Let's Play! Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, episode 13!

[aka Cthulhu]

Ohhhhhhh, yeah, FAN! It's been one year since I LPed that Touhoumon game, and now it's time to LP a different game! When I finished the Touhoumon LP, I had thought of doing an LP on another Touhou fan-game, from a Pokemon-like game to a SRW-like game. Alas, back then I didn't have time to play, and so here we are. Instead of doing another Touhou game (either the SRW one, or the original Touhoumon romhack, or even the expansion pack of the Touhoumon game I LPed... though a translation does not exist yet for that one), I decided to go with a particular favorite of mine, the roguelike Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead.


To give a brief summary of the game, Cataclysm DDA is a roguelike. Okay, I think I need a better summary. Cata DDA is an open-world sandbox roguelike with a heavy post-apocalypse flavor, which in this case, heavily seasoned with the zombie outbreak genre. Here and there the game also draws influence to a number of horror stories. Aside from the zombies out to kill you, you'll have to survive against hordes of triffids, giant ants, and some creatures of a very Lovecraftian nature.

More than that, Cata DDA is very much into trying to simulate a post-apocalypse survival situation. You need food, you need water, you need clothes to keep your dirty ass warm and someplace to rest where you won't get munched at. Wanna take drugs to fix your pain problem, or just get a fix? No problem! Wanna go Mad Max and create a zany deathmobile? Go ahead! Wanna sample real people food by hunting down a probably dwindling number of human survivors? Well, you better go get hunting then! There's a ton of things you can do, and have to do, while playing the game, and I have a really hard time summarizing them all in one quick series of sentences, so I reckon that it's better to just explain things while I go and play the game itself.

That said, this post/episode is more of an episode zero, as I get started with the first step before playing the game: creating a world.

Also, right now I'm currently using an experimental version of the game. Don't let the word experimental fool you. So far, there have been three stable releases of the game, the current one being version 0.C. It's a very outdated version, while the experimental versions since then added a ton of new content and features that make 0.C look incredibly bland in comparison. The game itself is constantly updated: right now the game I'm playing is 0.C-6270. In a week or so the most recent experimental might be 6300 or higher. Maybe. In any case, unless this version has some game breaking bugs, I won't be updating versions for some stability, as new versions might clash with goings on in the current game I'll be playing.

Anyway, world building. The first thing you'll see in the create world menu is a list of mods to add in:


First we got the default mod list, and before that I can see that the game has two mods already added in for my world: Filthy Clothing and Disable NPC needs. The former I'm not too familiar with while I already had a taste of the latter last year, though it wasn't a default mod option then. I removed Disable NPC needs while keeping Filthy Clothing, just because.

Anyway, I'll add some mods to this world, to give it more stuff, namely:

Extended Realistic Guns
Icecoon's Arsenal
Medieval and Historic Content
More Craftables
More Survival Tools
Mythological Replicas

Generally, more guns, tools, and weapons. I left alone fictional guns, craftable guns, and generic ammo. The former two since I'd prefer the real world guns, which doesn't lack in some strange and exciting weapons anyway, while the latter will clash with a ton of ammunition types (there's a ton of them). That said, I think Icecoon's Arsenal adds some fictional weapons of an improvised nature anyway, and the game itself has some fictional guns of their own.

Going down the screen is a few more mods to add, and ignore. I'll just list them here and say whether I'm adding it or not.

Crazy Cataclysm: Adds some joke monsters and items. Not a big deal, but one joke monster is uber dangerous. Adding to the world.
More Locations, and Tall Buildings: Rather self-explanatory. Added.
Boats, Folding Parts, Tanks, and Vehicle Additions pack: More vehicles to drive, more or less. The extra weapons pack also add more weapons to strap up on cars, for a Twisted Metal experience.

Necromancy: Not adding. I wanna kill zombies, not have them on my side.

Next page! The blacklist mods.


Well, basically it removes certain content in the game. Take no monsters for example. No zombies, but wildlife creatures will still exist for a sort of survival in an empty world kind of run. For full experience, I'm not blacklisting anything... though later on I'll regret not blacklisting fungal monsters. The things I do to entertain you folks...

Lastly, we have balance mods:


Okay, I'm just adding one of these mods, not including the one I already kept which was Filthy Clothing. Might as well explain what each of them does.

Classic Roguelike Classes: You can select a profession for your character, which starts off with extra skills (if applicable) and different gear from the default survivor. This mod basically adds the standard roguelike classes to that list, like warriors and thieves, etc. Not adding.
Disable NPC needs: NPCs will require to be fed, quenched, and rested like your character. Still under development, so it can be rather annoying. However, I don't want it disabled, so not adding.
Filthy Clothing: You can take the clothing off zombies. Normally, the clothing are in varying stages of damage, requiring repair, but this feature makes zombie clothing have the filthy tag. Your survivor won't like wearing it, and the chances of infection will be a little higher if you do wear it. You can clean the clothes, and aside from zombie wear no other clothes are filthy. I guess they're filthy in the sense that the clothing is caked in zombie gore, and not dust. Adding.
More classes and scenarios: Like the roguelike classes mods, more professions. As for scenarios, this adds more starting points in the game, with varying locations and situations you have to deal with in the start. I'll explain it more once we reach that part of character creation, but since I plan for this initial run to be done as the default survivor, I won't add this mod in.
Simplified Nutrition: You need a balanced diet to better survive out there! This mod makes it easier. Not adding.
Prevent Zombie Revivication: If you kill a zombie, they stay dead. Not adding. In general, you can make it so that zombies won't come back anyway, but this mod makes it too easy. Not adding.
Zombie nightvision: You can't see much in the dark, but zombies do. Ehhh... not adding. Just groping around in the dark is tense enough, thankyouverymuch.

And finally, StatsThroughSkills: Adding. Wanna try this. Basically, as you learn more skills and improve them, your stats will slowly increase. Initially, this mod can turn a character into a demigod by grinding skills, but with recent versions making skills harder to train, and overall making the stat increase less generous, I wanna see how this works out.

And that's about it for mod adding. Time to move on to World Generation!


Whew, more stuff to explain.

Size of cities: More or less determines how big cities are. Lower numbers make it more likely that small towns are surrounded by wilderness, while higher numbers make it so that the wilderness areas are more rare. Default is 4, I'm setting it to 6.
City spacing: determines how far apart one city is to another. Not really sure how this works. Set to it's default value of 4.
Spawn rate, item spawn, and NPC spawn. Determines how much monsters and items spawn, while the latter determines the chances of a random NPC showing up. Default values are 1, 1, and .10. Setting spawn rate to 3x and dropping item spawn to .5, and keeping NPC spawn at default. More monsters and less items for a challenge.
Monster evolution scaling factor: Default 4 and staying that way. Zombies evolve over time into nastier zombies.
Monster speed, monster resilience: Rather self-explanatory. Let's go with default values. No need to make it harder or easier.
Default region type: not yet implemented.

Initial time, initial season, season length: default is 8AM, Spring, 14 days. Setting time to 3PM, Spring, 91 days. Time makes it closer to night so we can quickly get in on the night raid action, while 91 days makes it feel closer to a standard year.
Construction scaling: Adjusts the speed of construction in accordance to the length of days in a season. Since I have it at 91 days, and construction scaling being set at default value, construction work takes a loooong time.
Eternal season: Selected Spring as starting season? Spring forever! Set to false, since I wanna experience all four seasons.

Wander spawns: Aside from the zombies already set in cities and other locations, wander spawns add hordes, large groups of zombies that can show up on the map depending on noise. If a horde shows up in an already zombie packed area, hoo boy... Set as true.
Classic zombies: Just mundane zombie types. Set as false.
Surrounded start: Your starting location is surrounded by zombies, if it doesn't already. I wanna lessen the amount of early game deaths, please, so setting this as false.

Static and Random NPCs: Static NPCs has an NPC start with you, as well as put certain special NPCs in set locations, while random NPCs means that some NPCs will show up randomly. Some of them are helpful, some of them are... not. Both set as true.

Mutations by radiation: You can mutate by other means, but with this you have a chance to mutate if exposed to radiation, though you're just as likely to be killed by radiation. Don't sleep next to a nuke, please. Set as true.

Experimental Z-levels: adds multi-floor locations. Not yet finished, but with the tall buildings mod I reckon I need this on.


And there we have it! One world created!

...and now it's time to create a character. Noooooooo!

...but before that, I'll mention some option stuff that I had selected. No need to list all of them, otherwise we'll go on and on with this post:

Auto-save mode: Self-explanatory. Not activated, since I prefer to save the game on my own command, since autosaving can take some time, and it can happen during crazy moments, taking away some tension as the game can take a while to load.

Saving is important, since if you explore too much without saving, the game has a worrying tendency to crash.

Of course, since this is a roguelike, permadeath is in effect, and there's no way to go back to a save if you die. Just like real life!

Aside from that, I activated the option of the game asking me to save when my survivor goes to sleep.

Circular distances: Affects your light radius, and going diagonal will take more time. Something like that. Set to true.

Graphics: Chesthole tileset. Don't mind going ASCII, but I reckon for the readers to be more entertained, I'll stick to the tilesets. Chesthole is nice, as it alters the survivor's look depending on his/her clothing and mutations he/she has.

Debug:
Initial stat, trait, and skill points: I'll cover this on character creation, default is 6, 0, and 2, and they stay that way:
Maximum trait points: Limit of how many trait points you can have. Default is 12, set it to 60. This means I can select more traits, though to get a lot of good traits I have to pick a lot of negative traits to have the points for it. Again, will explain it better on character creation.
Skill rust: Over time, your skills will degrade if you don't practice it. Since there's a lot of skills in the game this can get tedious, but at the same time due to having StatsThroughSkills setting it as off doesn't feel challenging. So, went with IntCap skill rust. Basically what it does is that your skills will still rust, but skill levels will never go down your current level. Like you have a level 10 in cooking and it's at 70% before level 11. Not using cooking skill with IntCap makes it so that 70% will slowly go down to 0%, but won't go beyond that and degrade you to level 9. With standard skill rust it can and will put you back to level 0 if you don't use cooking at all.

And now (finally), it's time to create a character...


First, you pick how you can use your points. You can spend points on stats, traits, and skills. Going with multi pool, which hopefully you guys can read the screenshot.


Scenario is up next. This determines your starting location and situation. Just going with the default here. Sorta metagame in making a starting character, but in future runs I might be more RP-like in doing things. For now, default scenario, where you start off as a survivor (or any profession you choose) with nothing out of the ordinary. You start in an evac shelter, which may be close to civilization.

Still, might as well explain some of the different scenarios. Do note that choosing some scenarios give you bonus points, or make you have less points to work with:

Really Bad Day. THE challenge. You start off feeling like crap, your morale is shit, you're infected, naked, sick with the flu... there's a nearby fire, there's probably zombies nearby and you're drunk. You get 10 bonus points for this, and for extra masochism you can select your profession as a meth addict, giving you nasty withdrawal symptoms for extra points.

Abandoned: You're a sickly patient in the hospital when the world seemingly ended. Aside from being in a zombie infested building, this scenario makes it so that you start with a trait that permanently reduces your starting HP by 50%. Forgot to mention, as I recall, there's basically no way to increase your maximum HP, aside from one mutation line. 8 Bonus points, though since you start off with a negative trait that gives 6 bonus points, this scenario really only gives you 2 points.

Ambush: it's the first winter since the apocalypse began, and the shack you live in is surrounded... The game's story starts at Spring, and choosing a different season doesn't change that. That means you're surrounded by evolved zombies. Ouch. No bonus points.

Experiment: You're more or less a test subject who got out before things got nasty. Minus 2 points in your point pool; you can start as an unwilling mutant, a broken cyborg, or a willing mutant. Choosing mutant provides you with some extra mutant traits on trait selection, both good and bad. Willing reduces your point pool more but you start off better than the unwilling mutant. Broken cyborg gives you one good bionic (a feature I will cover in the future)... but you get all the failed bionics (very bad).

Again, just going with the default scenario here.

Next up, profession selection.


Once more, we go with the default survivor. Different professions start with different gear and skills. Survivor doesn't start with any skills, but gear-wise they have an okay set-up. Choosing the bad professions, such as crackhead (starts with crack cocaine withdrawal) will give you points. Good professions, such as the black belt with high melee skills and a martial arts learned costs you points. There are quite a bit of decent professions that doesn't cost points, giving you some free skills, though usually they're poorly equipped compared to the humble survivor. Most of the time, depending on what's needed when the game starts.

Next, we got traits.


Hoo boy, this is gonna be long, but I swear this is the last long post! So, basically, you can pick from a list of good and bad traits. Good ones cost you points, bad ones grant you points. So, with the default starting points I got nothing, so If I want some good traits I need to pick some bad ones in turn. Note that choosing one trait may prevent choosing another. Like, picking addictive personality prevents you from picking addiction resistant.

Anyway, since the list of traits is damn long, I'll just list down the ones that I picked, and maybe explain some notable traits.

Cannibal: Good(?!) trait. Removes the morale debuff for consuming the long pork. You also start off with a cookbook for delicious human dishes. With cannibal on, human meat provides a great morale buff when consuming human flesh. In general, you can get by without needing human meat, but come on! It's the apocalypse. Might as well indulge in the forbidden fruit... or in this case, meat. Costs 1 point.

Addictive personality: Bad trait. You're more likely to be addicted to booze, cigarettes, pain pills, caffeine, and drugs. Not a bad trait to choose, really, if you avoid the hard drugs. Grants two points.

Animal discord: Bad trait. Wild animals are usually more hostile to you. Another bad trait that's not as bad. If you're hunting wild animals, they'll run away if they're a deer. On the other hand, moose and bears are more likely to come charging at you. If you can survive... well, you got meat. Grants one point.

Fast learner: Good trait. Skills you learn from practicing them go up faster. Learning skills through reading is still at default speed. Costs 3 points.

Fleet footed: Good trait. You move faster on even terrain. Very handy in outrunning most zombies. Costs 2 points.

Gourmand: Good trait. Better morale boost through eating, less problem with eating nasty food, and you won't puke from overeating. Handy for my cannibal. Costs 2 points.

Forgetful: Bad trait. Skill rust is faster. Practically an exploit if skill rust is off, but since I have it on as IntCap, this still provides a challenge. Grants 3 points.

Glass jaw: Bad trait. Head HP is 20% lower. If the head and/or torso reaches zero HP, game over. Grants 2 points.

Night vision: Good trait. Very good. Increases your sight radius by a little in the dark. Super useful. Without it, you can only see the tiles surrounding your character in complete darkness. With it you can see a little further. Costs 2 points.

Jittery: Bad trait. When under stress or under the influence of stimulants there's a chance of getting a severe drop in dexterity. Can be dangerous, but late game it's not a big problem. Grants 3 points.

Packmule: Good trait. You can carry 40% more volume. Very handy. Aside from a weight limit, your inventory has a volume limit which depends on what you have for carrying things. Costs 2 points.

Lightweight: Bad trait. Alcohol and drugs affect you more, their negative effects to be exact. Grants 1 point.

Pretty: Good trait. Some NPCs might be more friendly to you. Might. Mostly for vanity. It's opposite trait, ugly grants more points. Anyway, costs 1 point.

Psychopath: Good(?!) trait. You have no problem killing in cold blood and offing zombie children. Not really needed, but since our survivor is a cannibal anyway this would fit nicely. Costs 2 points.

Quick: Good trait. 10% bonus to action points. Costs 3 points.

Robust Genetics: Good trait. Mutating has a better change of giving you good mutations. Costs 3 points.

Strong back: Good trait. Weight limit increased by 35%. Costs 2 points.

Stylish: Good trait. Stylish clothes grant morale bonus. A little bit of flavor since it's not that useful of a trait to spend points on. Costs 2 points.

Poor hearing: Bad trait. Less likely to hear some noises. Can be dangerous when sneaking around in the dark. Grants 2 points.

Slow healer: Bad trait. Natural healing is less. Grants 2 points.

Slow reader: Bad trait. Learning from books takes longer. Grants 1 point.

Squeamish: Bad trait. Character won't wear filthy clothing. Since character is pretty and stylish, makes sense to have this trait. Grants 1 point.

Thin skinned: Bad trait. Cutting damage deals more damage to survivor. Grants 1 point.

Trigger happy: Bad trait. On weapons with burst fire, sometimes firing a single shot leads you to unloading more shots. Grants 1 point.

Truth teller: Bad trait. You have a hard time lying to NPCs. Grants 1 point.

And that's it! That's the setup we'll go with for the first few runs (since the chances of still dying early is pretty good). Before we move on to the next step, I'll mention some interesting traits that I didn't pick.

For the good traits, there's a number of martial arts trait, where you basically start off the game with a martial art learned. This can range from krav maga to fencing. They provide good bonuses to melee and/or unarmed fighting.

Self aware: good trait. You get to know exactly how much HP you have. Not choosing this only gives you a vague idea on how much HP you have left, but honestly it's easy to tell if your hit points are dangerously low.

Albino: Bad trait. Getting exposed to the sun is painful. You need to wield an umbrella during the day, or have clothing that fully covers your body.

Schizophrenic: Bad trait. You suffer from hallucinations. Can be controlled via medication.

Asthma, near/far-sighted: Bad trait. You get an inhaler to control your asthma attacks (and you better find more soon), while near/far sighter gives you sight penalties if you don't have glasses.

Anyway, total amount of points from the good traits I selected is 25, while negative traits grant 21. I still need 4 points, but since I have 6 starting stat points I can take from there. Moving on!


Stats. Strength affects starting HP (pretty sure that increasing it later in the game won't increase max HP), carry weight, and melee damage bonus. Dexterity affects hit chances plus certain actions. Intelligence affects how fast you read and the rate of skill rust, while perception affects sight range and seeing traps. Since I'm using StatsThroughSkills, no point in adding to these since I'll eventually gain them, I reckon. However, since I still have 2 points to spend I might as well increase strength for the hit points and carry weight.


Finally, we reach skills. Not much need to explain all of them now, so I'll just gradually explain them as the game goes on. Anyway, by default I have two free skill points, and for safety I reckon the best choice is melee. Long range fighting can be tricky at the start, so getting up close and personal is usually the best choice. Or fleeing. All skills start at level 1 (not zero as I previously thought and I'm too lazy to edit what I said a while ago). So two points in melee puts me at level 3.


And we reach the end of character creation. All I need is a name and a gender and we can get started! Anyone wanna decide that? I have a name in mind, but if anyone wants to suggest something, I'll be down with it.

That way, I can take some time to rest my eyes, because damn this took longer than expected. Cthulhu out!

[aka Cthulhu]

Aw, yeah, FAN! Time for the next... or technically the first episode in this LP! Last time I spent the entire time creating a world and a character, but thanks to droning on and on about the process it took me roughly 2-3 hours to make the post. Hopefully I get much progress done playing the game while keeping the time it takes to post about it shorter.

Anyway, before that, one last thing... A name.


Well, just like any other game I play, my naming sense is rather horrid so I might as well re-use the same name of my character in my Touhoumon LP. Poor Yin, from training cute Pokemon-like creatures to fighting for her life in the post-apocalypse. Chances are she'll die many times, with her name being re-used until I get a decent run going... But hell, I'm game in trying to keep this first try a long run, and who knows? It might happen.

No time like the present. Let's get playing.


Welcome to the cataclysm, baybay! We've finally taken the first step into this dangerous, post-apocalyptic world, and I reckon it's a perfect time to give a brief explanation of what can be seen on the screen. Again, using a tileset for graphics instead of the default ASCII graphics.

At the very center, is our naive heroine. The apocalypse has struck, and she's one of the lucky few who managed to get going away from the chaos and hole up on an evac center away from the city. She's not quite sure what's going on, but from what she's seen during her escape she knows that she's in deep poo-poo.

Things went south at midnight on the very first night in Spring, and it's been roughly half a day since then (to be exact, this game starts at 4PM). It looks like no one is coming to help. She's on her own, more or less, and this current hiding place may soon be found out by what lurks in the city nearby...

Quick infodump! On the right side of the screen you can see a number of helpful things. Box on the left of that corner is a small map view to let you know where you are in the world. Pressing m shows a bigger map, and I'll get to that later.

Beside the map box, is the health bars. Four limbs, the torso and the head. Like many games, if you take damage and reach 0 HP it's game over. That said, the fact only applies to the head and torso. If any of the limbs reach 0 HP, then that part would be considered broken, and will be more or less a detriment in a number of ways - but unlike the head and torso, you can eventually heal the limbs from 0 HP.

The face is your current morale, which is more or less neutral. Morale can affect focus which affects your rate of learning skills. High morale is good, low morale bad. Furthermore, too low morale prevents you from doing a number of things, such as learning from skill books. Morale can be affected by a number of things, from eating food to getting wet in the rain. One of the biggest morale debuffs is killing an NPC in cold blood... but since Yin right now has the psychopath trait, she doesn't give a damn if she maims a defenseless NPC and eats them for dinner.

Next to that are the stats. With StatsThroughSkills on, the stats would slowly rise as Yin learns more skills. Aside from that, stats can increase (or decrease) temporarily from different factors. Good food and drink can produce both better morale and a temporary increase in stats, while getting hurt will drop your stats. Since Yin right now is unhurt, you won't be able to see the pain stat. The pain stat is simple; get hurt, get pain. More pain creates a speed and stat loss, and since lower speed and stats can make escaping harder, it's best to try to avoid getting pain.

The right corner screen also tells us the location of the current map tile (in this case the evac shelter), the weather (snowing, as since it's just the first day of Spring there's still some Winter weather looming in the horizon). Below that is the current season and day, next to that is a rough estimate on the time of day (having a watch will give us a more exact time). Also, the lighting says very dark, since we're in an unlit evac shelter. Early on, it's important to know the value of the darkness as a hiding spot. We'll be spending a lot of time in darker situations, to avoid dangerous confrontations as much as possible.

Sound also plays a factor. If the enemy can't see you, they can still hear you. Walking around produces some sound, same with attacking. We don't have a gun right now, but if we did, firing it can produce a ton of sound. Not a good thing to do when sneaking around, so for now let's not worry about guns.

Now for fists and no style. The place in the sceen that shows fist is the currently wielded item. Since Yin isn't wielding anything, all she has are her bare fists. No style means that Yin doesn't know any martial arts styles, so fighting unarmed might not be a good idea at the start. One of the things we have to do is find a weapon to wield, so in the event of a confrontation things will be a little bit better for Yin's survival.

The NW, N, NE stuff basically tells us what creatures can be seen beyond the screen. Important in avoiding conflict. Lastly, the map-like thing at the bottom is the minimap, which helps a ton in figuring out where to move.

Also, a little bit north of Yin is another survivor. A static NPC. When Static NPCs are on, each time I do a new game there will be an NPC nearby at the starting location. They're non-hostile and can be somewhat helpful. There are static NPCs in other places, but I won't spoil who they are and what they do. Random NPCs also exist, some possibly friendly, some... not.

For now, let's ignore the NPC and take a look at the map.


So... where do I begin? Cursor is currently centered on where Yin is, and from the top-left I can see the name of the NPC who's currently in the same location. Anyway, it looks like we're not that far off from the city. The green arrows are basic houses, while the ones with different colors are stores and other buildings. I'll cover what they are later, as I go. Anyway, it's best to be careful. Chances are there are a lot of zombies swarming the city, and running there in broad daylight is unwise.

Current plan is to sneak in at night and raid a few buildings for supplies. Right now, we have shelter. Possibly temporary as it's relatively close to a zombie-packed area. Aside from that, Yin needs food and water, and better gear for her to survive her new life. After that, maybe some mode of transportation and storage so she can head out to the wide world, in search of safer climates.

Some info on how zombies are placed, and used to be placed. On the starting versions of the game, Cataclysm had a thing called dynamic spawn. I think that was its name. Anyway, at the start of the game, you get around an hour or so in-game time where no zombies show up. After that, they begin to spawn in points based on stuff like noise. Most of them spawn in cities and other areas of interest.

That was then. Now, the game has static spawn. With this feature, all zombies are placed on their spawn points the moment the game starts, more or less. No more window of peace where you can rush inside a city and nab some essentials before things go to heck. Running into a city during the start of the game with static spawn means a high chance of getting mauled.

That said, if you can clear out an area it stays clear... most of the time. That's where the hordes come into play. If there's a horde nearby, the big map will show there presence via blinking dark green Z icons on the big map. No hordes showing up on the map right now, so no need to mention more.

Next, we take a quick look at the inventory and how it works.


You can see what Yin is wearing and other items she's currently carrying around. The default survivor start has okay gear; clothes meant to give a little extra warmth during the cold days of early spring, and some okay tools. A knife for butchering things, a source of fire, and some clean water to drink. On the other hand, the water will only be enough for a day, the pocket knife is a crap weapon, and your clothing won't offer a ton of protection from fights, it's not friendly in terms of mobility, and as the days goes by and things get warmer some of the clothing becomes downright uncomfortable.

Before I continue on with talk about clothing, let me take the time to give an explanation of how items are stored in the inventory. Your max capacity for items is determined by two things: weight and volume. Weight determines how heavy you can carry and volume determines how much you can carry. For the former, more strength is the main factor for calculating how much weight you can lug around. In general, you don't get a lot of opportunities to have permanent strength increase, but since StatsThroughSkills will increase Yin's strength as she becomes more skilled, weight limits might not be a problem on most runs.

As for volume, your maximum volume is determined by the clothing you wear. Take the jeans Yin is wearing, for instance. It has a volume capacity of .5, which means if Yin is wearing it she can carry .5 volume of items. A bottle of water is .5 volume, so Yin can bring it with her on her inventory. Most clothes have some volume capacity, so wearing more = more volume. However, too much might not be a good thing, as more clothing layers can affect Yin's physical performance in a number of ways. After all, you can't really reliably fight if you're covered head to toe in backpacks.

Basically, you can never go over your volume limit, but you can go past your weight limit. However, just going a tiny bit above the weight limit penalizes you. Going too far beyond your weight limit will hurt your character.

Since we're talking about volume, it's the perfect time to have some understanding of clothing, and how it affects survivors.


Hoo boy, let's go over this as quickly as possible:

Price: Value of item when trading it to NPCs.
Volume: Volume of clothing in inventory, does not add volume to inventory if you are wearing it.
Weight: You need to take into consideration how heavy your gear is. A suit of armor may seem like a good idea, but that means you may have to carry less supplies!
Material: What the item is made of. To repair or reinforce items, you need the proper tool and the spare parts that's the same material of the item.
Covers: What the clothing covers. Like, a steel helm will keep your head protected, but it won't offer you the same protection in other body parts.
Layer: Outer. There are four (I think layers). If you wear two things that cover both the same coverage area and layer, there will be encumbrance penalties (more on encumbrance later).
Encumbrance: How encumbering the clothing is. Will explain this more after mentioning the other things.
Storage: How much volume storage clothing offers when worn.
Protection: How much it protects you from certain damage types.
Environmental protection: Likewise, though against more indirect things such as poison gas and radiation.

