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 Let’s tell the story about a guy named Phillip.  Phillip has a little problem, you see, in that he has no idea who he is, where he is, or what’s going on. He only knows his name because it’s on the medical bracelet he was wearing when he woke up in an abandoned cryogenics lab. I’ll tell you Phillip’s story as he attempts to find out what’s going on and piece together his life. Regardless of whether to not Phillip ever learns of his past, his destiny lies… to the north. NEO Scavenger is a post-apocalyptic survival RPG, set in the greatest hellhole on Earth: MICHIGAN. While Phillip was frozen, multiple apocalypses happened, society has collapsed (possibly several times) and is only starting to rebuilt itself. In order to survive and get Phillip’s full story, the player must guide him through the ruined and twisted remnants of lower Michigan, scavenging the necessities of life (and everything else I can carry) from the wreckage. Meeting people in whatever bastions of civilization still exist and overall undertaking a great quest. You can never see everything in one playthrough, so multiples are normally required, but I’ll use my ultimate technique of having played through a few hundred times to fill in the gaps as needed, in lieu of playing the game four or five times in a row. The game is rather notable for being difficult and having permadeath (your save file is deleted when you die). For the sake of a cohesive narrative experience, I'm cheating like a little bitch and backing up my saves. But for your entertainment, a running list of Phillip Kindred's many deaths can be found at the bottom of this post. One of the things I love about this game is that it has a very robust modding community and there’s a huge library of fascinating additions to the game on the official forums. I’m gonna be playing through the vanilla game, but I might highlight a few of the interesting ones later. I love this game, but there’s a few flaws I’m not afraid to bring up. This engine is pretty bad, and made worse for being built in Flash. Even the developer admits that it was a terrible idea and all of his later projects avoided it (including the mobile version of the game, I believe). It works, and the game is still fun, but the issues are there and I’ll go into further detail about them later. Part 0: Character Creation! [NEW GAME]  We start with a bit of character customization. It’s a concept you’ve probably seen a time or two. You get 15 points to allocate to various advantages, which cost between 1 and 6 points, and can pick up various disadvantages to gain additional points. Certain advantages and disadvantages conflict with each other, taking one means you can’t take the other, usually for obvious reasons. Besides the uses I mention for skills in their entries, most skills are also situationally useful in events throughout the game. Advantages Strong – 6 Points The most expensive advantage, and probably worth the cost. Strong, as the name implies, means you have better than average physical strength. Your melee attacks hit harder, you can carry more, and you can use your strength to move obstacles while scavenging that a lesser man might need a tool to help him move. It also grants a special move during combat, allowing you to create obstacles that might cause an opponent to trip or lose a turn entirely. It’s a workhorse that you can’t go wrong with if you have the points to spare. Strong conflicts with Feeble. Melee – 4 points Strong’s combat-oriented little brother, Melee makes you a superior fighter at close range. You hit harder, get hit less hard, and gain a special move during combat, allowing you to trip an opponent in melee range. It also gives you the knowledge to build your own improved spears. Ranged – 4 points Kinda like Melee, except you fight from way over there instead. You know everything about bows and guns, and can use them at their maximum effective ranges. Like Melee, Ranged also permits making improved spears (although the ranged fighter will prefer to throw them), but also grants the ability to make bows and arrows. Tough – 4 points Tough makes you tough. Seriously though, that’s the point. A tough character can handle pain better than the rest without ill effect, heals slightly faster, has a better immune system, and gains a new skill in combat, Headbutt, hitting the enemy with his superior thick skull and maybe knocking them down, hurting them, or making them lose a turn. Tough conflicts with fragile. Medic – 4 points Those other skills are good for fighting, but Medic lets you patch yourself back up better afterward. Medic lets you heal faster, self-diagnose when you’re ill, and identify any drugs you come across. It also gives you a better breakdown of the state of your health, rather than a single bar that you have to decide means you’re dying or not. Trapping – 4 points An incredibly valuable skill for staying alive in non-combat related situations. Trapping, as the name suggests, means you know how to trap animals and how to get the most possible use out of their corpses. You gain the knowledge to craft squirrel traps, and how to make fire with sticks. I try to fit this skill into nearly every game, the ability to not freeze to death is not to be underestimated. Botany – 4 points Like Trapping, Botany helps you survive, mostly in the form of being able to find food in the wilderness. If you have botany, you’re better at finding items in the wilderness, and can identify which berries and mushrooms are safe to eat and which are poisonous. Botanists also have the knowledge to make an incredibly healthy tea out of tree bark. Athletic – 3 points Makes you just a little bit better physically. Instead of the improved strength of Strong, Athletic lets you do more before becoming tired, run faster, take a little less damage, and be able to quickly put distance between yourself and the enemy in combat. It also permits you to run further when traveling on the world map, covering more distance in less time and getting away from fights you don’t want to be a part of. Athletic conflicts with Enervated. Lockpicking – 3 points You know how to make a usable lockpick out of some junk you found. Having lockpicks greatly improves your chance of finding loot while scavenging buildings, and is an easy way to get into locked buildings. Mechanic – 3 points You know how stuff fits together. Primarily, this skill is about building stuff, a mechanic intuitively knows how certain vehicles can be made. Sure, a sled made out of tree branches isn’t great, but it’s better than nothing at all. It also makes you better at safely traversing damaged buildings. Hiding – 2 points Another skill that does just what it sounds like. Hiding makes you stealthier in general, making your campsites more concealed, improving your ability to stay hidden while trying to travel undetected, and sometimes letting you slip away from combat. You can also hide while scavenging, attracting less attention, but being less likely to gain loot. Eagle Eye – 2 points Increases your visibility on the world map, letting you see one hex further than you otherwise could. Also makes you slightly better at spotting enemies in the dark or that you haven’t seen yet. Conflicts with Myopia. Metabolism (Slow) – 2 points A slow metabolism means you need less food and water to keep chugging along, but has the minor downside of making you heal a little slower. Slow Metabolism conflicts with Fast Metabolism. Hacking – 2 points You have incredible skill with computers. Unfortunately, you’re scavenging a post-apocalyptic wasteland. On the plus side, if you do find any working computers and can get them powered on, you might find something useful. Once you’ve hacked a computer, you can use it to hack smartphones and tablets, and occasionally find valuable information or useful apps. It also has uses in the game’s ending sequence. Tracking – 1 point You’re good at spotting tracks and identifying the things that made them while at the same time hiding your own. Moderately useful for tracking specific people or creatures on the map. Electrician – 1 points You can identify electronics and fix some broken ones. Electrician’s great claim to fame is in the endgame where you might successfully collect the pieces needed to make a do-it-yourself gauss gun. Disadvantages Feeble – 4 points You’re not strong. You’re the complete opposite. You deal less damage in melee and can carry less. Conflicts with Strong. Fragile – 4 points Makes you pretty pathetic. You take more damage, take greater penalties from injuries and diseases, can’t handle pain as well, and heal slower. Conflicts with Tough. Fast Metabolism – 2 points You need to eat a lot and drink even more. Food and water are precious commodities that you can’t help but go through like water, if you’ll pardon the pun. But you do heal a little faster. Enervated – 2 points Really out of shape. You’re slower, get tired faster, and just can’t do as much. Conflicts with Athletic. Myopia – 1 point Bad eyesight means you can’t see as far, reducing your vision on the worldmap by one hex and making you a little worse at spotting enemies. Conflicts with Eagle Eye. Insomniac -1 point No matter how tired you are, you have trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep, and you need more sleep to feel fully rested. There are a small handful of advantages not listed here that you can pick up during the course of the game. We’ll get to them when they become relevant. I’ll freely admit that I oftentimes prefer a nice casual playthrough where I cheat and take every advantage. It’s a fun, not too stressful but still moderately difficult way to approach the game, and means that you never have to worry about not being able to do something. But for this LP, I’ll play it honest. And now, on with the show. The Many Adventures of Phillip Kindred Part 1: I Just Want Some Pants! A Decent Pair of Pants! Part 2: Phillip’s Quest For Pants Part 3: And Then There's THIS rear end in a top hat Part 4: I Wanna Ride the Ferris Wheel
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Oct 20, 2018 10:00
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Part 1: I Just Want Some Pants! A Decent Pair of Pants! A decent build, not exceptionally great in combat, but not cannon-fodder, and not so combat-specialized that he’ll starve to death in the middle of the woods. Well, probably. Starving, freezing, and any number of other gruesome fates are just part of the reality that is Phillip’s life now. Let’s get started then. [Confirm]  My name’s Phillip Kindred. I think. It’s written on this hospital bracelet I had on my wrist when I woke up, I’m pretty sure they have to put your real name on those. It’s the law or something, right? Anyway, first thing I remember is waking up having just been dumped out of a tube full of liquid. The tube turned out to be a cryogenic tube, for freezing people, just one of a whole bunch in a whole cryogenic facility. An abandoned, one, no people, broken windows, a real mess, but all the cryo stuff was still operating.I figured all that out a bit later of course, because as soon as I stood up, I heard a terrible screaming noise and the sound of something big and heavy coming down the hallway toward me. Luckily though, I know a thing or two about a thing or two, and knew I had a few options This is the first of several point in the game where you get a bank of options based on your skills (or sometimes certain inventory items will give you an option). In this case, Phillip has six options. Athletic – Dive through the broken window Botany – Use knowledge of plants to identify a plant that’s growing in the room as something that can repels animals Electrician OR Mechanic – Shut the door and rig a lock Hacking – Hack the door controls to keep it locked The skills I brought are conveniently most of the ones you can use here, I’m missing Medic (emergency dump a cryo tank to create a distraction), Strong and Melee (each allows you to fight the monster coming down the hallway, though you’ll take some injuries doing it, having both allows you to administer a flawless beatdown, which impresses Phillip so much he takes the time to figure out how to get a recording from the security cameras that he can show people). The last option, always available regardless of your skills, is to heedlessly jump out the broken window, taking some injuries from cutting yourself on the glass.  