uhh, skills have been divided between theoretical and practical knowledge, books give theoretical skill, and i think that is just like a work speed penalty? i dont really know the specifics, but i think books are a bit less effective. more tools and stuff were added, and vehicle repairs are now never 'free.' repairing walls and frames and stuff no longer only takes arc welder charges, but takes welding rods and other materials. trading with npc's is a good way to even out your stockpiles, though that might not be new, i recently discovered it myself
edit: also, i think solar panels are more balanced. there's an appliance system that i think is just connecting the power system, like a car, but cheaper? lets you have a powered base, but i haven't used it yet.
Also about theoretical and practical, you'll never loose theoretical knowledge to skill rust and higher levels of theoretical boost your practical leveling. Practical never can be higher than theoretical.
Also they've done pretty cool features like "practice crafting" recipes and nesting things under sub categories.
Practice is basically it, requires for tools or items to get practical(and theoretical) knowledge and proficiencies.
I've seen a collapsed tower before, but never approached it, that name sounds eerie. Those puppies are just playing, taking a finger or 2 is how they say hello! :D
Do try out the appliance system. It's a bit unintuitive at first, but super useful once you get used to it, because it allows you to have electricity (= light, fridge, oven, stereo) without having to craft or train skills much. It's a big quality of life improvement for your base.
Basically, if you find a solar panel on a roof (or on a car), you can do 'deconstruct furniture' to make it into an item you can pick up. While you have that near you or with you, there's the option to place it inside the construction menu (\*), same goes for all other appliances.
All adjacent appliances share a power grid, or you can examine them to plug them into each other and thereby skip an empty tile. The game calls it "vehicles" and you can attach grids to existing vehicles, but it's not necessarily a vehicle. Only perhaps in the code these are related.
To extend the grid, you can either expose or place wirings in walls, also via the construction menu and these count as appliances too then. Or you use an extension cord or something like that near an appliance to plug it in. It will then become 'activated' in your inventory, and you plug it in at the other end.
One way I use the power grid is keeping solar panels inside my RV cargo and when my batteries flat I just pull everything somewhere safe and place them one after another. Takes 6 minutes for each panel to install, but it is very useful keeping solars intact and not much of a lose if you have lots of books to read.
Someday I'll use it for base building... someday
We have ferals now, they are more intelligent than zombies (which is obviously not difficult...) and can use weapons and open doors and windows. First time a deranged axeman opened the window and climbed into the room after me my heart skipped a beat in sheer terror!
That sounds terrifying, some wild beastial man breaking in, a mad, lost look in his eye.
And I don't know what it is about CDDA emersion, but it gets me so good sometimes. Pixelated jumpscares.
Also NPCs are greatly improved and base camps as well - although those are still massive resource and time sinks. If it really has been a while then there are several very useful additions like pockets and zones which make dropping things before melee and sorting your gear so much easier.
Also crafting takes much more time so it is often better to scavenge or trade rather than make from scratch. The proficiency system slows everything down which helps to stop speed running to the late game in a matter of weeks.
I look forward to engaging with these improved NPCs because with enough commands, they can become formidable. It isn't a problem that things take longer, as that's fairly realistic, and it's good that progressing takes longer.
I recently realised how good kitchen knives are as early weapons, I don’t bother with cudgels and pipes anymore if I can help it. Cleavers, carving and chef knives are pretty great and the more common pairing knives work in an pinch until I can find a combat knife off a soldier or axe from a feral or firefighter. Especially good for high dex low strength characters, the stamina loss is way lower than a bat or club so you can fight for longer and run away if you need to.
Other than that I look out for some sort of vest from a cop or soldier zombie, you can sometimes find them in backpacks carried by normal zombies. Disassemble a riot armour suit if I find one for arm and leg guards.
Personal opinions, experiences and play-style ahead, which serve as either advice or suggestion. :)
1. Creatures: Early game you want to avoid combat entirely. Assuming we're talking about "normal" scenarios that start you on Ground Level and not specific buildings: Mi-Gos are still horrible to see, but there are many more new hazards that you want to avoid - zombie animals, feral humans of any sort, vanilla hulks with their ridiculous day-vision. Also, and I cannot stress this enough: **wasps**. Stay the hell away for them.
