, but it comes at a hefty cost - all the zombies start almost entirely evolved, and you start with a 3-season time-elapse so much perishable food is just gone. On top of this, you start in bumfuck nowhere. Not really for new players.

Don't have too much encumberance earlygame (with exception). This slows you down in every facet, and, unless the mobility tradeoff is worth it, don't bother. However, grabbing a full suit of plate early on or other hefty equipment with high armor values (fireman equipment is a good example) allows you to gain nigh immunity to the lesser zombies typically on the fringes of a city, allowing you to train your skills with impunity. Make sure you're layering appropriately with +, so you don't get large encumberance penalties (it read as x + y where x is the base encumbrance and y is the layering encumbrance).

A trunk on a wooden frame is a godsend, wheels or not, and requires minimal skills - seriously, it quads+ your carry capacity and comes in handy. Even with a deathmobile with high storage mid-lategame, it still helps to have a foldable version to tug some extra loot along.

Tailoring is the key to survivial - you want to have every viable layer occupied by at least one object (two only in specific circumstances, e.g. worn rifles), and, since the ingredients you use are essentially ubiquitous, it's very easy to level it early on and gain alot of precious armor and warmth. If an object says it 'layers easily', I believe it means you can wear one extra item before suffering penalties. The layers are: close to skin, normal, outer and strapped, and every bodypart can have one of each without any penalty. Put the armored stuff on the outside and the precious, low armor, or hard-to-repair stuff on the inside.

Butcher every zombie corpse if you can. All zombies resurrect, albeit damaged after a day or so, unless you have the option turned off.

Deactivate skill rust. It's an anti-fun mechanic.

Use every single interesting-looking mod (e.g. arcana, historical weaponry, !GUNS!, vehicle additions, etc.). It's fairly balanced and adds a crapton of stuff.

[Takeguru]

You don't need to butcher zombies, you just need to (S)mash them, if you lack an implement to butcher with.

Save any shocker zombie corpses for higher skill levels in butcher, they give free CBMs but at low levels you'll destroy them when you try

[Wyzack]

I prefer to butcher because it will not damage your weapon and does not fatigue you

[Drynwyn]

So I forgot that Blood Filter doesn't help with chemical dependency, and now have a serious (-90 morale when craving happens) alcohol addiction due to using loads and loads of alcohol to fuel my bionics.

Between Blood Filter and Ethanol Burner, it hasn't really been an issue, though, so I'm just rolling with it.


EDIT: Also, if you're having trouble starting out, Xhuis, here are my recommendations for not-technically-cheating with a min/maxed character build.


Min/max your traits for 12 starting points by taking Addictive Personality, Forgetful (you turned off skill rust, right?), Insomniac, Heavy Sleeper, and Trigger Happy. None of these will affect you very much at all.

Start with the Razor Boy career path and the Night Vision trait, and spend a point each on Dodging and Unarmed Combat.

You can spend your remaining 4 point on stats to suit your tastes- do note that as a Razor Boy, you start with a dexterity-boosting bionic. If you wish, you can also blow a point on Parkour Expert or Fleet Footed, both of which give you more run-away capabilities (especially helpful if not on the latest experimental).

This setup starts you with some pretty sick combat skills (Melee 2, Unarmed Combat 4, and Dodging 4), an excellent way of dispatching opponents that you can't lose and doesn't break (your bare hands with razor claws are extremely deadly), good armor (Fitted leather jacket and pants plus an armor-enhancing bionic), and protection from everything that can damage your eyes.

It's not the most effective character build, but it's very forgiving for new players, and lets you easily dispatch most enemies you will encounter at the start of the game. (Do avoid shocker zombies, though.)

Your priority for this build should be getting tailoring things, as always, and acquiring a martial arts style from an NPC. (I advise against spending 3 points on one at character creation- too expensive.) If you can get Scorpion Style, once your skills go up, you'll be able to go toe-to-toe with Bio-Operators without a care in the world.

[DemonFiren]

So, is tai chi of any use at all?