The option you pick here doesn’t really matter. It’s better to kill the monster (a large and ferocious werewolf-like creature called a dogman) since that gets you the body, which is covered in meat you can cook and eat, and with the trapping skill, a furry pelt you can skin off and turn into a coat. Important to note: Phillip is naked save for a hospital gown, and this is Michigan in permanent November. A heavy fur coat is an incredible advantage that makes Trapping totally worth it… except I have no skills to kill the dogman.  I know a lot about plants, and I was able to identify one of the plants growing in the ruined room as being a castor bean plant. Castor beans are full of a toxic oil and most animals with a strong sense of smell will avoid it. So I crushed some up real quick, rubbed the oil over as much of my skin as I could and scattered more crushed beans near the door.Yeah, it was a really dumb idea that never should have worked, but it did! The man-like dog creature sniffed around, decided I wasn’t safe to eat, and wandered off to look for food somewhere else. I’d survived the encounter, but I knew something wasn’t right. My memory was nonexistent, but I was at least pretty sure of some basic facts, and I knew this ruined room that nature had thoroughly invaded meant the building I was in was abandoned, and had been for a long, long time. I had no idea. I wasn’t keen on following the dogman down the hallway immediately, and knew the nearby broken window would be an easy and accessible way out of the building (and back in, if I wanted), so I took a second to look around.  I found a miraculously still working computer console, and was able to pull up some records. I knew that I was in tank number 5, so I pulled up the details on that block of tanks.  Well, that was completely uninformative. Maybe not completely. It backed up the bracelet, so my name probably really is Phillip Kindred. There was no emergency contact or information on who was paying for my stay here, just a bank account number. But the other people around me had relatives in Detroit, Michigan. Probably not out of the question to assume that’s where I am. Also, I was committed (there’s a loaded term I’m not sure I like the sound of) in September of 2019. I have no idea what the date is now. How long have I been frozen that this went from a functional facility to a ruined wreck with plants growing throughout? Years…? Decades…? Centuries…? I had enough wandering around Gyges (Gyges Cryo Facility, there was a logo on the computer) and decided to take my leave. Hopefully if I need to come back, the dogman will have moved on somewhere else to find food.  [i]The parking lot outside was just as abandoned, but I did hear some gunshots in the distance. Wasn’t quite willing to go in search of whoever was doing the shooting, I wasn’t that desperate. I was really loving cold though. Fall in Michigan is a bitch, especially when you’re showing your rear end to the world in a hospital gown and nothing else. Well, not nothing else. I had the hospital bracelet, and a necklace. A little bronze charm on a leather cord. Probably not valuable, but touching it made me feel oddly safe and comfortable. I decided there was no point in ditching either of them for now. Taking off the necklace this early is actually a swift death sentence, for reasons I’ll show off later. I often wonder what proportion of new players’ first deaths is due to doing that.  Your first time through the game, or any time it thinks this is your first time, because saved Flash data doesn’t exactly last long, it gives you this. This is the whole tutorial. I appreciate brevity in tutorials, but there’s a lot not covered here.  The inventory is a rough interface, but it works well enough. Phillip, as I mentioned, has a hospital gown, a medical bracelet, and a necklace equipped. That leaves me with plenty of empty equipment slots. The game uses a combination of grid-based and weight-based inventories. I have no inventory grid, because I have nowhere to store items. Few are the games that stop to think about where you keep all the poo poo you pick up. The large grid on the left is the floor. Gyges’ parking lot is big, so there’s a ton of room for stuff here. All outdoor locations are the same, while indoor locations will have smaller areas for storing stuff. The pointy objects already on the ground are shards (most salvage is very general, the better for not needing to have a thousand kinds of the same piece of garbage). They’re in pretty rough shape, and there’s nothing I need them for right now. Besides, I have nowhere to put them. Now that I’ve left Gyges, I can turn right around and go back in, first by scavenging the tile, which sends Phillip back in to look for stuff.  When you choose to scavenge a hex, you’re presented with a list of available buildings or other possible salvage locations. Usually there aren’t very many, and none it all in open fields or the like.  When you scavenge, depending on the building you’re going into, you’ll have a choice to use one or more relevant skills or items. There are two skills that can aid in scavenging Gyges, neither of which I have. (Eagle Eye lets you find a multitool, while Medic gets you a first aid kit, which sometimes holds useful drugs or other items, and can be used as a small (4x4) container. As I had neither skill, all I managed to do was remind Phillip where the window was, allowing him to go back in at will without having to scavenge again.  I can simply use the window now like any other usable item.  Not much has changed, but now that the dogman is gone and Phillip’s calmed down, he can go down that hallway.  This didn’t turn up any useful items, but I did find a nice room, still intact, protected from the elements. The exam room is now available as a campsite in this tile. Like salvage sites, campsites infrequently appear, one or more places with four walls and a roof (or a thicket of trees in the woods) where you can sleep better and safer than out in the open. This room even has some amenities.  They’re broken, but they’re there. My particular skillset will allow me to fix both of these (Mechanic for the heat and Electrician for the lights) if I can find the relevant supplies. Examining them both will get me scraps of paper with the items I need to fix them Fix HVAC: Mechanic skill, screwdriver, small mechanical parts (I told you salvage was pretty generalized, all screws, bolts, wires and full on fall under this heading), and a tarp Fix Lights: Electrician skill, small mechanical parts, pliers, and a cutting tool (the shards in the parking lot would work find for this if I can’t get a multitool or some other knife) There’s a bug (or at least a probably unintended feature) that you can keep examining the broken vent and lights and Phillip will keep making GBS threads another piece of paper out to write the needed supplies down, spawning potentially an infinite number of paper scraps. It’s hardly gamebreaking, but it’s there.  For a brief comparison, this is the campsite for sleeping out in the parking lot. You can do it, but it sucks. Offers no shelter, gives no early warning of incoming critters, it’s a mess. Never sleep out in the open if you don’t have it (especially when you’re nearly naked, if it starts raining in the night you might never wake up).  This is the exam room. It has walls and a ceiling, can’t ask for more than that. It’s shelter stat is already great, and fixing the HVAC would allow it to keep Phillip as warm as a fire in the same location, with no need for fuel. Fixing the lights will improve night visibility, making it safer to fight here at night. NEXT TIME: Phillip’s Quest For Pants
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Oct 20, 2018 10:01
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Part 2: Phillip’s Quest For Pants It didn’t take very long after I left Gyges to discover that it wasn’t just one ruined building lost to the sands of time. Trailer parks, blocks of houses, entire cities had crumbled. There were people, to be certain, but even I know better than to go towards the shooting in a post-apocalyptic deathworld. So I did what anybody in my situation would do: I stole everything that wasn’t nailed down. I clearly wasn’t the first person to come scavenging through these ruins, and I certainly won’t be the last. There are those who like to compare NEO Scavenger to roguelikes, because of the high difficulty and permadeath. But there are a few things you can rely on. The map will always be the same from one game to the next, though what buildings are available so scavenge or camp in changes. That means when Phillip first leaves Gyges and steps out into the open world, the same choice is always available: take to the woods to the south (in black on the map because forest tiles block light and Phillip has poor eyesight) or west to the formerly inhabited area. Movement is pretty simple, you click on the adjacent hex you want Phillip to go to. You have a maximum number of moves per hour, depending on a few factors (I’m not running, in decent health, don’t have any shoes but haven’t injured my feet, so I get 4 moves per hour). Besides movement, your moves can be spent crafting items instead, most crafting consumes a fraction of a mover depending on the complexity of what you’re making. In this case, the choice was easy: I have the Trapping skill so I can make fire with a couple of sticks and some bark for kindling. It’s loving cold. So I ducked into the woods first to grab the bounty of nature.  The downside to going into the woods is that they’re harder to traverse, taking more movement points than just staying out in the open. Any turn involving the woods is likely to be your whole drat turn.  Like buildings, forests usually offer up a chance to scavenge. My Botany skill is useful here, slightly increasing my chance to find loot.  However, scavenging is a dangerous way to live, and opportunities to fail and get hurt are constant. This is just wasted time thankfully, there are other locations where you can get hurt much worse, or even be permanently disabled.  But the real prize here is the wood. Forest hexes are an infinite supply (just by clicking use on the forest item in their floor inventory) of bark, medium branches, and large branches, all of which are useful to Phillip. I grabbed some medium branches and bark for fire, but I’ll be back for more later. Especially since some poor fool left a perfectly good piece of aluminum foil just lying there! Then I went back to Gyges and made fire.  The crafting interface can be politely described as unintuitive. Or a mess. All your skills and the items in your inventory are presented on the left side (equipped items highlighted in yellow so you don’t accidentally use your pants to fuel a fire), and you drag them to the box on the upper right to craft. When you successfully create something, it appears in the box on the bottom right. Thankfully, there’s an easier way.  You can skip the clunky interface altogether by using the recipe list. Clicking on a recipe adds all the items required (if you have them) to the crafting grid. You start out with a fair number of recipes known, and can learn additional ones by finding scraps of paper throughout the world. When Phillip wrote down the items he needed to fix the HVAC and lights in the exam room, those were added to the recipe list. The downside to this option is that, is the number of recipes you know increases, the list gets bogged down and loads very slowly. Moderately annoying in the base game, brutal in modded games with tons of additional recipes. Also, because it adds items to craft automatically, you can’t pick and choose which ones you want to use, which is sometimes less than ideal. I prefer the unintuitive but more customizable option, but it’s good to have both available, especially for those starting to learn the game.  In this case, I combined my trapping skill, some bark, and two sticks to create a small campfire. Small campfires do the job, they give heat and light and can be used to set other things on fire, but they only burn for a couple hours.  Then I combined a stick and the small fire to make a larger fire that will burn much longer.  Fire is good as a lightsource, but I needed a way to take it with me on the go. TORCHES! I was able to use some bark and the paper scraps Phillip wrote his crafting recipes on to make a crude torch (burns for one hour) and a quality torch (burns for three). I can light one from the fire before leaving the facility again (by crafting together the torch and campfire) and have a light available when I scavenge a nearby hex.  