As for the other things, I think they explain things well enough.


Now, as for encumbrance, it's a tricky factor when you consider protection and storage space. Higher encumbrance can affect physical tasks, making you slower to react to a number of things. Usually, heavy clothing or "storage" clothing carries high encumbrance. The encumbrance value of these clothing will only affect the body part that piece of clothing covers. Take the winter coat, for example. It covers both the torso and arms, and so both parts get a 20 encumbrance value. Having too high encumbrance on the torso will negatively affect melee hit chance and dodging blows, not to mention making you slower when it comes to swimming, and making your attacks slower as well. Too much is bad, but since there's no alternatives right now it's what we're gonna wear. After all, it's a cold spring day.

Which brings warmth into the equation. The yellow 34 at the bottom center of the screen shows how warm Yin is on the chest area. Since the winter coat has a high warmth value, it makes a great, if not bulky, way to keep warm during the cold. Going too cold or too warm can be dangerous. Right now, in the current season, Yin might feel chilly going outside, which slows her down. When the temperature drops even more at night, it might go from chilly to very cold which may damage areas that are feeling too cold. In particular, looking at the warmth values, her legs and mouth may be in trouble. In general, it's best to have all parts in a dark green color, which is not too cold or hot. Due to the changing seasons, Yin will have to adjust her clothing regularly.

And that's all for long explanations for now. Let's get playing! At the very least, this episode will be done after a few raids on some buildings. For now, let's get a look at the basement of the evac shelter and see if there are any supplies.



Nothing. Aside from a t-shirt, there's nothing down here. At the very least, this place can be used as a rest area when Yin gets tired. This also provides a preview on how dark things are at night. You're sight radius is low, and you can't read or do a number of other things without light. Enemies will have a harder time seeing you in the dark... but the same applies to Yin. Her sight radius would be even lower if I hadn't selected the night vision trait, and it was a whole lot worse in earlier versions such as the stable 0.C. Non-night vision survivors could only see in a 3x3 grid centered around them... which basically means only the surrounding tiles, and night vision only made it into a 5x5 grid.

Of course, there are means to see in the dark. Light sources, for instant, but let it be known that having a flashlight lit in an unknown area can be a VERY dumb idea. After all, zombies can see the light, and you're pretty much standing at the center of it.


Going back up, the lockers in the evac shelter does not provide anything that much better for Yin. An emergency jacket which is a worse version of the winter coat, especially in the current weather. The emergency blanket could be used for sleeping, at the very least. However, sleeping is for later, as Yin needs to set up a situation for surviving the coming days...

Let's ignore the NPC for now, and that computer terminal...


Outside, Yin does not see a lot. She knows that going east would lead her back to the city. Despite the chaos, there may still be some supplies there that she can use. However, despite the weather, she knew that it was still to bright out. Heading there now would be suicidal, as she would be spotted by the horde. A day before it was a bustling city, and it still is, but now the citizens have changed. She'd have to wait it out until night fell, but there's no point in sitting around and doing nothing. Walking a little, she spots a decently-sized stone, a simple tool to help her pass the time.

Now, you can wield anything that you can carry in the game, and they can help in a melee situation sometimes. Now, using a rock to fight the undead isn't exactly wise, but that's not what I was planning for it. Anything in the game can more or less be destroyed, as long as the survivor is strong enough. Bare fists may not be enough, so with that in mind I got a rock to help assist me for a task.


Time to destroy a locker. Yin's not venting, she needs the parts. It took a few hits with the rock, but if I went bare-handed it would have taken longer. Now, why would I destroy a locker? For parts, of course! For crafting!


Ah. The metal pipe. A somewhat uncommon weapon in the world of pro-wres... sports entertainment. At least when you compare it to steel chairs and kendo sticks. As it is, the pipe is an okay starting weapon. Better than nothing. Better than going unarmed if the survivor isn't trained in unarmed combat. However, many items in the game can be further used as a tool for crafting, so we go to the crafting screen!


The crafting screen. Something we, or at least I, will see many times during this game. Sometimes you need an item, and sometimes you can't find said item. In a lot of cases, there's a chance you can get an equivalent, or maybe something better, via crafting. It's simply, really. All you need is the materials, the tools, and the skills for the item you want to craft, and you can then craft said item. Some crafting recipes the survivor knows already, and some new ones will appear when you get better in certain skills. Aside from that, there are a ton of crafting recipes in the game that require you to find the books that detail how to make said items.


Take the 'To Serve Man' cookbook, which Yin starts off with, since she has the cannibal trait. The book itself can train her cooking skill, and has a number of recipes for cannibal consumption that Yin can learn. Having the book in the inventory (or near Yin enough) gives her access to the recipes, though some of them can't be made until Yin gains enough skill levels in cooking. Furthermore, Yin can't use the book to learn cooking, as learning from this particular book requires a certain amount of cooking skill in the first place.

Patience, Yin. That filthy NPC won't know what hit him...

Anyways, back to crafting. I want Yin to have a makeshift crowbar. It requires a pipe, and a tool with a hammering level of 1. The former we have, but where can we find a hammering tool? Why, the rock has a hammering quality of 1! Groovy.


It takes only one minute to craft, and it's easy enough to craft as it really doesn't require a lot of skill. It requires level 0 fabrication, and since Yin has level 0 fabrication, she can do it easily. Now, since both required level and current level of that skill is the same, this actually trains Yin on the fabrication skill - by 11% as a matter of fact. For many non-combat skills, this is one of the two ways to raise skills, the other being reading the appropriate book. There's another way via NPC, but I'll get to that later.

Now, since fabrication has been trained a little, we might as well train it while waiting for night.


Yin heads south of the shelter. She has an idea on what to craft, something easy and doesn't require the bashing of lockers. Instead, small trees are the ones who face her wrath. As you can see in the screenshot, the SW, S, SE, and E direction mentions a number of critters than Yin can see offscreen. Unless the direction is highlighter, they're not hostile so we can leave them alone.


Now, Yin needs a lot of heavy sticks, which she can get from bashing the small trees in the forest. Bash, bash, bash, and soon we have 10+ sticks available. Now we need to craft them.


The heavy sticks can be made into a number of things. The pointy stick, if you wanna poke enemies to death. The cudgel, if you want to bash them to death. Or the two-by-sword, if you want to look like a fool. That said, the two-by-sword can block attacks with enough skill, but it takes 25 minutes to craft one, and the crowbar is somewhat better in some ways, even without blocking.


We go with the cudgel, which takes a minute to craft one. To make things quick, I batch craft and make 13. I don't need them all, but doing this will train the fabrication skill faster.

As it turns out, crafting individually gains you more skill than batch crafting (though batch crafting reduces the total craft time, I think.)


Several cudgels, and one pointy stick later, I do enough work to level up fabrication. Now that fabrication is level 1, the level 0 requirement skills like the cudgel will no longer train Yin's fabrication.

As for all the spare cudgels, I leave them there save one. The cudgel is a pretty okay weapon. More accurate and faster than the makeshift crowbar, though the crowbar has an ability that the cudgel doesn't. Basically, it can pry open locked doors and crates. You can smash a door or a window open with brute strength, but doors and windows have the tendency to make noise when you try it. Bastards. Prying them open with the crowbar is more quiet, perfect for sneaking around at night.


And with that, Yin heads back up north to her temporary home. Only a few more hours until night... This is going to be a bad idea. It's not like she ever robbed a house before, and now she's gonna do it in a city that had gone to hell. However, there's no other choice... if she wants to survive, she'll have to risk her neck out there to get the necessities for her new life. As she waits, she thinks of her lone companion in the shelter. More and more, he's beginning to took extra tasty for some reason...

Aaaand that's it. I apologize for cutting this abruptly! After nearly a year since the Touhoumon LP I forgot how much time it took to play while write at the same time. If it makes you feel better, reader, is that I've laid most of the groundwork. Next episode would have definitely more action-packed gameplay. It's gonna be heavy on the stealth, but to be honest the chances are hilariously low that our dear heroine won't be attacked.

For now, laters!

[aka Cthulhu]

Yoooooooooooooooooo, FAN! It's time for episode 2 of this LP! Last time... well, not a lot of anything was done. We all got acquainted on a few mechanics on how the game worked, and our intrepid heroine Yin managed to craft a tool or two, but aside from that, not much. For a game that has zombies, we haven't seen a lot of zombies yet, haven't we?

However, this episode aims to change that fact. Today the plan is to sneak into a city at night and raid the area for loot to make survival on the next few days possible. I'll be honest with ya; the early game on Cataclysm can be very unforgiving. Whether it's the weather, the monsters, and the general lack of supplies and protective equipment, chances are that Yin might die. If that happens, I'll start the game again with the same character. Still, since like many roguelikes there is permadeath going on. If Yin dies, all the time she spent honing her skills and getting items will be gone. It's not a big problem early on, but it is painful if too much time has been spent. If that happens, I might create a different character, different profession and starting scenario and all the other bits.

Anyway, let's look at the map first and plan out the raid. Perfect time to explain to you what most of the icons on the map are.


The light green ^ are houses. You can find multiple things in houses. From food in the kitchen, and clothes in the bedroom. Some tools and even weapons might be in a house, but the chances of that being the case is rather low. That said, some houses may have basements, and the loot in those areas can be very profitable in terms of long-term survival.
The dark green ^ is a grocery store. It's got food and maybe some spare parts, not to mention some low-end skill books to learn from. Aside from the food, one important thing that may spawn in grocery stores are shopping carts. Yin can drag one around, which has a large volume space - basically more than wearing multiple backpacks can offer, without penalizing Yin with severe encumbrance penalties. Only cars offer better storage options, but in terms of mobility, a shopping cart is essential. Before anything else, that's where I want Yin to go to.
Dark red ^ is a gun store. Well, guns. Enough said. However, most likely we won't be going there right now. For one thing, unlike many stores, gun stores are locked. A crowbar won't help pry open the door either, as gun store doors are made of metal. Furthermore, the gun store has an alarm system. A zombie can bang on the walls on a gun store and all hell will break loose in the area as the sound will alert more zombies.
Dark blue ^ is a clothing store. Just standard clothing, usually nothing that would provide a ton of damage protection, but Yin might go there. Remember, one of the traits Yin has chosen is squeamish, preventing her from wearing any clothing worn by zombies.
Dark brown ^ is a library. A lot of books that can increase skill can be found here. May be very useful, as Yin would gain stat increases thanks to the StatsThroughSkills mod.
Slightly dark blue ^ is a gas station. Gas for cars. Not needed, but there's usually a mini grocery store in the location.
Series of gray Ws is a public works. Possibility of heavy duty tools in the area. May be useful, but the area often has some powerful zombies lurking there. In general, public works are usually located a little bit far away from towns or cities, but map gen in this case decided otherwise. In worlds with large city settings, it's entirely possible for the starting evac shelter to be located in the middle of a big city. Things can get very chaotic if that happens.

Anyway, there's a lot more buildings to describe, but for the rest of them, I'll make mention of them as needed. Now all that Yin needs to do is wait for night and sneak in!


Ahhh, but since Yin doesn't have a lot to do on the evac shelter, we might as well scout the outskirts of the city and get an early preview. Time to head north-east, and follow the road and see what lies beyond.


It doesn't take long before Yin spots a zombie off-screen. Pressing V enters view mode, so let's do that and see our possible opponent.


View mode tells us the exact distance between Yin and the Zombie. If the Zombie in view mode has a ! symbol beside its name, that would mean that the zombie directly knows where we are. Maybe if the distance between the zombie and Yin is about 20 tiles less, then it would be seeing Yin and head straight for her.

Now, as for the Zombie itself, let me describe how it is, the first of possible many in this LP. It's more or less common cannon fodder enemies. Not too strong, not too tough. It can do a normal weak-ish attack where the zombie hits you, and it doesn't do a lot of damage. Like many other zombie types, it does have a grab attack which prevents you from moving away, and a bite attack that can do more damage than the normal attack. However, the main danger of said bite attack is the chance to infect the body part that was bitten.

Unlike many zombie tropes, this bite doesn't eventually turn the bitten person into a zombie. For all intents and purposes, this is just a standard infected wound. However, without proper treatment it can still kill a character if they don't manage to fix it. Later on I'll explain the lore on how people are zombified, and how the world went to hell.

The zombie isn't a big threat alone. Even with no weapons, Yin can take care of it - though at the moment that would still be un-wise since we don't want pain to slow down Yin for her task at night. All in all, I'd give the zombie a C, in terms of danger.

Still, with two episodes where barely anything happened, let's go and get that zombie's attention and fight it!


...and I only take a few steps east and another zombie shows up.

As you can see in the NSEW thingy on the right corner, the EAST direction is highlighter red. That means that the zombie is somewhat offscreen, and it has seen Yin. I can run away, or fight, and I'll be going with the latter. But first, bestiality!

...

...Bestiary. I meant, bestiary.

Basically a zombie with a better grab attack than the standard zombie. In general, the lower-end zombie types are not that big enough to write about. Later on, the zombies will be more distinct, and a lot more dangerous. Hell, at night I'll probably encounter a handful of them, but right now the grabber zombie isn't that big of a deal. Like the zombie, my personal opinion on its dangerousness is another C.

Anyways, time to fight it.


First, switch out the makeshift crowbar with the cudgel, for a number or reasons. The cudgel is faster and has a better hit chance, while the crowbar is a lot bulkier and slower on the move. That said, weight does come into play for bashing weapons. Cutting weapons as well, but our goal right now is to hit quick and avoid damage, and the cudgel will do a far better job than the crowbar. It takes some time to put the crowbar into the inventory and wield the cudgel, as the grabber zombie is halfway there where Yin is. When switching wielded weapons, you can opt to drop the currently wielded weapon to quickly have the new wielded weapon ready, in case you really need to switch weapons in a hurry. Just don't forget to pick the item back up once the fight is over.


Some tactical tips. Instead of charging straight in, lure your opponent to an obstacle. If they stay in an obstacle, all their moves are slowed down, depending on the obstacle they're in. This allows you to do more hits, and then you can step away to avoid their attacks. Most zombies are slower than you, but this tactic is more viable for one on one fights, so in the end it's still a matter of determining the best way to finish the fight.


And it's on! Yin hits the grabber zombie here and there, while luring it in and out of the bush while avoiding the undead creature's hits. One other reason for using the cudgel over the crowbar is due to the weapon being able to do quick and precise strikes. Quick strikes are weak hits but take less time to do, while precise strikes do higher damage which can also stun opponents. It can also block attacks, making it a well-balanced weapon for one-on-one fights. Anyway, a stunned opponent starts to move in random directions, allowing you to hit them some more with less chance of retaliation - though if the opponent does try to move to where you're standing on, it would be an attack attempt.


Yin gets hit. A bite attack, which thankfully does not infect. As you can see in the health bars, there's a slight change in the bar for the left leg. It's not big damage, not enough to make Yin feel pain, and one more whack with the cudgel later and the grabber is dead.


Her first kill... Yin doesn't feel anything in particular. In fact, she's honestly more sad about the fact that she's out in the cold and rain. This zombie used to be a person, and just moments before it was like a wild beast aiming to do harm unto Yin... but right now it's cold and that sucks. Still, no point in moping in the rain... priorities, man, and right now Yin rummages through the corpse to see if it's got anything good.


And nothing of value was there. We have a corpse, and some filthy clothing. Again, for one extra point in character creation, Yin has the squeamish trait that prevents her from wearing filthy clothing. It rears its ugly head here, as a pair of stockings can help Yin keep her leg warm, while the cargo shorts can be worn for extra volume space. Oh well, nothing can't be done about that. Still, something has to be done about the zombie.

In time, a zombie corpse can revive itself, and there are two means to prevent that. You can butcher the body, or you can smash the corpse. Butchering can be done on wild animals which can provide Yin with meat and bones, and sometimes fat, to help her out. Skin as well can be acquired through butchering, which can be turned into leather or fur. As for the undead, they produce tainted meat and bones. Both can still be used... and in a pinch they can be eaten, though obviously it should only be done in desperate situations. Yin may fancy human meat, but she wants it on a slightly more fresh side.

Anyway, for now I opt to just let Yin smash the corpse. The cudgel helps speed it up, and we're treated to a nice blood splatter for our troubles. Both smashing and butchering can take some time, so be very careful in doing such things in dangerous areas. Also, doing the latter trains the survival skill.

With her first kill secure in her mind, Yin continues on to scout her surroundings.


Wilderness areas are often devoid of a lot of things. Forests, which we really haven't explored yet, are more or less the same, except with trees everywhere. However, as we move north-east, we shall soon find the city...


...but checking the map, a potential danger is detected: hordes. The dark green Zs in the map are horde icons. Basically, if you see those Zs on the big map, there will be a horde in the surrounding area. Unlike the static spawned zombie which are already placed on the map at the very start of the game, horde zombies get spawned in areas more or less in and around the Z icons. Usually they show up when there's noise, basically appearing on the area as some sort of undead reinforcements.

Right now, Yin has zero chance of fighting a horde. Five zombies will already be dangerous, quadruple that amount and you get hordes. Still, they're far, and much of Yin's mission right now is to avoid confrontation.

As Yin slowly creeps her way into the city, she encounters something higher on the undead food chain.


The zombie brute. Can easily be an early game killer. Faster than normal zombies, more hit points and a lot more power. They're one of the big zombies with a special smash attack, basically a punch that launches you several tiles away. The punch and the landing can do damage... even more so if there's something between said punch and landing. A tough enemy, and not something we want to fight right now. They're not so problematic later on... mostly because there are worse things later on, but right now the present is present: we're not fighting it. Aside from that, they can see as well as an ordinary zombie, so hopefully this brute won't see Yin at night. In terms of danger, I give it a B.

The brute does not see Yin, and directs its aggression to a fox that it spotted. In turn, Yin runs north and sees a house in the distance, and another zombie.


The acidic zombie. A zombie with acid. Acid damage is nasty without proper protection from it. Pools of acid are a hazard that Yin can step on, and if she does it does continuous high damage on the legs, more than enough to zero her hit points there. Now, the acidic zombie is the lowest acid zombie in that particular tree of zombies. It's acid attack basically has it puke acid on an adjacent tile - usually the tile where it's opponent is. Aside from that, the acidic zombie is as resilient as a normal zombie. Step out of the acid puke, if you have to fight it, and kill it quickly before it can puke again.

Also, acid zombies leave a pool of acid where they are when they die. You have to wait for it to go away before you butcher them. Smashing their bodies is out of the question, as it randomly creates acid pools around it, which will damage survivors. It's still not a big thread, so I give it a C+.


Yin keeps her distance and moves up north some more, and she encounters three possible problems. At this point, Yin should go back to the evac shelter and wait until night. Whether she does it or not will be later, since we better take a look at the three problems.


First, the signs up north. Using look mode ( for a better view, we see three more like it. That, my dear audience, is a mine field. Step on one of those hidden mines, and kiss your legs (and maybe other parts, or your life) goodbye. Any survivor with 10 perception or greater can detect the mines, and if they have a decent skill in traps they can disarm it. Since Yin has neither, going inside the area won't show Yin where the mines are... well, unless she steps on one, and she'll definitely know where the mine is.

Aside from the mines, let's look at the two new zombies in view.


The fat zombie, who knows where Yin is. The lowest-tier in the big zombie family. Just a fat zombie. Slower than normal zombies, not particularly stronger but has more hit points and some toughness. Not a big deal. C.


The shocker brute. A definite A. Maybe A-. Take the strength, speed, and toughness of a zombie brute, then add electricity to the mix. For offense, the shocker brute has an attack where it launches an electrical current at you, this does minor damage and can stun you. Pray that you don't encounter this attack at night, since the electricity stays a while and it lights up the area. Not a lot of light, but enough to show a ton of zombies where you are. For defense, hitting it with weapons that conduct electricity can both damage and stun you. To top it off, it also has the special smash attack of the zombie brute. The standard zombie brute is tough, but I'd rather face that now instead of the shocker variant.

Thankfully, at night the shocker brute glows, so you'll at least know where it is, and you can stay the hell away from them. Later on, butchering their bodies can provide you with some very useful items, but for now Yin will stay the hell away.

The fat zombie knows where Yin is. Going further north will make the shocker brute know where Yin is. Right now, it's best to wait back in the evac shelter and stay there until night. However, I reckon it's time for a little daring-do. Ladies and gentlemen, let's do a smash and grab.


By pressing ", I activate the run command. Running makes movement faster, at the cost of draining stamina, doubly so if you try to fight and run. Never fight and run, since you'll be out of stamina quickly and you'll end up slowly trying to escape while a horde of zombies clobber you. Fight or flight; choose one, but never both.

Yin runs east to where the house is. Fat zombie is close but it won't catch up to a running Yin. Another fat zombie inside the house, but no matter. We'll go through the seemingly empty room.


No time to wield the crowbar and try to pry open the window. I said smash and grab, and dammit we'll smash it! Smash the windows twice. Once you can already go through a window, but you run the risk of wounding yourself via broken glass. Smashing it a second time causes all glass to be removed.

And, we're in! Apologies for the rather shoddy collage of pictures. Basically, from the top right, Yin enters the room before the fat zombie can. The bedroom has a blanket, and some clothing in a cabinet that's currently not needed. Remember, Yin does not have a ton of carrying capacity, volume-wise, so carrying stuff she doesn't need is out of the question. Then, she turns her attention to the door on the right, taking care to close the door. The fat zombie has reached the bedroom my then, and a closed door will at least slow the zombie down. On the corridor, room to the south is a bathroom, where I find some calcium vitamins, some saline eye drops, and a first-aid kit. All three are taken. Living room in the north has an MP3 player and a rain hood, both taken. Yin reaches the kitchen where she finds a frying pan and a pot. Now, the pot has better values as a tool, but the frying pan is enough to get her by. Furthermore, the former takes up too much space, so there's no choice but to get the pan.

(Unfortunately, I saved over that bit with the next picture. The encounter with the grabber zombie also encountered a similar mistake)


And there you have it. It's not over yet, but our heroine Yin has finished one-half of robbing a house! All she needs to do is escape, and unload her loot in the safety of the evac shelter. All that's left is to run away. She had stopped running since entering the house, and that gives her enough recovery time to start running again once she heads outside. From the noise of breaking the windows, and the possibility of one of the fat zombies banging on a door, there's not much time before this house becomes a zombie hotspot. There's a stairs leading to a basement in the kitchen, but there's no time at all. Basement diving will be later, when Yin is better prepared.



And so Yin runs. She runs, and runs, and ran all the way until she's out of breath. But by that time, the zombies are far away, and are no longer giving chase. All that's left is to run back to the evac shelter, which for now is her base of operations. The fat zombie in the kitchen did get a hit on Yin's head, and unlike the first hit Yin took, this one hurt a little and caused a tiny bit of pain. Adding to that is the pain from getting exhausted from running, and we see some of the effects of pain; some temporary stat loss and a slight speed drop. More pain, and the stat loss and speed loss will be much worse, but for this kind of pain it's not a big deal. Time to head home.


...only I notice something on the map. That green + on the map is a campsite! As I recall, there's not a lot of zombie activity in those places, especially when it's so far out from the city. With the horde icons being so close to the evac shelter, I feel that this would be a good side-journey to take.


The journey to the campsite takes some time, but it was uneventful. Sometimes you might encounter some nasty things out in the wilderness, and like the campsite, there are locations in areas not connected to roads. For now, Yin surveys the area and breathes a sigh of relief that no one seems to be here. In the distance, Yin hears a pack of dogs, but they wouldn't be a problem. For now, it seems that this area is safe; away from the unearthly noises coming from the city which she could hear from the evacuation center. She knows that it's not over yet, as when night falls it would be time to venture back, deeper into the city to find more food and water.

Annnnnd I apologize as I say that that's all for now! I promised a night raid, but all I gave is one smash and grab. Hahaha... this stuff takes a while to do. For for realsies, next time it's gonna be a night raid, and until morning comes and Yin goes to bed we won't be stopping until then.

Until then, laters!

[aka Cthulhu]

Hallo. It should be time for another episode... matter of fact, I've finished playing and typing out the third episode. However, imgur is being iffy at the moment, so I can't upload screenshots. Anyone know a similar image host that can be used/doesn't require to register.

Also, a lot of stuff happens this time.

[pegasuswarrior]

Feb 28, 2017 13:34:12 GMT -5 aka Cthulhu said:

Hallo. It should be time for another episode... matter of fact, I've finished playing and typing out the third episode. However, imgur is being iffy at the moment, so I can't upload screenshots. Anyone know a similar image host that can be used/doesn't require to register.

Also, a lot of stuff happens this time.

tinypic?

[aka Cthulhu]

Tinypic doesn't seem to let me upload the entire set of pictures, and I was too lazy to upload each pic one at a time.

Anyway, imgur works now, so episode 3 is a go!

--

--

--

Heeeeeeeeey! It's that time once again for another episode of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. In this episode a lot of stuff may be happening! Alternatively, this episode may lead to a horrible death via zombie mauling, but I suppose that still counts as stuff happening.


Previously! Yin had come across a campsite during her little scouting trip before the night raid. No one seems to be around, but there are tents set up in the campsite. Yin sees this as an opportunity to safely check out the place and see if there's anything she can scrounge up. And, as a matter of fact, she does find some stuff. Going through each tent, Yin gathers everything that's not nailed down and sets them into one tent, which now includes the items she had found during the previous episode's smash and grab.


Here we have the advanced inventory screen. This is a useful menu when you want to look at all the items in adjacent tiles, making it easier to sort out and take items you might want to carry around. You can set it in such a way that by activating the menu via pressing the "/" sign, you can see all items around the survivor, and then pick and choose what you want, and automatically place them in the inventory of the survivor, or the inventory of whatever wheelbarrow or shopping cart that's being dragged around. Items can be sorted by category, and overall is a much easier menu to navigate compared to examining every tile and scrolling through several items.

Anyway, Yin has found a decent number of food. There's about 2-3 days worth of eating already, but aside from the bottle of water she started off with, there's no other liquid that would quench her thirst after one day.


As a matter of fact, Yin's both hungry and thirsty already. In general, you can be in both states and still be a relatively safe state. However, go lower than that, from very hungry/thirsty and beyond and you'll be in a lot of trouble.