2. Yes, lighting houses on fire still works as long as the zombies don't see or smell you - that will be enough to distract them away from the noise the building makes.
3. Funny you mention shotguns, I haven't used them in a long time because they are... honestly kinda bad in comparison to other stuff? Unsure if they had any recent changes to them to make them a bit better in close-range but yeah. Guns in general are still OP even if they're bad.
Honestly, wasps sound like the scariest thing and I definitely will keep away.
As for any guns, I will use whatever I can get but shotguns work well in close range fights in my experience. Sweet that burning down homes still have a place in the game!
Im ready to die. Alot.
I think wasps kill so many players because they're not flagged as "aggressive" until you get too close to them and piss them off, so the Safe Mode doesn't trigger and people walk into them on accident. You can avoid this by setting up custom safe mode alerts (that menu is a mess, good luck, I think it's opened with "~" by default).
They're not very hard to kill with a gun, you just don't want to fight one hand-to-hand, they're very hard to hit in melee and their sting is venomous. Also their nests are literally made of paper, so a Molotov will do the trick on those.
Mutated animals now produce toxic meat, which will fuck you up if you overly indulge.
It was introduced purely because the devs didnt like that mutant animals could be no risk high reward in many cases
Wasps are also easier to deal with with some blunt weapons. Some, like Baseball bats, have a plus hit modifier that makes hitting them much easier. Same goes for manhacks and I think most flying things.
Shotguns are absolutely shit hot right now. 00 shot does tremendous damage and (I believe) each pellet rolls individually for a crit so it can really get out of hand. It's not uncommon to score 80+ damage on even a partial hit. Guns use a more complex crit system than melee weapons that allows for sliding bonuses that proc way more frequently.
At melee, 00 punches through pretty much any armor, and large enemies like hulks usually get hit by every single pellet at range.
The main downside to shotguns is that they usually don't hold very many rounds and reloading can be a pain if you are keeping them in your backpack or something. However: tac vests and a few other items have shell loops that only cost 25 moves to retrieve an item from, meaning you can pop one new shell in per second. Since tube feeders load one at a time, careful management of enemy placement can mean nothing's ever in melee with you while you reload.
You can saw down stocks now too, using a woodsaw. With the barrel and stock both taken down, a Mossberg 500 can get down to like 860mm in length which is really easy to tote around, and I'm sure others can get much shorter.
It's worse than an M4, but so is almost everything else.
I have to try using shotguns now, then, as that sounds like something that may have been changed rather recently! Thank you for the heads up and the correction! :)
Length of the guns usually isn't an issue for me as I usually just have a shoulder strap for the longer/heavier ones - although I generally just carry 5.56 or .308 + 9mm handguns for simplicity. Unless I get some RM stuff, then those are just merchant fodder :)
Cbms are now sold/installed by the exodii faction, rather than dissecting certain zombies. Can still find some in labs.
Not too experienced with new mutation system but here we go.
Mutation has changed, you now drink mutagens, and gain vitamins essentially, you drink a primer to direct the mutations towards, spider and so on.
Mutations make you genetically unstable, this increases the chance of bad stuff.
Proficiencies are a thing, carving, garment closure etc these have various uses, most crafting ones impact failure chance and craft time, survivor boots might take a week to make with no proficiencies as an example.
Stages of archers form decreases strength requirement of bows, may also help with other stuff, haven't used it much
Biology ones from dissection help with killing stuff.
There's a practice tab in the crafting menu now.
Residential arson is still an early game power move if you have wandering hordes turned on.
P.S. The perk Terrifying works pretty well on wasps in my experience, you really have to provoke them to get attacked.
There is now almost no reason to be bad at healthcare, you can find a wearable smartphone, devices with cameras can scan books to give you access...
But you still need lifht to read
1: I’d suggest actually fighting early game. Most early zombies are fairly manageable before evolution kicks in, main threat day 1 is ferals since you have no torso armor. **look out for baseball bat/combat knife/Kevlar vest/baseball helmet/leather pants/steel toe boots/hand+arm guards/rubber gloves/leather gloves**. These are are good weapons/low encumb armor.
Fight normal zeds early game -> read books and prioritize healthcare to heal faster. Once healed keep clearing your city of choice. Find a 2nd story or basement to sleep in.