NOW I AM PREPARED! AND STILL loving COLD! And so Phillip’s quest for pants began in earnest.  Your first visit to a town or city hex gets you Phillip’s sudden realization that the world is hosed. The implication here is that Phillip remembers what the world was like before he was frozen, it’s his own personal details and history he can’t remember. Which makes sense, total amnesia would probably mean he wouldn’t know how to repair machines and electronics or hack computers.  In a more specific sense, this time the city hex next to Gyges is apparently a trailer park, with three mobile homes available to scavenge. Mobile homes are generally pretty baseline as scavenge locations go, the loot isn’t spectacular but they’re not very dangerous.  Phillip’s torch increases his chance to find loot and decreases his chance of getting hurt, but also draws attention from any nearby creatures. Note the filled up safety bar, it is drat near impossible for Phillip to hurt himself scavenging in here. Scavenging a building takes one full move, so I only have time to do two of the three mobile homes before the hour ends, and had to go into the next hour to finish the third.  But what a haul! A sleeping bag (improves sleeping in any campsite, this one is loving huge and is best left wherever you set up your main base, or converted into a sack for carrying poo poo), a pot that I can boil water in, a cleaver (it’s not a great weapon, but I don’t have anything else yet), a first aid kit (it’s empty, so it’s only useful as a box to keep stuff in), a rifle scope on a strap that increases Phillip's vision range by 1, two empty bottles I can store water in after boiling it, a bunch of mechanical parts, two plastic shopping bags (these will be my primary means of carrying stuff until I can get a backpack or something) and two tarps. And a newspaper, which serves two purposes, I can tear it up into a whole bunch of paper scraps for torches, but first, I can read it to find out a bit of what happened to the world. This one is about a casino in New Mexico that was built over a nuclear waste dump filled in with soil from an Indian burial ground and had guests attacked by skinchangers. The important thing to remember about the crazy stories you read in papers in this game: they are very probably all true. I’ll maintain a list of them so we can get an idea of how civilization ended.  I went back to Gyges to offload all that stuff and grab and light another torch before heading out to the next closest hex. It was less rewarding, only netting me another cleaver, some more plastic bags, and another copy of the newspaper about the New Mexico werewolves. Still no pants, or any other clothes. But with the sun high up, there's enough daylight to get Phillip's full visibility (revealing two hexes away from wherever he stands, as opposed to the standard three with a scope, because Myopia), enough to reveal another city hex east of Gyges. On the way back, I tried to swing into a bit of forest to pick up some more branches.  Oh, well, gently caress. NEXT TIME: And then there’s THIS rear end in a top hat What Happened to the World After Phillip Was Frozen? Werewolf attacks in New Mexico Truthkeeper fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Oct 21, 2018 |
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Oct 21, 2018 01:48
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Part 3: And Then There’s THIS rear end in a top hat So there I was, minding my own business with a couple bags of loot and hoping ot pick up some usable branches on my way back to my little hidey-hole at Gyges when I got jumped by something out of my nightmares. Literally jumped, thing came from out of the air and kicked me to the ground. Things were looking pretty bad for ol’ Phillip right about then. There’s a face you wouldn’t want to run into in a dark alley. Mind you, just about everywhere is essentially a dark alley in this hellworld Phillip woke up in. It’s probably best not to wonder how Phillip knows the thing that just jumped him is called an Enfield Horror. For those of you not up on weird-rear end American cryptids, the Enfield Horror is one of a few names for one or more creatures believed to have menaced the population of Enfield, Illinois in 1973. Cryptid Wiki posted:What Henry found, to his terror, was a creature that “had three legs on it, a short body, two little short arms, and two pink eyes as big as flashlights. It stood four-and-a-half-feet tall and was grayish-colored. It was trying to get into the house!” Henry was completely mortified by the sight of this horrible apparition, slammed the door, and rushed to grab his .22 pistol and a flashlight. Henry proceeded to fire on the creature four times, and according to him, “When I fired that first shot, I know I hit.” The beast hissed at him (most sources say that it sounded rather like a wildcat) and proceeded to bound away in long leaps across the yard, eventually becoming lost to McDaniel’s sight as it made its way towards the railroad and the cover of the trees. He asserted that he had seen the thing cover fifty feet in three leaps. Stunned by the encounter, Henry proceeded to call the police. The Horror in game is based pretty much entirely on this description. It’s a scary fucker and definitely not something you want to run into without having a decent weapon to fight it off with. It’s downright dangerous to get into melee with, since it can very easily knock you on your rear end (you’ll note it started this fight at melee range knocking Phillip on his rear end and leaving him stunned for a round). Being knocked prone is not a good position to fight from, your only choices are to try and pull your opponent down to the ground, crawl away to get some distance, roll to dodge an incoming attack, or take the hit and try to stand up. I made a couple risky decisions here that ended up working out. First, I stood up.  That worked out great, it missed trying to attack. Now Phillip is already at melee range, holding a stick (the burnt out remnants of the torch he had earlier). Sticks can be used as melee weapons; they suck, you can see I took a few swings to little effect and then it broke (items take durability damage from being used as weapons). So I took a chance to waste a turn swapping something else into play.  The combat system is… elaborate as gently caress, to put it lightly. Maybe not Dwarf Fortress levels of overthinking it, but drat close. Any weapon that cuts or pierces is as good as gold, causing an enemy to bleed out is always a valid strategy (the Horror has little resistance to any kind of attack, whereas Dogmen and armored humans are significantly harder to hit). Besides making them bleed, other ways to win fights include hitting hard enough with blunt or piercing weapons to damage internal organs, or beating them into unconsciousness with whatever you have. Once an opponent is unconscious, you can leave, or pick them over for loot, or keep attacking to finish them off.  There are of course thirty thousand other options in combat. You can advance or fall back to change the range between you and the enemy (range 0 being face to face, 1 being close enough to hit with smaller melee weapons, 2-3 allowing you to hit with longer weapons like spears, further than that being out of melee range). You can charge forward or retreat back to move faster, which leaves you more open to attack and more likely to trip depending on the terrain, charging will increase the power of a melee attack the next turn. When wielding a melee weapon, you can just try to hit the enemy, which has a decent hit rate, does some damage, and might leave you open, or make a melee surge, which swings multiple times, has a lower hit rate, leaves you open, and makes you skip your next turn. You can also try to parry or dodge an incoming attack, reducing the enemy’s hit chance and leaving them vulnerable if they miss. You can tackle them, which puts you on the ground, but also grounds the enemy if you hit. You can also try talking to resolve your differences… by which I mean you can wave your weapon and act in a threatening manner to make some enemies bail. You can actually talk to human enemies, actively hostile ones won’t respond, but some people don’t immediately want to kill you and talking can end the encounter. You can also demand that a human opponent surrender, which they might if they’re badly beaten and smart enough to want to live, allowing you to steal everything they own.  I’m doing moderately well against the Horror, having landed a few blows with my cleaver and even managed to knock it down. You can kick opponents while they’re down, dealing decent damage with a chance to damage internals.  I quite thoroughly smacked it down. Fighting should usually be avoided. It can’t always be, which is why the combat-related advantages are so good, but most fights just aren’t worth getting into. Humans at least carry useful items, the Horror doesn’t have anything.  Scavenging the city tile east of Gyges got me not just PANTS! A DECENT PAIR OF PANTS! But also a shirt, and a hoodie. When it rains, it pours. Also got a lighter, I can now bick my Flic to start fires and light torches. I still prefer to start fires the old fashioned way because lighters have limited uses (in this case I assume the durability meter refers to how much fuel it has).  And another newspaper article! A military base, Camp Grayling, installed a microwave-based Active Denial System to keep people out, despite it having… pretty much exactly the problems that real world microwave weapons have. Well, I’m sure that will never be useful information that I’ll need to know about.  In a nearby shack in some woods, I found a smartphone (with no battery), more pants and shirts, some lockpicks (which would be amazing since you can only make them if you have the Lockpicking advantage… but you not Lockpicking to use them, so they’re useless), and a squirrel trap (will allow me to trap and kill squirrels when scavenging in the woods).  My pile of loot back at Gyges is getting pretty decent (and full of useful garbage). I did eventually start sorting some of this, and keeping it indoors in the exam room instead of out in the parking lot. It doesn’t actually matter which space you keep your stuff in, but it’s convenient for organization.  After 8 hours have passed, evening falls. Evening has about the same lighting as day, and afterward dusk has about the same as morning, but the orange tone is mostly to warn you “night is falling, get back home or find a place to bunk down before it gets dark”. You have two hours of evening and three of dusk to either get back or find a place to spend the night. Once night falls, it’s full dark and you can only see one hex around you and get one move per hour.  This is where my insomnia disadvantage kicks in. Usually, when you’re tired, you click the sleep button and go to sleep. Insomniacs can’t fall asleep easily, and get less out of every hour of sleep they do get. So you spend the whole night mashing the sleep button and hoping to have decently filled up your rest bar by morning.  Briefly going over the status bars: Hunger - Starts at sated and goes down, as you get hungrier your movement and strength decrease. Increased, obviously, by eating, or by drinking tea and soda. Thirst – Also starts at sated. Similar penalties as hunger, but it goes down faster. You can rehydrate by drinking water, which should be boiled or chemically treated, untreated water from ponds or streams can result in turning this into an Oregon Trail roleplay, where you have no wagon and only one character and that character has dysentery. Rest – Starts at well-rested. If this bar drops to the bottom, you collapse where you’re standing, regardless of what you’re doing or who you’re fighting. This bar can be filled by sleeping, which is nice and easy if you were smarter than me and didn’t take Insomniac. It’s easier to sleep at night, or while the rest bar is low. You can be snuck up on while sleeping, which is why you generally want a campsite with a high camouflage meter, sleeping while the meter is low makes you sleep deeper and be less likely to wake up if someone sneaks into your site. You can drink soda for a short caffeine boost to the meter, but it will drop even lower when the crash hits. Carrying capacity – It’s kinda silly that they made this one a meter. Starts at unburdened. Carrying too much will reduce your moves/hour and tire you out faster. Your capacity decreases when you’re hungry, thirsty, tired, or injured. Temperature – The bar that will kill most new players. This bar tells you if you’re freezing to death. Comfortable is good, anything higher or lower is worse. Going 12 hours from the start of the game without finding more clothes or making a fire will almost certainly kill you, even faster if it starts raining. As you get colder you’ll start shivering and get hypothermia. It is possible, though unlikely, to swing too far in the other direction, if you wear a heavy fur coat while sitting at a fire and drinking soda. Outdoor Temperature – A rough idea of how loving cold it is, recall this is outdoor temperature in November in Michigan, my thermometer tells me that’s 40 F right now. This gets lower at night, or while raining. Health – A rough indicator of Phillip’s state of health. I’m hurting after fighting the Enfield Horror (and a few dogs), but not particularly damaged. This also tells you if you’ve lost a lot of blood. Having the Medic advantage gives you additional bars to get a better idea of your health.  