For now, let's have Yin eat and drink a little. She'll need the energy for later, believe you me. The bottle is emptied and all that's left of the curry is the tin can. Those two are placed back in the pile of items. Both can still be used; the can for a certain number of crafting recipes, while the bottle can be refilled when a water source is found.


With two of her main needs met, Yin takes one more glance at the surroundings. Also, those little white plate like things near the tents are braziers. They're handy little tools for cooking, as you can light a fire in tiles with the brazier set and it prevents fire from spreading. Outdoors it can help prevent fires from getting big and dangerous, and indoors it's more or less them same - though there's a slight problem of a ton of smoke being generated indoors due to the fire. Not a good thing for Yin's lungs.

Anyway, food-wise Yin is more or less all right. However, she'll need more water, and better clothing to protect her from the weather and monsters. The city may have both, though going there even at night will be dangerous. There's no other choice, and so Yin leaves some of her loot at the camp and heads to the city. By the time she reaches the area, it would be night, enabling her to sneak into buildings undetected. With an empty bottle, a crowbar, a cudgel, and the first-aid kit, she heads out.

This is gonna be a straight up burglary mission, more or less. Right now, Yin is in no condition to fight in the darkness. Sure, she can take down a zombie or two, but only in one-on-one situations, with ample room she can move around in.

Sneaking around at night offers neither. Even with the night-vision trait, Yin only gets a small sight radius, so if she encounters a zombie in that situation, the possibility is high for more zombies being nearby. Most zombies don't see as well at night, but they can track you still by sound and scent, and fighting does tend to make a little bit of noise. Furthermore, fighting drains stamina, and while walking does not, running does, and trying to fight will drain stamina quickly, to the point where if the situation calls for retreat, there won't be enough energy to run. Furthermore, it doesn't even have to hit zero stamina. Once stamina reaches the halfway point, the chances of running out of breath is high, causing pain and a speed drop. Lower stamina also slows down survivors considerably, to the point where zombies become faster.

To top it all off, there's the weather to take into account. There's still daylight, and the temperature is rather chilly. It will get worse at night, where the cold will drop Yin's speed at the very start. If it gets colder than that, more speed loss, and random body parts start getting damaged from the chill.

So... we're looking at a stacked deck here. Still, there's no other choice but to go raid the city, to increase the chance long-term survival at the expense of lowering short-term survival.

Yin had gone back to the evac shelter. As it turns out, it's still the middle of the day, so there's really not much choice but to wait a little bit.


Gameplan time. I'm marking things on the screenshot to let you guys in on the plan. Red circle is where Yin is right now. Red lines point to two grocery stores and one clothing store. Both have useful supplies to find, and those three spots often have a shopping cart in the premises, so another valuable tool there. Yellow lines lead to boxing gyms. Not at lot of stuff in those places, but it's one of the few places where one can find a martial arts training manual. In this case, the martial arts is usually boxing, but I've found manuals for krav maga in the past. They're not so useful at the start, but once unarmed reaches level 3 most martial arts styles become very potent.

Blue lines is the library and public works. Former can have skill books to learn from, and latter may have useful tools - some of which can work as a weapon.


Aside from that, there's nothing left to do but wait for darkness. Or, I could scout a bit more, and see if there are potential locations to go to, perhaps safer than the city.


White line is set between evac shelter and campsite. One or the other can be Yin's base of operations. Red lines point toward the edge of the map. Going there would reveal more of the map, and the fact of the matter is the game will infinitely generate the map. There's no end to it, and the map won't loop around. Going far from the starting location for safer areas will be done much later, but I can still check out the edges in the current map to see if there are any desirable locations.

Also, kinda obvious, but doing this is much better done in the day. At night, your sight radius in the map is just one map tile only, while during the day you can see much farther than that.

Lastly, the blue line that heads to that quartet of hs is a motel. May have some food, and a pool of water as a water source. However, I know that motels have several zombies lurking near the entrance, so there's not much point in sneaking it there. Possibility of food is tempting, and I can get some by employing smash-and-grab tactics, but without a shopping cart for carrying capacity there's not much point.

My plan right now is to travel in the general areas of those yellow lines for scouting. No horde icons there yet, so it would be the safest place to explore. Catch y'all later when something interesting is found.

Stepping out the evac shelter, we encounter a zombie Yin hasn't seen yet.


The crawling zombie. Well... it's half a zombie. Slower than regular zombies. Not a threat. I give it a D rating on my danger scale, and that D doesn't stand for dangerous. It's easy enough to fight that I just walk right up to it and do some half-hearted hit-and-step back tactics, and I win easily.

Continuing my path south-east, I encounter another zombie and some promising loot.


The zombie soldier. These guys used to be a little stronger and tougher than standard zombies, but recent experimental versions of the game really pushed up their toughness. Normal attacks don't do that much damage to them, especially when it's done my unskilled survivors. That said, they provide decent loot - army clothing for protection and sometimes weapons and ammunition. For the clothing, sadly being filthy zombie clothes Yin won't wear them.

Anyway, the surroundings around the zombie soldier is a helicopter crash site. Some decent loot can be found in the wreckage, but Yin needs a shovel to find them, which she doesn't have at the moment. However, three items are visible and attainable - a gun of some kind, a vest that would offer very good protection to the torso, and a backpack.

Fighting the zombie soldier will be dangerous, and most crash sites have two, but the items (especially the backpack) is too useful to pass up, so I reckon Yin will quickly try to nab them without engaging the zombie.


View mode can be used to check items as well. So we have the military rucksack, which offers a ton of volume at the expense of high torso encumbrance. The MBR vest with steel plating attached, providing high torso defense in exchange of more encumbrance, and the H&K MP7, a submachine gun. Not sure if it has ammo, but even then all three items are desirable. There's also a military black box, the use of which isn't important at the moment.


To get those three items safely, we employ tactics! Now, wreckages are one of the obstacles that can damage creatures going through them, not to mention severely slowing down anything that goes through them. The zombie soldier isn't quick, and much like many zombies are not that big of a thinker. All I need is to run and lure him around, letting him struggle and trip through the piles of broken helicopter.

However, two things must be known. Anything that dies under a wreckage gets buried, leaving a survivor no way to loot the body. Another is unlike zombies, the still human survivors do have to worry about things like tetanus. Getting damaged from walking in wreckage has a chance of acquiring tetanus, which can be just as nasty as an infection via bite wound.


So, with that in mind, I lured the zombie out of the wreckage and engage. The cudgel didn't do any damage, and the crowbar did little. Even with little health remaining, the zombie soldier still put up a fight before going down.

While the clothes/armor the soldier zombie has can't be used by the squeamish Yin, the non-clothing items provide a great bounty.

A lighter, a minor but useful tool for cooking and boiling water. A damaged but still usable L12 Defender, a decent shotgun, even if there's no ammo available. And finally, the entrenching tool, more or less a shovel.

...wait, a shovel? That means we can dig up the wreckage and see if there's anything good under there!


It takes a while to dig through everything, but eventually the wreckage is cleared out and Yin is free to survey the loot. Now, most of it is scrap metal and chunks of steel. Later on, these items are components in a lot of high skill fabrication work; basically blacksmithing weapons and armor and several other tools. Right now, they're not any use to Yin. Despite the pile of currently useless metal, she does find some gems within this heap.


Behold! Weapons and armor. Three MP7s, two L12 Defenders with one in good condition, and the SCAR-L. No ammo to use any of them, unfortunately, but it's possible to find some later on, and the spare guns can be used as bargaining chips for NPCs. Two MBR vests for protection. The steel plates offer more protection, but weighs a lot and is very encumbering, while the ceramic plats offer somewhat less for better mobility. Once the cold Spring weather goes away, I may just use the one with ceramic plates. Army pants don't fit, which makes it a little more encumbering, but the encumbrance penalty (slight drop in speed), is not that bad compared to the better warmth, volume, and protection to the jeans Yin is currently wearing. Yin can wear both at the same time, though since they're the same layer it gives an extra encumbrance penalty. Not a big deal, and it'll keep Yin warm. Wearing both, running costs Yin extra ten action points. Not that bad. Swimming costs an extra 150, but we're not gonna be doing any swimming right now.

What I want to find is a helmet, or any sort of protective headgear. Right now, Yin has absolutely no means to defend her head, and due to her glass jaw trait she won't be able to take much damage on that part. Yin does have a rain hood, but it's protection value is minimal.

Anyway, Yin moves south-east from the wreckage and encounters two problems.


First, we have the Mi-Go. Straight outta the pages of HP Lovecraft. Highly aggressive, fast and hits hard. Won't stop chasing you until you're dead. They also bombard the message box by talking, mimicking the voices of humans, kind of a newbie trap luring you in. They won't stop chasing you, but is one of the few enemies that will retreat if wounded. Thankfully, at most, you'll only encounter at most 2 of them at the same time, though two is already dangerous. C+ later on, but B for early games.

Then we have the majestik moose. Don't let the description fool you, they're irate all the time. Get to close, and get mauled, basically. Many a careless player dies on the early game when they get too close to a moose. Solid B, maybe B-. No exasperation. These guys can take on groups of zombies and still win.

Now, I'm tempted to try to take on the Mi-Go. When a Mi-Go is around, a pile of dead people are around, with loot. These are not zombified bodies, they're plain, relatively fresh corpses. With damaged but wearable clothing and much to the delight of our cannibalistic lady, can be butchered for meat and bones.

Yeah, let's kick some eldritch ass.

Or let's not. Mi-Gos are strong enough to bloody Yin and kill her, and unlike zombies, Mi-Gos are smart enough to avoid being lured in obstacles to slow them down in a fight.


Instead, let's be a clever dick and lure the Mi-Go and provoke the moose. Creature groups are usually benign towards creatures in their group. The moose and the Mi-Go, however, is not part of the same group, and both are violent enough to fight each other. I stood between the two and sort of run like heck when both are close enough. This should give me enough time and loot the bodies where the mi-go was spawned.


...okay, that didn't take long, and the more aggressive of the two came out on top. The moose is dead. Uh-oh, but a way out can be found south.

A bear. Surprisingly more docile than a moose, but more powerful and faster when provoked.

With less stamina on the tank from luring the moose to its death, Yin manages to lure both into a fight, though the bear did manage to get a minor hit in to our heroine. Time to run and loot those bodies and RUN LIKE HELL. (damn, forgot to screenshot).


Anyway, here's the bear after the fight. Didn't take no damage from the mi-go. I give it a danger of C+, because while the moose may be weaker, the bear is not as aggro and won't chase you if you manage to get some distance, unlike the moose who won't stop unless it finds another target to squish.


These are the general gist of the items I found. Nothing special, nothing useful to wear. Did find two backpacks, and a flashlight, which is useful. A plastic canteen without water as well. Water purification tablets to be used to clean dirty water without boiling them too. That said, these bodies provide something extra nice with a little help from Yin's trusty pocket knife for butchering...


Meeeeeat. Delicious meat. Soylent green. Long pork. The forbidden fruit. These are either next to unedible, or the most delicious thing ever, depending on whether or not you have the cannibal trait. Yin does, and this will keep her happy in the coming days.

Also, one thing to take not of: most food will rot. The only food that won't are the ones that has been preserved in some way; turning them into jerky, stuff like that. Still, one benefit of the cold early Spring weather is that the rotting process more or less stops, or at least severely slows down, allowing Yin to find a way to preserve the meat for future enjoyment.

All the human bodies net a total of 25 chunks of human flesh and 25 bones. Higher skill in survival, and a better cutting tool would have provided more meat. Oh well. Found the dead moose as well and butchered it: one piece of raw offal, 7 chunks of meat, one chunk of fat, a raw pelt, some sinew (for sewing) and 10 bones. Food supply is slowly increasing.


Back at the evac shelter. For now, Yin unloads her loot there. A few zombies were spotted near the evac shelter. Not too close, but close enough. Staying here too long will lead those nearby zombies via scent. After the night raid, the campsite will become Yin's safe zone until something better comes along.


Also, NW from the crash site an office tower was located in the distance. Not a lot of important loot to find there at the moment, and too many zombies lurk there.

All that's left is to wait for night to fall... I regret leaving all the canned food at the campsite, as Yin is getting somewhat hungry...


And so the sun begins to set.


Night begins to fall.


And there's nothing but darkness now.

Here we go. It's finally time to head to the city and do what I said I'll do an episode or two ago. Good luck, Yin!

While Yin is groping around in the darkness, let me take this time to explain the safe mode feature. Basically, when safe mode is active, it will alert Yin to the presence of creatures detecting her. If such a creature is present, the game is then paused and you can basically do nothing but deactivate safe mode so you can move again. Very useful, since traveling long distances often mean holding a direction button. With safe on, the brakes are hit, so to speak, so you can reassess your plans.


And we reach the city in a short while. Like I said earlier, initial goal is the grocery stores in hopes of finding a shopping cart. If I can find that, get some supplies, and find some books, Yin will be set for several days, spending the time honing her skills.


Also, just noticed a small stat gain. From using the cudgel, her bashing skill has increased to the point of getting a permanent +1 on strength. As I heard, it gets less generous with stat gains much later on.


No zombies seen or heard yet. Need to cross a road to get to the grocery store, and I encounter a car in the middle of the road, and it seems like there's some stuff inside...


A SWAT truck! Nice, and it seems well enough to be driven. However, not a good choice to do so when I have no idea how many zombies are around. Still, some items in the car, so might as well check and see what they are...

9mm ammo and 40mm smoke grenades. Ammo that can't be used on the guns that I have. Still, might as well nab them in case I do find the appropriate guns later on. Soon as I leave the truck I encounter a zombie.


A zombie child. Well, a small zombie. Weak, though slightly more evasive than standard zombies due to their size. Killing them causes a morale penalty since survivors feel guilty from killing what once was a human child. On the other hand, psychopath-trait characters like Yin don't care, and can kill them without getting penalties. Also, for non-psychopaths, gradually killing more and more zombie children lessens the guilt. D for danger rating. Sometimes they carry candy or junk food.

No need to fight. Save stamina for escaping. Priorities.


Yin soon reaches the grocery store wall, and making her way to the entrance, she encounters more undead. Again, no fighting. Time to run.


Dodging the two zombies, encountering two more to dodge, Yin manages to slip past to the entrance of the store. Huzzah! A cart.


It's not in pristine condition, but all the same Yin can still use it. Getting the basket destroyed will spill the contents of the car everywhere, while if the wheels get destroyed the cart might make noisy scraping noises. Maybe later we'll find a better cart, but for now this one will do.


It's kinda like one of those game shows where you nab all these stuff in a supermarket and all that, ya know? Even a time limit, as I was being chased by zombies, and it won't take that long before they find me. They're not going to be quiet in their search either, so I nab everything I can find and escape.


The store itself is far from full, but it's an okay haul. Most of the food is hardly filling junk food, and most of the drinks are booze that has negative quench values, it's still an okay haul. Aside from that, some medicine (disinfectant for healing and curing infected wounds), some books (the novels basically just help increase morale temporarily), and some chemicals. Don't really need to use bleach, but I can remove the content and use the container for storing water.


Back at the entrance, there's a definite sign that zombies may have entered the store... or some might still be outside. So, second grocery store is SE from here. NE of that is the clothing store, then from a street across, N from the clothing store is a boxing gym and a second one NW of that. That's basically the plan, unless I encounter too many zombies on one path. Outside, I encounter another new zombie (new for Yin, not for me).


The shocker zombie. Basically a weaker version of the shocker brute, in terms of physical power. It still has the same electrical powers as its stronger brute cousin, and as such very dangerous to fight at night. It's a B, for me. Also, shocker zombies only glow strong enough to light where it's standing on, while the brute lights up adjacent tiles. Avoid them at all costs at night.


Another one on the way to the second grocery store.

The boomer. A zombie from Left For Dead. A lot of zombies in Cata are based on that game, I think. Anyway, weak fighters, but their bile attack can blind a survivor. Killing them also causes bile to explode around them, not to mention the noise. Another B enemy due to those qualities.

I manage to dodge more zombies and enter the other store... but run into two nasty monsters.



First, we have the shady zombie. Nasty gimmick. Basically, on low-light areas... like night-time with no light sources, these buggers are invisible unless one walks up to you. On early versions, due to a bug they were more or less blind, making them easy but sometimes potential nuisances. They fixed that bug now. Now, they're one of the few zombies with night vision. Unlike Yin's night vision, theirs is much better, and it's not uncommon for several shady zombies to see you sneaking around and gang up on you. Since you can't see them until they're next to you, you can't take measures to avoid them. Due to that, the current version of these zombies are a B+ in my danger scale.

Now, for the other zombie. Can you see a little smoke at the edge of Yin's sight radius? That belongs to the smoker zombie. It generates smoke around it. Due to that, it's not good at hiding itself since you can generally see the smoke and avoid them. On the other hand, that smoke can hide other zombies inside the smoke field, and the smoke itself can cause survivors to cough and lose stamina from breathing it. Dangerous. B+.


Despite that, I do manage to run around the edges of the store, avoiding the smoker and dodging the shady, and nab... a gallon jug of milk. Hey, it's a drink, with 15 servings. That can go a long way. Still, since exiting grocery store number 1 a lot of running was done, and I'm worrying about Yin running out of breath. Can't stop, otherwise I won't be able to shake off the shady zombie.


My plan was to run NE and get to the clothing store, but the path was blocked by two zombies. So, went with flight over fight. Down SE, leading to the open fields. This raid is not done yet, but considering the very low stamina, it would be wise to be in an area less likely to be populated by zombies and take a breather.


However, my plans hit a snag as two zombies manage to catch up, and one is rather nasty. With low stamina, and having to drag a cart, these two manage to catch up easily when Yin is just walking.


The spitter zombie. The venusaur to the acidic zombie's bulbasaur. The acidic zombie can puke out acid on a tile adjacent to it. The spitter can spit a massive pool of acid from a distance. Since acid can do continuous damage on the legs, and right now Yin's stamina is at an absolute low, this is a bad spot to be in. The only saving grace is that spitters can be rather inaccurate, sometimes enabling a way past them. B for danger.


I manage to run far enough to get out of the neighborhood and into the wilderness, but at that point Yin reaches the point of exhaustion and slows down... in time for a pool of acid to soak Yin's legs. Two slow steps in acid, and as you can see it didn't do Yin a whole lot of good. Thankfully, the spitter is a pretty shit fighter, and the decayed gets damaged from the acid, as really only the acid types are immune to acid. The entrenching tool helped, since aside from a shovel it's a pretty sharp tool.


Yin gets some distance away from the neighborhood, but remember what I said about shady zombies and night vision? Yeah, they're very good at it. No stamina to run, but thankfully at this distance I won't have to worry about other zombies hearing Yin fight. Despite fatigue, Yin plants her feet and fights.


...as it turns out, there were indeed more of them. Damn their good night vision. 3 directly in front of Yin, 2 on the right and one on the left. They're not good fighters, but it's the numbers game that makes them dangerous. Aside from there being no running from them due to stamina, I decided to fight because, aside from shady zombies seeing Yin far away, fighting them on an open field greatly reduces the risk of other non-Shady zombies hearing and finding Yin.

In the end, the spitter did most of the damage, but the pain the acid gave seems to wear out for most part. However, one of the spitters did manage to infect Yin, but thankfully Yin has something to take care of that.


The disinfectant can clean the wound and heal some hit points. The first-aid kit is stronger, but it would be a waste to use. Anyway, body parts labeled blue is only the first stage of infection. On the first and second stage, there's a chance of an infection going away on its own, but don't rely on that too much.

Aside from medicine, one can also clean a wound via cauterization. Get a knife, have a lighter or a matchbook, and heat up the knife. Obviously, doing so brings a massive amount of pain, but when you lack disinfectants, it's a relatively safe choice for a cure. However, sometimes cauterization can fail. You might need more than one round with a hot knife to clean the wound. Worse-case scenario, doing the process will speed up the infection process to the second stage. The blue highlight becomes green, and cauterization no longer becomes an option. Survivor will get a fever, and constant pain, and over time it will reach a third stage. In general, once it reaches the second or third stage, find a way to heal the wound, or you're basically a ticking time bomb before you die due to infection.

Healing items primarily heal lost hit points. Higher skill in first aid means more healing. Being a novice, it would be a waste to use the first-aid kit unless its an emergency, as it won't provide a lot of healing. Broken limbs can't be healed by them, as they require time and a sling to heal on their own.


So Yin uses the disinfectant, and while she's at takes the time to snack on some food and drink. Always start of with perishable food, since they'll eventually rot and go to waste if uneaten. Once Spring starts to warm up, finding perishable food in stores will be next to impossible, and the only ones you'll find are usually the ones that you hunt. After the meal, Yin takes a swig of belgian ale, just as a little extra and a little painkiller.

The night's not over yet, but I think it's time to call this episode a day. A ton of stuff happened. Yin had more or less found some helpful tools, and managed to avoid some very nasty situations once or twice. The night isn't over, and so is the raid. Next time, we conclude this night raid, and maybe look towards far lands for safer locations.

Laters!

[aka Cthulhu]

Yooooooooooo everyonnnnnnnnnnnne! Time for yet another episode of Cataclysm DDA!

Something important to note; the current version of the experimental apparently has a slight problem. Certain maps may fall victim to severely overenthustiastic map gen. Some locations may be several times larger than it should be, basically. I may just update to a more recent experimental, but for most part, a large chunk of the current map may create the bugged out massive locations. When I say current map, I'm not just talking about the map that's currently revealed. Once I travel to a far enough point, the next map chunk should more or less be more fixed. 'course, the map gen problems may not even show up, but just to be safe, I'll be updating the experimental version soon.

Right now it's got no bearing on anything I'll be doing this episode and the next few, so let's get LPing!


So, previously, Yin has managed to successfully grab a few things from the city, all while avoiding conflict for most part. She has not gotten through this without taking damage though, and frankly she's in a slightly risky position safety-wise if she were to continue.

Still, I reckon that it would be all right, so Yin will continue on her night raid and proceed with looting. Also, forgot to mention this, but one of the shady zombies she had fought at the end of the previous episode dropped more 9mm ammo. No guns for that still, but the extra ammo can still be useful should Yin find a compatible gun.


Looking at some of her stats, Yin's in no position to fight. The cold is doing a nasty number on her hands, for instance. It's not encumbered, but that's mostly due to the fact that she doesn't have anything to wear on her grabby components. Unwielding the entrenching tool can keep her warm, as the winter coat she wears has pockets she could stick her hands in. Considering how low her dexterity is right now, having no weapon to fight with and just avoiding fights may be wise.


Here's the current map position. The red circle at the very bottom is where Yin is. The other red circles are the grocery store she went through. The building icons for those two stores have been colored grey, as I have marked them on the in-game map as already went through, so I won't forget that fact.

Blue circles are the buildings I still want to get to. Two boxing gyms, a clothing store, a library, and a public works. If I'm lucky, those places will provide Yin with proper tools to keep her safe and not risk more night raids for a while. Also, yellow circle is a house. It's just close enough for Yin to check out, and there may be some useful things there.

Aside from the house that I have decided to go through, the green lines are roughly the path Yin would take to the other buildings. Going there would take advantage of the empty fields, which would have a decreased chance of zombies lurking around. Not a guarantee, but there at least won't be walls and possible dead ends.

We've reached the back door of the house, but before we could even reach the door, an enemy appears! Also, with regards to houses: some may have back doors, some don't. The pointy end of the ^ is the front, so it's easy to check where the back is.



Not a real skeleton, just a really thin zombie. Still, they move faster than regular Zs, and are often more evasive, especially against ranged weapons. Still, not much of a threat one-on-one. C.

I only run a few steps back into the fields and lose the skeleton. Walked back to the house, and it's ripe for opening.

On prying open doors and windows. You can use the crowbar to attempt to pry a door open. It might take a couple of tries, it might take several or just one. In any case, prying open a door is a lot more quiet than smashing it open, though with windows there's a chance of the window breaking, causing noise. If possible, go for the doors at the back to avoid detection.

Also, prying takes some time. I manage to pry the door, but of course a shady zombie decides to be an ass and show up. Instead of running back into the field and fight it there, I figure that it would be easier to get inside and fight it there. It would be less cold, allowing a small decrease in speed loss.

Of course, things don't work out as they should.


The tough zombie. As the name states, these are tougher and stronger than the average zombie. That said, they don't have any other qualities that make them stand out. A longer fight than regular zombies, but later on they become the more common cannon fodder zombies as zombie evolution kicks in. C+.


No point in fighting. I run and dodge the zombies and take what I can. Room I entered is the living room and dining/kitchen without any walls in between. No food to take, but the living room has a couple of skill books, and a pair of fingerless gloves. Not very warm, doesn't fit, and no time to wear them. Take it anyway and manage to enter a bedroom.


...where I promptly get trapped, of course. And of course, while avoiding the fight the tough zombie still manages to get a bite out of Yin's chest.


No choice but to fight. Thankfully, some advantages. Dexterity has increased somewhat, the stat penalty lessening due to the warmer climate of the house. Since the room Yin is trapped in is a one-tile area, I don't have to fight the shady and tough zombie at the same time. Furthermore, due to the position of the shopping cart, the zombies have to stand on the same tile as it, and the cart counts as an obstacle, slowing them down.

However, nearby zombies can still try to bash the cart, damaging it, so avoid that if possible.


Once the two zombies are down, Yin is free to loot the rest of the house. Some food (lutefisk for the lutefisk god!), and some nice clothing. Mostly the long underwear top, as it could be a better replacement for the winter coat if I could find a less encumbering but more protective torso armor. Tramadol as well to lower pain, which Yin takes as she waits to recover her stamina.

In old versions, like the stable 0.C, stamina was not implemented yet, so survivors can slowly but surely become melee demigods as they never get tired from fighting. Now, not so much. I think it's a good feature, and while melee isn't as great anymore, survivors can now run and escape, balancing it out a bit.


Waiting finished. Yin's tired now, and it's time for her to go beddy bye. Well, not really, as the night and the raid ain't over just yet. I had taken the time to disinfect Yin's torso, but I wonder if that's a good choice, since the possibility of getting infected during the raid still exists, and I'm using up medical supplies too quickly. After that, it's back to the planned route.

The house raid was beneficial, as one of the skill books there was for mechanic skills. This will in time allow Yin to make repairs and improve her shopping card to get a big increase in volume space.


Anyway, another shady zombie was encountered. Even with the little warmth it provides, the fingerless glove grants just about enough to prevent Yin from feeling very cold, which causes severe speed loss and gradual damage to affected parts.