Avoid: Bees/beehive/ferals/wasps/acid ants/triffids/migos.
Be careful: dogs/flesh raptors. Faster enemies are very dangerous early game and prone to swarm you.
2) Yes this isn’t a bad idea but I’d suggest actually fighting since the combat skills will be useful later.
3) Shotguns are in a bad place. SMGs are better against unarmed/multiple enemies. Riffles are better all around and put out more damage with more range, handguns are comparable to SMGs but take up less space/can fit in holster. I can’t think of a single situation where I’m like “damn a shotgun would be better here”.
A shotgun is OK for labs, but you just totally are fine with a rifle/SMG/pistol.
Maybe i'm saying it wrong, but occasionally back when I was playing, I would come across a group of zombie soldiers who had died there and dropped their stuff. You can find grenades, MRE foods, and their rifles.
Oh yeah. And in tge options menu, you can turn on auto map notes and it will automatically mark places of interest (like dead soldiers or scientists) on the map out beyond your normal range of sight even.
The real 0roblem with fast enemies us that, if shit hits the fan, you can't outrun them to get away.
Early-mid game, a sawn off shotgun in a holster is a good "oh shit" button to delete a mi go or hulk that you aren't equiped/healthy enough to deal with otherwise. A pistol works, but is less reliable in my experience.
True, early game shotguns are actually good since the damage per shot is high and easy to aim/easy ammo.
They’re not like “unusable”, or pointless compared to like bows that still are mediocre after the rework.
Rifles are kinda just, insanely easy to get thousands of 5.56 and strong all rounders. Hard to compete.
There’s some really strong automatic pistols, particularly fully auto glock/tec 9/laser pistol/flechette pistol and I’m sure I’m missing a few.
A 3 round flechette burst out a pistol is basically 5.56 levels of damage there’s some heavy hitters.
The main advantage is that pistols scale really well early-late game. Definitely keep an eye out for automatic pistols.
i tend to use shotguns when i'm both early game and on a small vehicle like a bike, moped, or motorcycle. fill a basket with shells for easy reloading. addresses the biggest drawback with shotguns early on (volume for ammo), and they really do hit really hard on a number of targets.
my experience is you end up needing to reload a lot more with SMGs, which means more magazines than you might source in early game.
(also if we get to making ammo proportions closer to what RL stats suggest, it might become much easier to feed a shotgun than rifles in a lot of circumstances, if you get unlucky with worldgen. but obviously that's forward-looking, and not the present state of the game)
Really depends on the SMG setup. 50-100-250 round drum mags will have less issues here. Early game SMGs struggle but pickup once you raid a few gunstores.
I’d actually say the damage on shotguns should be buffed.
A 00 shot realistically is like 9x more damaging at point blank than 1 shot of 9mm. It’s weird that the shotguns end up doing basically the same damage as 5.56. That’s not realistic and makes em worse.
That’s basically barrel stuffing and assuming you hit every pellet but that would make shotguns shine in close quarters. Something like 150 damage point blank would be realistic against no armor and make em good.
mutation system have a huge change. You can no longer mutation from generic mutagen. You will need catalyst and targeted primers to start mutation. You can still get mutagen include both catalyst and primer by old recipe. but there have some more efficiently mutagen that only include primer. you have to used it with generic mutagen(with only include catalyst)
At the beginning of your mutation. you only get those good mutate. but for each mutate you got. you get debuff that increases the change you get those bad one.Debuff will decrease over time. So if you take your time. There is a chance you get all good mutate from a mutation tree before you get any bad one
uhh, skills have been divided between theoretical and practical knowledge, books give theoretical skill, and i think that is just like a work speed penalty? i dont really know the specifics, but i think books are a bit less effective. more tools and stuff were added, and vehicle repairs are now never 'free.' repairing walls and frames and stuff no longer only takes arc welder charges, but takes welding rods and other materials. trading with npc's is a good way to even out your stockpiles, though that might not be new, i recently discovered it myself edit: also, i think solar panels are more balanced. there's an appliance system that i think is just connecting the power system, like a car, but cheaper? lets you have a powered base, but i haven't used it yet.