[Amelius]

Generally, martial arts vary from 'blase' to 'kinda useful but gets progressively worse compared to other options mid-lategame'. See http://www.wiki.cataclysmdda.com/index. ... rtial_arts for general info, thought most blurbs are very outdated and may or may not be representative of what is in the game currently.

To answer your question, Tai'Chi seems shit for anything but at the verybeginning of the game. A block will decrease damage to zero or very low levels without the perception bonus, and it forces you to keep your hands free to benefit from it. No damage bonus so it's terrible all-around.

Karate seems decent.

Melee weapon styles are good, generally speaking. Eskrima especially, since it works with most early-midgame common equipment. That said, getting it in character creation is another 3 points that you didn't spend on stats, when stats are the sole thing that you can't flatly boost in-game - you can only boost them with bionics or mutations, and even then, it's a flat boost so your stats will still be lower (barring alpha *prime mutations which effectively rounds your stats). Niten-Ichi Ryu is OP as shit if you can get a Rising Sun, nodachi or another grorious nippon sword, since most of them do good damage with moderate CD anyway and the techniques are crazy good (3/5 of them stun for two turns and boost damage by 1.1-2x~).

So I forgot that Blood Filter doesn't help with chemical dependency, and now have a serious (-90 morale when craving happens) alcohol addiction due to using loads and loads of alcohol to fuel my bionics.

TBH, unless you're abusing the shit out of ZA WARUDO you shouldn't be using anything but glorious solar panels, batteries, and the one that boosts energy whenever you move. Both of which are very easy to come by.

Though, za warudo does make turrets less silly. EMP grenades are a cheap substitute.

[Super Aggro Crag]

So, is tai chi of any use at all?

do you do tai chi irl

[DemonFiren]

Shamefully, I do.

And it pains me that there are no weapon forms ingame - if we're talking about Yang-style taijiquan alone, then that has forms for the jian (as well as, I suppose, any comparable straight sword), the dao (and any similar curved saber) and the pole or spear.

[Super Aggro Crag]

I used boxing once on a squid person it did a lot of damage

[Timbrewolf]

I'm happy to see people still enjoy this.

This game has had a really weird evolution over the last 2-3 years.
If you are feeling ballsy, dig through the menu and enable dynamic spawns on a world.
Enjoy playing the game how our God Whale intended it, when men were men and the stream of FUN was never ending.

[EndgamerAzari]

God dammit

I had a great run last night. Full cliche mode: trenchcoat, tekked-up Deagle, fancy shotgun slung on my back, nodachi. Had just looted an electronics store and a library, and knew of two nearby basements, one full of guns, the other survival stuff. Had just killed a jabberwock and managed to be only half-dead.

Then two NPCs were fighting a horde of blobs and it caused the game to overload and crash.

So mad

[Wyzack]

Dude enable autosaves. Saved me so much rage

[Takeguru]

>Playing with NPCs enabled

You brought this upon yourself

Honestly though, I just give myself extra points to take a starting style, just because NPCs are so fucking buggy

[EndgamerAzari]

Hey, sometimes it's handy to have quality loot just deliver itself to you when some fuck with a crossbow tries to mug you when you're wielding a shotgun.

[Wyzack]

I find the world seems so empty without dynamic NPCs enabled, partly because of the carnage they cause. Take my current situation for example. Cleared out a small town with my badass operator crocodile man and populated it with NPCs, but it is sandwiched between big cities due to a higher city size. Wander spawns are on so there is always a threat of a bigass horde wandering by

Spoiler:

Was minding my own business crafting my deathmobile when a douchebag NPC smashes through the back window of my house with a katana and threatens my life. Fuck that noise, i draw my own blade and we start fighting. I made a really dumb mistep and accidentally walk through a busted windowframe while trying to hit him. This causes me to take a ton of hits and get badly injured. In a moment of desperation i pull out my Rivtech (tm) short shotgun from it's holster and blow his head clean off. In doing so i sounded the goddamn diner bell. I fix my gear, heal up with some bandages and get some sleep. Next morning (2am ish) I make some eggs and tea for breakfast and do my daily perimeter walk. Fully healed because reptile regeneration. My heart sinks as I see a massive number of blips with my lizard IR vision. A horde is here. I rouse my sleeping NPCs, grab my best weapons and the basic power armor i salvaged and we get to work killing just as the sun comes up. The fighting is brutal, even with all our best guns two of my NPCs are dragged down and killed. In the climax of the battle we were forced to fall back to the barricade and i killed a Hulk with an Autoloading 120mm tank cannon i had salvaged, which was awesome. All said and done i have 3 NPCs of my starting 6 left, and two of them were injured to uselessness from broken bones/getting caught in my tank blast. I think they are gonna pull through though, and i have since recruited another. Did not take any screens of the battle but here is the aftermath

Spoiler:

In all the battle took most of the day, and we were chopping corpses well in to the night. Need to shore up the defences quickly and maybe get some traps, we made a whole fuckload of noise and there is a good chance a second massive horde will come from the north

[Drynwyn]

Generally, martial arts vary from 'blase' to 'kinda useful but gets progressively worse compared to other options mid-lategame'. See http://www.wiki.cataclysmdda.com/index. ... rtial_arts for general info, thought most blurbs are very outdated and may or may not be representative of what is in the game currently.

TBH, unless you're abusing the shit out of ZA WARUDO you shouldn't be using anything but glorious solar panels, batteries, and the one that boosts energy whenever you move. Both of which are very easy to come by.

Though, za warudo does make turrets less silly. EMP grenades are a cheap substitute.

I have solar panels and the *very* useful internal furnace, which lets me turn blankets into a couple hundred energy.

However, I ran through a couple Labs, and needed to use a lot of bionics in a short period of time to clear them out.


And as for martial arts style: Most of them are eh, but Scorpion Style is fantastic. Your crits deal massively increased damage, and automatically stun for three turns. Given the extremely high crit rate of unarmed attacks, this is incredibly good.

Also, unarmed in-general does have late game options- or rather, late game option, singular. The adamantine claws bionic lets you compete with high-end cutting weapons for damage, esp. if combod with a damage-boosting martial art.

The thing is it's impossible to craft, and while it's about as hard to find as any SPECFIC high-end cutting weapon, is much harder to find than any high end cutting weapon at all.

[Wyzack]

My favourite combat style is fencing with a good rapier or estoc, but i have no delusions that the grorious nip katana combat style is the best

[Wyzack]

For me this game has turned into harvest moon with occasional zombies. I have a nice fortified homestead now, i have created a few custom vehicles to help me plow and plant a large field right next to it. I battled two armies of the dead just so that i could secure home renovation supplies. Gonna give the whole house nice carpet and a new paintjob, and maybe move on to preparing the next door house for more NPCs to live in. Possibly finish the basement. It is very relaxing

[Drynwyn]

For me this game has turned into harvest moon with occasional zombies. I have a nice fortified homestead now, i have created a few custom vehicles to help me plow and plant a large field right next to it. I battled two armies of the dead just so that i could secure home renovation supplies. Gonna give the whole house nice carpet and a new paintjob, and maybe move on to preparing the next door house for more NPCs to live in. Possibly finish the basement. It is very relaxing

you should add turrets and manhacks and robots oh my

I have a stash of fifty inactive manhacks in my base, just in case.

[Wyzack]

I actually sort of have. I have a "vehicle" outside that is really just a frame with a barricade and a bunch of mounted guns bolted to it, including a 120mm autoloading tank cannon and a grenade launcher. They need to be manually aimed and fired for now, but i think i can rig up and autotargeting system of some kind for them.

I had to blow all my manhacks to help battle the massive horde earlier. Explosion fucking suck also, my grenadehack did not kill a single zombie

[EndgamerAzari]

Fighting manhacks is the second-worst thing, next to fighting giant wasps.

[Wyzack]

They are obscenely difficult to hit in melee but really easy at range, even if you have garbage gun skill. Also they bounce off every time they hit you, so it is usually not too difficult to bait them into a room and close the door