Sneaking through the fields, Yin comes close to a mortuary. Across the street is the clothing store, but extreme caution is required due to Yin detecting several zombies thanks to the light of shockers.


The grappler zombie. A grabber zombie with far greater abilities in grabbing. On grab attacks, any zombie can do it. They basically hold a survivor in one spot, and it can take several turns to break free of it, if they try to escape. The grappler can do it... from several types away. I think three to five tiles is the distance its arms can reach. Can be very nasty. I recall that they can do it while you're driving, so they can be dangerous. B+.


The zombie cop. Another "armored" zombie, similar to the soldier Zs. The cop can't evolve to the soldier, though. In any case, they're less armored than the soldier, and while their item drops can provide weapons and sometimes armor, it's not as good as the potential drops from soldiers. C+.


Going in between those two groups is too much of a risk. The mortuary itself seems to be holding more zombies than what Yin can see. The zombies make noise and smash around the building, creating much more noise. That would attract more zombies in the area, so going near that area is dangerous. Instead, Yin backtracks to more or less the original path she was going to take an episode ago.


...and runs into a shady zombie ambush. I should have ran, but since the clothing store was already so close, I fought. I thought it was just three shady zombies at most.


...turns out it was a lot more than that. Yeesh. Now, it's not like they came at Yin all at once. Two at a time, three at most, with one standing on the shopping cart. The entrenching tool is potent, as it can do both cutting and bashing damage while being fairly quick to attack and has a to-hit bonus. It still got damaged, and Yin is pretty banged up as well. I'll ignore the infection for now, since I'm low on disinfectants and the raid isn't over yet.

Let it be known know that fighting a big group like this so early is generally a bad idea. Aside from the shady zombies, none of the ones I fought in this skirmish didn't have notable abilities. If they did, the fight would have went by with a much worse outcome.


The dead provides some decent loot. The cash cards can be used on vending machines and gas pumps, while the flashlight is a flashlight, and the toolbox provides several tools that would be a requirement in many crafting recipes. Aside from that, a ton of useless and filthy clothing. Now, it's not entirely useless, as filthy clothing can be butchered for parts and used as components. However, there's no need to do that right now. Not enough time.


Anyway, building Yin fought in was a pizza parlor. Some pizza to eat, and ingredients. Ingredients can be eaten as they are, though you're not gonna get filled up from that. More importantly those can be used to make better cooked meals. The salt in particular can be used to make jerky, which stops the meat from rotting.


There's also some sausages. One of the food types that won't rot, so a definite keeper. However, the shopping cart is actually full, so I either head back to base and call it a day, or I unload some useless items.


So Yin drops some stuff. Clothing that's not really needed. Junk food that doesn't really fill up a hungry survivor, and booze where most of it makes a survivor thirstier. Books that only increase morale, empty containers, and some soap. Those types of items I can hoard once Yin has a more solid supply of food and drink. Essentials first, luxuries later.

Outside, while planning a route to reach the clothing store north of the pizza parlor, Yin encounters her first non-human zombie.


The zombie dog. Faster and more evasive than the zombie, but not as resilient. According to the lore, zombification at most only affects things the size of, and larger, than a dog. So yeah, expect certain wild animals having nastier zombie variants later on. Smaller animals don't become zombies, though certain species still get affected by the cause of zombification in another way. For now, the zombie dog alone is not a threat. D. By the way, this threat ratings I give usually are based on how dangerous these creatures are on a one-on-one basis. Usually.


We reach the clothing store! We're in, but Yin is in a very tense situation as just a short distance from her is a shocker zombie, and other zombies.

One new species Yin sees is the skeletal dog. Like the skeleton, it's just a very thin zombie. Faster than the normal zombie dog, and very dodge-y, but not very tough. Another D for the dogs.

From what we can see, it seems that the shocker zombie and others are wrecking a car. This is both good and bad. On one hand, the noise they make serves as a distraction to themselves, and as such making them less likely to notice Yin. On the other hand, the same noise will gather zombies from a distance, and sooner or later one or more will notice Yin.


There's not a lot in the clothing store, much to Yin's disappointment. However, it does have a trenchcoat. It covers the same area as the winter coat, only much less encumbring (good) and less warm (not so good early in spring). On the other hand, Yin did find the long underwear top, and combining that with the trenchcoat offers enough warmth to handle the cold, while keeping her much less encumbered.


Just as I finish looking through the store, of course a shady zombie comes into view. It could have seen me enter, or saw me inside when it came close to the entrance, being lured into that place by the sound of the other zombies.

At this point, I have enough bravado from the so far decent raid to just straight up fight the bastard.


Bad idea. More shady zombies to fight. I fight them, and take more beatings. Head is in critical condition, and at this point I really should leave. If you have been paying attention to Yin's sprite, you may have noticed the severe lack of a rain hood, as it has been destroyed in the fight. Real bad news, as it did offer some measure of protection, and now Yin doesn't have any on her head to soften up some blows.

Time to leave... but first...


A less-banged up shopping cart. It's really important to keep any cart being dragged around in near-perfect condition, otherwise all the hard-earned loot will scatter on the floor in a bad situation and you run away with nothing. It takes some time to transfer the items on cart to another, but thankfully nothing bad happens. One more shady zombie shows up to mess with Yin, before every item has been transferred.


Right. Time to leave. Yin's head is close to zero, and there's a TON of noise in the wall behind Yin. No more time to get to the library - it's time to run, period.

Managed to exit the clothing store. The amount of noise icons outside is massive. Nearly the entire screen in some turns, concentrated N to W outside the store. Thankfully, aside from the shady zombies, no one else went inside the store while I was inside, though if I had taken longer the wall on the south side of the store in the previous pic would have lured the ones north in... or destroyed the wall south. A severe miscalculation on my part, but I managed to slip past a horde.


...not over yet. Close to the worst possible enemy to encounter right now. Shocker doesn't see me yet, but it damn well knows that Yin is there, and is not one of them.


Run, Yin, run like hell! The burst of speed running provides is enough to get some distance away from the shocker. Had she walked, the shocker would have spotted her and fried her on the spot. The electricity would stun Yin, and the light will let every zombie know where Yin is. In that case, it would be game over.

All that's left to do is run west. If undetected, Yin would be home free and she can take her time to recover...


...and that's exactly what we're gonna do. The library, the boxing gyms, and the public works can wait. For now, Yin will begin the conclusion of this first night raid by heading back to where she started and leaving the city for now.


Remember this car? this was the SWAT truck that was the first thing Yin encountered during the night raid. We're pretty much home free... buuuuut, since we're more or less at the outskirts, I'm rather tempted to go down those three houses SW and see what might be around there.


House number 1 was easy enough to reach. Only a few steps SW to the backyard, and the door there wasn't even locked. However, the window was broken in, so there may have been a zombie who entered the place before, or exited.


Not a lot of things here. Some extra clothing, a little bit of ingredients, and some caffeine pills and painkillers. The shopping cart is already quite full, but since I'm not aiming for fighting, I wear several of the clothes in the shopping cart. Two effects; lessening the space in the cart, while increasing the volume capacity for Yin's own inventory. 'course, all these encumbering clothing will make Yin's fighting performance much worse, but right now that does not matter. On to the next house.


House number 2. Required the crowbar to open the front door, but no one seems close enough to notice.


Nothing amazing here, but some potentially useful clothing. Some noise seems to be going on below the house.


There's a basement here. May have some good items here, but considering the noise, there's probably some zombies there, or something else. Too risky. Exit the house via the entrance and head on to the last house, to finish Yin's night raid.


Door is not locked. Like the previous house, the noise from below seems to suggest a basement with something lurking below. Each step generates noise markers in the screen. It may attract zombies in this level, but from experience zombies a level under you will never go up unless they directly see you - meaning you have to go down there first and get seen before they follow you upstairs.


Some decent items here. Food and drink which is always nice. A poncho that provides warmth with very little encumbrance, and more importantly a bike helmet to keep Yin's head protected. A saxophone (it's sprite is a guitar, but considering the amount of work a single guy did to make the tileset, forgivable), which can be used to boost morale, at the expense of creating noise. Gonna keep it. At this point, might as well fill up Yin's pocket with loot.


Stairs that lead to the basement is in the bathroom. No point in risking encountering zombies. Ignore for now.


Lastly, the bedroom. It has several blankets and pillows, Yin takes some so her sleep later on will be more comfortable. And also, a fancy watch.


Now, the fancy watch does a couple of things. First, it's fancy, and as Yin has the stylish trait, this means that wearing it gives her a very small morale bonus. This bonus can stack with more fancy clothing, and the watch is one of the items that are both fancy and offer zero encumbrance penalties at all. Furthermore, the watch tells the time. Can be very useful in raids like these, as it gives you the exact time, so you know when to start a raid and end it before it's close to sunrise.

The time when the sun sets and rises depends on the weather. Right now, a snowy spring night provides the best cover to sneak around it. A clear summer night with the full moon up gives you, and the zombies, much better visibility.

Aaaaand then...


Yin's home free! Yes! Night raid successful! Yin got beat up quite harshly, but she made it out of her first raid with enough items to get her through a week or so, maybe more. It won't be her last night raid either, as she still has a few targets to aim for in this city. For now, she can rest and recuperate to get her better prepared for the next time. Time for her to rest...


...only, it's not quite over yet. The evac shelter is really too close to the city, in my opinion, so it would be safer to sleep in the campsites. Before Yin gets some sleep, I will travel to the campsite to unload the shopping cart there, and then go back to the evac shelter and collect those guns Yin found during the day and transport them back to the campsite. Then she can sleep.

Unless something happens on the way there and back and there again, no point in screenshotting those things. Reader, you get to skip that tedium and reach the part where I finish the transporting!

...something was encountered.


Scene of the crime! It's another one of those corpse piles, similar to the mi-go encounter in the previous episode. Yin doesn't hear a mi-go around, but there's some loot to be had. However, there's not enough room in Yin or in the cart, so I'll gather this things later. For now, I'll mark it on the map.

And yes, that's cocaine.


Back to the evac shelter. Was completely right about the evac shelter becoming unsafe. Good job, Greg! Yin was totally rooting for you and was not hoping that you die and become Yin's future meal. And with that, Yin has finished gathering the stuff from the evac shelter and heads back to the campsite.


Back at the campsite. Pile of bodies hasn't been dealt with yet, as the stuff in the evac shelter took up too much space in the cart. You may have noticed a slight improvement in the head hit points. Aside from cleaning one infected wound, I quickly realized one danger that I forgot: lower hit points in body parts also increases sensitivity to the weather.

So, basically with Yin's head at low health, she was feeling very cold outside. Cold enough that it was damaging her head, lowering it even further. Had I kept it that way, her head will slowly get damaged to the point of death. Dying that way would suck considering her success in evading zombie death, so now I'm out of medical supplies. All that use of medical tools did increase Yin's first aid skill by a level.


After placing all her loot in a relatively safe place, as well as having a decent meal of pizza and milk, Yin heads off to bed. The room she's in was once a toilet, but Yin broke it and replaced the toilet with a rollmat she found on one of the tents. Add some blankets and pillows taken from a house, and Yin has herself a bed. There will be better places to sleep in the future, but for now this bed is practically the most luxurious space out there. Time to rest. She has to check out all those dead bodies with cocaine later, not to mention rearrange her clothing to become more comfortable, but for now it's time for some well earned rest.

'course, I end this episode here. She'll sleep and continue on with her game later, on the next episode. Hope you had fun, guys.

Until next time. Laters!

[aka Cthulhu]

Hey y'alls! Time for the next episode of Cata DDA! Due to having free time, I'm writing and doing this LP just a few minutes after the previous episode. I'll post this roughly a day later, and in general I may write-up several episodes in advance and post them every 24 hours or so. May be busy in the next few weeks, so just in case, I'll do multi-episode LPs when I have the free time, or not have other free time stuff to do.


Anyway, you guys are just in time for Yin to sleep. Couple of things about sleep. Healthy characters will heal hit points as they sleep. The healthier they are, the more hit points are healed. On the flip side, unhealthy characters will get less hit points healed, or none. While still a work in progress, the nutrition system is in the game, so players won't have to rely on a single meal to keep a survivor fed - usually that means smoked meat and water. I prefer giving my survivor different meals later on, for RP purposes.

Furthermore, characters have a harder time sleeping if the area is too bright or uncomfortable. A bed or a rollmat can provide comfort, or at the very least a blanket on the ground. Blankets, or lacking that, a pile of clothes can also keep a character warm and less likely to wake up prematurely. Noise can also wake a survivor up, though with the poor hearing trait it's less likely for Yin unless it's close, or whatever is making the noise attacks Yin.


Yin sleeps, and as you can see she's still healthy enough to recover lost hit points. Not a lot, but in a day or two she'll be good as new.


She wakes up at around 5PM, and after a meal, she switches her clothes around for something less torn. The loot from last night provides her with more than enough new choices, though in the end it's still not exactly the most protective gear. All in all, her new outfit gives her some decent volume space without weighing her down with too much encumbrance. That said, it's still technically daytime, and the warmth of these clothing may not be enough when night falls.

In particular, the head. The bike helmet provides good damage protection, but not enough warmth, especially since the head is still relatively low in hit points and is more vulnerable to the cold. The other parts can be warmed up by adding some extra clothing, but as for the head, Yin looks toward crafting.


At the crafting menu, there's really only one headgear that Yin can make: the turban. Aside from that, while the turban doesn't need the tool, having a sewing needle can also be beneficial for the tailoring skill, as it would enable Yin to do three important things: repair anything made out of cloth and cloth-like materials, reinforce them for better defense values, and re-fit clothing that does not fit to reduce encumbrance.

For now, let's just focus on the turban, maybe two, before night falls.


So, where can Yin find some rags? Well, for one thing, Yin didn't just get those extra blankets to keep warm when she sleeps. By using the butcher command on the blankets, Yin salvages them for rags, enough to make two turbans. Furthermore, these rags are the components in fixing, repairing, or making other cloth materials. That said, other types of clothing require different components. Like the leather pants needing leather patches, or the bike helmet not needing sewing, instead a soldering iron and some plastic chunks.


It doesn't take too long to make two turbans, and with that Yin stays warm. For now, at least. It might be a different story at night, but hopefully it won't put her in a very cold state.


Next focus is food and drink. Keeping most of the perishable food in the cart so they can be eaten. I probably don't need to worry about decay for a while, but just in case. No point in eating the non-perishable food first. That said, eggs last a long time, but cooking them drastically lowers their expiry date. As for the meat Yin has collected... I really want her cooking skill to improve first, so she can make jerky and preserve the meat.


Well, time to move. Just some minor exploration. I don't think it's safe enough to do another night raid, especially with how low Yin's hit points are.

We're going to that pile of dead bodies Yin found after the night raid. On the way, we'll cover some basic foraging stuff.


First, foraging the underbrush. By examining underbrush tiles, a survivor may find something. Sometimes junk, sometimes something edible. Don't expect finding gold or weapons here, it's all just minor stuff, though still of value especially to hungry survivors.


It might take several tries in different bushes before you can find something. In general, better survival skill means better chances, or higher quantities of found stuff.


Now, some plants or trees can be directly examined and there would be stuff to be taken. No hoping for finding something, as there's already something there to take. However, some trees or shrubs require the right season to acquire, like strawberry bushes in the summer or apple trees during autumn. For those, you can get a bunch from the same/tree once per season, while some plants like this poppy flower disappear once examined and taken.

In general, you can get food that way if going to the city is too big of a risk. Some players do like to do just that and let their survivors live a life far away from civilization, or it's new undead version.

That said, looks like there's a zombie nearby. It could be one of the zombies that spawned near the corpse pile (though I want to remind again that human corpses do not become zombies, they just rot). Basically, according to the lore, the cause of zombification had reached the most of the water supply, "infecting" most of humanity in the area. Once people started dying the infected became zombies, while the normal human corpses are the ones who managed to get water from an uninfected water source.

Now, how people started dying en masse is another story, for another time.

By the time I reached the zombie, a couple of dogs had finished it off. However, due to the animal discord trait, they're not too friendly to our heroine either. So, she kills them.

Anyway, since we fought it, let's mention the dog as part of Yin's bestiary. It's a dog. Like a zombie dog, only not undead. D, like it's undead form.



Yin butchers everything. The dogs, the zombie, and what the zombie wore. Due to low survival skill, Yin botchers one dog butchering and only gets bones, and all she could salvage from the clothing is one filthy rag. Could be still useful, so she takes everything but the zombie meat.


We reach the corpse pile Yin found a while back. A couple of zombies around, so probably best to deal with them first.


Ah, they can wait. I slowly nab all the loot, butchering some of the bodies. Clothes are torn up, but can be used and worn in a pinch. There's a cougar fighting the zombies, and I'll deal with one or the other if they get too near.

...like right now.


The cougar. Stronger than dogs, and some zombies. Not a nice creature to face. They can leap around, where they can skip past several times before landing. They do this to quickly reach a target and then run away. B.


I manage to wound the cougar, and it's smart enough to stop its attacks. Unlike zombies, most animals are usually smart enough to stay away once they have been badly wounded. After that, going one-on-one with the zombie cop doesn't take long.

Back to work. Butchering the corpses takes a while, and it's night time when Yin is finished. She also had to cut some of the useless clothing to its components, so as to make room in the cart. It's an okay haul. Some human meat, some cargo pants, and the bones can be used for cooking once Yin gets skilled enough. Once she gets to make a wooden needle, Yin can also begin practicing her tailoring skills, and she can get string from disassembling rags.

Yin also found this:



Aw yeah. Thank you, dead drug carrier. Not the most spectacular gun out there, but it's the first gun Yin has found that she has compatible ammo to use. Definitely keeping both gun and ammo now on Yin's inventory, just in case.

Furthermore, while the night's weather is clear, so far Yin's new clothes are holding up in keeping her warm.

Back at base, Yin deposits her finds, and finds the ammo she stored a while ago and loads it on her submachine gun. Again, it's just an emergency weapon, but Yin feels a little tingly feeling the power of gunfire in her hands. I mean, sure, she doesn't have the skills for it, but at the very least she could give it a try if the situation calls for it.

Well, it's almost 9PM and there's nothing to do...


Maybe a minor night raid, perhaps?


Not the intended targets, but the houses at the edge of the city shouldn't be too concentrated with zombie activity. It should be safe enough... With a little bit of bologna and milk in her gut to fill her stomach, Yin heads out.

Not too far from the city, Yin encounters a couple of zombies to fight.




With no stat loss to worry about due to cold weather, no pain, more mobile gear, and bashing weapons at level 2, Yin makes short work out of the two zombies. Basically a one-on-one situation, but things bode well. 'course, I'm more inclined to fight since this is still practically the city outskirts, otherwise the situation would be more tense in a closed and populated area. Shady Z had a skill book to take. Forgot about those, was supposed to describe the books I found earlier, and then use them... guess that's what's gonna be done next episode.


Heading SE, Yin finds herself in a new house to raid. This one is actually quite close to the first grocery store Yin went through, and by extension the boxing gym is really only a street away. Whether I go there or not is still up in the air.


Eh. House is practically empty. There was a wrist watch in the bedroom, but since Yin has a fancy one, there's no point in taking it. Outside, Yin takes a piece of splintered wood to make a needle, to save her the trouble of smashing a bench to get one.


...somehow I decide to take a risk and head to the boxing gym. Worried about shady zombies, but Yin is already here. Might as well do it.


From experience, boxing gyms don't really contain a lot of useful items. However, the back office usually has a training manual that provides martial arts styles to use, improving unarmed combat. So let's head to the back room and head out.

...well, crap. It's there, but not like I can get it. RUN, YIN! RUN! (post-pic-uploading note: Did not save the picture by accident again: Basically, Yin enters the office in the boxing gym. The training manual for boxing is visible in a bookshelf... because a shocker zombie is standing next to it. Beside it, the wall had been smashed open and several zombies were nearby.)


And she runs north, to the library. If I can't get a martial arts book, at least I can get a number of skill books to increase Yin's skills.


...eegh. That pile of rubble in the top-right corner probably means one of the library walls has been smashed open. Meaning, lots of zombies may be around. *sigh* If I hurry, I could find some books before Yin is noticed.


...and that's about it. Those two books are the only things Yin could salvage here, for reasons to be known immediately after.


Yeah. I had actually taken one extra step forward before the pic, and the sight radius there showed a lot more.

Anyway, the feral runner. The first and weakest in the feral zombie line. Fast, but a lot more resilient than a skeleton but not as evasive. Not too big of a threat, still. C+.


Thankfully, during the salvage mission for books, I already spotted a back door. Some zombies out the back, but compared to the side, and judging the noises from the front as Yin made her escape, this is minimal.

Since it's close, might as well explore the public works up north. ...I just realized from the screenshot a fact I forgot. It's a clear night. Yin's sight radius is bigger than usual, and it's probably the same for the zombies. Crap.


In front of the public works, the entrance is potentially somewhat crowded. However, the the sides and back of the location is only surrounded by a fence Yin can climb on, so that would be safer than going up front.


Yeah. I hate you too, shady zombie.

Taking a breather before heading to the side of the public works. The place has three buildings, two garages that can hold multiple tools, and the main office building which has some food, and work clothes. The office is near the front, and in general the two garages may be more profitable.


No opportunity for rest yet, though... trenchcoat is getting torn up. I regret having Yin go in this deep. A handgun compatible with 9mm rounds is found, though, so at least there's that.


At the side of the public works, Yin climbs over the fence, leaving her shopping cart alone for now.


She immediately finds some good tools. A bucket which can contain a lot of water, a shovel to serve as a spare to the entrenching tool... and a pitchfork.

The pitchfork has decent attack values and is fast. I think pierce damage basically ignores most defenses as well. On the flipside, piercing weapons can get stuck on an enemy, and can't be removed until the enemy is dead.

However, one other nice thing about pitchforks, is that it's long enough to do reach attacks: it can basically hit up to two tiles away from where Yin is standing.


And there's an electric jackhammer. Will explain why this is so useful, but for now I'll go back to the shopping cart and deposit some items before taking this and the bucket.


So a shady zombie managed to break through the fence. On one hand, bad. On the other hand, that was after I deposited the shovel on the cart, helping me bring the shovel inside the public works. Jackhammer taken, baybay.


Some noises heard on the room above, so Yin exits the room. Too risky to explore further, time to exit the public works.

...Think it's time to end this episode with a cliffhanger, haha. Sleepy.

Next time we conclude Yin's second night raid. She's deep in the middle of the city, and there's a lot of zombies out there with less cover of darkness.

Until then, laters!

[aka Cthulhu]

Just a little update and apologies on the slight hiatus. Currently adjusting to a new work schedule, so I didn't really have time to upload the pics.

On the other hand, I'm still playing and writing. In general, I already am up to episode 12, and expect me to start posting them in a few days.

[SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman]

I'll have to read this at some point, if only to get some pointers on how to get good at this game as I usually end up dying very, very quickly.

By the way, what tileset are you using? I really like this style.

[pegasuswarrior]

This game rules. Enjoying it.

[aka Cthulhu]

Mar 6, 2017 14:10:03 GMT -5 SsnakeBite, the No1 Frenchman said:

I'll have to read this at some point, if only to get some pointers on how to get good at this game as I usually end up dying very, very quickly.

By the way, what tileset are you using? I really like this style.

ChestHole. It's available in the options on all the graphical experimental builds.

[aka Cthulhu]

First, two things to note:
-Already have up to episode 18 written and ready to be posted.
-Was gonna post episode 6 much earlier, but internet was rather iffy for a bit, so I couldn't upload the screenshots. So I just played the game and wrote the episodes while waiting for internet to get fixed. By the time it did, about a week ago, I caught a fever and had no energy to upload.

Now that both internet and me is fixed, it's time to start this once again!
---
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Extra note: this sixth episode in particular has some missing pics, and for that, I apologize. Rather confused with uploading sometimes as imgur doesn't always upload things in order, which confuses me on which pic should go where sometimes.

---
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Hey and a yo! It's the sixth episode! Fun fact: I have a harder time trying to think of something to say in these intro parts than the gaming parts!

Er, anyway, let's get started.


So, we left Yin on a rather precarious situation. She's in the middle of the public works, and there's noise suggesting quite a bit of zombies around her.

Main building of the public works is at the west, and Yin can see that there's a shocker brute there, and who knows how many zombies around the place. If I'm correct and the shocker is inside the building, it and the other zombies are probably generating enough noise to gather more. The main exit/entrance of the place is SW, and Yin had tried to enter there first in the previous episode, but turned back due to there being a lot of zombies near the entrance. East, where she sneaked in, has just recently been swarmed, which left Yin to be stranded in the middle.

Yin can probably run down to the entrance/exit, but I suppose it's best to check north first. The north end should have a fence. If the area is empty, Yin might be able to smash through the fence. Or, worst-case scenario, leave the cart and jump over to the other side. There will be more shopping carts to find.


Right. North fences have holes through them. A zombie or two must have smashed it, though that means there might be zombies past that, but I reckon I could still outrun them. Shady zombie behind. No time to fight it, stamina can't be wasted fighting since running is required.


And there are zombies, indeed. At the top-right edge of Yin's line of sight, there's a piece of scrap metal, which suggests there's a car nearby that's being swarmed by Zs. Very bad news indeed, but I can probably run NW and lose them among the houses.

Of course, some new and nasty zombies to discover.


The shrieker zombie. A standard zombie with a shriek ability. Basically, if a shrieker zombie can sense you, like if you're close enough, it will scream and alert zombies nearby. You don't have to be seen, as you only need to be a few tiles away for this to happen. They're just as strong as a regular zombie, but that scream is loud and the potential amount of zombies it can call can be dangerous. C+


The zombie necromancer. Oh man. It's a little weaker than standard Zs, but like their namesake suggests, they can revive any zombie that isn't pulped or butchered. They're smart enough to stay in the back and do just that. On old versions of the game, their revive ability is rarely used, but now they do it as much as possible, and worse, it doesn't take them a long time to do it. You can kill a zombie and the next moment they're back on their feet. Kill two zombies, and stick to fight another and before long all three are back on their feet. Think that's bad enough? Then remember what I just said about them staying in the back. Sometimes you won't see them in your vision, but you'll know they're there due to zombies reviving. Their revive ability has good range, making them a hard target to spot in the darkness. Despite it's weak physical ability, this is one of the enemies in the game with a definite A+ danger. Maybe S, even.

The normal zombie already sees me... really shouldn't have raided the city on such good weather. Run NW, Yin.


Safety across the street. A couple of zombies saw Yin and is probably tracking her, not to mention the shady zombie probably from the public works still chasing. Basically four houses to the west before Yin could be out of the city. Heading straight to the roads will be bad, but I reckon going inside the houses could be safer.

