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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 5, 2015 10:27:56 GMT -5
Taking a break from playing Dwarf Fortress and posting about my findings of the game, to play another game and post my findings there.
Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead is a roguelike where you're a survivor of a zombie apocalypse. The cities are flooded with zombies, and beyond that there's more nasty creatures lurking about. Hordes are wandering, things are mutating, and beings from beyond our reality are starting to loiter around the place. The game has a big emphasis on survival and is equally big on being an open sandbox. Your goal is to survive, and perhaps even go further than that.
I have a lot more experience with this game than DF. Still, it's been a few months since I last played a game, and the new experimentals should have a lot more things to offer now. Last time I played there's already a survivor outpost set up in the game, so I'm quite excited to see what new stuff there is to find in the game.
This is also a chance for me to release my inner hoarder and get all the items.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 7, 2015 12:55:09 GMT -5
Starting as a default survivor to shake the rust off. Extra points for chargen, plus increased the cap for points in general. That means I can pick more negative traits - which in turn gives me more points for chargen for stats and positive traits.
In particular, here's some of the positive and negative traits: +Cannibal. Not the best positive trait out there. In general, it turns the negative penalty of eating human flesh and turns it positive. It's somewhat rare to find fresh human corpses unless you have NPCs turned on, which I do. +Night vision. Super important. When night falls, vision radius drops a ton. You can use a flashlight... but you might as well yell at the zombies where you are if you do that. +Psychopath. Works well with cannibal. Removes morale loss when killing NPCs and zombie children. +Martial arts. Unarmed fighting becomes real deadly when you got the skills for it, and knowing a martial arts style increases that benefit further. -Frail. Reduces total health by 50 percent. Quite a big thing as you start playing you won't get any further health increases. A slight challenge, but once you use it a lot you become used to it. It gives a lot of chargen points, so super useful to me. -Albino. Direct contact with sunlight gives pain, unless you wield an umbrella. Later on once you have clothing that can cover the body, you can leave the umbrella. -Forgetful. Increases the rate of skill rust. Cheating if skill rust is turned off. My skill rust mode drains experience if the skill is not used, but doesn't lower skill levels. -Glass jaw. Further hp decrease on the head, stacks with frail.
There's a few more positive and negative traits I got, but with that I start surviving into the cataclysm... and most likely get killed before the second day starts.
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Post by Apricots And A Pear Tree on Nov 7, 2015 16:05:37 GMT -5
Cataclysm? I thought we killed Deathwing?
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Post by El Cokehead del Knife Fight on Nov 7, 2015 21:03:39 GMT -5
Cataclysm is pretty neat but it just seems like the type of game where reading the stories about it is more enjoyable then actually playing it like with Space Station 13.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 8, 2015 1:17:26 GMT -5
Somewhat. Aside from lore you can find while playing, there's really no story that moves the game forward. Due to the open sandbox nature of it, it's more or less survive until you die, or get your survivor into the point where he's a one man army and get bored of that.
That said, it's constantly under development, with new buildings and whatnot added, so maybe in the future there will be more story. One of the bigger updates a few months back was the creation of an outpost. There's a pretty long series of missions that eventually makes the outpost bigger and get more survivors hanging about in that place. There's also factions, but that hasn't been developed yet but it would add some new interesting stuff when it does get implemented.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 8, 2015 3:56:07 GMT -5
One of the fun aspects is the early game. Most of the characters you make will die in the first few days, sometimes in the first in-game hour. Still, if you're lucky or you know what you're doing, you can set up some temporary ways to survive.
Night raids are fun. Pretty much complete darkness, wandering around town scavenging for supplies, with a high chance of encountering zombies. You can fight them, but there's a matter of making sound. Melee won't make a lot of sound, but enough to make zombies near enough to search toward the sound. A gun or a shotgun will send zombies going toward the sound in a large area.
There's also zombie types that'll make things worse. One screams, some others glow which attracts zombies to them, some make you glow making every zombie in the vicinity see you, and one is faster than you and also has night vision.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 8, 2015 15:28:17 GMT -5
Raiding towns. Homes are usually locked, so you can either smash a window which generates quite a bit of noise, or use a crowbar or a lockpick. Crowbars open doors and windows more quietly, but still generates some noise, but with windows there's a chance that the window will break. Picklocks generate no sound, but you can only open doors with them.
Once you've entered a house, it's looting time. Having a wheelbarrow is essential to cart off a lot of items, but lacking that you're left with what you can carry. Strength plays a role in how much you can carry, but there's also a volume limit to take mind of as well. A lot of clothes don't offer up a lot of volume space. The ones that provide the most are backpack types, but the main problem with them is encumbrance. Too much encumbrance, you will end up slower in a lot of things. Torso encumbrance in particular lowers melee attack speed - not really needed in ranged attackers, but for melee weapons users, and especially unarmed fighters, it's quite a massive drop.