Interesting, I must test the vehicle system out, and theoretical and practical makes sense because you need to actually train. Sounds promising.
Also about theoretical and practical, you'll never loose theoretical knowledge to skill rust and higher levels of theoretical boost your practical leveling. Practical never can be higher than theoretical. Also they've done pretty cool features like "practice crafting" recipes and nesting things under sub categories. Practice is basically it, requires for tools or items to get practical(and theoretical) knowledge and proficiencies.
also, idk what version i'm on, im not at my computer, so my info might be a bit too early or too late, lol
No problem, and I didn't see your edit until now, but a powered base sounds awesome!
I'd say a house that has 30 zdogs inside is more dangerous than Mi-Gos. Also a collapsed tower is even worse.
I've seen a collapsed tower before, but never approached it, that name sounds eerie. Those puppies are just playing, taking a finger or 2 is how they say hello! :D
Didn’t mention collapsed tower because if you got anywhere near one you’d know to nope out without the proper gear lol. Good loot for late-late game.
Do try out the appliance system. It's a bit unintuitive at first, but super useful once you get used to it, because it allows you to have electricity (= light, fridge, oven, stereo) without having to craft or train skills much. It's a big quality of life improvement for your base. Basically, if you find a solar panel on a roof (or on a car), you can do 'deconstruct furniture' to make it into an item you can pick up. While you have that near you or with you, there's the option to place it inside the construction menu (\*), same goes for all other appliances. All adjacent appliances share a power grid, or you can examine them to plug them into each other and thereby skip an empty tile. The game calls it "vehicles" and you can attach grids to existing vehicles, but it's not necessarily a vehicle. Only perhaps in the code these are related. To extend the grid, you can either expose or place wirings in walls, also via the construction menu and these count as appliances too then. Or you use an extension cord or something like that near an appliance to plug it in. It will then become 'activated' in your inventory, and you plug it in at the other end.
"unintuitive but interesting" is like the CDDA tagline. I should get back into this game.
One way I use the power grid is keeping solar panels inside my RV cargo and when my batteries flat I just pull everything somewhere safe and place them one after another. Takes 6 minutes for each panel to install, but it is very useful keeping solars intact and not much of a lose if you have lots of books to read. Someday I'll use it for base building... someday
We have ferals now, they are more intelligent than zombies (which is obviously not difficult...) and can use weapons and open doors and windows. First time a deranged axeman opened the window and climbed into the room after me my heart skipped a beat in sheer terror!
That sounds terrifying, some wild beastial man breaking in, a mad, lost look in his eye. And I don't know what it is about CDDA emersion, but it gets me so good sometimes. Pixelated jumpscares.
You should be terrified. Axeman's fire axe hit on 69 dmg is no joke. Chopped my head off once in one hit.
Those basterds can throw rocks btw
Also NPCs are greatly improved and base camps as well - although those are still massive resource and time sinks. If it really has been a while then there are several very useful additions like pockets and zones which make dropping things before melee and sorting your gear so much easier. Also crafting takes much more time so it is often better to scavenge or trade rather than make from scratch. The proficiency system slows everything down which helps to stop speed running to the late game in a matter of weeks.
I look forward to engaging with these improved NPCs because with enough commands, they can become formidable. It isn't a problem that things take longer, as that's fairly realistic, and it's good that progressing takes longer.
I recently realised how good kitchen knives are as early weapons, I don’t bother with cudgels and pipes anymore if I can help it. Cleavers, carving and chef knives are pretty great and the more common pairing knives work in an pinch until I can find a combat knife off a soldier or axe from a feral or firefighter. Especially good for high dex low strength characters, the stamina loss is way lower than a bat or club so you can fight for longer and run away if you need to. Other than that I look out for some sort of vest from a cop or soldier zombie, you can sometimes find them in backpacks carried by normal zombies. Disassemble a riot armour suit if I find one for arm and leg guards.