Pass the first house, and reach the second. Time to slow down. Perhaps pry open this door and see what's here...


...nope. Fat zombie too close. Run further west, Yin.


Next house get cornered by three shady Zs. Kill them, take the leather pants of one of them. It's filthy, but there can be a use for it.


Nothing in the house but more shady zombies. Unfortunately, Yin's torso has been infected and is now badly wounded. On the bright side, a shining ray of hope, there was a first-aid kit in the bathroom. No time to use it, as there were more Zs inside. Run outside without getting anything else. At this point, only four map tiles left before Yin reaches the open fields outside the city.

Patience... patience... don't run unless they come close.


Shhhhh... ooot. Up, Yin, up. Cars are dangerous zombie magnets. Avoid them, or use them to your advantage.

Looking through the screenshots as I upload the pics, I notice a zombie Yin hasn't encountered yet. The hazmat zombie: the weakest armored zombie, wearing a hazmat suit that slows them down. Sometimes they drop hazmat suits (duh), and other items belonging to that field. Not a threat. C or a D.


Aaaand Yin is home free. She basically heads north, then NW to avoid a shady zombie and several others, then reaching this house turning SW. Past this house is the fields away from the city. Safe!


Tried to pry open the door, but a shady appeared so Yin ran until she reached the fields. Okay, safe! Time to use the first aid kits...

Then plan to raid the houses on the edge. Barely got anything on this raid. After all the trouble Yin went through, it would suck to not get anything useful. Of course, first to take revenge on this shady...


But shady Zs keep coming. Two at a time, three at most. What I do is to run and step back, until there's only one shady that can hit Yin, and attack it. If another shady shows up next to Yin, step back again, and repeat. Actually works quite well. Can't use the reach attack of the pitchfork, but the tactic is effective enough.


Of course, as you may have noticed on the screenshot, all this backing away leads Yin to another helicopter wreckage. May not need to house hunt, after all... Gotta take care of these zombies, first...


Spoils of war. Managed to grab another handgun that uses 9mm ammo, but before I could check the other bodies (and smash them), a shocker brute appears.

Feh. Didn't even fight the zombie soldier. Oh well. While they're busy among those shady corpses, I stay a distance away from them and slowly check the debris from the wreckage. I could try to lure the shocker into the wreckage and have them slowly die from getting cut up by the debris, though...


And I proceed to do just that. Didn't expect more shady zombies to come, though... and as a result, torso is in critical condition, and right arm is infected again.

This plan is risky, but it does work. All I need is to wait for the shocker to die, then butcher his body. Unlikely due to low survival skills, but shocker brutes and zombies can hold some interesting components...


Finally, the bastard dies, and Yin can proceed to dig up the bodies and check if there's anything interesting to nab. Raiding the houses is out of the question now, considering the damage on Yin, so hopefully there's something nice under the rubble and corpses...


BOOYAH! Butchering the brute didn't net anything useful, and nothing was found under the rubble for a while aside from metal scraps. However, one dig revealed this baby.

The Rivtech RM20 autoshotgun. The rivtech company is the non-mod, fictional weapon company in the game. The guns pack respectable power, and they basically have some high-tech caseless rounds. Once you find the (admittedly rare) rivtech book, their ammunition can be made with requirements that are far less strict than homemade ammo from regular guns. Plus, this is a shotgun, and rivtech shotguns have surprisingly good range. Double plus, the gun is loaded. Yes, oh yes. Yesss...



Well, from all the yelling Yin did to lure the shocker back and forth the rubble, some more zombies show up in the area. Managed to take a clean army jacket that fits Yin. Good thing, too, as a shady zombie managed to destroy the leather jacket Yin wore.

Too many zombies, in fact. Two more shady Zs show up, but Yin makes short work of them due to the undead duo standing on the rubble. A few more digs, and the risk becomes too great in staying. Time to move. A bottle of disinfected does provide a way out of fixing the infected arm (again).


So, here's the loot I managed to gather in the wreckage. Another handgun, an army helmet (better than the bike helmet, much better), a signal flare that has been converted to shotgun ammo, a sewing kit (this probably was from one of the zombies than the wreckage, as sewing kits are not in the pool of items that spawn in a wreckage, I think), and a bunch of filthy clothing that I can butcher for parts, or use as tailoring training. That's about it. In some ways, not as much as the first night raid, but a great haul nonetheless. Time to head back to base and take some well earned rest.


In a surprising turn of events, Yin gets the rare instance of an infection getting better on its own. I guess drinking milk and eating nothing but fruits recently helped her health. In any case, back to the camp.


...of course, because the game seems to have a sense of humor, the weather worsens and lowers visibility just as Yin finishes the raid. Perfect weather to sneak around, if not for the fact that it's almost sunrise.


Oh well. Back at camp, Yin eats a little to fill herself up, then heads off to bed. She'll sort out her loot when she wakes up, and then she'll begin practicing some skills after that. For a few days, Yin will rest until she's definitely well enough to fight at full strength. She heads off to bed, snuggling that autoshotgun she just found.

Now, it's a short episode, but I reckon it's the perfect time to end this and continue later.

So, next time it's gaining skills and recovering hit points. Considering the bad risks I took for the second night raid, I think it would be wise to stay safe until Yin's in better shape.

Until then, laters!

[aka Cthulhu]

Hallo there! Next episode of Cataclysm DDA is here!


Yin wakes up, not quite feeling well on her chest. She has some disinfectants to help ease her torso wounds, but it's probably best to save those for an emergency. All she has to cover her chest is the army jacket; basically not enough warmth to counter the afternoon chill of Spring. She does have a wool poncho, and while it's an outer layer garment like the jacket, a tiny bit of extra encumbrance shouldn't be worried about for now. Aside from that, the bike helmet gets replaced by the army helmet. It offers better protection, so there's no question on what should be used. Head encumbrance doesn't have an effect. The only penalty head encumbrance gives is limiting the amount of headgear that can be worn, so go on ahead and use as much as possible.


Anyway, there's a fair amount of surplus clothing, and some filthy ones. I reckon this is the perfect time to hone Yin's tailoring skills.


Tailoring, as the name suggests, covers the act of repairing, reinforcing, and creating clothes. For most part, just clothes. More protective armor is more on the lines of the fabrication skill, though some clothing made via tailoring can still provide decent protection. Better skills means higher chance to repair clothing, and maintaining the clothing being worn is a lot easier than trying to find replacements. Tailoring can also refit clothing that does not fit, reducing encumbrance penalties.

A sewing kit and string is required for tailoring. String can be normal string, plant fiber, or sinew from animals and humans. For standard string, you can butcher a rag for string, and rags can be butchered from most clothing. Some clothing provide leather, felt, or fur, which doesn't produce string. Basically, you can repair/refit anything as long as you have the spare parts (rag/leather/felt/fur patches) that match the clothing to be tailored.

In old versions, sewing can be done easily without skill levels, but now you actually need the skill, otherwise you'll just damage the clothing, eventually destroying it. Refits, and repairing damaged clothing has a very low chance of success in low skill levels, but you can still practice the skill and gain experience despite failure - which is why I nabbed some filthy zombie clothes. They can still be used for components, or practice.


Some clothing items can be disassembled instead of butchered. It takes some time, but it usually provides more components, such as string and rags at the same time. Disassembling certain items can also give the survivor the knowledge on how to create them. A little bit of reverse engineering, and it's not just for clothes. However, the recipe will only be learned if the respective skill is high enough.


I only get two rags and no thread from it, and Yin lacks the skills to know the recipe. Still, practice is practice.


Four cargo pants get disassembled. Total amount of thread acquired: 0. Total amount of rags: 4. Not a great result, but her tailoring skill is 44%. Almost halfway there to leveling up to level 1! Aside from that, the second bottle of milk Yin has is getting old. Hopefully she finishes it all before it rots.


Yin cuts up the filthy clothing, then proceeds to disassembling the rags. Not a lot of interesting stuff, so let's skip to the part where I finish.


Only two filthy rags are disassembled, which provides 200 units of thread all in all. Might as well start tailoring practice with that amount. Our target, the damaged winter coat Yin once wore. Chances are it'll get destroyed, but it will provide experience.


It doesn't take long for the sewing kit to run out of thread. However, that's just the thread the kit is loaded with, which amounts to 50 units. Still got 200 units of (filthy) thread that can be reloaded. Furthermore, some results are showing. Tailoring has leveled up, and with it dexterity gets a permanent boost of 1. I think, for certain skills, the first level provides a point in stat, but it would take much higher levels for more stat gain. Like, Yin already has multiple skills related to combat, but so far she only got one extra point in strength, since she started the game at 10 strength and it's only 11 right now.

Magically, reloading the filthy thread in the kit makes it clean. No longer a problem for the squeamish Yin, then. Also, cooking with rotten food as an ingredient results in a rotten meal... most of the time. If the cooked meal is non-perishable, while the ingredients are rotten, the result will be magically unrotten food. Kinda an exploit.


Looking at the crafting menu, Yin can now make cargo shorts, though basically all it does is have her cut the lower legs of the cargo pants. She still has two cargo pants; one she's wearing, and a spare. Both are damaged... but using the cargo pants to create the shorts create magically fixed shorts. Let's go with that. The shorts have a little less volume than the cargo pants, but wearing two will just about give a little more. For coverage, Yin wears a pair of jeans. So, basically, she's wearing three pants at the same time, plus underwear. It encumbers her legs a little, but nothing too bad.

Turns out she doesn't need the jeans as she's wearing leather pants already. Still, three pants and underwear. Surprisingly little encumbrance at 14 on the legs (for the record, less than ten has no penalties, with every ten making the penalty worse).

Night falls. The milk and a human stomach in the item pile has become rotten. Still have some food and drink so it's nothing to worry about, but as for the human flesh I should hurry and improve Yin's cooking skills before it goes bad. As for the rotten milk, Yin will dump the contents later and find water.

Using a brazier, and some of the logs in the campsite, Yin lights a fire. Can't craft most things in the dark. The light can be a beacon for other creatures, but since Yin is far away from the zombie-filled city, I reckon it's safe to use. Anyway, back to crafting.

These three items have a difficulty level of 1. Like I said before, if difficulty level matches the skill level of the survivor, it becomes an easy training method. Yin might wear all three on her as well, since they provide warmth and protection with low encumbrance.


Failed to make the safety glasses, and ran out of materials for the stockings. However, still some spare clothing to butcher. Due to the rain, fire kept getting removed, so went and used a flare to light the camp for a bit. For now, practice, practice, practice.

Looking at the possible crafting items, Yin goes and makes multiple leg warmers. They're less warm but less encumbering than stockings, and take less rags to make. Sometimes she fails, sometimes she succeeds. She also makes one arm warmer, to keep that part of her warm. Eventually this brings her tailoring skill to level 2.


This opens up a lot more crafting options for Yin now. Some clothing items she has, like the turban and the cargo shorts, have a chance to be reinforced now. Still, not every clothing can be refit and repaired yet, so she needs more skill in tailoring to be able to do so.

Ya know, I'll just skip ahead until Yin has reached a level of skill I'm satisfied with, or if her supplies run out. Whichever ones happen first.


A zombie did manage to sneak in. Yin makes short work of it. At the very least, the Z has some clothing to be butchered for parts.


And here we go. With tailoring being trained, Yin manages to expand her equipment to better serve her in the coming days. She has reached level 3, and with it gave her multiple choices for clothing to keep her relatively warm and protected. Here's a short summary of what she wears. On the screenshot, the clothing items with a darkened green color have been reinforced:

Torso: Not as protected as I would like. Yin does have the MBR vest with ceramic plating to replace the army jacket as an outer layer clothing to protect her torso. However, that would lessen her arm protection as the jacket also covers that area as well. Both are outer layer clothing, so wearing both will encumber her. One of the effects of torso and arm encumbrance is melee penalties; increasing attack cost for the former, and stamina drain on the latter. However, I can remove the ceramic plating on the vest, cutting the encumbrance by half. Less protection, but surprisingly still good. After all, it's still made of kevlar.
Long underwear top (made at level 3)
T-shirt (made at level 3)
Fanny pack (found)
Army jacket (found)
Wool poncho (found)

Head: Army helmet is more than enough protection. Unless I use the MBR vest, this part is the most protected. The other clothing here just serves as warmth.
Two cotton hats (made)
Turban (made)
Army helmet (found)

Eyes: Only has the makeshift sunglasses. Basically a bone covering the eyes with a slit to see in. Protects eyes from bright sunlight. To be hardcore, used human bones to create this.

Mouth: Knit scarf. Started the game with this one. Not really defending the mouth (and by extension, the head) from physical damage, but it keeps Yin warm. Need to find better environmental protection to protect against smoke.

Arms: Similar to the torso, a little bogged down by clothing, but somewhat better protection. The leather vambraces offer decent values in defense, but it doesn't quite cover the entire arm, so I'm hesitant in removing the army jacket in favor of the MBR vest.

Arm warmers, long underwear top (replacement for the destroyed one), leather vambraces, and army jacket. All but the army jacket was made.

Hands: Light and fingerless gloves. Just to keep Yin warm. I could make bone armor gauntlets, but they're quite encumbering, and more encumbrance further slows down melee attacks. An alternative is to make leather armor gauntlets, which offer okay protection but not as much coverage as the bone armor ones. The fancy watch is also in this area, but doesn't really do anything in terms of defense or encumbrance.

Legs: Panties, leather pants, cargo shorts. Cargo shorts were made. Not a lot of protection, but should be enough. Slightly encumbered, slowing the run speed a little, but not too badly at the current setup.

Feet: Socks that Yin started off with, winter boots replaced with the hardcore bone armor boots. Like the makeshift glasses, this one was made from human bone. Sadly, the game does not make a distinction whether the bones were human or animal. A cannibal like Yin would probably be happy wearing her prey... even if her prey so far have been bodies that were already dead when she found them. Anyway, the winter boots actually have more defense than the bone armor, but is very encumbering, slowing Yin's run. However, the bone armor boots have better acid and environmental protection, so it balances out.


Anyway, some stuff happened, as you can see. During the day, a couple of zombies attacked. They were just near the area and wandered in. None of them were a threat since it's a one-on-one fight. After that, it was several wild dogs. The dogs were in the area way back when Yin found the campsite, but at the time they kept their distance. I suppose animal discord kicked in and they became aggressive, so Yin had to skewer them.


Aside from the clothing, Yin also managed to tailor up a leather funnel. By setting it on the same tile as an empty container in an outdoor area, when it rains the funnel can collect rainwater into the container. Then, by cleaning it via boiling, Yin now has a supply of water to drink.

That more or less concludes tailoring, and Yin can get some well-earned rest. The episode is not over yet, as Yin needs to heal up, and perhaps acquire more skills through reading books. That way, the next episode can be focused on exploration and raiding the city. For now, sleep.


Morning, day 5. Time to learn some skills! ...but first, mopping up the area, taking care of the zombies that have wandered too close. Best to do it as soon as you spot one, since if you leave one alone and if more start wandering in, the lone zombie can become a horde that can't be dealt with.

With the area cleared out, it's time to hit the books. But first, Yin cleans the campsite and sorts out the stuff scattered around the place. Also, it's time to unload the TEC-9 and give the bullets to one of the two handguns.


You can compare items easily to figure out which is the best item to use. The Beretta M9 is more or less similar to the Glock M9 in stats. However, the former has better damage bonuses for just a tiny bit of more recoil, so that's what Yin will keep around her.


Furthermore, Yin crafts a sling. A little mini-weapon where ammo can be plentiful: just find rocks. A sling can come in handy in case Yin wants to hunt small animals, and may even be useful at attacking larger targets. For small animals, the sling is essential as larger weapons can pretty much destroy the body, leaving nothing to butcher. I'll leave finding rocks later, since Yin is gonna get busy with reading.

Here's all the available books Yin can read. One of them no longer has anything to be learned from, while one is just a relatively useless morale booster. To Serve Man, the cannibal cookbook is still too advanced for Yin to read, requiring her to learn a level or two before being able to use it. Also, some of these books have crafting recipes. Reading the book can help Yin memorize the recipe, but those recipes are already available if Yin has the books around her. If she crafts those items in the books, she'll be able to memorize them as well.

Now, let me just cover all the things that what the skills can do. I'm not mentioning all the skills, just the ones with books to learn from. Also, items highlighted in yellow means it won't increase skill but still have recipes to memorize, blue means some skill can still be learned from it, while gray has nothing else to teach:


Tailoring: Already covered that.
Unarmed combat: Affects how good a survivor can fight without weapons - though certain weapons like brass knuckles can be used for unarmed combat. You need a little unarmed combat (about level 3), before most martial arts skills can be used.
Computers: More skill equals more ease when using and hacking computers. Not a lot of applications for this, but on the times that its needed higher skill prevents things from blowing up in your face - and for certain things, I'm not being literal about that.
Cooking: Better food recipes, with many mid-level ones preserving perishable food so they won't rot. The highest cooking skill recipes is pretty much chemistry, from medicine to... other formulas.
Driving: When driving, low or no skill causes the car to swerve around. Not good when running away or driving through a forest.
Speaking: Makes communicating with NPCs easier. Random NPCs can be very wary of people, and good speaking skills can get them to lower their weapons. Can be a lifesaver if you run into a wary NPC with a rifle or a shotgun.
Mechanics: Multiple applications, but the most important thing is the ability to repair and create vehicles. In old versions, once a character can repair cars, training this skill becomes super easy. To make it less game-breaking, the rate of learning while repairing vehicles has been severely nerfed. You need high skills to install all the extra stuff that makes a deathmobile live up to its name.


To avoid the rain, Yin stays in the comfort of her bed and reads. Unless something happens, the next screenshot would be the part where Yin has finished reading all the available books.

So, day 6, nothing in particular happens, but Yin manages to reach level 2 in cooking, enough for her to learn from the cannibal cookbook. First, she learned from the Glamopolitan skill book to put her cooking to level 1. Then she cooks. Some boiled eggs, then some johnnycakes (fried bread; cooking oil and flour/cornmeal). All the eggs were eaten, while the johnnycake still had a few portions left. On the bright side, them cakes can last up to a month before going bad. After that, she learns from the cannibal cookbook, allowing her to reach level 3, enough skill to create jerky.


Now, one piece of jerky isn't very filling, but some food items provide more portions than its main components. Like the jerky would have four servings for every chunk of human flesh. So, 20 chunks is 80 portions. A decent amount, but if Yin only eats that she'd burn out the supply very quickly. Not to mention make her thirsty. And put her nutritional balance at risk. Still, no point in letting meat rot. There's better ways to preserve the human flesh, but right now this is the only choice.


It takes a while to craft it all, but soon enough Yin has a ton of jerky, both human and animal. She'll definitely enjoy the snack later once she runs out of perishable food. For now, it's night and she's tired. Her learning will continue when it's daytime.


Day 7. More and more zombies wandering it. Even without making noise, wandering hordes do wander around. From the blinking Z icons, they travel in different directions and there's a chance that a survivor like Yin might encounter them. Still, no point in worrying. Best to keep reading until everything has been read.

And the days go by... Think of it as a training montage.

Day 10. Yin has finished, she steps out of her small room and surveys the surrounding area...


Aw, yeah. Look who's ready to rock! Yin has been busy, not just from reading books, but swatting away Zs whenever they come too close. About five or six a day, though thankfully one at a time. In general, there wasn't much choice but to stay in the room 90% of the time to avoid detection.

The stats have been increased, for most part. Starting the game at 10/8/8/8, it's now 12/10/10/8. Pretty good stats. Am somewhat worried about it going to high, but I selected the mod so it can't be helped.

Yin had been burning through her supplies as she spent a lot of time consuming them all. No more perishable food. Boiling water can also be only be done during the day. Otherwise, the light from the fire would have tipped off the horde to Yin's location. Believe me, there's a horde out east, and since then I've been debating if Yin should leave soon.

There's a fair amount of zombies piled up... and that's just near the entrance of her room. More are out there...


So, while it's not a night raid, after Yin gets some rest it will be time to find a new home for her to live in. The campsite has provided her with a lot of safety, but now it's not as safe. While Yin spent her time honing skills, that's also time spent for zombies to slowly evolve. In time, there would be even stronger zombies, and with a horde so close by it's time to find a less hostile area to sleep it.

Until then, laters!

[aka Cthulhu]

New version for the next episode, baybay! Yin now exists within the realm of 0.C-6289, because apparently, there was a slight map gen bug in the version I started this LP with. In any case, it's still the same game and world, though the new version probably has some slight changes and fixes. May have bugs as well, but that can't be helped.

Anyway, new episode is go!

PREVIOUSLY! Yin had finished recovering from various wounds from a rather shoddy second attempt at a night raid. During the recuperating process, she had also spent some quality time studying books covering different subjects in order to hone several of her skills. Now that she's done and read through all the books she had acquired so far, she's ready to get back to stealing stuff from the city to fill up her base.

There's only one teeny problem...


During the past couple of days where Yin stayed in the vicinity of the camp, zombies have been wandering in. Most likely it's part of a horde, which wanders around, since the campsite is quite far from the nearest city. Zombies in the map can then track by sight, sound, or scent, so once in a while they'll come close enough and find Yin. The ones she had fought were mostly mundane cannon fodder, but it won't be long before the nastier types arrive...

So basically, it's time to abandon this place. The camp has treated Yin well, but if a larger group were to discover Yin, she won't have much to work with. I mean, hell, the only room with stable walls is the toilet which Yin had converted into a bedroom. It's not exactly a good image for defense... So, while things are still relatively safe, Yin will leave and begin exploring beyond the visible map for a new place to stay in.

A decent amount of items have been amassed during Yin's two night raids. Sadly, Yin and the shopping cart can't really carry them all to a one-way trip to who knows where, so I gotta decide which items Yin has to bring or leave in the campsite.

Before that, I reckon it would be smart to clear the area out. Kill a couple of zombies, so Yin won't have to be bothered by them during her exit. Checking the map, something interesting is seen.


An NPC, just a little SE where Yin is. Encountering an NPC can be beneficial, but alternatively it could also be dangerous.

Now, explaining everything about NPCs would take a while, so I'll just explain things when needed. For now, I'll just mention the NPC as a potential hostile, like all the hostile creatures that Yin had seen so far.

Like player characters, NPCs have multiple body parts with their own HP bar. This can make killing them take a while, since either the head or the torso has to be destroyed, and there's really no means to target specific body parts. Now, as for how dangerous a hostile NPC can be, comes down to what weapon they're wielding. An NPC wielding a baseball bat is a nuisance. An NPC wielding a shotgun or a rifle can kill you in one shot. Thinking about it, a baseball bat can still do quite a lot of damage and kill a player character with ease. Be very wary about them. Still, they can provide decent loot, and is the main source of human flesh for cannibal characters.

Despite the danger, let's scout the NPC and see what's up. He or she might be friendly, after all.


So, Chung Dietrich... fighting some zombies, and wielding a crossbow. So, once an NPC is visible, always check them out first with the view screen. That way, you can see what they're wielding, so you can quickly assess if communicating with them is a good or bad idea.

Honestly, for now I'd rather not talk to Chung. Still, Yin desires that crossbow in Chung's hands. Since he's being attacked by Zs, might as well let them do the job and mop up the survivors afterwards.

That said, Yin doesn't have the luxury of dawdling around. Gotta take care of some Zs on her own.


Chung seems to want to talk to Yin, who continues to give him the silent treatment. A smoker zombie is posing a problem for the NPC, as smoker zombies have great evasion against ranged weapons. Furthermore, being caught in the smoke can cause the victim to cough and slow down, making the fight harder.


Personally, I'm rooting for Chung. If he can't kill the smoker Z, then Yin will have to deal with it. Aside from that, Yin encounters a new zombie type:

The swimmer zombie. A rather sluggish zombie on land, and pools of water aren't that common... not to mention that fighting underwater is generally a bad idea anyway, so I haven't really fought them on their natural habitat. On land, they get a definite D. That said, they're a fairly common zombie type, and since the description states that they wear swimwear (and drop them as well), it's rather odd that so many beach/pool goers have been zombified.


Due to the smoke, it's hard to tell if Chung has died from the fight, but considering that the smoker zombie is heading toward Yin, the chances are likely that another victim of the cataclysm has been claimed.

You suck, Chung. You didn't even scratch the smoker!


No choice but to fight. And win. Going melee against a smoker isn't too bad. It's only when you fight others at the same time that makes them so problematic. And the coughing, of course. Sucks to cough from zombie smoke in a night raid. Also, the smoker zombie is one of the four or five zombies in the game that don't leave a body. They pretty much explode.

Catching smoker zombie causes temporary stat loss in strength and dexterity. Stamina as well gets affected, I think. The longer the survivor is in the smoke, the more severe the effect. On the other hand, having proper environmental protection prevents the survivor from catching the smoke effects. Yin would need a gas mask, which sadly she doesn't have. Eh. She'll live.


Inspecting the previously alive body of Chung, Yin is free to take the items (and butcher him for meat, of course). Okay loot. Bandages to heal damage, while the diazepam might be helpful in case Yin is affected by her jittery trait (not sure on that one). The crossbow and its wooden bolts will be useful, while the armored fingerless gloves is a good replacement for Yin's standard fingerless gloves.

Looking at the trail of blood, I reckon a zombie must have bitten Chung on either the head or the torso, and he more or less bled to death. Aside from infections, certain attacks can cause a bleeding effect on the player. The bleeding part does constant damage, and you can use a number of things to stop the bleeding. The bleeding can stop by itself, but sometimes it won't, and if untreated can put hit points down to zero.

It's probably the bleeding that done Chung in. Still, you suck Chung, for being so useless against the smoker Z.

So, time to sort out Yin's luggage and leave...


But because I'm a fool, I figured it would be a good idea for Yin to butcher the dead zombies to train her survival skills. When she finished, it was already midnight, making leaving now potentially harder since she won't see dangers from far away.


I had somewhat sorted out her going-away gear. The shopping cart, compared to other cargo carrying movable boxes, really can't carry that much stuff, leaving Yin bringing the bare essentials.

Weapons, essential tools, some food and medical supplies. Hurts having to leave most of the guns, and depending on where Yin finds a safe place, backtracking may be too much trouble. One thing for certain is this: once her current food supply runs out, she'd better hurry in finding more otherwise it'll lead to quite a bit of problems.