Somehow, I managed to survive that first day, despite having to fight off wild dogs and being jumped by a literal monster. I had food, clothes (anything is better than freezing my actual rear end off in a hospital gown) and a place to sleep. But I also had time to kill, looking at the sky and wondering who and where I was. It was then that I saw it, the glow of artificial lights, a lot of them. The kind you get from big cities, but times a million. It was off in the east, and I considered it as a possible place to go. Where there are artificial lights, there are people, right? Cue this a dozen times or so. I thoroughly lament taking Insomnia so I could have Electrician, it is not loving worth it.  Eventually, morning did come, and I was rested enough to travel a bit.  I used some bits of rope and a few tree branches to make a rudimentary sled, a travois. It’s a portable inventory I can drag behind me. It’s annoying in combat, where you have to spend a turn dropping it before you can move freely. The travois is the least durable vehicle, and you can’t keep small objects in it because it’s just some branches lashed together, but it’s made of easily replaced materials, and fairly big. Once you have water, food and clothes taken care of, you can explore further afield safely in search of other luxuries. I went north this time, hitting a few scavenging sites on the way.  And fought some dogs. Got scratched up pretty good, but it’s only really bleeding wounds that you need to be concerned about. You can bandage them (with dirty rags if you like infections, or clean rags if you prefer not to have your skin sloughing off).  That was when I heard it. Engines running, lots of them, like generators powering something big. I could see some bits of ruined city further north in the same direction the sound was coming from, and decided to check it out. What Phillip saw was a ring of six city hexes in various states of disrepair. And in the center… ZOM ZOM’s, a place to eat. Well, Phillip has all the tasty skewered and grilled dog meat he can eat, but this is interesting. And crowded with people besides.  I took a few minutes to scavenge the tiles around Zom Zom’s first. Managed to get a crowbar, which is an incredibly useful tool that increases your chance to find loot while scavenging buildings, but also your chance of getting injured. Also works as a decent weapon. Also note the newspaper article. Truly short shorts brought about the end of human civilization.  I also found a box cart (the moving bits of a shopping cart with the basket removed and replaced with some big cardboard boxes). This is moderately useful as a vehicle, but deteriorates quickly and is almost impossible to find the parts to build another. I stuck it in a building campsite in case I need it later.  Also, a flashlight! On demand light source, no crafting or fire required. It even has batteries, it’s ridiculously uncommon to find a flashlight with all the batteries. On the downside, they’re dead, but all batteries in NEO Scavenger are rechargeable, it’s just a matter of finding a power tap. Or finding charged batteries, in which case I can move the stored power between batteries. It’s silly and nonsensical, but convenient. Besides finding batteries, the only way to obtain electricity is to find a power tap, and there aren’t any of those around here. That will require a much more populated area…  This is one of the only places in the game where powered vehicles (ATVs, in this case) appear. SPOILER: they’re not obtainable. Anyway, you get three options on first approach to Zom Zoms. You can ignore it and leave, go in blind, or, if you have binoculars or a rifle scope (I have both), you can try and get a closer look at what’s going on here. I mean, it’s just a restaurant operating in Mad Max world, what could possibly be dangerous?  Well, this is less than ideal, strictly speaking. I’m gonna go in anyway. Phillip’s not really a smart lad.  You get the choice between going in as a spectator or as stock (or saying “Huh?” which automatically gets you marked as stock with no explanation given). Spectator is safer, but costs you an item (various useful items, weapons, and such are valid payment) while stock is free, but… Well, free sounds good.  All of my weapons and other useful items were confiscated at the door, I’ll have to pick the up when I leave. That’s perfectly sensible.  Hey, food sounds good. Real food, with seasonings and sauce and stuff, not the dog meat kabobs (and a bit of Enfield Horror, lot of meat on that thing) Phillip has been living on since he woke up.  Phillip, you’ve had plenty of hot food. Getting meat and cooking it hasn’t been a concern, just the quality.  Interesting that they compare this “unknown meat” to veal. It’s usually compared to pork, if you know what I mean. I wonder where this “unknown meat:” is coming from.  Ooh, dinner and a show.  It was right about then that I realized there really isn’t any such thing as a free lunch. I got in without having to pay, but they were going to get their money’s worth out of me, if not now, then eventually…    Dinner and a show indeed. The spectators pay to get food and watch the stock get mauled by killer robots. I think we all know where the meat is coming from now. ZOM ZOM’S BARBECUE IS PEOPLE! At this point, you have three options. You can try and get to the exit and bail before your number comes up. Or you can try and rub off the stamp. Or just wait and see what happens. Oddly enough, against all expectations, waiting is the smart course of action.   I have no idea how he knows that Phillip is a recent defrostee.  I don’t know why he needed to pretend to be a middleman either. There’s a lot about this encounter that doesn’t make sense. You have four options here. You can tell The Stoat to go pound salt, or tell him what he wants to know, or give him the bracelet which has the information written on it along with Phillip’s name. Either of those options will get you some decent gear, usually a good backpack, a gun, and some other supplies. Or… ask him about the trade if you want in on something better.    This is actually our first lead on the end game. The Stoat is one of several people with an interest in what’s being stored at Camp Grayling. Going there and living to tell about it successfully completes the game. Needless to say, won’t be going there for a while. You cannot complete Stoat’s quest, there’s no way to get back to him after entering the Camp. Taking the deal, for all that it’s sketchy as hell and puts a lot of dangerous pressure on Phillip, is the best course of action.  At this point, Stoat has two pieces of equipment to help Phillip get into Camp Grayling. If you just tell him where Gyges is, you get the less useful item, giving him the bracelet gets you the more useful one. This is the only time the bracelet is needed (there’s another situation where it’s kind of useful, but not required), so it doesn’t hurt to give it to him.  I sometimes wonder if the developer meant to do more with The Stoat than he did. Nothing ever comes from telling him about Gyges, nothing there changes. And he reacts here to learning Phillip’s name, but again, nothing comes of it. The orange box will be a very useful item in the endgame. It will sit in a corner gathering dust until then.    The Stoat was kind enough to have my stuff brought to me so I don’t have to go back to the entrance.  Any time you leave Zom Zom’s, your stuff is given to you in a locker. If you leave anything in the locker and leave the tile, you lose it.  I got the orange box (with a label from Stanstead Automated, whoever or whatever that might be), and The Stoat’s flash drive. I have no intention of doing his quest (you can only complete one of the three versions of the endgame), so I left the flash drive sitting in the dirt. Sorry Stoat, next time do your own dirty work.  On leaving, I found another newspaper, indicating that policing in Michigan pretty much went to hell, and a private security firm was in talks to fill in the gaps. I’m sure that could never have gone badly, right? Whoever heard of private enterprises getting involved with policing in Detroit going badly? Serve the public trust, protect the innocent, uphold the law.  I also ran into my first human opponent. Bad Muthas are… well, really, the name sums it up. They’re barely one step up from animals, they always aim to kill you, can’t be reasoned with, and eat people they kill. They’re generally armed with whatever they can scavenge up, in this case a rock, which is better than a broken bottle or an arrow. I beat his rear end into the ground and split his head with my cleaver. But I’m better than him, because I’m not going to eat him.  I know I said fighting is generally not worth it and should be avoided when possible, but being rewarded with two expensive multitools (and some pants, and a dumbphone) makes it kinda worthwhile. NEXT TIME: I wanna ride the ferris wheel! What Happened to the World: Werewolf attacks in New Mexico Cutbacks led to streetlights being removed in most of Detroit Police overstretched in Michigan, supplemented by private security
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Oct 22, 2018 04:42
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Sure, I was actually a little concerned about the size I had them at, but figured I'd wait and see if anybody had any issues. Two people who want them bigger back to back is more than enough reason. I've been cutting them down to half size, I'll try at full size, and if that's too big for some people I can start playing around in the middle ground. It'll have to be after the next update though, since all the shots up through then are already done. Although I kinda have my doubts that posting these at any size is going to help you read them on your phone Zushio. That just sounds painful. As for the game's difficulty, it's not really so bad... if you're like me and you absorb the wiki for every game you touch like a sponge. Even then, I've died like four times just getting this far. Full Disclosure: I am cheating like a motherfucker to keep this as one cohesive narrative and not the constantly restarting story of Phillip who died less than twenty-four hours after defrosting.
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Oct 22, 2018 05:38
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Heir03 posted:I'd love to hear the various ways that Phillip has met his demise so far. Went back and checked my notes, there's been three deaths so far, not the four that I threw out before. It was actually very annoying and led to me having to keep replaying from morning on the second day up to Zom Zom's because I kept dying before I saved again. 1) Lung crushed (or possibly pierced, the details didn't specify) by dog bite 2) Bled out after being stabbed by an arrow-wielding Bad Mutha 3) Skull bashed by a Bad Mutha with a rock For the sake of your continued entertainment, I'll keep a running tally in the OP when Phillip dies. Siegkrow posted:I would recommend, if it isn't too much work, if you got screenshots full of text just cut everything away and resize it so it is only the text. Easier to read on the phone, yeah? A little difficult, but I should be able to work something out, at least for the more text heavy bits.