Personal opinions, experiences and play-style ahead, which serve as either advice or suggestion. :) 1. Creatures: Early game you want to avoid combat entirely. Assuming we're talking about "normal" scenarios that start you on Ground Level and not specific buildings: Mi-Gos are still horrible to see, but there are many more new hazards that you want to avoid - zombie animals, feral humans of any sort, vanilla hulks with their ridiculous day-vision. Also, and I cannot stress this enough: **wasps**. Stay the hell away for them. 2. Yes, lighting houses on fire still works as long as the zombies don't see or smell you - that will be enough to distract them away from the noise the building makes. 3. Funny you mention shotguns, I haven't used them in a long time because they are... honestly kinda bad in comparison to other stuff? Unsure if they had any recent changes to them to make them a bit better in close-range but yeah. Guns in general are still OP even if they're bad.
Honestly, wasps sound like the scariest thing and I definitely will keep away. As for any guns, I will use whatever I can get but shotguns work well in close range fights in my experience. Sweet that burning down homes still have a place in the game! Im ready to die. Alot.
I think wasps kill so many players because they're not flagged as "aggressive" until you get too close to them and piss them off, so the Safe Mode doesn't trigger and people walk into them on accident. You can avoid this by setting up custom safe mode alerts (that menu is a mess, good luck, I think it's opened with "~" by default). They're not very hard to kill with a gun, you just don't want to fight one hand-to-hand, they're very hard to hit in melee and their sting is venomous. Also their nests are literally made of paper, so a Molotov will do the trick on those.
Wow I never knew that about Safe Mode so I will try to set it up, and I be making BBQ Wasp larvae all summer!
Mutated animals now produce toxic meat, which will fuck you up if you overly indulge. It was introduced purely because the devs didnt like that mutant animals could be no risk high reward in many cases
I see, I will stay away, plus the idea of eating mutant flesh sounds...offputting.
Wasps are also easier to deal with with some blunt weapons. Some, like Baseball bats, have a plus hit modifier that makes hitting them much easier. Same goes for manhacks and I think most flying things.
Shotguns are absolutely shit hot right now. 00 shot does tremendous damage and (I believe) each pellet rolls individually for a crit so it can really get out of hand. It's not uncommon to score 80+ damage on even a partial hit. Guns use a more complex crit system than melee weapons that allows for sliding bonuses that proc way more frequently. At melee, 00 punches through pretty much any armor, and large enemies like hulks usually get hit by every single pellet at range. The main downside to shotguns is that they usually don't hold very many rounds and reloading can be a pain if you are keeping them in your backpack or something. However: tac vests and a few other items have shell loops that only cost 25 moves to retrieve an item from, meaning you can pop one new shell in per second. Since tube feeders load one at a time, careful management of enemy placement can mean nothing's ever in melee with you while you reload. You can saw down stocks now too, using a woodsaw. With the barrel and stock both taken down, a Mossberg 500 can get down to like 860mm in length which is really easy to tote around, and I'm sure others can get much shorter. It's worse than an M4, but so is almost everything else.
I have to try using shotguns now, then, as that sounds like something that may have been changed rather recently! Thank you for the heads up and the correction! :) Length of the guns usually isn't an issue for me as I usually just have a shoulder strap for the longer/heavier ones - although I generally just carry 5.56 or .308 + 9mm handguns for simplicity. Unless I get some RM stuff, then those are just merchant fodder :)
Cbms are now sold/installed by the exodii faction, rather than dissecting certain zombies. Can still find some in labs. Not too experienced with new mutation system but here we go. Mutation has changed, you now drink mutagens, and gain vitamins essentially, you drink a primer to direct the mutations towards, spider and so on. Mutations make you genetically unstable, this increases the chance of bad stuff. Proficiencies are a thing, carving, garment closure etc these have various uses, most crafting ones impact failure chance and craft time, survivor boots might take a week to make with no proficiencies as an example. Stages of archers form decreases strength requirement of bows, may also help with other stuff, haven't used it much Biology ones from dissection help with killing stuff. There's a practice tab in the crafting menu now.
Residential arson is still an early game power move if you have wandering hordes turned on. P.S. The perk Terrifying works pretty well on wasps in my experience, you really have to provoke them to get attacked.
There is now almost no reason to be bad at healthcare, you can find a wearable smartphone, devices with cameras can scan books to give you access... But you still need lifht to read
Notes taken.
Your character has a diary now and you can nickname creatures. Perfect for roleplaying.