Not sure if leaving in the middle of the night is safe, but Yin does it anyway. For now, first stop is that motel down south. See if the place can be a safe area. Rest, or maybe explore, in the morning, and we'll see what happens after that. The area will have zombies, no doubt about that, but perhaps going in at night will be useful as Yin can stealthily clear out the area. If there are nasty zombies there, then she'll run, and follow the road connecting the motel to who-knows-where.


It takes an hour to be close enough to the motel to know that it would be a bad idea to clear out the place. Shocker brute at night? No thank you.


Time to hit the road. The map really won't reveal anything but the map tile that Yin is currently walking through, but there's not much choice but to stumble around blindly now. That said, if you pay attention to the road you can somewhat guess one thing. Once the road starts to have pavement on the side, that more or less means that you're nearing a building or a city.

Thirty minutes later, and Yin feels tired. Heading out in the morning becomes more and more a better idea than going out at night.

Whoa there. More or less a road barricade. It won't be wise to turn a flashlight on, as who knows what might lurk in the dark.

Another corpse pile. Some sort of military barricade, it seems, judging from the loot on the dead bodies.

As desirable as the items are... like despite the damage, some of those items are good if they can be repaired, Yin has no room in her cart to carry any of them. I'll have to make note on the map of this place, just in case.


Groping around the darkness, since having a light on might alert whatever is in the area to Yin's presence... anyway, Yin encounters another body and a vehicle. The body has something useful: a packed M72 LAW. Basically a one-time use rocket. Unpack LAW, fire, and kablooie. Something to take, keeping it in the inventory.


The car seems to be in good shape. Still, Yin won't be driving yet. Personally, I feel that cars are unwise to use on the early game. With no way to sustain the vehicle yet, and no place to keep it, and low driving skills in general, it could potentially put Yin in a more tricky situation.

That said, Yin can still make use of this. With the toolbox and Yin's mechanics skill, she can remove a part from the vehicle to use in upgrading her humble shopping cart.


So, Yin removes the opaque door, which brings Yin a steel frame to use. Then, she then removes the shopping cart basket. Now, steel frames are the basic body parts of most car, and aside from an opaque door, you can use it to create different car sections. In this case, Yin uses the steel frame on the cart to make a box. I figured explaining how is better than less time-consuming than show it picture by picture.


Now, why a box, you ask? For one thing, a car box has slightly more volume space than the shopping cart basket. More volume to carry stuff around is better. Aside from a box, there are other things that can be turned into a wheelbarrow with higher carrying capacity. Unfortunately, Yin lacks the tools to install them, basically welding tools and welding goggles.

Surprisingly, you can't install a shopping cart basket without welding tools.


As you can see, the upgraded cart has about 18 points more volume than the cart basket, which only has 50. However, as you can see in the screenshot, something is making noise, and it's not a very comforting sound to hear in the dark.

From experience, most barricades have turrets set up. Anything with guns are bad news to survivors. However, turrets also have a light installed on them, so their firing system can more or less spot the targets. No lights in this barricade, which means no turrets. No NPCs on the map screen either. Meaning... there's only about two candidates left that fire guns in the darkness, and both are DANGEROUS.


They can't see in the dark, as I recall, meaning a zombie may have encountered it up close, and it fired. Either way, Yin will not survive if see sees the thing firing the gun, so sneak away as fast as possible... though might as well loot some of the dead bodies due to the cart's extra space.


Something exploded. It could be the nasty thing that was firing a while ago. Still not comforting news if it is. Since that would mean something, or a lot of somethings, must have destroyed it. Now, if that's the case, the explosion may have killed the attackers in return, but no point in betting on that outcome. Just quietly butcher bodies Yin, then get the heck out.


Alas, some of the bodies are past their expiration date. I could turn them into jerky before they completely rot into nothing, but I kinda don't want to use that since it's more or less an exploit. Plus, Yin left her seasonings back at the campsite.


It took some time to upgrade the cart. It's 4:30AM, so the sun would rise in about an hour or two. Perhaps waiting until then would be wise. Obviously, this was done far away from the barricade, to be safe.


Back at the barricade, no sign of the gun-firing being. Maybe it was destroyed. Not a lot of zombies either, so not much point staying. Time to continue moving.

Some shady zombie corpses found, but Yin wasn't the killer.


Also, since it's daylight now, more can be seen on the map, even more if the roads weren't surrounded by so many trees.


Now, these zombies, these zombies Yin is definitely the killer. Anyway, compared to the game I played half a year ago, it feels that more zombies seem to be spawning on the road. Not really sure, since it's possible that Yin might be near a location.


More dead bodies, some of them by Yin's hand. In any case, here you see a giant insect. A little bit of lore. Some animals, in particular insects, are not affected by the cause of zombification in the standard way. Instead of coming back from the dead, the insects instead grow giant in size, which can be somewhat bad news to the unprepared.

More zombies, but this time Yin finds a place: another motel! Hopefully no shocker brute this time...


If Yin can kill the zombies here, she'll finally have a place to sleep. For one night, or many nights, that would depend on the location around this place. Can't really find out unless she tries. Also, new zombie.


The Z-9. A zombie police dog. Slightly better defense than other zombie dogs, but not by much. D. Sometimes they still have their kevlar harness, which could be butchered for components.

Anyway, Yin can clear out this place, provided no super strong zombie is around. She has decent protection, and the pitchfork is very potent. Of course, tactics need to be employed: basically lure out the zombies that sees Yin. Never engage the entire group. One at a time, three at most.

Just keep calm, kill them far from the group, and loot whatever looks useful. If there's a zombie Yin can't handle, then at least she would have gotten something out of it.


Slowly but surely, Yin clears out the area around the motel and pushes forward. It's not over yet, but things are looking good.


Damn. It's just one brute... I think Yin can do it, but the spitter zombie is worrying.


Brute hasn't reached Yin yet, and the spitter missed its shot. Best to kill it before it spits again.


The brute seems to have forgotten about Yin. Meanwhile, the zombie soldier takes a long time to kill. Maybe the piercing of the pitchfork is incompatible, as the thing only does 1 or 2 damage on non-critical hits.



The zombie soldier drops a nice item. The military ID card. Won't spoil it's use, but it can potentially give good items.


Wish the dogs weren't there, but it's time to face the brute. Hopefully, the motorbike will slow the brute down, since it's an obstacle tile if someone steps on it.


...ow.


Amusingly, Yin lands on a chair. She struggles to stand up, but manages to do so after a couple of tries. And yes, survivors do struggle to stand after attacks like that. At the very least, Yin had only hit a wooden wall. Stronger material, like concrete or a car, would have been nasty. Still, she manages to pull through and kill the brute. However, there's still several zombies to fight, and there's no more energy to run.


Oh, the day just keeps getting better and better. While resting, a shocker shows up.


Switch to the cudgel. The pitchfork conducts electricity, while the cudgel doesn't.



Still, it won't help avoid the initial shock blast. Unlike the spitter the blast is more accurate in hitting a survivor, and the sparks will jump around random tiles before they fizzle out.


Like the spitter zombie, it takes some time before the shocker can do their ranged attack. Perfect time for Yin to attack and kill it.


Well, seems like Yin has cleared out the motel! Of course, just to be sure, she has to check the area first and see if there are more zombies around.


There's a second floor. Less zombies here. Anyway, the odd tiles represent open air. If you want a shortcut to the first floor, step on one. Obviously, that's not good for anyone's physical health.


And we're done! No more zombies within the vicinity of the motel. Yin has a new home, at least for now. She's beaten up, but she'll live. She still has some disinfectant to fix up her arm and leg, and soon she can take some well deserved rest.

Of course, she still has to either smash or butcher all the corpses lying around. She can sleep after than. Then, when she wakes up, she'll have to gather all the loot she's found, and maybe clean up the motel. Might as well live in a clean environment, after all.

All of that, as you may have guessed, will happen next time.

So until then, laters!

[aka Cthulhu]

Yeah, yeah, yeah! It's time for episode 9!

On the previous episode, Yin said goodbye to her campsite base and hit the road in search of a new place to stay. She encountered a motel which seems like a promising base area, but that remains to be seen. With a little effort, she had managed to remove the zombie denizens lurking in the motel, but her job's not quite finished yet. She has to make sure that all the bodies have been smashed up so they won't rise back up.


In any case, now's the perfect time to tend to Yin's needs. Food, water, and cleaning up her infected wounds. I'm tempted to just cauterize Yin's arm and leg and hope the wound gets cleaned that way, but since I'm not 100% certain that there are no more hostiles in the surrounding area, it's too big of a risk to take.

The consumption from human flesh provides a decent boost to morale, on top of the morale boost from eating the human meal. Combined, it gives a far bigger boost than what the standard animal meat jerky provides. Now, if Yin was no cannibal, the morale would be going in a negative direction. In general, survivors can survive without the need for human flesh, but being able to do so adds flavor to the game.


Time to mop up the bodies. Butchering them would be ideal as that trains survival skill, but since Yin is feeling fatigued it would be wise to just smash them all up, which takes less time. Over time, the pulped bodies will decay into nothing, but that takes several days. Once Yin has slept, she could still butcher them for training.


It doesn't take long to pulp the zombies. Yin had deposited her stuff in one of the motel rooms, and since it's still bright outside, I reckon it would be better to wait for night before sleeping. Time to collect all the items scattered throughout the motel, and see if there's anything worth taking.


First things first: water. Yin has run out of clean water, so she takes the gallon bottle of rainwater Yin had brought from the campsite, acquired through using a funnel to collect the rainwater, and boils it. Now, in the motel, there's a swimming pool that can serve as an infinite source of water. I'm assuming that the rain refills the pool from time to time. Anyway, Yin can collect as much water as she can from the pool, so she won't be needing a funnel for now.


Now, time to loot the place. First that ambulance at the motel entrance. There's a vacutainer and some bandages. The latter is always useful for healing while the former I think doesn't have much use in the game yet aside from being a very small container.


Butcher the bodies, take everything, deposit the things in the room Yin is staying in when the cart is full, then repeat process until everything has been taken. Sort them all out later. For now, I want this place tidy.


Another brute. Yin's feeling gung-ho since killing her first brute, but this doesn't stop the new brute from sending her flying. Thankfully, there's no walls in sight for Yin to crash through. In any case, Brutes are not a big problem one-on-one after a survivor has gained some skills and is equipped with better gear.


Not quite finished with cleaning the motel, but since it's already dark, it would be better to wait until morning to continue. Yin heads to bed.


After about a couple of hours after waking up, Yin has finished cleaning up the general vicinity. Basically, every piece of zombie that was butchered, and whatever filthy clothing and items they had on them, plus the scatted stuff around the motel and the broken bits of the building, have been moved around. The broken and zombie bits have been placed on the brazier, to be disposed of by the fire since Yin doesn't have a use for them yet. The clothing will be sorted out later, since they can be cleaned and used - though Yin still lacks the required item to do so.

Now, I haven't checked everything the motel has, and since the first round of cleaning has been done, it's time to get all of it.


First, the janitor's closet. Some odds and ends here. A soda can stove kit which can function as a fire source for cooking without needing a lit fire. A skill book to train the fabrication skill, and some bleach which could be emptied and the bottle be served as a clean water container. The use of bleach is more or less a mid to late game component for many chemical stuff. Right now it has no useful functions.


Next stop, the vending machines at the motel lobby. This is the reason why I hoard cash cards, as Yin can then use them to purchase stuff at vending machines.


A lot of these is pretty much junk food. The pork sticks, fruit leather, fried seeds and jerky can still be filling, while the fruit juices can be actually healthy, and since Yin has been on a jerky diet the past few days, a little bit of health to balance things out is nice.

Technically, you can smash the vending machines and simply steal the food. However, the vending machines are rigged with alarms, and right now the last thing Yin wants is unwanted attention. Anyway, Yin takes everything. The juices Yin will consume first, as they are perishable goods.


Lastly, Yin takes the stuff in the other motel rooms. It's nothing much. Some non-skill books, and some pillows and blankets. At least the latter two can be used for Yin's own bed.


Anyway, here's what Yin has found in the motel, and it's former denizens. This doesn't have the tainted meat and bones taken from the zombies, as those had already been disposed of.

Gonna give a brief summary of each pile, which has been sorted out by category, going from left to right:

First is the tools. Some scissors, the vacutainer, a bubble wrap which can be used as a very poor alert system is something steps on it, and the soda can stove kit. Nothing super useful.

Next is clothing. Most of it was taken from zombies, so Yin can't wear them yet. Once Yin has some soap, she can then clean the clothing, allowing her to wear it. Some of them are rather useful, so it would be good if Yin finds some soon.

Third pile is food. Most of it is the junk food in the vending machines. Again, most of the fruit juice is perishable, so best to drink them instead of the clean water to not waste them. Aside from that, there were a few wild animals around the motel that have been killed by zombies, and I can cook up the meat before they go bad.

Next up, medical supplies. Nothing much aside from the bandages. Some recreational stuff.


Then we have the books. Two morale increasers... books as morale increasers are not very efficient. Reading takes time, and it doesn't take that long for the morale increase to go away. Anyway, the Bowyer's Buddy can increase fabrication, but Yin does not have enough skill to learn from the book.

Now, there's also the tourist map. Using the map can mark down locations all across the map, even in unseen areas. Very useful for exploration. There are different maps out there that point out different locations. The tourist map, for example, maps out certain attractions and rest stops. Might as well use it now and see what's out there.


And voila. It doesn't reveal everything, but now we more or less have a better idea on where things are.

If you look at the roads, you can generally have a good idea on what some places are. The area SW with lots of intersecting roads is most likely a city, while the place east would be a small town. In some places where the road ends usually means something is located there as well. Now, some areas are not connected by roads, but in general you can tell where most locations are via roads.

Anyway, back on the item piles. Next pile is the misc. stuff. Just bits and pieces of things that don't really belong in other category. Some of these stuff can be used in crafting, and empty containers like bottles that can be refilled are placed here.

Next are chemical stuff, like bleach. Again, most of these stuff are crafting components.

Next pile is more of the same: spare parts. Now, these are also stuff that can be used in certain skills, like rags and thread for tailoring.

Last pile is armor. Like clothing, only better in protection most of the time. These are all filthy, so need soap to make full use of them.

And that's all the stuff in the motel.


Now... time to repair a few things here and there. All the fighting in the motel had damaged some of Yin's clothing, and she might as well spend the day repairing them. She has more than enough resources for it, since there's a pile of filthy clothing to cut up for spare parts and thread.


Looking through the dirty clothing, Yin spots something nice. A gas mask, which can protect her from smoker zombie smoke. Alas, her squeamishness prevents her from using it until she can find a way to clean it.


Before repairs, Yin cooks some food. It doesn't take a few hours during repairs that the food she cooked, and some of the drinks she found, are slowly reaching their expiration date. Can't be helped. The weather is getting less cold now.


Night falls. All the meat Yin has cooked has become rotten, but at the very least she has finished basic repairs. She might be able to reinforce some of the clothing, but for now it's time to head to bed.


When she wakes up, she'll look into reinforcing some of the items, and maybe scout the area ahead.

Here we go. It took a day, which means Yin has to wait until next day to explore, but she has finished reinforcing all the clothing she wears that can be reinforced. The rest require more tailoring skills to do so. Yin's at level 3, and requires 15% more to advance to level 4.

Well, since there's no time left on the current day to explore, might as well craft a few clothing items to level up. Fingerless gloves require 5 thread and 2 leather patches, so it's the best item available for quickly training skills. After several failed and successful attempts, Yin hits level 4, opening up new and better crafting recipes for tailoring. Still, night has fallen, and it's time to sleep again. It has become warm enough that Yin no longer requires the long underwear top to be worn. On the next day, she might look into upgrading some of her clothing in exchange...

Morning. Time to finish up the armor of Yin. First take out and butcher the one MBR vest that Yin had brought, as well as some filthy combat boots.


Next, create the makeshift kevlar vest. Some encumbrance, but not a lot. Also, unlike the MBR vest whose layer is outer (conflicting with the army jacket, meaning extra encumbrance penalty), the vest's layer is close to skin. The long underwear top is also close to skin, but since Yin isn't wearing it anymore, it's fine.


Next piece is the sleeveless trenchcoat. Since it lacks arms, no arm encumbrance. Less defense than the army jacket, the makeshift kevlar vest balances it out, and for extra arm defense I got something else in mind.

On second thought, let's go with the standard trenchcoat with sleeves.


Last, the metal arm guards. Better coverage and defense than the leather vambraces. More encumbrance, which is why I removed the army jacket and replaced it with the sleeveless trenchcoat. No warmth on Yin's arms, which is why she'll be wearing arm warmers. The warmers have less arm encumbrance than wearing a trenchcoat with sleeves.

Now, Yin has long string (the broken windows had curtains with long string), but where to get metal?


Easy, smash up the lockers. And with that, Yin completes her new equipment.


There we go. More defense and a little extra storage space, though a little more encumbrance. It's manageable, in any case.


Now that we're done with that, it's time to do a bit of exploration! It's the afternoon, perfect time to scout the probably nearby town, and maybe later Yin could do a night raid on it.



It's hard to tell due to the message log being so small, but the armor protects Yin from attack. This makes fighting at night more viable. Shady zombies will be a lot less problematic, but obviously there's no point in being overconfident and rushing straight to danger. Furthermore, time has passed more, meaning that there would be more nasty zombies out there.


Following the road east, Yin encounters a broken down car on the road. It has something inside: a jack. Could be useful later once Yin starts creating a vehicle to drive around in. Might as well pick it up.


Getting close to the town, and a little bit of the town can be seen on the map. Since the icons blink, the screenshot didn't capture it, but there are horde icons around the town. Slightly problematic, but expected. Aside from that, Yin catches sight of a new enemy.

The bloated zombie. Packed with some poisonous gas. These don't attack you, but instead charge to you and then self-destruct, releasing a cloud of poison smoke around the area. Inhaling it causes stat debuffs, coughing, and nausea. Problematic without proper mouth protection. That said, they're very fragile, and a shot from a distance will usually kill them. Still, that releases the gas and the explosion does cause some noise. C.


The firefighter zombie. Another armored one. About the same as the zombie cop, though the firefighter zombie drops loot more in line with their profession. C+.


For now, it's wiser to just get a good view of the town and leave going there for night. Of course, if any zombie is far away enough, might as well lure them out and deal with them. With the pitchfork for damage and the new equipment protecting Yin, there's not much to worry about on one-on-one fights.


Yeah, this is going nice. Less zombies now means less zombies to bump into at night, allowing Yin to pillage the town more easily.


Ah. Usually we can't see it at night, but thanks to it being daytime we can see a bunch of zombies going at it on a car. Like I said, cars are zombie magnets. Make use of the noise, or avoid it.


Damn fat zombie. The pitchfork got damaged, lowering its damage potential by a little bit. At the very least, the fat zombie dropped a bottle of cough syrup, which might be useful in case of a cold.


Seeing more and more zombies around town. Unwise to fight them now, or fight them at night. Yin stays as far away as possible, while continuing to scout the area around the town.


Crap. While butchering a zombie who broke out of the group, this bugger showed up. Gotta switch to the cudgel...


Now here's something interesting while Yin was scouting in this area.

A Last-Man-On-Earth shelter, the red + in the map. A cave made for a survivalist. Can hold very good loot, and in general can be a very secure place to stay in. Very much worth checking out.


Here we are. Surrounded by solid rock walls (more or less one of the strongest walls available), and the shelter itself is underground, making the shelter less likely to be attacked. However, the surrounding area is a swamp, which has a large number of hostile wildlife, which can generate quite a bit of noise. On the flipside, more wildlife means more hunting targets.


Using a flashlight, Yin checks the place out. The man-made walls are metal, another plus.


Another room leads to an underground (and infinite) water source. There's a stove in the middle which acts as a brazier, minus the indoor smoke.


The main room has an armory, and has decent choices for weapons. Gonna wield the trench knife as it offers a faster attack speed than the pitchfork. Will still keep the pitchfork in case I need the reach attack. Also discovered that the pitchfork does not conduct electricity; probably due to the wood handle. No need for the cudgel, then.


Lastly, there's a bedroom and toilet to complete the picture that this place can become a potential home.

's a matter of fact, it's gonna be Yin's new home. It seems like a safe place. Moving around the items from the motel to here might be a bother, but she'll do it. However, before that, she knows night will soon come. Perfect time to raid the town. Whatever she finds, she'll bring them back to this shelter. No one seems to be around the place, so the poor shmuck who made this place probably died during the cataclysm without getting to use his or her shelter. Sucks for him, good for Yin.

In any case, perfect time to end this episode. Next time, raiding and moving!

Until then, laters!

[aka Cthulhu]

Ten episodes, baybay! (and one episode zero)


So, yeah. Just as Yin has been getting comfortable in her motel home, she finds this LMOE shelter hiding underneath a swamp, and the location is really quite nice that she's gonna be staying there for a while.

That said, one slight problem about underground locations is that you can't drag wheelbarrows up and down stairs, making placing items rather time consuming. You'll need a ton of backpacks to wear so transporting items from one level to another would go faster, and right now Yin doesn't have that. Still, the shelter would probably serve Yin well, and so she shall stay.


It's currently 6:33 PM in the game. I reckon that Yin can run back to the motel and transport some of the items there and get them to the shelter, before doing the night raid. Before she does that, she samples a bit of the canned supply in the shelter to fill up her belly.

On the way to the motel, Yin heads to the south outskirts of the town she has been scouting, and sees some zombies.


Well, a lot of zombies. There's a couple of harmless animals in the view screen, but the zombie count is still 25+. Even if Yin has managed to take care of several of them, trying to take on 20+ zombies at the same time would be suicidal. Never do that until your combat skills is high. Still, by that time, the number of weak zombies considerably lessens, and you'll have a tough time against more evolved zombie types.


Unfortunately, Yin had walked a little too close, and about 15 of them (counting in the view screen) has detected Yin. Right. Time to employ tactics! Move back and let the faster zombies come first and thin the herd.


Keep calm. If you're gonna fight, then fight. Don't run, as the stamina drain will soon prevent you from either running or fighting effectively. You can tell from the dead bods that Yin is stepping here and there, so that despite the group of zombies going in toward Yin, due to the varying speed and distance of the zombies, Yin is essentially fighting them one by one.


Also, keeping the cart in front of the zombies, means that there's often a chance that the opponent in front of Yin is fighting while standing on an obstacle, slowing them down.


A brief moment of trouble when Yin gets boomer bile all over her. Still not a problem: just step back until it wears off. I know from viewing the view screen that there's no enemies down south. Take advantage of the daylight during fights like these to know where the heck you're going.


And soon, everyone's dead. Hooray!

Time to butcher, or at least smash, the bodies. Considering the time it takes to do so, not much point in retrieving some items down at the motel. After this is night raid time.


'course, best to search through the dead and see if they've got anything good. Sadly, nothing much. Some cash cards (aside from the use in vending machines, I like to collect 'em), xanax, and a can sealer. The latter is nice, since once Yin improves her cooking, she can then seal her own food, another means to preserve some perishable food.


Going back to the LMOE shelter, as she had left some important tools she can use during a night raid there, Yin encounters another small group. Half the amount as the last group, but still play cautiously and do the usual try to fight them one at a time deal. It works and Yin is unharmed. Aside from a flare and a flashlight, no good loot.


Yin reaches the LMOE shelter and takes some of her stuff back to the cart. Mostly food and water, and the makeshift crowbar and toolbox. 9PM and it's still bright outside. Maybe one more hour, I reckon, before it all goes dark. So, let's look at the map.


White 0 is a garage. May have some car parts, and possibly a welder. The welder is needed for heavier fabrication jobs, as well as installing and repairing car parts. If I can get my hands on one, the cart Yin is dragging around can really start to hold a ton of items, so hoping for that.

Green 0 is a park. One type of park has a well-stocked vending machine. Could be nice, but those types of parks often have a ton of zombie children hanging around. They're not a threat at this stage, but getting surrounded by so many of them can still be trouble. They'll slow down Yin so that the other stronger zombies will start to show up.

Yellow ^ is an electronics stores. Some components, and tools that use up batteries. Batteries as well. Might be worth a look now.

Light purple ^ is a restaurant. Like the pizza parlor, it might hold some ingredients.


Anyway, Yin had moved to where the garage is nearby. It's 11PM, and while it's already night time, the sky is clear. Going in would be a risk, though I reckon now would be an easier time compared to her bad second raid. Unlike that time, it would be easier to retreat back to the outskirts if things go bad. Of course, Yin is also much better equipped and would be less likely be harmed badly. Better armor means a less likely chance for infected wounds.

Yin's gonna do it. Time for a night raid.


Of all the things that would happen... the signs mean there's a mine field. Yin has no chance of running into it, and the clear night certainly helped in showing Yin where the field is, but there's still one problem. There's zombies being idiots and are wandering around the mine field. Some have stepped on it, and no doubt the blasts from the mines would alert more zombies.


And just as Yin reaches the garage, the weather gets cloudy and things turned dark.

Still, just in time for Yin spotting gold in the garage already.


The acetylene torch. It has a similar function to the welder, plus one other function I'll mention when it could be used. However, unlike the welder, the torch can't be reloaded (or perhaps a means to do so has been implemented since I played this game again). So useful. Now, for most tasks that require the acetylene torch or a welder, welding goggles are required, and luckily there's goggles visible in the garage as well.

Aside from the torch and goggles (found a second pair in the garage as well), there's not much else to take. While the plan was to go to the fire station next, Yin heads back out to the fields, with the intent to use the torch to upgrade the cart.

First, remove the box from that cart. It will return the box to it's original part, a steel frame. Now, once again, install the steel frame, but due to the torch as a tool, a new option is available. Costing 10 power from the torch, Yin can now install a car trunk instead.


Why a car trunk? Well, it holds 162.50 worth of volume - almost 3 times the amount that the box had. While we're at it, might as well repair the wheels on the cart as well.

With the newly upgraded cart, Yin heads on to the house close to the garage, and encounters something new.


The feral hunter. The second stage of the feral line. The hunter trades away the burst of speed the feral runner has for jumping power. Like a cougar, it can leap a good distance toward the player and attack. Stronger, but just as resilient as a normal zombie. C+.

One on one it ain't a threat. With better gear, I'm honestly more comfortable with Yin standing her ground and fighting. The hunter has some 9mm rounds in its possession, which Yin gladly takes.


Inside the house, signs of a bloated zombie are present, with the green gas hanging about. Hard to tell if a bloated exploded inside or if it's still around. Smoke and gas can take a very long time to disappear indoors. Meh on the decayed zombie. The trench knife is a great weapon, due to its speed.


Not a lot of things to take inside the house, basically some food supplies and that's it. The rubble in the bathroom suggests that several zombies had collapsed part of the wall, but no one seems to be inside anymore.