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Oct 22, 2018 19:24
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Part 4: I Wanna Ride the Ferris Wheel! Thanks to Mechanical Ape for the reminder that I forgot to mention that the Michigan Dogman is a real urban legend. Huge bipedal dog- or wolf-like creatures believed to roam northern lower Michigan, reported sightings come from throughout the 20th century.  My work at Zom Zom’s isn’t quite finished, but the rest can wait for now. Instead, I took off on a little jaunt to the northwest. Nice open area, not a lot of activity, a few city hexes to scavenge (turning up nothing of interest).  And stumbled across a long-deserted fairground. Allegan County is a real part of Michigan, which to my recollection is pretty rural (though I’ve only driven through a couple times), it’s not surprising to see a small county fair here. Well, nothing bad ever happened to anybody at the fair, right? This has to be perfectly safe.  The giant rooster statue is maybe a little unsettling. (Not pictured, Phillip is also wary of the rooster)  Well, clearly. Gotta wonder what happened so abruptly that the people all ran off and left their stuff behind. No bodies, for that matter there haven’t been any bodies anywhere except for the recently dead, you’d expect this level of devastation to have a body count, although I suppose it’s been a long time. I have the option to put by Trapper skill to good use to examine the area.  Lovely!  Besides my trapping skill, I can examine the main exhibition hall, or the tents outside, or bail entirely. I went for the tents first.  Tent-covered stalls subject to years of exposure to the elements. Untouched by looters. That is strange. You can tear down the least rotted tents to obtain some tarps and string. And take the Ronald McDonald head if that’s your kind of thing. I’m not here to judge.  You sick freak.  The main hall is the center of all the action here. There’s a box full of tools, where I obtained, all in perfect condition, a crowbar, monkey wrench, cleaver, and multitool. This is the only guaranteed place to find a crowbar, and makes it well worth coming here as early as you’re able. The multitool also helps, although if you took Eagle Eye you can get one when you first scavenge Gyges. Next up, we have the remnants of a booth labeled “Genuine Indian Artifacts”.  Yeah, sure, standard poo poo you find any time Indians and capitalism coincide. Add a casino and some cheap gas and smokes and you have a microcosm of the average Michigander’s exposure to natives.  I’d call this the good poo poo, but really… no. I can take the copper beads, which are worth a little cash and easy to carry (you can keep three objects around your neck, I’ve got the bronze talisman, a pair of binoculars, and a rifle scope right now, I ended up switching one out for the beads), but the real prize…  The dev deviated a little bit from the usual spellings, mostly to drop double vowels (the place is the Ziibiwing Center, while the people are the Anishinaabe, a sort of collective term for the native populations of the Great Lakes area, most referring to their similar language roots). Like so many other things, this is a real place in modern day Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, although it’s not a giant unified Indian city in our timeline. Still, this puts another potential travel location on Phillip’s map, a but of a trek northeast from Zom Zom’s but not much worse than the trip to Allegan was.  With the booth thoroughly looted, there’s a pile of blankets nearby, potentially covering up something valuable… or I can walker deeper into the rather dark and creepy building. I could also use the lighter as a light source, wasting valuable fuel. Instead, I’ll go for the blankets.    Well gently caress me, run! The Melonhead is another fun old Michigan horror tale, about small humanoid creatures that roam the woods around western Michigan, believed to be children with hydrocephalus who were kept in an asylum in the area, tortured, and later unceremoniously dumped in the woods when the asylum closed down. The official story is that there was never an asylum in Allegan county at all, but… well, all urban legends are true in NEO Scavenger. The Melonheads will start coming at you if you either uncover the one under the blankets or go deeper into the building. Depending on your skillset, you can very easily die here. You can use a lighter to light the blanket pile on fire to try and scare them off… and die when the whole building catches. If I had Strong, I could force my way past the ones between me and the exit and bail. Eagle Eye would let me spot a chain I could climb up to the rafters. I have neither of those, and am forced to rely on Mechanic (Athletic would also let me run out, but that’s less fun). My decent working knowledge of mechanical stuff was enough to give me an edge. I know a thing or two about vents, and I know that in a big building with only one door, you need some ventilation, usually near the top. So I climbed up, hoping to find an air duct and action movie myself to safety. Instead of an air duct, there’s a chain that opens a hole in the roof. Good enough.  This is where Athletic can kick in again to let you safely jump. Without it, you can still jump off the roof, but get hurt in the process, usually breaking a leg. With Athletic, you turn that into some bruises from the landing.  And that gives Phillip more than enough headway to be able to leave without being chased. The Melonheads will continue milling about the fairgrounds for a few days, but they do eventually settle down if you need to come back for something.  Meanwhile, to the victor go the spoils. I’m not taking the clown head.  I was able to tie some bits of string to the crowbar to make a rudimentary strap so I can sling it over my shoulder. You can also do this with some bows and some guns, allowing you to carry a single large unwieldy object on your back instead of taking up a hand or a lot of space in a vehicle. I now have two crowbars, one in pristine condition, the other just about spent. I’ll hold onto the lovely one for now and use it until it breaks.  Scavenging a nearby city hex scored me the best bag in the game, a canvas backpack. This is in good enough shape to last me a long drat time, which is good because they are annoyingly hard to come by. Also a daily pill container (the kind marked Sunday-Saturday so you can lay out which pills to take on which days). It has a bunch of pills in it, but as a non-medic I can’t identify them so they have no real value (unidentified pills sell to vendors for a few bucks apiece, the vendor then identifies them and resells at full price).  Also, a newspaper story that follows up on a story we saw last time. The Detroit Skycorps private policing agency was indeed allowed to start up. Competent and quick to respond police in Detroit? That’s how you know this is a work of fiction.  Locked sheds are nice when you can find the, an almost certain chance of loot that’s usually pretty decent. You need a crowbar or Lockpicking to get into them.  They’re frequently trapped, which is why Trapping comes into play. Mechanic usually isn’t worth using while salvaging (increases safety but drastically decreases chance of finding loot) but the base loot chance on a locked shed is so high that you can use it without losing much.  I found binoculars and Tylenol. Not great, but better than a sharp stick in the eye.  Found another newspaper as well, indicating the beginning of the Detroit MegaCity project, building a wall around Detroit (and probably some of the nearer suburbs). Keep in mind we’re talking about an area where they can’t even make roads last a year without needing to be worked on, any kind of substantial wall is laughable.  Back at Gyges, I was able to use my recently acquired multitool to fix the heat.  And the lights. Having working heat and lights is basically as good as having a permanent fire, except you can’t cook or ignite things.  I also took an opportunity to start sorting some stuff, putting most of my more useful and valuable items in the exam room. I also set up a rudimentary security system (some cans and string) to wake me in the unlikely even that I’m asleep and somebody comes prowling. It was about this point that I realized that, although I found a decent water source nearby (a patch of marshy woods a few hexes east of Gyges), I never actually bothered to collect any. Swamp and river water is dangerous to drink by itself, but can be boiled to make it safe, or used to boil other things.  A group of dogs decided to show up and try to show me who’s the boss. Fighting groups is just like fighting single enemies, you can switch between them with the left or right arrows that appear under them, and each enemy has it’s own range from you. It’s generally very dangerous to fight groups and you will end up getting hit a lot if you try.  Dogs are worth a lot of meat. The large chunks, when cooked, are very filling and are worth a surprising amount of money, but meat deteriorates quickly. You can cure it with ashes from the fire and Trapping, which will give it a few days shelf life. On the downside, eating cured meat makes you thirsty. The smaller chunks are the same, but less. The hides are useless in their own right, but can be boiled to use as bandages. Boiling a strip of dog hide literally turns it into a clean cloth.  You can boil water 3 units at a time to clean it, or use up one unit of water to turn three dirty rags or strips of hide into clean rags. You can fit two units of water in a soda, water, or whiskey bottle, so a unit is approximately 10 oz or so. Besides cloth to use as bandages, water and whiskey are other useful items to have for medical purposes. Using water to wash a wound significantly reduces the chances of infection, and whiskey to disinfect is even more effective. Thankfully, we are not at full on Metal Gear Solid 3 levels of needing to dig bullets out of your skin with a knife.  And so evening fell on the second day. It was about that time that I started preparing for my next great excursion. A little trip north, to old Mt. Pleasant, where the Anishinabe have apparently set up shop. NEXT TIME: Ghost-Face What happened to the world? Werewolf attacks in New Mexico Cutbacks led to streetlights being removed in most of Detroit Police overstretched in Michigan, supplemented by private security Detroit built walls to cut itself off from the outside world Truthkeeper fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Oct 23, 2018 |
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Oct 23, 2018 00:48
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Siegkrow posted:...so I was googling for that gif from one of the "scary movie" showing "here is Detroit and here is Detroit AFTER the attack" and I found out that Detroit looks like loving Fallout 3. Welcome to Detroit! I don't care what jokes fiction makes about it, the reality is usually worse. Heir03 posted:What kind of objects can you use to boil water? I'm guessing you can't use plastic bottles? This is a nice lead-in to what I consider the most interesting part of this game's crafting system. Rather than just saying "You can use this item as a part of this recipe", the game instead has tags that are assigned to items, and recipes look for those tags. In this case, it looks for "Fireproof, Waterproof Container", which can be a glass bottle (which can only be used once and will shatter afterward), a soup can, a pot, a medical kit (not a first aid kit but a specific kind of expensive medical kit that uses nanomachines) or a silver urn (this is an odd item that appears in one particular place later in the game). The pot can boil 1, 2, or 3 units of water at a time, the other items can only do 1. It's a nice touch that items like the urn or medical kit, which would probably not be usable in other games, work because they have those tags specified. I figure this is part of why the modding scene is so strong, new content can just slide in pretty seamlessly.
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Oct 23, 2018 05:05
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Part 6: Ghost-Face McStabberson I am moderately well-stocked on food (more than I’m going to need for a couple days, but also it’s probably not going to last longer than that, I'm not actually very good at preserving food), water, and have all my valuables that I don’t need to keep packed on the travois. This is just a quick couple of days up north, where hopefully there will be some people. The kind that don't eat other people. On the way north, I found another newspaper about a derelict ship that drifted near South Carolina, and the Coast Guard sent to deal with it contracted loving smallpox. The end of the world just keeps getting worse and worse.  I also found a more compact sleeping bag. This is the kind that’s super tight around your body, and it takes up as much storage space as a shirt. It’s worth a lot of money at $80, but is useful enough that I wouldn’t sell it unless I had extras or desperately needed a quick infusion of cash. You might be curious that I’m talking about selling like there’s still stores in this world. Or maybe you’ve played Fallout and your confusion is that there are still stores where dollars are valid currency and not bottlecaps or something. Well, society is slowly on the rebound, and what bastions of civilization still exist (not I said civilization, I think we can agree that word doesn’t apply to Zom Zom’s) still use money.  An idea of how far I’ve traveled, having left at dawn. You can see Zom Zom’s only a few blocks north of Gyges, at the bottom left, my destination (the ATN Enclave I learned about at Allegan) is just barely offscreen on the top right.  Up here, in fact. You can never actually step on the visible ATN tile, their enclave takes a circle of six tiles around it, stepping on any of them is considered entering.  Well that’s not creepy at all.  Creepy woods where I’m being watched. Using every resource to find out what’s going on… is unhelpful. From using binoculars (or rifle scopes, they’re essentially the same for looking at stuff:  Fromm using Botany or Trapping:  Ultimately, this is really unhelpful and it comes down to a choice to advance or retreat.  Well said Phillip!  Even creepier! Still, I have the option to talk to this… person? Yeah, let’s go with person. They haven’t shown hostility yet, unlike drat near everybody else.  Surrounded by creepy motherfuckers. We’re going to play a game. It’s called “comply with everything they say because IDONWANNADIE!”  Yes sir Mr. Scary Armed Man.  Well this is going better than it could have, at least.  Talking about me in another language is just rude though. Along with keeping me blindfolded.  Did we really need an entire screen for this? There was plenty of room for this line on the last screen. FYI, I’ve had no options to do anything since letting them blindfold me, it’s just been a series of mashing the continue button. If this place wasn’t so vitally important, both of gameplay and story reasons, this would be really annoying.  Oh good, we’re here. I suppose they wouldn’t have bothered taking the blindfold off if they were just going to kill me, right?  Yo. Nice to know someone around here knows how to talk to people like a loving human being. Bunch of ignorant savages, oughta tear all this down and build a loving mall. Yeah, you in the back with the facepaint and spear, you loving heard me!To be fair, if there was a mall in this game, it would probably be full of zombies.  The game is about to throw a lot of native language at us. It’s not really necessary to know what the hell she’s talking about, but I’ve heard of some of the terms she uses, and Wikipedia fills in the rest well, so I might as well interject so we can pretend my presence here is worth something. Michelle is identifying herself as one of the Ajijaak Doodemm, the Crane Clan. The doodems (clans, and also where we get the word totem from) of the various Anishinaabe tribes are a sort of combination patrilineal descent familial system, series of totems, and labor division. The Aijijaak is one of several clans in the Baswenaazhi group, whose primary tasks are communication with outsiders.  