So it's better to find a wheelbarrow or a shopping cart early on. Once you have some skills you can modify the carts to have a lot more storage space, and also repair carts from damage. You can drag around carts without a speed decrease, unless you're carting off engines and such. Engines are almost impossible to carry by hand, anyway, as car engines have a ton of weight, while wheelbarrows also has a higher capacity for weight. Not sure of the numbers, but you can carry a few times more than your weight limit, and several times your volume limit.
Later in the game you can repair cars you find or make your own, which provides even more storage space.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 9, 2015 6:18:01 GMT -5
Running and stamina is now a thing in the experimentals. For most part, making a survivor run makes them faster than zombies, making it even possible to do a smash and grab raid at town in broad daylight. On the other hand, that depends on how many zombies there are, and there's some zombie types with ranged attacks.
Pain is also a thing. More pain equals stat and speed loss, and a few good hits to a insufficiently dressed survivor will make running go at a zombie's pace. Furthermore, stamina drains quite a bit, and there's a chance to go out of breath and slow down and feel pain. Melee fighting also drains stamina, so trying to fight and run isn't viable if there's too many enemies.
That said, first few night raids are a success. Got food, clothes, and other needed supplies as well as an important wheelbarrow taken from a hardware store. With a wheelbarrow, I can carry more supplies, and if needed retreat into the wilderness in hopes of finding a better location to survive in.
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pegasuswarrior
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Post by pegasuswarrior on Nov 9, 2015 22:44:15 GMT -5
Cataclysm is pretty neat but it just seems like the type of game where reading the stories about it is more enjoyable then actually playing it like with Space Station 13. This seems accurate. Which is why I plan on reading the eff outta this thread.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 10, 2015 7:43:12 GMT -5
Establishing my survivor's hideout in a large power substation. Nothing special about the area, but it does have a small building to keep away from the elements outside. No curtains on the windows, though, meaning that my character would have trouble sleeping in certain hours due to the sunlight coming in.
Light also plays a somewhat important role aside from a lack of light hiding a survivor and zombies. Light has to be bright otherwise reading books will be slow, or impossible if it's completely dark. Light sources such as flashlights and oil lamps exist, but they require batteries or fuel. You can also light a fire... but if you do it indoors without a proper construction to hold the fires... well, the indoors will soon be outdoors - plus you may burn to death.
Luckily, one of the zombies dropped an atomic lamp. Plutonium powered light source - pretty much infinite light. If it's damaged it'll leak radiation which will give some nasty side-effects. Carrying it around was hard as it will generate a small radius of light around the survivor - though it was near dawn anyway.
There's a number of interesting structures surrounding the power station, but I'll keep on raiding the nearby town for now to increase my supplies, and perhaps find better weapons and armor-type clothing for longer trips into the surrounding area.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 10, 2015 11:45:29 GMT -5
Food's surprisingly abundant once you can get past surviving in the first day. Canned food and a number of other things won't rot; same with pretty much most drinks. On the other hand, stuff like butchered meat will rot unless you can cook them up into a preserved meal. Stuff like jerky, aspic, smoked meat, dehydrated meat won't rot, though there are some meals that will rot.
Since my character is a cannibal, I'm currently in a hurry to cook up the non-zombie human corpses to jerky, since I need more cooking skill to turn them into the better quality preserved meat.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 10, 2015 18:46:50 GMT -5
A look at some zombies made to make life in the cataclysm a headache, part one.
Acidic/spitter/corrosive zombies: Acid damage used to be pretty nasty in the older versions. It's nerfed now, but still pretty nasty on lightly armored survivors. Acidic is the first stage and they just barf out some acid. Spitters are second and they spit out a wide pool of acid. Nothing bad now with good footwear, more or a nuisance.
Corrosive is the final stage and is increasingly common in towns. Instead of a pool of acid, where spitters have a cooldown period where they don't shoot pools of acid, the corrosive almost constantly spits out a single tile's worth of acid. They're quite accurate too, and will deal quite a lot of damage after several hits. Hitting them will make them spill out a pool of acid on a random tile near them. To top it off, they glow which means that several zombies are probably around them, and even worse is that while the acidic and spitter zombie is fairly weak, the corrosive zombie is tough and will take quite a fair amount of hits to die. A nightmare in melee due to their abilities, even for mid-game survivors.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 11, 2015 12:11:29 GMT -5
Found an ice lab. In general, labs are a great source of items. Lots of chemicals, and mutagens, and if there are barracks down there then there's also a ton of guns and ammunition. That's not even counting the bottom floor loot. On the other hand, there's also a ton of dangers, mostly from turrets hiding behind close doors. The labs only use normal turrets that fire 9mm bullets, but are still dangerous to improperly armored characters. For the record, military outposts have milspec turrets that will murder survivors wearing kevlar from head to toe.
Ice labs, well, are cold. They get colder and colder the deeper the lab goes. So aside from armor, warmth is an important thing to consider unless you want a survivor moving at a snail's pace. Slower survivors will make zombies attack multiple times in a single turn, and the labs often have one of the most dangerous zombie types available.
If you do manage to clear out an ice lab, you get an area where you can permanently preserve meat and food to prevent them from rotting.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 12, 2015 9:49:41 GMT -5
Plan to switch bases and move to that ice lab. I wanna transfer all the loot I've gathered from my old base, and so I've begun the construction of a car.