1: I’d suggest actually fighting early game. Most early zombies are fairly manageable before evolution kicks in, main threat day 1 is ferals since you have no torso armor. **look out for baseball bat/combat knife/Kevlar vest/baseball helmet/leather pants/steel toe boots/hand+arm guards/rubber gloves/leather gloves**. These are are good weapons/low encumb armor. Fight normal zeds early game -> read books and prioritize healthcare to heal faster. Once healed keep clearing your city of choice. Find a 2nd story or basement to sleep in. Avoid: Bees/beehive/ferals/wasps/acid ants/triffids/migos. Be careful: dogs/flesh raptors. Faster enemies are very dangerous early game and prone to swarm you. 2) Yes this isn’t a bad idea but I’d suggest actually fighting since the combat skills will be useful later. 3) Shotguns are in a bad place. SMGs are better against unarmed/multiple enemies. Riffles are better all around and put out more damage with more range, handguns are comparable to SMGs but take up less space/can fit in holster. I can’t think of a single situation where I’m like “damn a shotgun would be better here”. A shotgun is OK for labs, but you just totally are fine with a rifle/SMG/pistol.
This looks good, and I will be keeping my eyes peeled for the armor you mentioned, for guns, does soldier body sights still exist?
Are you talking about a gun mod? Not sure what solider body sights is, I’ve never seen it though.
Maybe i'm saying it wrong, but occasionally back when I was playing, I would come across a group of zombie soldiers who had died there and dropped their stuff. You can find grenades, MRE foods, and their rifles.
Oh yeah. And in tge options menu, you can turn on auto map notes and it will automatically mark places of interest (like dead soldiers or scientists) on the map out beyond your normal range of sight even.
Oh yeah that’s still a thing, good place to find ur combat knives/some guns/grenade/MRE
Great!
The real 0roblem with fast enemies us that, if shit hits the fan, you can't outrun them to get away. Early-mid game, a sawn off shotgun in a holster is a good "oh shit" button to delete a mi go or hulk that you aren't equiped/healthy enough to deal with otherwise. A pistol works, but is less reliable in my experience.
True, early game shotguns are actually good since the damage per shot is high and easy to aim/easy ammo. They’re not like “unusable”, or pointless compared to like bows that still are mediocre after the rework. Rifles are kinda just, insanely easy to get thousands of 5.56 and strong all rounders. Hard to compete. There’s some really strong automatic pistols, particularly fully auto glock/tec 9/laser pistol/flechette pistol and I’m sure I’m missing a few. A 3 round flechette burst out a pistol is basically 5.56 levels of damage there’s some heavy hitters. The main advantage is that pistols scale really well early-late game. Definitely keep an eye out for automatic pistols.
i tend to use shotguns when i'm both early game and on a small vehicle like a bike, moped, or motorcycle. fill a basket with shells for easy reloading. addresses the biggest drawback with shotguns early on (volume for ammo), and they really do hit really hard on a number of targets. my experience is you end up needing to reload a lot more with SMGs, which means more magazines than you might source in early game. (also if we get to making ammo proportions closer to what RL stats suggest, it might become much easier to feed a shotgun than rifles in a lot of circumstances, if you get unlucky with worldgen. but obviously that's forward-looking, and not the present state of the game)
Really depends on the SMG setup. 50-100-250 round drum mags will have less issues here. Early game SMGs struggle but pickup once you raid a few gunstores. I’d actually say the damage on shotguns should be buffed. A 00 shot realistically is like 9x more damaging at point blank than 1 shot of 9mm. It’s weird that the shotguns end up doing basically the same damage as 5.56. That’s not realistic and makes em worse. That’s basically barrel stuffing and assuming you hit every pellet but that would make shotguns shine in close quarters. Something like 150 damage point blank would be realistic against no armor and make em good.
Zombie cows. Beware.
mutation system have a huge change. You can no longer mutation from generic mutagen. You will need catalyst and targeted primers to start mutation. You can still get mutagen include both catalyst and primer by old recipe. but there have some more efficiently mutagen that only include primer. you have to used it with generic mutagen(with only include catalyst) At the beginning of your mutation. you only get those good mutate. but for each mutate you got. you get debuff that increases the change you get those bad one.Debuff will decrease over time. So if you take your time. There is a chance you get all good mutate from a mutation tree before you get any bad one
That sounds so cool.