There's a shocker brute in front of the fire station, so no chance entering from that area. As much as Yin is currently doing well against zombies, engaging in shocker anythings at night is bad news. Just standing next to one will alert every zombie nearby. Trying to find a way in the back, Yin encounters a boomer and a zombie child. Despite the bile, Yin kills both and finds some shotgun rounds and some fried seeds to eat.


Still searching for a way in the fire station, and Yin gets cornered. At this point, unless a brute shows up, fight!


Some decent loot among the dead. The USP .45 has ammo that Yin found, I think. While they're filthy, once Yin finds some soap they can be used, so Yin takes the gas mask and combat boots. The wheat can be used for farming once Yin has the time for it as well. Cough syrup gets taken as well. The fire ax can also be an excellent weapon, though the trench knife is still better due to its speed.


Cough syrup comes in two flavors. The standard one like the one found, which can make the user feel sleepy, and the non-drowsy formula. The standard ones can be useful if you want the survivor to sleep, for example.


Ouch. Not only does Yin get boomer bile on the face, while backing away her legs get burned by spitter acid.


Still, Yin fights through them. Some damage on Yin, but nothing to worry about. Yin finds a baseball bat, a useful weapon, but again overshadowed by the trench knife. Still keeping it. A cell phone is found as well, which could function as a light source when needed.


Circling around the fire station, Yin finds no other entrance except for the one in front. The dim light in that place pretty much means the shocker is still hanging around there, so no point in trying to enter, even though the possibility of a gas mask being inside is rather good. Still, Yin can probably check out the electronics store across the street.


More zombies to fight. One of them drops a loaded Beretta, which is nice. On games with incredibly low item spawn, the only way to find some stuff in a city is more or less taking them off zombies. Also, when a zombie dies, they drop all their items (which somehow includes their clothing). When they revive, they're basically naked and won't drop more items. One of the firefighters has a small fire extinguisher. Might as well take it, just in case.


Most of the stuff in the electronics store is, well, electronics. The batteries on some of them can be useful, and the soldering iron is basically a sewing kit for stuff harder than cloth - like kevlar and plastic. Taking them all. Some of the gadgets can be disassembled for parts that can be crafted into other gadgets.


Ooh. Yin has encountered a nice store: a military surplus store. She was planning to check the restaurant out, but the military surplus can offer a wide variety of tools for easier apocalypse survival.


What awaits Yin is a boomer and three shadys. At this point, encountering surprise shady zombies has become a fact of life, though the more they appear the less of a threat they become.


Some food and drink for most part. Not a lot of stuff as I was anticipating, but I suppose reducing item drop by half on world gen would do that. Ah well. The first aid kit and clean backpack is nice.


Anyway, when Yin entered the restaurant there was two different spots with smoke inside. Right now, Yin has no problem fighting smoker zombies, ignoring the coughing... but only at daytime. At night, in the middle of a populated area, no way. Also, killing this zombie shows an odd action of RNG. Sometimes they drop perishable food. Since items that zombies hold don't show up in-game until they get killed, perishable food items that get dropped show up fresh. Unlike map generated items; most perishable food that gets placed on the map would be rotten after several days of spring, so the longer the game goes by, the more empty containers that once had food would be more present.


The pizza parlor south of the restaurant provides a good example of this: as you can see, one of the items in the counter is a cardboard box. Now, most likely, before that there would have been pizza there, but the food had gone rotten, and eventually decayed into nothing. How it decayed into nothing is a mystery, but the fact is all the fresh food available at this point would come from the player character's actions.

Now, despite the horrifying lack of pizza, there's still some non-perishable food and drink, plus ingredients lying around. There's even soap, which Yin can use to clean up some filthy clothing.


Yin crosses the street to a grocery store. 4AM, not much time until sunrise. Upon reaching the grocery store, she encounters a hostile animal.

The giant cockroach. Affected by the cause of zombification, but like many insects, grew to giant size instead of being able to come back to life as a zombie. Not a nasty enemy, but like cockroaches, these bugs can come in rather large groups, plus they're quite fast and evasive. They're often found in some grocery stores and fast food restaurants. They also don't belong in the zombie group, and would often fight zombies as well. Not as good a thing as you might thing, as the fighting might attract more zombies in an area. C+


Desiring the food in the grocery store, even if most of it has been walked around by cockroaches, Yin steps into the store to do battle. There's even a baby cockroach in there. Can't help but ponder if non-psychopath trait survivors will feel guilty about killing a bunch of insect babies...


More insects deeper in. If Yin was just starting out with no real protection, these guys would have killed her. Alas, unfortunately Yin is a lot more experienced a few days since the apocalypse began. She ignores most if not all of the junk food in the store, instead taking non-perishable food and a few items. Bleach because might as well. Charcoal as it can be used to smoke meat. The steak knife is a better butchering tool than her pocket knife (and the trench knife) - it's only useful for butchering, as it's a poor melee weapon. There's also a couple of skill books that Yin can learn from. And so the store gets cleared out.

4:37 AM. Yin still has time to check out a few houses, so might as well do it. The current volume of the upgraded cart is 72.47/162.50. The shopping cart basket or box at this point would have no room at all to hold the current volume. So glad I found that torch and welding goggles.


The house has some decent loot. Notably, this was the place where that group of zombies chased Yin before the raid, so there's a lot less to fight around this area. It took around 20 minutes to raid the place... Yin makes a very good burglar. Anyway, time to steal more stuff in other houses!



Looking through the house, Yin spots something nice. The flag of America. Basically just a blanket at this point in the game, but some NPCs ask for them, so it can be a useful tool for currying favor with NPCs.

However, while searching through the house, Yin encounters a slight problem...


It's only 5:18 AM but the sun has begun to rise. Uh oh.


Eh. Might as well not worry and continue pillaging this house. It's located on the outskirts of this town, so Yin can run to the fields if things get dicey. At the very least, there's a pretty french maid outfit to wear.


There's some food in that house, but not much else. It's Yin's win. She exits the house, and the zombies are too far away to notice her. A little south, and she's home free, and then running NE back to her LMOE shelter.


She even encounters the pile of zombies she took care of about half a day ago.


Aaaaand, safe. This will end the episode for now. Plan is for Yin to get some sleep first, and then she'll deal with moving her items from the motel to here. Unless something happens, the next episode will start with Yin having finished all that. I like to keep a tidy base, so next episode the first thing you guys will see will be a well stocked and organized LMOE shelter.

Until then, laters!

[aka Cthulhu]

Ohhhhh yeaaahhhhhhh! It's time for episode 11, peoples!

First, one thing to note:

-A slight goof up in world gen. When creating the world, I set the days per season to be 91 days, so that basically the amount of days would basically be around one year (4 seasons = 364 days if each season is 91 days). However, I forgot to actually set that during world gen so the game went with the default 14 days per season. For me, I was wondering why things were rotting faster than expected during spring, and how the weather got so warm quickly. In any case, that value can still be modified in the options while playing, so now it's definitely 91 days per season on the world.

With that hiccup fixed, let's get back to our regular programming.

So yeah, last time I mentioned that when the episode would end, I would go "off-camera" and do a couple of things, namely Yin getting her stuff from the motel and moving them in the LMOE shelter. Aside from that, she also took the time to repair and reinforce some of her stuff, as well as add a couple of new things to her equipment. Nothing really happened, and it only took one or two in-game days to do everything, so this episode is starting on day 17 of spring.


Introducing, Yin's new pad, with her stuff now placed properly around the base. During the moving of items from the motel, Yin had encountered a zombie or two with some interesting drops, and I'll mention them along the way.

And here we are. Yin's using a heavy duty flashlight (basically a flashlight with a bigger light radius and more capacity than standard flashlights) to light up the base. Since the shelter itself is underground, no natural light will shine around the base - so when reading or crafting Yin will either have to use a flashlight or light a fire. Anyway, Yin didn't take everything in the motel - she left a lot of filthy clothing there, though some of them have been brought and finally cleaned.


So here's one of the interesting drops Yin got from a zombie. Another rivtech product. I don't recall what this exactly does, but a similar rivtech product heals a survivor for a ton of hit points - but after a short while will cause severe temporary stat debuffs. Anyway, both modules require a specialized rivtech injector to use, so this item is basically useless at the moment.


And here we have a bionic. Taken from a body of a shocker zombie. Not dropped, but found after butchering one of them. Higher survival skill increases the chance of finding a bionic on a shocker zombie or brute, and three other zombie types that Yin hasn't seen before. Some bionics can be found elsewhere, and some can be crafted, but the main source of them are often the zombies carrying them, as later on they can become rather common enemies.

Now what's a bionic, you ask? Basically some sort of cybernetic parts that a survivor can install on their bodies. The effects of each and every bionic vary, and can often be useful: from mundane utilities such as having a sort-of flashlight attached to your body (so you won't need to carry one in your inventory), to more elaborate functions like the ability to shoot electricity like a shocker (though without the electric immunity). Of course, installing them ain't easy, as you need high first aid and electronics skill, and have decent intelligence for the procedure to be a success. Failing to install the bionic can have some rather nasty effects; normally a survivor just feels a lot of pain, but sometimes the failure can cause a survivor to mutate, or receive a large amount of damage on all body parts (large enough that frail trait survivors can die at full health), or just as bad, install a faulty bionic with some nasty passive effects.

Right now, the chances of successfully installing the bionic Yin found is... 16%, so not gonna stick that on Yin just yet.


Lastly, here we have the cure for filthy clothing: the washboard. Yin made it herself, which only requires a single two by four to make, plus a hammer as the tool. Then, load the board up with soap, activate the board and select your filthy clothing to clean. Each piece of clothing requires one soap bar, and a ton of water. One main source of complaint about the filth system is how so much water is required to clean clothing - basically the best way to clean right now is to find a practically infinite source of water like a pool or a river, or the water reservoir in the LMOE shelters. Once an item has been cleaned it will no longer get filthy, at least for now.


Yin only needed to clean about five items. One is the hard leg guards which she has on her; great defense for the legs, though it will slow her running speed somewhat.


The other thing she cleaned is a gas mask. One new thing about gas mask, or eye encumbrance, since I began playing again. High eye encumbrance (like wearing the gas mask), severely reduces the sight radius of the survivor. As you can see, without a light source, and even with the night vision trait, Yin's sight radius in the dark while wearing the mask is more or less the sight radius of someone without night vision. Due to the lower sight radius (and the mouth encumbrance that will quickly tire Yin out), wearing the mask will only be for emergency situations.

We're more or less finished with the tour of the base. Just one more thing...


Dual Beretta M9s. You can't dual wield in the game, but one of the recent features on the game has provided a nice little bonus to things. Gun magazines. On old versions, the game didn't have them, making it seem that most guns found at that time came with a magazine that could never be removed. Now it's different. Some guns lack magazines, meaning you have to find both that and ammo.

On the other hand, that means if you find an extra magazine, you can load a spare one instead by taking the magazine from the other gun and keeping it loaded. That way, reloading can be faster in some situations thanks to having a spare magazine. Of course, you can't use an M9 magazine for a rifle and whatnot, but at the very least it makes finding extra guns that you already had more useful.

Now that we're done, it's time for Yin to head outside and do some exploring...


...only I just remembered just now that Yin found two skill books; one to train archery to level 2 and one that trains shotguns to level 1. Both can be useful, in general since Yin has weapons that use those skills (several shotguns and a crossbow), plus there's the fact that her stats might get boosted by learning skills.

Roughly 24 hours later, Yin finishes reading (and after that, resting). She emerges from her new home...


...and there seems to be a welcoming party.

The fact that there's a shocker zombie means that it would be wiser to go with the pitchfork. Time to make some friends...


The shocker zombie yields some decent bionics. The power storage CBM is basically installed to increase the survivor's power capacity for bionics. Basically, most bionics require power to be activated. No power, no activation. However, power storage only affects capacity, you still need to find a bionic that will generate power to fill that up. The metabolic interchange that was found on the same zombie does that; what that bionic does is basically generate power at the cost of increasing the rate of hunger. It will keep generating until the survivor is very hungry. It can be a useful source of power, if you have enough food to supply a survivor.

Also, the first bionic that Yin found is the solar panel CBM. Another power generator, except it only generates power when the survivor is moving around areas more or less lit by the sun.

Anyway, unless some real big threats show up, Yin will have no problem removing the current group of zombies wandering around the shelter.


Another night raid will be done when it goes dark. Aside from killing the zombies around the area, she forages for some food in the forest and swamp. A few eggs found (then boiled), and some wild vegetables to help Yin whip up some vegetarian meals. All that jerky was nice, but all that salt would be bad for her bod, so a change in menu would be a wise choice.


For example, dandelions can be found in the fields, and they don't decay, so they can be kept for a while. When needed, they could be cooked up for some healthy meals.


Yin encounters a firefighter zombie who drops two interesting things. One is a skill book for fabrication, one that can increase her fabrication skills to a high level... but only until her fabrication skill is already relatively high. While useless at the moment, she'll keep it.

The other items is the turnout trousers. As I recall, two layers of those trousers, plus turnout boots, pretty much makes a survivor immune to damage from stepping on acid. That makes the acidic zombie and spitter zombie's attack useless... but the heavy encumbrance of the trousers (and you need two of them) can make it impractical. Gonna keep the trousers, but not gonna use them yet.


More foraging as Yin waits for night. The dahlia requires a shovel to get the roots. Said roots can then be cooked into starch, which can then be further cooked into flour which could be used for several different recipes. Yin lacks the tool to make starch into flour, but we might as well take the roots now instead of trying to find some later.

And night falls...


Show time. There's actually a lot less places to check on this small town, so we might as well have Yin to try to explore all the remaining buildings in this place so she can look toward to other places to explore the day after this raid.


One house down. I didn't put all the items Yin found there on the screenshot, but they're not really interesting enough for me to paste them on the pic.


And another house down. A pack of shady zombies follow Yin, but they're barely a threat at this point if they're just shady zombies. Some food to take in this place, and some neoprene arm sleeves, basically a better version of the arm warmers: an extra point in encumbrance, but better defense.


The house also contains a handheld game system. As a matter of fact, you can play video games with it.


The game itself is set in the near future. I think 30 years in or so, but retro gaming must have been the in thing at the time, as all handheld games contain the games minesweeper, sokoban, and snake. Another temporary morale boosting item. Oh well. Keep them for the batteries.

Next couple of stops will be a lone house west, then a radio station north of the house Yin is currently in.


The house itself is actually a multi-story building, with a swimming pool in the basement. Fancy. However, there's no items in the house, so it's pretty much a waste of time.


The entrance has several Zs waiting outside. At this point, as long as the zombie group is not that large, and there are no shockers, spitters or the next acid zombie evolution, brutes and stronger zombies, I think Yin can take them on. She gets hit a couple of times and her fanny pack and coat gets scratched up a bit, but she lives and is free to take the loot from the dead.


The radio station has two notable things to take. In general, I was expecting some skill books to take, but all it had were some morale-boosting novels. Useless. Now, for the finds... one is more or less a random drop found in a broom closet: plutonium cells. Some gadgets run and can be made from them, and they're more or less handy later on when I find the means to use these cells. The other items is a guaranteed drop on radio station: national weather transcripts. Not a skill book or a morale booster, but some NPCs want the book, so having one can be helpful. On the other hand, this book is always next to a lit console, so you're taking a risk getting it, as standing next to the console will reveal Yin's location to any zombie who might be nearby.

That said, since Yin had killed a group of zombies outside, the only one who sees Yin is one lone zombie child, and that one was already next to the console to begin with.


Next stop, the restaurant. Yin didn't go here during the previous raid since it seemed that there were at least two smoker zombies in the area. Wearing the gas mask, Yin will have no problem dealing with them, despite the lower sight radius. They're no longer inside it seems, and Yin is free to take some items. Not much, really. A potato, some rotten milk (the container can be used, at least), and a skill book for cooking. However, the book might not be useful, as I think it only trains skill up to 1 or 3, and Yin's already level 4.


Outside, there's a wreck of a car which Yin takes some scrap metal. These can be used for a number of things, but mainly scrap metal can be used with the soldering iron to repair several tools with metal such as the pitchfork and trench knife. Like clothes, they can also be reinforced, and doing so with weapons increases the damage they can do by a little.


Yin heads to the fire station. Thankfully, there are some zombies to fight but the shocker that was blocking the entrance seems to be gone. One of the zombies is the Z-9 dog, and it drops a kevlar dog harness. Yin can't wear it, but she can cut up the harness to harvest some kevlar plates that can be used to repair her makeshift kevlar vest when needed.

Some more zombies inside. Seems like a lot of zombies had trashed the entrance area, but thankfully left the means to open the fire station alone. Now, the only way inside the station is by activating a mechanical winch, and if that was broken, Yin would currently have no way to open the door. There's also a clean pair of elbow pads in the wrecked room. Okay defense, not as much as the metal arm guards... but coverage-wise, it's less than half of what the arm guards offer, so pass.


There's another winch to seal the door from the inside, and Yin activates it, leaving her free to open up her flashlight. Here's a mystery, a building that was locked-in, and inside there are signs that zombies wrecked parts of the place, but no zombies in sight. I reckon they became part of a wandering horde, causing them to disappear from the building. Anyway, that makes looting the place easier.

Some notable items. A flame-resistant hood, close-to-skin headgear (since the army helmet is at the normal coverage area, Yin can wear the hood) which offers a little extra protection. The turnout coat is a little too bulky to wear on the torso, but it has kevlar plates to harvest if Yin butchers the clothes. Nomex as well, which is the main component for most firefighter gear. The flame resistant suit is somewhat low in encumbrance, providing some minimal but still useful defense... and the best part is that the covers the torso, legs, and arms with 100% coverage. Still, the makeshift kevlar vest is layered close to the skin, so I'm not sure how to fit the flame resistant suit in. I'll figure it out later. There's also a spare gas mask, so might as well take that as well.


Only five more unvisited buildings in this town. Once Yin has done that, she'll have to search for a new place to raid. The LMOE shelter will still be her base for the time being, and for most part, that'll mean that exploring and raiding may start taking up more than one night or a whole day.


Another cockroach infested grocery store. That said, this particular store is a nice find, as there's quite a decent amount of canned food and cooking ingredients to take. Right now, Yin has enough cooking skill to make canned food, so she can eat some of the canned food, and then use those empty cans to can some of the food she hunt. Oddly, looking at the crafting menu, some of the canned food recipes require a glass jar instead of a can.


Another house down. Nothing worth taking or to screenshot there. Going south to the other houses, Yin finds an ambulance where there's some medical supplies to loot.


Next house has a charcoal smoker and some supplies. The charcoal smoker can be a handy tool, as once Yin gets the cooking skill for it she can then make some smoked meat - basically more filling than meat jerky. Of course, Yin can smoke some human meat as well.

At this point, there's really only one place left on the town to check - the park. There's probably nothing there, but it's only a couple of hours since midnight, so might as well go there. Maybe some zombies will provide some interesting drops.



Yin then encounters a pack of Zs on the car. Smoker zombie present, so she puts the gas mask on... just in time for one spitter zombie to burn Yin's feet. Yin kills the spitter, and another one launches its acid spit. After the fight, there's some ammo to be found, and another shotgun. As I recall, the stats of the L12 Defender Yin has found is more or less the same, and that one is undamaged, so not picking up the Remington 870. Most shotguns don't need magazines, so nothing to take from the gun itself.


At a road intersection, Yin finds a manhole cover in the middle of the road. With her makeshift crowbar Yin can pry the thing open and go down, but honestly there's really nothing to see there. It might connect to the nearby city, but aside from a possible emergency exit there's not much worth in going down that place at the moment.


After killing yet another firefighter zombie, Yin finds a halligan bar on the corpse. Better quality than the makeshift crowbar, so dropping the makeshift crowbar in favor of that.

There was nothing else to find in the park, aside from a few more zombies. This town has been cleared of useful things to take, so it's time to head back to base. No screenshots or entries unless something happens, since all I'll be doing is move the items down the shelter and repair Yin's damaged clothing.


Stuff has been stored, and items have been repaired. All in all, the only change Yin has to her equipment is the addition of the flame-resistant hood to her headgear, and replacing the fanny pack with the utility vest. Both essentially have the same clothing layer and encumbrance, but the vest has twice the storage capacity, a little more defense, and more coverage. In the case of coverage, while it has a better chance of softening some blows, more coverage also means that it's more likely to be hit and possibly be damaged, I think.


After a bit of rest, it was also time to learn some stuff with the new books Yin found. Some of the books no longer offer skill gains, and some don't even offer any recipes as well. Anyway, here's the down low on some of the skills that can be learned:

Electronics: For passive effects, the electronics skill mostly help increase the chance of successfully installing a bionic. Aside from that, higher skill means more crafting options for electonics stuff.
Bartering: Only useful when trading items with NPCs.
First aid: Increases the effectiveness of healing items and the chance to install a bionic. I think some crafting recipes require the first aid skill as well.
Speaking: Much like bartering, only involves with dealing with NPCs. Kinda useful, but not too useful in the grand scheme of things - though StatsThroughSkills may help increase the usefulness of it. Right now the NPC system is still rather bare: it has improved by a ton since the early versions of the game, but there's still something lacking with it. Once the devs really start working on factions I reckon this skill will be much more useful. For now, speaking affects the success rate of convincing NPCs to do things (like join you, or make them less wary of you).


While reading up on things, an NPC barges on Yin on her alone time.

Bastard just went up and took Yin's stuff! Bastard, bastard, bastard! No one steals from Yin!!!

Hold on a second, me. You can give away some items in the trade menu. Then you can get that NPC to join Yin, and perhaps help her with certain things...

...she took Yin's cash cards. DIE!!!!!


...and there we have it. Yin's first human victim. After taking back her stuff, the NPC doesn't have a whole lot that she owns that Yin can use. Of course, there's a body to butcher for meat, but aside from that the corpse has nothing else of value.


Time for a bit of cooking. Adding up the other human bones Yin had kept around, this gives her enough items to craft a batch of aspic, meat set in a gelatin of bones. In this case, it's amoral aspic, due to the components of the dish. Human bones, human flesh, and a bit of water. A bit more filling than jerky, but not much as it has less portions and takes more materials to create. Oh well, less salty.


Yin's almost done studying up. Anyway, this is one reason for a good diet. About an in-game week ago, Yin was actually in poor health (basically during the exodus of her campsite base) when all she ate was junk food and jerky (also classified as junk food). If her health got any worse, she wouldn't be able to heal during sleep.


...and as Yin enters her reading room, an NPC manages to spawn there while she wasn't looking. This one doesn't seem friendly at all...


Going with option B. Using the look command in the NPC talk screen, Guillaume isn't holding a weapon, so screw him and his threats. Yin's gonna get some meat to eat! There's also another NPC standing there, but she's ignoring us so we'll worry about that later.


Guillaume isn't a threat at all with nothing but his fists to attack. Yin easily slices him up with a trench knife.


He dies easily. Looking through the corpse, Yin finds some antifungal drugs. Remember at world gen why I was tempted to use the no fungal monsters mod? Should I encounter those creatures, this drug will be helpful. Yin takes it before the other NPC could nab it.


In any case, the other NPC, Jacqui, doesn't seem the least bit disturbed at this act of violence in front of her. As a matter of fact, she seems distracted about something... might as well ask about it.


Interesting. Yin seems willing to do something, so let's do it! I know what kind of enemy this is, encountering this type of NPC before in so many previous runs. Basically, we have to hunt down a really nasty zombie, and it's definitely a step up to what Yin has encountered so far.


When you do missions for NPCs, sometimes you can ask them to give you free stuff. Jacqui gives Yin a nail gun. It can function as a short-range, silent handgun, which can be somewhat useful early game.

Yin quickly goes up and grabs her cart. Unlike the first NPC Yin encountered, Jacqui won't be taking Yin's cash cards... Anyway, the target is close, just NE of the LMOE's entrance.


It only takes a few steps to find the mystery creature - and it sees Yin as well.


One of the strongest melee-oriented zombies in the game. Faster and stronger than a brute. It has a scream that can disorient survivors, and while it doesn't have the brute's smash attack, it has a powerful slash attack that will knock a survivor down on the ground. It's a zombie, but unlike the others the Jabberwock is hostile to everything, including other undead. It's one saving grace preventing it from becoming a super tough enemy is that they're solitary creatures. They are often found alone on forests, so for most part it's a one-on-one match, and I let Yin oblige with those conditions.


...and it was a stupid move. Had I not positioned the cart to serve as an obstacle to slow the Jabberwock down, Yin would be dead. Yin's badly wounded, her t-shirt and survivor trenchcoat has been destroyed (notice the items on Yin's feet? Since the trenchcoat has been destroyed, there was no room for some of the items in her inventory. I stuck with the trench knife for the entire fight... if Yin had used her autoshotgun, the fight may have ended faster, but I didn't want to waste the ammo, and attract a horde with multiple shotgun blasts.



Man, looking at its corpse, namely the weight and volume, really sells the size of the Jabberwock. Still, despite taking a beating that's more or less far worse than fighting several zombies really gives Yin some street cred. She fought one of the nastiest baddies in the cataclysm and came out on top. I mean, sure, she's rather badly wounded, and there's no one else to fight, and she can easily heal up her wounds, but going melee on such a beast is still a big deal. It takes a while to butcher the corpse, but the Jabberwock has some fat to use. Like zombie meat, tainted fat will poison survivors who eat it, but it can also be used to make tallow that can be used for candles.

In any case, Jacqui has wandered far away. Once Yin feels better, she's gonna go look for her. She owes Yin big time.

And that's the end for this episode. Next episode will start happening once Yin has re-made some of her clothing and repaired the rest, plus some other stuff that don't need to be recorded on the LP.

Until then, laters!

[aka Cthulhu]

Hello, hello!!!!! It's time for episode 13 of Yin's post-apocalypse life!


...and she's surrounded by dirty thieves!! Filthy, grubby survivors who'd want a quick buck and just take things lying on the ground that aren't theirs! They are a plague, I say. Basically, the longer you stay in one spot it becomes more and more likely that a random NPC will spawn close by. Hostility is only a possibility, but random NPCs will pick up anything of value they can stuff down on their inventory, which is an annoyance.


That said, some of them can provide good loot. The skill book for archery is now recipe-only, as Yin had read a book on archery that had advanced her archery by more than level 1. The gem of this NPC is a kevlar vest; much better defense than the makeshift kevlar vest that Yin is wearing.