This is the first choice offered since getting caught by the ghost-faces. I can either confirm Phillip’s name, or lie. Lying, obviously, is a terrible idea and will result in a swift death.  They wouldn’t kill Phillip. They would just march him back out of their territory, tear the necklace they think he stole from a grave off him, and then be horrified when... things happen.  The joke is that Anishinaabe (or Anishinaabeg for the plural) means “the people” (various English translations, but they’re all based around some version of “the people”.  Well I knew how to properly pronounce it. Because I used to live up north and saw commercials for their casinos all the loving time. Speaking of casinos, care to guess what business is run on the real world Isabella Reservation where this enclave claims to be located? My point is that there are shitloads of Indian casinos in Michigan. At this point, I get the chance to start pestering Michelle with questions. You have to be a little careful, because a certain line of questioning makes the game think you’re done talking to her, so it’s best to get everything else out of the way first. Asking about Ghost-Face:   Lovely. Glad she knows Phillip. How does she know Phillip?     The developer had some… odd ideas about the advancement of technology by 2019 if he thought cryogenics was going to become viable. This game came out in 2014, there’s really no excuse. He would have been better off pushing it forward another decade at least. Michelle’s question leads to another Tell the truth/Lie choice. It’s rude to lie, especially to people who are telling you the only things you know about your past, especially when surrounded by armed guards.   About the picture:       In short, Phillip used to curate a super in-depth urban legend wiki. I’m wondering if that was his hobby or if he found a way to make money off of it. Could have been on Patreon or something, I guess. Now for the big question. How long ago was this picture taken?  … And I missed screenshotting the climactic revelation: The guy in the picture with him is Michelle’s father, it was taken before she was born. Phillip has been frozen for fifty years. … Honestly, that doesn’t seem like enough time for everything to have gone to poo poo this badly. Maybe. Is there somebody around who binge-watched a shitload of Life After People who could weigh in? Okay, obvious next question, now that the important old questions are taken care of for now. The hell is this about a spirit?   Well, that’s inconvenient. Phillip pissed off some kind of spirit and ran to his indian friends for help because… well, they deal with spirits and poo poo, it’s kinda the same thing!  Okay, forgot that she did eventually explain that one. About the talisman:    The medicine man of the bear clan. About finding a way to stop the spirit that’s after Phillip:   Way to go Phil. You went around asking questions and ended up waking up an ancient nightmare of the universe that specifically wants you dead.   It is not out there. Unfortunately, this is another storyline that feels incomplete. While more of Phillip’s past can be found, there’s no way to learn more about the NEO. And that ends our conversation with Michelle, who we will never see again. Everybody say goodbye to the chief of Clan Exposition!  Our story needs finished, we go back to the main area of the enclave, where Phillip is now allowed to come and go as he pleases. Now our gameplay needs our fulfilled, because this place is a goldmine to the player.   Once per day, you can visit Joe the medicine man. Joe has many ancient medical secrets, and you can choose to either have him treat all your wounds or treat you for illness (I still had a bunch of scratches healing up, so I got him to give me the once-over with his disinfecting herbs and stuff). You can also go see Joe if you contract certain… more obscure conditions from situations such as eating at Zom Zom’s too often. What I mean, because I don’t know if I’m going to get to show it off, is that if you eat too much human flesh, you turn into a Wendigo. Another creature from the local mythology, either a human-like monster or a human possessed by an evil spirit that craves human flesh. ”Wikipedia” posted:The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tightly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into their sockets, the Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave. What lips it had were tattered and bloody [....] Unclean and suffering from suppurations of the flesh, the Wendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition, of death and corruption Joe will only cure you of Wendigoism once, if you get it again, they get the idea that maybe you’re not serious about swearing off cannibalism and kill you on the spot.   Also once per day, you can visit the awesome daily feast. This is a great way to get some nutrition if you’ve been having trouble finding food, and would make it worthwhile to make a home near the enclave. And really, for all that I complained about the rough treatment on the way here, it is awesome that they share their food so freely. But there’s one more thing, the absolute best reason to keep coming back here.  The shopping.  I LOVE CAPITALISM! Stores work pretty much just like regular ground inventory, except that you need to have enough money to buy something to pick it up. Purchases are made immediately on picking up an item, sales when you drop something. And you can trade any item with a $ value and get full price (modified by the item’s condition). The only thing with value you can’t sell is human meat, which the game will keep track of even if you can’t tell the difference. Trying to sell human meat will get you banned from the enclave. This is why I bought all my valuables. I can convert them into infinitely easier to carry cash (which exists only as a number on my status bar, no need to have it take up inventory space) and buy useful items.  I had a little more than I thought I did, and managed to get over $350 for my scavenged crap.  Then I turned right around and spent $250 on a coat, and some hide armor, and a shoulder bag (it’s not a purse, it’s an authentic deerskin shoulder bag) and a club, and a sling, and some pelts to make gloves out of (I already had plenty of pelts back at Gyges but I didn’t feel like waiting until I got back to make them). I considered a bow, but bows are big and bulky, and without Ranged I have no way to make my own arrows. A sling is less effective, but I can find rocks and pebbles to throw with it drat near everywhere. Guns are of course the most effective ranged weapon, but in turn the hardest to keep yourself set with ammunition for. There’s one way to effectively farm bullets and shotgun shells but it’s dangerous and not really worth it for any reason except to be a badass over here.  For all of the above reasons, I usually like having a campsite, preferably in a city hex, within a couple hours’ travel of the enclave. Unfortunately, there’s nothing close this time. I might comb through the surrounding woods and try to find a cabin or something, or just set up a little further away. But that will wait until the next time I’m up this way. Right now, I have business back near Gyges. NEXT TIME: Return to Zom Zom’s What happened to the world? Werewolf attacks in New Mexico Cutbacks led to streetlights being removed in most of Detroit Police overstretched in Michigan, supplemented by private security Detroit built walls to cut itself off from the outside world Smallpox outbreak, started with Coast Guardsmen in South Carolina and spread from there
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Oct 23, 2018 09:45
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Anticheese posted:Wait...You can rotate items in your inventory? I've got an embarrassing number of hours in this and never knew that. I can't fault you, It took me a distressing number of hours played before I figured it out completely by accident. When you've picked up an item, you can use A and D to rotate them counterclockwise and clockwise. PurpleXVI posted:I wanted to like NEO Scavenger, but it just felt pointlessly fiddly in a lot of places, and considering the number of parameters to juggle(temperature, water, food, everything you carry coming apart at the seams ridiculously quickly, etc.) it just felt like a chore that was more determined by your luck on scavenging rolls than on your decisions. This game is absolutely not to everybody's tastes. You have to be the kind of lunatic who likes tracking all those fiddly bits, and who can memorize an entire wiki, or the results of a shitload of trial and error if you don't like spoiling yourself with wikis. It helps if you have a strong grounding in Roguelikes, years of playing Nethack had me well set to deal with every flavor of bullshit this game could throw at me. Epsilon Moonshade posted:I'm facepalming over being able to wear more than one thing around the neck, myself. I always thought those binos with straps were useless because reasons. The game makes absolutely no effort to ever tell you this, so the only way you'd figure out is trial and error (or autoequipping stuff and noticing that it shoves multiple items in your neck slot). Three neck items (or possibly a necklace and two scopes or binoculars, I haven't tested this much), two shirts, a hoodie or coat, a piece of armor or a vest, pants, shoes, gloves. A weapon with a strap on one shoulder, a shoulder bag on the other, a backpack or plastic bag on your bag. The difficult part sometimes, especially in modded games with a lot of new items, is figuring out what takes up which slot. Also, you can use binoculars by keeping them in your hand if for some reason wearing them isn't an option. It's just not something people usually want to devote a hand to. Mechanical Ape posted:I never met the Anishinaabe. In all my games I just headed straight east (standard videogame logic: always keep going right) and never explored north past Zom Zom's. Never discovered the fairgrounds either. There's a lot of important content I missed, it seems. Have these things always been in the game, or were they added in updates? This is perfectly understandable, if you never stray very far from Gyges, the only place the game will ever tell you to go is to investigate the mysterious glow in the east, and will mark it on your map. Technically, I skipped one step in revealing locations, there's one location you're meant to find south of Gyges that can mark Allegan on your map, and Allegan marks the ATN Enclave. Getting the endgame quest, from The Stoat or from another character who will appear later, marks Grayling. There's a handful of other locations the game never tells you about that you're meant to find yourself. I want to try and include everything possible in this LP. MechaCrash posted:I think the reason the "mystery meat" at Zom Zom's is described as "kind of like veal" is because the usual point of comparison is pork. You already dealt with a dogman and some three legged thing with red eyes, who's to say what kind of weird critters are roaming about out here and what they taste like? But you describe the mystery meat as being like pork and most people will figure out exactly where the meat came from. Very reasonable. Technically, you get the long "it tastes like veal" description the first time you eat human flesh wherever you get it. But unless you're desperate, or a creepy fucker, odds are good that first taste is going to be at Zom Zom's. At least they didn't say it tastes like chicken.
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Oct 24, 2018 02:13
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The story from Michelle is all you ever learn about the spirit that was hunting Phillip. Should you take off the talisman, it's resolved, one way or another... If you end a turn not wearing the talisman, at the beginning of the next turn you'll immediately be attacked by the spirit, called the Merga Wraith, which is very difficult, but not completely impossible to defeat. It's generally suggested, though not required, to have certain special abilities that Phillip doesn't have yet to pull it off. The question of what the Wraith is is never really explained. Once it's dead, you can safely leave the talisman off, even destroy it or give it away.
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Oct 24, 2018 03:21
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Epsilon Moonshade posted:Speaking of modded games, as an experienced player, are there any you'd recommend (either for first-time or experienced players?) Of course. I'd split the modding scene into roughly two categories, Stuff and Things. I know, it's so on the nose specific that you realize immediately what I'm talking about! Stuff mods are all about adding stuff. New items, new recipes, new scavenging locations, new ways to use existing items. A few to note: Mighty Minimod of Doom (often abbreviated to MmoD, sometimes with more or fewer M's in there) - overhauls crafting a little (splitting mechanical parts into nails, bolts, and wires). It adds important features that are critical to gameplay, like lice, and needing to bathe to get rid of them! Also adds a ton of new clothes, tools, and weapons. Even fits into the next section, adding new locations such as a ramshackle town in the far north called Hope's End, a refugee camp west of Allegan, and several new areas in Detroit. Also includes two older mods, Fields of the Dead (bodies decay into skeletons and you get bones from carving up a corpse, bones can be used for a few different purposes) and Sage's Pages (makes various documents and books available as loot, mostly useless, but occasionally worth money). Extended NeoScav - adds new advantages and disadvantage, such as a Tailoring skill to repair clothes and bags, or a Smoker disadvantagethat makes you need to find cigarettes to keep the nicotine monkey off your back. Also improves less useful skills like Tracking, Electrician and Hacking. Is one of the few mods to try and touch combat, adding new moves such as attacking with a held torch to stun an enemy, taunting, throwing objects to create a distraction, and an entire system of grappling. Also adds a shitload of new scavenge locations, new campsites, including the concept that an abandoned mostly intact residence should have some appliances in it. Also contains a shitload of new items, probably more than Mod of Doom. Also a thousand little changes. This mod is one of my favorites. Overhaul - Adds two new skills (Packrat increases the amount you can carry, Knitwit makes bags degrade slower and lets you repair them), improves a handful of others a handful of new items, adds lockers to stores to increase their inventory size, thus letting you sell more items that otherwise wouldn't fit and you'd have to wait for their stock to refresh, and a few other QoL features. Whereas Things mods add new things to do, or improve on existing ones. New places to go and people to see and quests to fulfill. Like the new areas added by Mod of Doom. Actually, I only know of a couple others (I do not claim to know even a fraction of all the mods made for this game) Depths of Gyges - Rather than the incredibly brief "Scavenge Gyges, get stuff, find exam room, live there" version of Gyges in the Vanilla game, DoG stretches it out into an extended exploration, requiring multiple trips, tools to get into areas rendered inaccessible, and even allows you to find the lair of the dogman Phillip escaped at the beginning. Nothing special, just fleshes out an interesting area. Officer's Mod - Adds rare scavengable police stations to some city hexes. Police stations can be explored in some depth, allowing you to find useful supplies and sift through paperwork. It looks like the developer of this mod intended to do a lot more than he ended up with. I should note that it's generally a bad idea to try to force these mods to play nice with each other, a few of them conflict really hard. I think there's some efforts in the modding forums to make a few of them fit cohesively, not sure how well that's working out.