On one hand, you can find a repairable car in the road and work with that. For most players, that's more or less what's done, especially if the car found is a real good one, like an RV or a tank. Later on custom vehicles are preferred in order to accommodate life in the cataclysm.
So I'm building from scratch my own deathmobile. Nothing really fancy. You can add a variety of turrets to a car, but personally I don't like using guns on a car. What I do want is a heavily armored behemoth that can serve as a temporary base while I'm exploring, as well as have a massive cargo capacity for long trips and bringing back massive hauls of loot.
Found a light tank, which I butchered for many things; the tank treads, military composite armor, and heavy duty frames. Also took the main gun and the machine gun turrets since it'd be a waste to not do so. Found a truck that has a lot of cargo carriers; the second most largest in mobile cargo capacity. The first one is kinda too sci-fi and a bit of an exploit so I don't use it.
Combine the two together and I got a hulking piece of metal; complete with bed and a crafting area for cooking. It's slow as hell though, but not that slow that walking is better choice. Not to mention that speeding around can be dangerous.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 13, 2015 9:48:16 GMT -5
There's a number of special basements in homes in the cataclysm. One of the better ones is the gun nut basement, aptly named due to the basement often having several types of guns and ammo. There's also a basement that holds some hardware tools and chemicals. Pretty much all basements have several zombies hanging around, and sometimes unluckily there's a hulk ready to turn a survivor into a red paste in the wall.
There's also the spider basement, and I found one during a recent night raid. Aptly named because there's a few zombies and a ton of giant black widow spiders. To a survivor without proper protection, a swarm of them is bad news cause they can poison a survivor. There's also a ton of webs that obscure the already dark area the basement is.
On the bright side, if RNG is pretty good, spider basements often have rare items and ammo. The spiders themselves can also provide a great deal of meat, not to mention chitin which can be crafted into strong, though somewhat encumbering armor.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 15, 2015 3:34:05 GMT -5
Next up on the dangerous zombies, brutes and hulks.
Zombie brutes are pretty damn powerful, and has a special attack that can knock a survivor several tiles away. If they hit solid ground, they'll be downed for a bit and can have trouble standing up and moving. It's worse if you do hit an obstacle, as you get extra damage from it. You'll go through a wooden wall. A steel door may kill you if you're not properly armored.
Hulks are bigger. Early game, if you're decent in melee and got a good weapon, brutes can be killed. Hulks have an insane amount of health, and they're freaking fast. Easy to die at night when you turn round a corner and suddenly get smashed by a hulk through a car.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 15, 2015 11:40:42 GMT -5
I am a complete miser when it comes to medical supplies. Wounds? Sleep it off, even though I've got like hundreds of bandages? Infected wounds? Want me to use a first aid kit, you big baby? Cauterize the bite wound with a knife and a lighter? Didn't cure it after 5 cauterizations? Hah, a 6th one will surely fix it! Too much pain? Sleep it off, you baby.
I will have some exceptions. If I have an upcoming night raid, then I'll bandage up. Wound turning green pretty much requires disinfecting it. Mushroom infections is pretty much cure immediately, because you sure as hell don't want to know what happens if you get a mushroom infection around for too long.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 19, 2015 12:08:44 GMT -5
Well, got an arm broken. Hostile NPC wielding a shotgun; my survivor's rifle got a headshot on him, killing him instantly, but before that happened the NPC opened fire. Shotguns pretty much do massive damage to zombies, and that also applies to humans as well. Since I picked a negative trait that reduces HP by 50 percent, one shot pretty much put the left arm health to 0. If it hit the torso or head instead, it would have been game over, but since it only hit an arm it could be recovered.
Using first aid kits or bandages won't work, gotta craft a splint and wear it and wait several days for it to heal.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 20, 2015 14:29:58 GMT -5
My survivor found several slime pits today. Areas like that spawn a ton of blobs, in numbers far larger than zombie hordes. Blobs by themselves don't pose much of a threat, but it's the numbers game at play. Melee is dangerous as once stamina runs out speed drops making a horde of two hundred blobs attack multiple times over. Most attacks won't penetrate good armor, but it all adds up in the end.
So, best solution is fire. Lots and lots and lots and lots of fire. Going down the pits with a flamethrower. One good thing about slime pits is the slime terrain is amazingly flammable.
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Post by aka Cthulhu on Nov 25, 2015 14:43:36 GMT -5
Updating this is somewhat harder than DF, I gotta admit. Unlike DF, I have to actively play the game for most part, where in comparison I generally set up some tasks on DF and let things move on its own.
That said, crafted the Rising Sun. It's a katana, which is already a pretty powerful cutting weapon on its own, modified that it can be activated to be set aflame for extra damage. While it's cool to go into the center of a dark street, and light it up for all to see, fighting while nearly everyone can see you, where you can't see how many are you actually fighting, is a terrible idea. Like moths to a flame, except the moths are like a massive tidal wave ready to snuff out the flame.
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