Yin takes this NPC appearances as an opportunity to widen her culinary experiences with long pork. It would be better if I could preserve them, but lacking the means to do so, I just cook whatever that can be made with the ingredients Yin has on her base. At least they're healthy. Since it's still early in spring, and after the summer hiccup due to world gen problems the food should last longer for a while. Summer is still a long way away, but Yin should definitely find means to keep the raw meat from spoiling.


Anyway, now that Yin has finished up studying and whatnot, it's time to head out! First, we gotta find Jacqui the NPC, since she owes Yin a favor for that Jabberwock brouhaha. She's SW and on the move. Possibly she's heading into town... NPCs are not that smart, especially when they're random NPCs.


It takes a while to catch up to her. She's in the town, which thankfully is more or less lacking in the undead population thanks to Yin's actions. Anyway, doing the mission for her nets Yin a reward. There's a number of them, but by far the best choice is getting taught a skill for free. It takes far less time to learn from that method, compared to practicing the skill or reading a book. In general, one of the main reasons to keep an NPC alive instead of robbing them.

Skill teaching takes a few minutes, and by then Jacqui is gone. Hard to tell where she is, as her icon on the map is no longer showing up. It's possible she ran into several zombies and bit off more than she can chew. Well, no point in pondering where she is. It's 12 noon, and it's time to do a bit of exploring.


Also, learning one more level in bartering increases Yin's intelligence by 11. Dexterity has also increased by a point, and I'm not sure when that happened.


Hmmm... another NPC near the LMOE shelter. I guess NPC icons only show up now in the map if you're relatively near them. After I check the NPC out, I'll go SW of the town. At the very edge of the visible map (not counting the visible roads), there's a gas station there, and past that is probably a city.


Searching for the NPC, Yin finds a couple of dead animals. Shame. Due to the zombie appearances around here, the animals get caught in the crossfire. Who knows how long some of these animals have been dead, so the meat I'll get from them would be rotten and useless at most.


An hour later, Yin can't seem to find the mystery NPC. No point in wasting time. Yin heads out to the gas station searching for loot.

It's basically set on the outskirts of the city nearby. A few zombies, but probably not a problem.


Heh heh, easy pickings. Didn't even have to attack the shocker zombie, as the pack of dogs nearby killed it on their own.


Butchering the body yields two bionics. A power storage, and an internal chronometer. The chronometer is one of the mundane bionics. Basically, it functions like a watch, telling Yin what time it is. It can also act as an alarm clock when sleeping. Very mundane.

I'm not sure if it has been fully implemented yet, but bionics now have a size, preventing the act of putting in every bionic into one survivor. The chronometer costs 1 head slot for bionics, and frankly I don't think a clock is the most efficient thing to place in the head.


In any case, Yin's intelligence and slight knowledge on first aid and electronics gives her an 11% chance of failure when installing the power storage. Pretty okay chances, I'd say.


And it works. Yin now has a 100 point capacity for bionic power. Of course, since she lacks any power generating bionics, her power will be stuck on 0 for a long while. She also doesn't have any bionic that can use power, so yeah... Still, it's one step towards becoming a stronger survivor.


Yin checks out the gas station. The interior seems to be a cross between a general store and a house. Some stuff to take, like books and some drinks. There's also a shotgun on the bedroom and some ammo for it... keeping the shotgun, but won't be using it. It could be a decent item to trade away.

Honestly, this gas station could be a decent place for Yin to stay in. She'll have to travel a bit south to the river to get water, but all in all there's some distance between the station and the city. I'm in no rush to do another move again for now, though. Yin will just have to tough it out and go back to the LMOE shelter when she's filled up on loot.


In any case, behind the station is another wreckage. Time to get that shovel out...


Some nice finds. A pair of drop leg pouches; basically a fanny pack/utility vest, only it's strapped on the legs instead of the torso. A little slower running speed is fine. A spare army helmet; which can be harvested for kevlar plates. A damaged handgun, could be still useful. A camo tank top... eh. An MBR vest... first one found since Yin left the three vests on the campsite. A second packed M72 LAW. And two very notable things.

One is the internal climate control CBM. A sustained bionic, which basically means that you activate said bionic, and while it's running it will provide a certain effect, depending on the bionic. It saps bionic power each turn or every few turns or so, depending on what kind of bionic it is. Some may last several hours even on low power capacity, while others require a survivor to have a massive amount of bionic power to constantly run.

Anyway, the internal climate control basically helps keep a survivor's temperature on a neutral level. Like if the current survivor is feeling very cold, it will downgrade it to merely chilly to reduce the negative effects. At most, it will only lower it up to one level of temperature, so if you're survivor is basically scorching from being set on fire, the internal climate control won't be of much help in getting your survivor into the comfortable temperature status.


It has a 38% chance of failure. It also takes up several slots on every part of the body, so not sure if I want Yin to ever use it...

Lastly, among the wreck is the AGTM Launcher. Basically an anti-tank missile, so expect heavy damage. Alas, Yin lacks ammunition for it, and even then she also needs a few more things - like mounting it on a car, for starters.


Going past the wreckage, Yin catches sight of the outskirts of the city, so far just a few isolated houses on the edge. Interestingly, this is the first time ever that I've ever seen a swamp more or less so close to a city. Swamp tiles are basically the blue Fs on the map. Forest tiles are the green Fs. Anyway, I've seen forests and rivers around cities before, but not swamps.

Swamps in general have a lot of mutated wildlife. They can be a good source of meat, but it is possible to be swarmed by hostile wildlife, and some can be more dangerous than standard zombies. Aside from potential meat sources, swamps have plants that can be foraged, not to mention the area being a source of both water and salt water; the latter for drinking (after you boil it), and a source of salt. Lastly, swamps have several pits, and a character with low perception such as Yin won't be able to see them until she has stepped and fallen into one. Since I don't want Yin to break her legs and get trapped, I'm generally avoiding swamps for now.


Some dead zombies spotted. Yin had no hand in killing them; the creatures of the swamp are hostile to zombies (and Yin). Well, in some ways, this makes things somewhat easier, as Yin is free to loot the bodies and check out the isolated houses.


Nothing worthwhile in this house, but I just remembered something, so I make Yin wreck a fridge to get some scrap metal.


Using the scrap metal, Yin can then make several improvised lockpicks. Simply put, it's a more quieter means of opening locked doors than a crowbar. They have a higher chance of breaking than crowbars, and you can't pick windows open, but it has its uses.

Heading to the next house. Due to all the swamps in the way, it's kinda hard for the map to reveal the buildings deeper into the city. However, a new enemy is discovered, along another human corpse pile.


The amoebic mold. A big blue blob that's not really hostile to anything. It has a large amount of hit points, but it really doesn't attack anything directly. To a survivor, getting too close gets them slimed, causing a severe speed drop that can last a while. To hostile creatures attacking it, there's a chance that the mold will mutate them into a certain enemy type, one that Yin hasn't seen yet. E.


The gracken. Another non-hostile creature in the same faction as the amoebic mold. As tough as a zombie, but does not attack. Can be killed and butchered for animal meat. E.


Dealing with the mold is easy. With the pitchfork, Yin can do reach attacks without touching the mold, avoiding the slime status effect, and due to lack of hostility from the creature it won't even bother to get close to Yin. After that, Yin is free to loot and butcher the bodies. Sadly, the human meat has gone past its expiration date, but it's not all a waste: sinew is more or less just thread, and the human bones can still be used, namely for aspic: amoral aspic requires 4 human bones for every single piece of human flesh, so I need a lot more bones than meat eventually for that meal.


Zombies come and bother Yin as she butchers the human corpses. One of them is carrying a BB gun. Practically useless as a weapon against zombies. Still, I like to collect stuff as long as there's room in the cart.


House seems to be some sort of orphanage considering the large amount of beds in the bedroom. Anyway, since this city is more or less unexplored up until Yin came to the place just a few in-game hours ago, some perishable food show up as fresh. This will become less likely the longer the game is going - like how some of the human bodies are already rotten. Sometimes some human bodies will be fresh, depending on where it is on the map, but in general the ones in the surface will be gone near the end of spring.


Some houses SW revealed by the map. It's a risk, but if there's time I might be willing to go further than that, basically exploring a city blind.


Some Zs trashing a car, best to avoid and head for the houses west. Yin's more capable, but if I want to explore, I need to spend less time risking damage from un-needed fights.


Nice and quiet. Nothing much in this house, but it does have some delicious bacon.


Some zombies harass Yin on her way out. There was a spitter in the window, but instead of trappin Yin in the room with acid, it tries to climb through the window first, allowing our heroine to dispose of it easily.


...well, this sucks. Another spitter zombie, who missed but leaves Yin with no way out... followed by a boomer blinding Yin, and a bloated zombie gassing Yin. Either Yin steps on some acid, or she stands still while she breathes more bloated gas. She goes with the former, and it takes two steps in acid to get out. Some damage, but she should be able to continue, and a hazmat zombie drops a geiger counter. Don't really need to stick Yin's nose to sniff out radioactive areas, but the batteries and parts might be useful.

Moving south, looting another house then continuing down, Yin encounters something new among the undead.

The rot-weiler. Basically a decayed zombie dog. At this point, not a threat at all. D.


As for the next house, there's nothing that interesting to note. There's a funnel, basically better at gathering rain-water than the leather funnel handmade by Yin. Still, if Yin moves out of the LMOE shelter, this could be useful. There's also several vitamins to take, and another first-aid kit.


Heading south to unseen territory. Yin saw a bloated zombie at the edge of the screen, but this time she's ready for it, wearing the gas mask to protect her from the gas. You need to run a little bit of distance away first, as putting on the mask takes a short time, but just about enough for a zombie to get close and interfere. In any case, seems like Yin was heading in a direction leading to a car being wrecked, so gonna let her avoid that while still heading south.


South led to another swamp, but going west from that led to a building Yin hasn't encountered yet: an antique store! There may be some interesting things to get there... but first Yin has to deal with some zombies.


...crap. That's smoker zombie smoke, and I know why I can see it in the middle of darkness: there's a shocker zombie in the smoke. Or worse, a brute. Run time!


Running now. Yin circles around the store and finds the entrance. At the back of the store, Yin finds... a longsword. However, it's sealed by a glass case, and a crowbar and a lockpick won't do any good. Only one way to get it... smash!


...and it's a freaking replica blade. Crap. Quickly searching through the store, Yin finds a candle, a locket (fancy clothing with no encumbrance or coverage), a cowbell and a walking cane. The cane is actually a better weapon than the damn replica longsword...


The zombies that were chasing Yin earlier have begun to swarm on the SE side of the store, which leaves Yin able to carefully slip out into the entrance in the middle. Heading south, Yin finds an open space gas station, there's no store here, but there's a couple of vending machines, and a ATM machine. Time to get the cash cards working...


First things first, get all the cash cards, and transfer all the money in each card into just one. It reduces the clutter in the inventory since the cash cards has varying value. Anyway, I should just drop the empty cash cards, but I reckon that I'll have Yin keep them, like a way of keeping score on how many cash cards she found in her adventures. Next, purchase all, or at least the useful stuff, in the vending machines. The items here are a lot less than the one in the motel, but still useful.

A bit of a risky move. Hitting the vending machine will sound a very large alarm, gathering the zombies to the machine. On the other hand, that might mean that all the zombies will be distracted on this area, leaving Yin free to check the surrounding area.


Running south, Yin finds a hardware store. Nothing of note in the place. More funnels, a tool belt - not as good as the utility vest, but can be used for crafting in the future - and an ankle sheath. Sheath can be worn and a knife may be placed there, reducing inventory clutter by a bit. Pizza parlor south of hardware store, in which there are many ingredients to take.

Currently 12:15AM. The deeper I go, the more mindful I have to be about the time. It would be... pretty much game over if Yin is at the very heart of this city when the sun rises. 3 or 4AM, depending on the distance out, Yin will leave.


East of the pizza parlor and the hardware store is a home improvement store. Not going in. The small stores don't offer much, basically just paint and carpets to decorate homes. Yin doesn't need that luxury in her life for now.


On the other hand, the grocery store below that offers Yin several helpful items for her daily life.


Well, this is an... odd item to have a zombie child hold. Anyway, I've been keeping rather quiet about these kinds of items due to the rules, so yeah. Just a disclaimer, Yin might possibly use some of these items (highly unlikely), but not promoting the use or talk of it here, or anywhere in the forums. Same with religious books present in the game. They exist, but I'd rather not talk about them in the LP.


Anyway, east of there is a furniture store. A little better than the home improvement store, as it carries some tools to take. Some fertilizer, which can aid in farming. North of the store is another furniture store, with a skill book and a hedge trimmer; like the game description says, it's basically a poor man's chainsaw. In general, chainsaws are pretty impractical as a weapon. Sure, when they're running they can do massive cut damage... but the noise will pretty much attract everyone in the vicinity. As a tool when fighting during the day, sure, but dumb for fighting in the dark.


There's a fire truck outside, and Yin takes the time to cut up some turnout coats she finds in the vehicle; as the kevlar plates can be handy.


Next to the truck... damn, a bank. Some potentially powerful loot inside... but Yin doesn't have the tools to break open the vault, and she certainly has them, in the LMOE shelter. Hopefully when she comes back this place will still be rather quiet.


Radio station south of bank, and nearby is a mobile meth lab. Apparently, this is a reference to that show Breaking Bad. Never watched it, so I dunno. Meth lab has no meth, but it has some aspirin, a syringe (can be used for painkillers such as morphine), and adderall. The latter gives a temporary intelligence boost - helpful when you want a higher success rate when installing bionics.


Damn, another nice find, but no tools to nab it. An atomic sports car with a minireactor, filled with delicious plutonium. There's a zombie banging on the car, unfortunately, and a damaged minireactor will start leaking radiation. Such a waste.


Down south is another antique store. ...pretty damn far from the only way out of the town. After checking this place out, I think it's time to leave the place for the night. Currently 2:33AM, so it would be wise to leave early. Also, with boomers, wearing the gas mask prevents the bile from blinding Yin, so wear one before going to fight them. The low sight radius from the boomer bile can be dangerous if you don't know how many zombies are out there.


And... jackpot! A rapier, not a replica or a dulled antique. The real deal, with great piercing damage, and great hit bonus and decent attack speed. The trench knife has served Yin well, but it's time to upgrade! Yeah, baby! Aside from that, a shady zombie drops a handgun, and a jade brooch is found among the antiques. Another piece of jewelry like the locket. Most jewelry don't belong in a clothing layer, and have zero encumbrance and coverage. Basically no defense, but you can wear a ton of them without penalty, and survivors like Yin who have the fancy trait gets a permanent morale boost as long as they wear it.


However, not everything is gonna go smoothly. Just as Yin sets out to leave the city for the night, the weather clears up, creating a bigger sight radius for Yin... and the zombies. So, plan is to go to the lines I marked on the map. More or less the edge of the city, meaning less encounters. Can't really go directly NE, as there's a river that will block Yin.

Also, SW of the antique store is a gun store, and SE is a garage. Considering the clear weather, it would be better to leave those for the next night raid.


I actually do go to the garage, running into another shady zombie who drops a loaded gun. At the garage, there's no interesting tools, like a welder, but there's a foldable engine crane which is required for some heavy lifting and installing of certain car parts. So, Yin folds it, and she's able to stuff it in the cart with the rest of her stuff.

Not gonna go to the gun store, as the cart is almost at max capacity. Time to leave. Anyway, the clear weather reveals more things on the map, namely another bank SE of the garage. More points of interest in the next night raid.


My, my, my... my! Now things just keep getting better. A pair of light amp googles. Filthy, but that would be easy to fix.


Firestation on the way out. Might as well check it out. Empty of zombies, but there's a flame-resistant hood and a suit, the former being worn. Yin's now wearing two of them, plus the army helmet, giving her head some heavy protection with the army helmet, and the dual hoods give respectable extra defense when combined.


There's a humvee nearby with a plastic jerrycan filled with a little bit of diesel. Might as well take it. The car is actually functional, but considering the distance and the zombies and there being only one way out of this place, driving it out will be hard, so no to that.


Aside from that, sticking to the road at the east side is more than enough. Some swamp denizens, but no zombies. At 5:30 AM, Yin has reached the exit and in an hour or two Yin will be back at the LMOE shelter with her loot. A smashing success. A tiny bit of trouble, but nothing too dangerous. In general, already have some key targets in mind for the next night raid, but for now Yin gets some hard earned rest, and some time to hone her skills through reading. Next episode will begin after all that maintenance stuff has been done, so we can head out for the night raid again.

Until then... er, some post-episode shenanigans, for a second here.


Car!! At the gas station on the outskirts, Yin found a car that was still in relatively okay condition. Transferring the loot to the car, and leaving the cart temporarily, Yin takes a speedier route to her LMOE shelter.

So yeah, Yin has some transportation. Might not be used as much yet, since it's rather banged up, but it's something for the future.

Anyway, until then... laters!

[aka Cthulhu]

Finally, I'm gonna start uploading episodes again!

---

Woo! Episode 13 in your face!


Back at the base, here's the books that Yin has found, and what she can learn from them. Basically only three different skills to learn from:

Throwing is damage and accuracy when throwing things, while launchers is accuracy when using launchers like the M72 LAW. Driving is how stable a car is when driving. Higher levels mean more stability in higher speeds.

Anyway, it doesn't take that long to learn them. Thanks to launchers skills reaching level 1, Yin's perception gets a +1. Not yet enough to detect landmines, but we're getting there.


So here's what Yin has at the moment. Not a lot of new things in her clothing, except for one main thing. Anyway, the Beretta M9 has been switched out in favor of the M1911, which uses the more potent .45 ammo. Since I found a second one of those, Yin has a spare magazine for it.

Now, the main new addition to Yin's equipment is the light amp googles. On one hand, it has massive eye encumbrance, making detecting traps and firing ranged weapons (and throwing) next to impossible at her current skills. However, activate the goggles, and...


Booyah. Light in the darkness without the whole pesky fact of letting the zombies know where you are. Sure, it costs battery power to run, and I think it still won't tell you where the shady zombies are, but knowing where the majority of undead are in the city is an amazing help.


Now, we're gonna be doing some bank robbery and we need some tools for it. An acetylene torch and an electric jackhammer. Yin lacks the skills to quietly open up a bank vault but she has the tools to smash it wide open. Hopefully the vault will provide Yin with even more high-grade loot to use.


And we're off. The car looks pretty goofy when going diagonal, but it's not a problem. That said, the car is rather banged up, so I'm really hoping to find a welder of some sort to make some essential repairs to it. I can use the torch for repairs, but it lacks enough "ammo" to do a full repair, so a welder where I can reload with batteries would be good. I also want to remove the back seat of the car and replace it with more trunks for more item storage.

Anyway, plan to park the car at the gas station, then move into the city with the wheelbarrow.


Well now. Just heading straight south from the LMOE shelter leads Yin to another wreckage. Don't mind if I do...

A very lean wreckage, as the only notable drops is an MBR and kevlar vest. There's also a steel frame, which Yin uses to convert one backseat of the car into another trunk.


Huh. While killing zombies south of the small town several episodes ago, I somehow missed seeing this electric lantern. These last a long time and provide enough light for reading and crafting in the dark. Very handy.


Arriving at the gas station, Yin takes out some items on the car and transfers them to her cart. Some of these will be essential for the raid later at night. However, Yin is feeling tired, what do?

Well, I figured that it would happen, so I took one of the cell phones Yin found and brought it with her. The cell phone has an alarm system that would wake Yin up at... around 8PM, I reckon, so she'll be relatively fresh when she ventures forth into the city.


Oh dear. Yin turned off the alarm clock and slept until 1AM. Damn.

Hrm. I'll make this a two-day raid. She'll raid the buildings close to the town exit for now, and when it's morning she'll stay in the gas station and wait for night where she'll do the night raid that was planned from the start.


Testing the light-amp googles... check. Not as big a sight radius as I was hoping, but better than her usual. It's raining, so most zombies will have the worst possible sight radius at the moment while Yin has a better chance of seeing them.


So, current plans. Two night raids for two nights. First night raid is at the green box, not that far, basically checking out the unexplored areas there. Don't have a lot of time to explore the area, but can't be helped. After that, she goes back to the gas station and stays there until it's night again, where she'll head to the area on the red circle. There's a bank and a gun store, and Yin really needs a whole night to get there, loot the area, and get out.


The weather had cleared up, and as Yin gets close to unexplored houses she finds a flatbed truck. More importantly, it's a flatbed truck with cargo carriers. So, a trunk can hold about 160+ volume. A cargo carrier holds 250. Do I want that for my cart? Hell yeah.


Had to fight for it though. En garde! Spitter acid on legs, and a brute smashed Yin, sending her crashing to the ground.

After killing the zombie group, Yin is free to remove some cargo carriers. Of course, things don't go as they should as Yin's task is constantly interrupted by a shady zombie entering the scene and being a general bother. Looks like the first part of this two-night raid is a bust. However, she gets three cargo carriers: one to become part of the cart, and two for the car. At this point, as long as Yin has food she can stick around the gas station for a long time while making multiple night raids and only going back to the LMOE shelter when the car is full. Very nice, indeed.

Then I notice it. More or less the top dog in the zombie hierarchy.


The zombie hulk. Faster than a brute, and double the strength and toughness. Whether it's a house or a car it can smash through them, and it will smash a survivor if they're far from skilled in standing toe-to-toe with it. Only a Jabberwock comes close to being as strong, but the zombie hulk is faster, and unlike the jabberwock it's possible can encounter more than one at the same time. A++.

This pretty much marks the time when more and more zombies begin to evolve, making night raids a lot more tough once the high-tier zombies become more common than standard zombies.

Yin ain't facing that beast, and since it's almost morning, it's time to go back to the gas station. Next night will be the bank job.


Yin also encounters a giant bug on the way to the station. The giant wasp. Another loner creature. It's about as nasty as a wasp, with the added bonus of being very big. An early game threat. Getting hit by their sting can poison survivors, and multiple hits will make it worse. That said, not a real problem after a while. Sometimes when killed they drop their stings, which can be used as a poor man's rapier.


Now, insects can be butchered, having meat like all the other animals. However, one other thing that can be found on a butchered insect is chitin, which can be used to make some decent and light-weight armor.


And there we go. Car has been modified with two new cargo spaces to replace a seat and a trunk, and the world is a better place. Wish I could have gotten more from the flatbed, but due to it being close to morning then, and the zombie hulk, there was no other choice but to take only three.

It's noon, and I guess all Yin can do now is wait or try to sleep...


Damn it, Yin. Urgh... 11PM. Risky, but I think if she heads straight to the gun store and bank, she'll make it.

At the bank. It's show time. Now, one reason why I brought the acetylene torch is to have it melt through some metal doors. However, that takes time, so we're going with the noisy option. Now, the side of the bank with the vault is at the back, and you can tell where it is as it's the spot without windows...


Enter the electric jackhammer. It can go through any walls, even metal. Noisy as hell, and takes a tiny bit of time, but since Yin was here before and there wasn't much zombie activity, it should be safe.

From the desk, there's some gold and a money bundle. Both are generally useless as they are in the post-apocalypse world, but they can still be used as components for certain things. There's also a MBR vest with hard plating; the plating has the highest defense value for the MBR vests, but are so encumbering that a melee-oriented lass like Yin would have trouble using it.

Still, the main meat of banks are in their safes. Yin requires a certain item she doesn't have to quietly pick the vault, and that's why we're gonna be using the words electric and jackhammer to solve things.


...and there's nothing but scrap metal. Argh. Alas, no point in giving up. Time to head to the gun store SW.


And here we are. Unlike most locked doors, the door of a gun store is metal. It can't be bashed through, and crowbars don't work. An acetylene torch will take too much time, and a jackhammer will trip the alarm. Remember last episode when Yin made some lockpicks from scrap metal? Yeah, that's the key.


Hmm... well, the gun store is rather low on guns. The S&W might be nice, while the Remington I don't need aside (since Yin already has a couple of shotguns) from being a trade item. Same with the TEC-9.


Not a lot of ammo either. Ah well. Not the haul I was expecting, but I'll take it.


Well, there's a bank at the east, along with a hardware and grocery store. Should be worth a look.


Anyway, the wide sight radius provided by the light-amp goggles helps Yin evade detection. Since she doesn't have a lot of time to explore so deep into the city, avoiding confrontation would be wise for now. And yes, after confirming it for myself, the light-amp does not reveal where shady zombies are.


Hardware store is more or less lacking in what I wanted to see. The vending machines are also bare.


Brute forcing the bank leads to more disappointment. Another fancy watch, for Yin's other hand, and an advanced UPS, which runs on plutonium. Don't have anything that requires a unified power system, so this item is pretty much just a fancy paperweight for now...


Next stop, the grocery store north of the bank. At least there's some items Yin can use here...


Moving east, the weather clears up, revealing Yin that she's nearby a bowling alley, with an antique store further down and a gas station due east. The clear weather gets enough light to reveal a shady zombie via the goggles. Still, it's not bright enough for the normal zombie to detect Yin.


Zombie necromancer detected! Important to kill this bastard first. If I kill the feral runner, the necro would just revive it almost instantly. Anyway, forgot to screenshot it, but the antique store was a bust. Another locket to wear, and a gold watch... for those keeping track that's three watches Yin is wearing at the moment. Also found a candle, but there were no weapons on their display rack this time.

At this point, Yin is very deep into the city. Almost 4AM. Like, it's a dumb move, with a lot of risks, but dammit I want this raid to have something good. This dojo will be the last place Yin will check out before leaving.


Nuts. It's a book all right (and rather appropriate considering what forum this place is), but sadly, there's no pro-wrestling martial arts. This is just an ordinary skill book for unarmed skill.


Time to leave. The weather is actually so clear that using the light-amp googles would be a waste.


Yin passes by the second bank she robbed. Zombies have definitely heard the noise, and there was probably so many that a chunk of the building fell on them. Some are probably dead (but not for long) and some may be alive. Yin has no time to check, however.


And Yin is home free. In order to quickly cut through to the buildings I aimed for, Yin went through the very edges of some swamp areas (at the edge to lessen the risk of falling into hidden pits), and the same areas can be used as an exit as well.


Without a doubt, the results of this raid was a bust. The total volume in Yin's cart is 41/250, and that's including some stuff that Yin brought along.

So, here's the found loot so far, not including the three cargo carriers. Not as bad when I think about it, but pretty poor compared to the haul during the previous episode.

On the bright side, I don't need to just stick to two nights. There's still some room in the car, so I'll be doing more raids until I feel satisfied. Maybe about until one cargo carrier in the car is full, at least.

That said, this is a short episode. Going to wait and raid at this point might take some time, so might as well just do it on the next episode.

Until then, laters!