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Oct 24, 2018 23:56
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Not an update (although I might have one later tonight), but since I've been save-scumming my deaths, I never bothered grabbing a shot of the game over screen until now. And this is a pretty good one, so I figured it's a good time to show it. Normally when you die in combat, the second section will have the log of that combat, or at leas the last bit of it so you can see what injury ultimately killed you. Even when you die of illness or protracted injuries. As far as I know, this is one of only a couple situations where the cause of death is just one line. As for what the Beast of Hades Glade is? We'll get to that when I write up this update. The right section is both more interesting, more informative, and confuses a lot of people. That's a list of every condition your character had at the time of death, every marker that could potentially interact with something. You'll note all my skills are in there, several of my pieces of equipment, places I've visited and people I've talked to. It even notes that I've eaten human flesh once and so could potentially turn into a Wendigo later. Mostly the player doesn't need to know this stuff, but since you're dead and not supposed to be coming back, it works as a final AAR before you start a new game, similar to Nethack giving you a list of your fully identified inventory and stats when you die there.
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Oct 25, 2018 22:42
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Return To Zom-Zom’s I want to pack everything up at Gyges and move further east. Maybe one of the city hexes near the ATN for now, an enterprising player can usually pick up some good stuff by bartering with them over time, selling them salvage and whatever you’re capable of hunting and their food and medical help makes surviving a drat sight easier. There’s only one campsite in the game that’s as good to live in as Gyges, but that one comes with it’s own set of problems. The only issue with Gyges is being too far away from anywhere I might want to go.  I actually finally managed to stumble across an extremely rare sight: another human being, just another looter like myself. Who isn’t interested in a fight. I tried to talk, but he just took off. Just as well.  I feel like the game is purposefully being easier on me than usual, almost like it knows I’m showing off for the crowd or something. I don’t normally get this much good stuff this early, or in these kinds of quantities. This is like the sixth crowbar I’ve found now, and at least the second water tester (a handy little tool that tells you if a unit of water is safe to drink, infested with parasites or bacteria, or poisonous, but needs batteries to work).  It’s just a coincidence that I never fought a melonhead before going to Allegan, they’re scattered around this whole area. They don’t use equipment, and are just big-headed humans, so they’re pretty trivial to fight one on one.  They also still count as humans for the purposes of cannibalism, so don’t go eating the melon.  Woo, I got a rifle, in great condition, with a strap on it! Woo, I have nothing to shoot out of this gun! Guns are tricky. They’re far and away the best ranged weapons when you need to deal a lot of damage quickly (especially rifles and shotguns). BUT you need to have the proper ammunition. Without Ranged, Phillip can’t tell a .45 from a .308 from a 12ga slug, they’re all just bullets to him. Plus, bullets are just plain difficult to find in usable quantities. If you want to use a ranged weapon without Ranged, a sling is generally a solid option (I picked one up cheap from the ATN, you can use them to throw pebbles for a little damage or larger stones for considerable damage). With Ranged, you’re capable of making your own arrows, and should stick to the best bow you can get your hands on. On the other hand, this thing is worth nearly $600. I immediately shoved it in an abandoned house, I’ll pick it up the next time I come up this way so I can hock it. I need to save up a large sum of money for something I want to do later anyway, this will help contribute to that.  After the first visit to Zom Zom’s you can reenter any time by using their logo, which is always found in the hex Zom Zom’s resides in, similar to the window to explore Gyges way back at the beginning..  Upon reentering, you have to decide what drew Phillip back here. Did he come for the barbecue (it’s still PEOPLE!), can he take care of himself and have unfinished business, or is there no good reason and he should just leave? I’ve already established that Phillip can take care of himself and doesn’t need to eat this trash. I’m after the big prize.  Unfortunately, that means going in as stock again.  The first time you go to Zom Zom’s, Phillip’s number will always come up second, giving you a chance to find out about the fights before getting stuck in one yourself, The Stoat only rescues you if you have the medical bracelet on, which I guess confirms that’s how he knew Phillip had come from Gyges. On return visits, it’s entirely random. You could be sitting here munching barbecue (again, not a good idea) and watching people fight robots for hours.    There’s only a handful of fights written up, there’s no random drawing here, the same human always fights the same robot, and repeats can and do happen often.  Phillip’s up, and there’s no Stoat to save him this time. This would be absolutely terrible except it’s exactly why I’m here.  Because I have a cunning plan. Step 1 was fulfilled when I woke up the melonheads at Allegan and got out alive. Now we have step two.  A lot like the dogman at Gyges that started this shindig, you can use just about any skill to fight Zom Zom’s robots. Some work better than others, and there’s enough random chance involved that coming down here is always dangerous. I’m going to beat it with Phillip’s knowledge of trapping. A brief description: Trapping or Hacking – try to trap the robot by taking advantage of it’s programming Athletic – try to outrun it until it runs out of power Mechanic – try to take advantage of weak points on its legs  Well it was obviously never going to be that easy.  That was actually incredibly lucky. I can’t remember the last time I pulled that off completely unscathed.  Yep. My work here is done. I fought a robot, receiving absolutely no reward. Right?  Except wait, I seem to have a new combat ability now. Vanish From Sight does exactly what it sounds like. What I just pulled off was achieving one of the game’s two legendary reputations. If you do a series of awesome things and get known for it, you get a special skill. Because I used my wits, ingenuity, and reflexes to escape Allegan and beat the robot, I got the Elusive skill, increasing my defense, making me harder to spot in poor lighting conditions, and reducing other creatures’ ability to follow my tracks. It also unlocks two combat skills, one of which you just saw. The other is the more impressive of the two. It’s coming up later. Also, I ended up killing that guy anyway. One less murderous cannibal in the world. (I am not actually sure if there are finite numbers of Bad Muthas or any other creature, based on my own experience I believe there’s a finite number per day but they can respawn later)  VFS is less useful, but still handy, in fights against multiple enemies. Using it against three dogs here dropped two of them out of combat entirely, leaving only one for me to fight.  My wandering took me to this strange, dark little patch of forest almost directly west of Gyges. In most playthroughs I come here first after getting clothes and before anything else. I’m not sure why I put it off so long this time.  Yeah, this all seems perfectly normal. Nothing untoward about this place. CARRY ON!  You can use a handful of skills to try and suss this strange grove out as you move through it. The only relevant one I have this time is botany.  Botanist says this place is dangerous as gently caress.     I ended up using Athletic against it this go-around.  Oddly, the game never describes the creature in this version of the fight. In the version where I used Trapping, it was clearly another Enfield Horror. This is the Beast of Hades Grove (which of course makes this forest Hade’s Grove, it’s never identified as such anywhere else) that killed me in one attempt as I noted earlier. This is clearly bullshit on several levels. First, of course, I fought an Enfield Horror early on when I was barely equipped and came out okay, there’s no reason for all this rigmarole. More importantly, however, is that the fight happened at all. This doesn’t always happen, and I’m not sure what the exact factors that play into it are (having and using Hiding helps, but doesn’t seem to be required). Unfortunately, whatever plays into the events here, they’re set in stone. After multiple reloads, I wasn’t able to do anything but escape this Enfield Horror (taking varying amounts of damage along the way). In playthroughs where you avoid the Enfield Horror, Phillip gets led on a merry chase through the woods by a mysterious presence, possibly a woman in white, that calls his name, but he never gets a good look at. This results in Phillip reaching a clearing with strange, non-human footprints and sometimes treasure. Most notably you can obtain a device that claims to repel Dogmen, but actually summons them to you while you hold it. There’s also sometimes a tracking bracelet that claims to be useful for a location that will appear later, sometimes a nanomachine medical kit, and sometimes a bottle of water. Sometimes there’s nothing at all. And sometimes you get jumped by the Enfield Horror. I feel ripped off.  On the plus side, coming out of that with just a couple wounds (one is older, the other came from rubbing up against one of the plants) is pretty good. I popped back to gyges to wash and bandage my horrible battlewound, then took a swing to the south.  When you’ve heard of places like Grayling or Detroit but don’t know exactly where to find them, you can use a roadmap to mark them on the in-game map (I never show this map because it’s garbage). I already knew where Grayling was from talking to The Stoat, so this just let me identify the Glow in the east as Detroit Mega City.  Well now, that looks interesting. Radioactive stuff is probably perfectly safe. It’s slimy and full of garbage too. This just keeps getting better and better. I missed a shot of the next screen. There’s a door, with a sign warning “Beware of the Tiger”. Tigers in Michigan. Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it. It still seems pretty dangerous though. Taking this at a run seems like the logical course of action.  OH gently caress ME THERE’S A loving SABER-TOOTHED TIGER! RUN NOW, MAKE SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY OF THE MILLENIUM LATER! Safety. Safety is good.  … Well, safety is relative. I’m thinking maybe this isn’t a place I want to be in very long.  Oh yes. It’s a robot. Of course it is. There goes that Nobel Prize for discovering a live specimen of an extinct species. I have no idea if you can even get a Nobel for that. What’s that about hot bricks though?  I’m with Phillip on being concerned about this man having access to plutonium. Especially in close proximity to Phillip himself. The fact that ol’ Bob seems a bit crazy isn’t helping.  If he starts in about contrails or 9/11 or some poo poo I’m braining him with the hot brick and taking my chances with the tiger.Bob’s crazy is almost, but not quite, enough to distract from the fact that he just said there’s a thorium reactor under here. I’m pretty sure those are categorized as “things that need to be maintained by professionals and maybe I don’t want to be this close to one this long after society ended and nobody’s been caring for it”. I wonder what post-apocalypse Florida is like. Or possibly South America. Hell, maybe they already buried the thing in concrete. Would explain why Bob here isn’t dead if he’s been living here.  Thankfully, it takes very little to convince Bob that I’m not here to rob him, tax him, or really do anything else. The radiation seems to be frying his brain a little, and there’s nothing I can do for that. But I can help him fix his robot. But first… Bob, I’m stupid enough interested in your little radioactive brick there. What do you want for it, couple hundred bucks?  Well, Bob doesn’t deal in currency, he wants useful items. There’s a few he might take for the brick, nothing I have on me. Except the bronze talisman that protects me from almost certain death at the hands? of an angry spirit that’s been stalking Phillip for over fifty years. Meh. Free power’s a pretty good deal. So I traded the talisman for a brick. This thing is technically perfectly safe as long as you don’t keep it on your person, and spits out a bit of electricity ever hour. It also stores a fair amount of electricity, which is useful if you want to recharge batteries on the go.  I can also use my Hacking skill to optimize the programming on the tiger. If you don’t have Hacking, you can use a multitool to try and make physical repairs… which gets Phillip a big dose of radiation. That’s to be avoided.  This seems really elaborate and silly. Wouldn’t motion sensitive cameras with guns on them achieve the same result?  Really, I’m just shocked that a guy like Bob was able to build such an elaborate animatronic and have it work as well as it did. I suppose in a world that didn’t go to hell he’d have a good job working for Freddy’s.  My reward for helping Bob is a doll. Yay?  Yay indeed. The doll serves a couple different purposes. Right now, it’s primary use to me is being a big ol’ battery, holding as much stored electricity as the hot brick can (every one of those grid squares is the maximum capacity of a AA or smartphone battery, a laptop or tablet battery holds four of them). Other uses for it will turn up. All is well with the world, got some cool stuff and ready to start packing everything up and move on to another area. Why do I feel like I’m forgetting something…  Oh. Right. That. NEXT TIME: Phillip confronts his past in the most literal way possible. VS. the MERGA WRAITH What happened to the world? Werewolf attacks in New Mexico Cutbacks led to streetlights being removed in most of Detroit Police overstretched in Michigan, supplemented by private security Detroit built walls to cut itself off from the outside world Smallpox outbreak, started with Coast Guardsmen in South Carolina and spread from there Crop seeds made by a thinly veiled stand-in for Monsanto (Agrisanto) have become so integral to feeding the world that the company got the seed vault at Svalbard shut down so their seeds’ genomes couldn’t be contaminated (SEEDS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!) Truthkeeper fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Oct 27, 2018 |
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Oct 26, 2018 04:31
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Anticheese posted:
There's a bunch of potential items. Medium meat, some guns, some of the rarer tools. I think this might be the first time I've showed up there with nothing he wants except the talisman. It's a shame, because after fixing the tiger he usually makes an offer to trade his rifle for the talisman.
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Oct 26, 2018 07:19
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You can also trade a slab of cured medium meat for the hot brick, and it's probably the earliest way to get a reliable source of electricity!
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Helical Nightmares posted:I usually treated this game as a find-a-matching-pair-of-shoes simulator. Truly the most difficult quest in the game. And then you finally have two matching boots only to have one fall apart and you have to replace it with a sandal or something.
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Oct 27, 2018 04:13
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Vs. Merga Wraith So there I was, finally face to face with the terrible spirit that sent me running to the Anishianaabe to get a magic talisman to keep it at bay. The same talisman I just traded to an irradiated redneck for a chunk of plutonium in a soup can. 10/10 for style, but minus several million for poor planning. But this was it. No more running and hiding for me. It was time for Phillip Kindred to face his past head on. Still kinda wish I knew what I did to piss it off though.  Kind anticlimactically, the Merga Wraith starts most fights stealthed, being too far away for Phillip to see easily despite having just popped in like a bolt of lightning. This is, without doubt, absolutely, the toughest enemy in the game. If it touches you, you will die. There are generally four ways to handle this fight: 1- The method I’m using today, making use of the Elusive skill’s Lethal Trap combat ability. It’s a rare ability that doesn’t always pop up when you need it and has to be used within a range of four (and again, the Wraith can murder the gently caress out of you at 1). The name of the game here is kiting, get into that 2-4 range where you can hit it and it can’t hit you and stay there, never letting it reach you. If you trip and fall, your rear end is grass. 2 – Using the other Legendary Reputation skill, Unstoppable, the reputation for being an unbeatable death machine (attained from various shows of strength and martial prowess, entirely trivial to get if you start with the Strong and Melee skills). That skill gives a combat ability called Exploit Weakness, which lets you penetrate an enemy’s armor. The Merga Wraith has a lot of armor it, but underneath it’s as vulnerable as any living creature to being shot a fuckload of times. 3 - Maybe you don’t have any legendary rep. Maybe you just have giant brass balls, or are an idiot, or just didn’t know any better, and you went into this fight without them. No instant kill, no armor skip. If you only have melee weapons, might as well kiss your rear end goodbye and start planning your next playthrough. BUT, if you’re very well equipped, particularly with guns and ammo to spare, beating the wraith legit is possible. You have to get very lucky with your shots and manage to get the brain or heart despite the wraith’s armor. It’s tough, but doable. 4 – Friends! Associates? Slaves. I - I brought slaves. Whatever you call them, if there are friendly (or at least non-hostile) units in the same hex when the wraith is summoned, it might go for them first, and they’ll usually fight back. If that poor son of a bitch taking the hit for you happens to be a Detroit Megacity guard, it is very possible he will manage to gun the thing down for you. All methods are equally valid, in that they’re all exploits anyway. The Merga Wraith was intended to be unbeatable. When people found ways to do it anyway, the dev was so impressed he just wrote it into the story. Anyway, my attempt. Step 1, as always, is to ditch the sled so I can move at full speed. The Wraith and I started a long distance apart, great if I was shooting it, less than ideal for the close range Lethal Trap strategy.  It only took one turn of searching to lay eyes on it. Like I said before, kinda hard to miss. His only attack is a melee range instant killing touch. My plan is a slightly longer range trap. And so we close the distance.  And then I lucked out. As soon as I reached range 4, Lethal Trap was immediately on the table. It died much the same way as it appeared (even with the same graphic, kinda lazy). Originally, this would have been the end of it, but to celebrate players beating the Wraith, the dev threw us a little bone. In the place where the wraith dies, a portal appears. You can jump in, or not, choosing not to makes the portal vanish.  Sure, I’ll jump into the mysterious hole in the air leading to a strange world I know nothing about that’s home to a horrible monster that’s been hunting me for decades!  Welcome to the Merga Realm, it’s a fun and happy place. Your options here are to bail back through the portal, take a look at the items scattered around, try to get a good look at the figures milling about down below (can’t see well enough unaided), or do the same with a scope or binoculars.  Dozens. Oh. Goody.  On the other, much safer hand, the room Phillip appeared in is full of stuff. Mostly completely irrelevant.  Some letters.  A childrens’ book.  A cuneiform tablet.  And some old home movies (Louis Le Prince invented one of the earliest, though likely not the first, motion picture camera).  Welp, I guess I have to admit that I remembered something incorrectly. Remember a few updates ago when I said: ”Truthkeeper” posted:Unfortunately, this is another storyline that feels incomplete. While more of Phillip’s past can be found, there’s no way to learn more about the NEO. Welp!  I somehow completely forgot about this bit.   So the Wraiths have super-advanced computers. That’s an interesting touch. Maybe advanced alien species? Hell, maybe they’re dark fairies or something. We’ll never know. The Merga Wraiths, unlike every other creature to turn up in this game, are entirely fictional, made up completely by the developer. I’m given to understand that ‘Merga’ means ‘death’ in Kurdish, maybe that was what he was going for.  What we do know is that the talisman worked to keep them from getting to Phillip, but they apparently had some exhaustive tracking going on. No magical sense of “talisman’s off, that boy’s rear end is mine!”, they were watching and waiting.  Welp, time to go! This is triggered by having looked at the computer/viewing device/magic screen. Phillip immediately gets the gently caress out, he’s not gonna find out what the darkness does and he’s sure as gently caress not going to fight more than one wraith.  And that’s probably the end of that. Certainly the end of it for Phillip. There was some talk from the developer for a bit concerning a potential sequel (presumably sometime after his current game is finished), I assume whatever the hell the Wraiths are doing would be a factor there. But for now, the rewards! The wraith is basically the final boss, combat wise. Beating it gets you whichever legendary reputation you didn’t have (or both if you pulled off the difficult no legendary kill option). I also was able to take the letters, books, film, and whatnot with me. Collectively, they’re worth about fifty bucks. Not really worth it for the amount of space they’ll take up when I move on.  The main feature of having Unstoppable, as I briefly mentioned before, is the Exploit Weakness combat skill, which can be used at any range and allows you to bypass enemy armor.  The other combat skill is Intimidate, which is a better version of Threaten that actually works sometimes. Still less effective than Vanish From Sight. If forced to pick between the two legendary skills, I’ll take Elusive over Unstoppable every time.  Back at Gyges, I was able to use the power stored in the doll and produced by the hot brick to charge up all my various batteries. That’s AA batteries for one of my two flashlights, a laptop battery for my laptop, and one smartphone battery to split between my two phones. And also this nifty little device, a sparker is any kind of battery modified to, as the name suggests, make sparks on use. It’s an electric lighter. A little bulky, but very useful.  Now that I finally have some juice for it, I can take a look at the Copperbook brand laptop I picked up scavenging somewhere.  Huh, so at some point they managed to make incredibly difficult to penetrate user authentication for end-user operating systems. That’s a hell of a thing.  Which is completely invalidated by the US government! Thank you Uncle Sam! This is the main meat of the Hacking skill, besides minor story uses like using it to fix the robotiger. Laptops, cell phones, tablets, and flash drives can all turn up with potentially valuable data on them. The First three all need to be hacked to find out what’s on them. It’s just a matter of using the Hacker skill on laptops, thanks to the aforementioned government, but phones and tablets require specific cracking software, which you have to hope either turns up on a hackable laptop or on a flash drive. Outside of random scavenging loot, the only real place to obtain software is near Detroit, which has a much better store than the one at the ATN.  I have no idea who’s going to pay me any money at all for these old company employee records, nor why they would only pay $4 if it’s actually worth something to them. NEXT TIME: Go East Young Phillip! What happened to the world? Werewolf attacks in New Mexico Cutbacks led to streetlights being removed in most of Detroit Police overstretched in Michigan, supplemented by private security Detroit built walls to cut itself off from the outside world Smallpox outbreak, started with Coast Guardsmen in South Carolina and spread from there Crop seeds made by a thinly veiled stand-in for Monsanto (Agrisanto) have become so integral to feeding the world that the company got the seed vault at Svalbard shut down so their seeds’ genomes couldn’t be contaminated
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Oct 27, 2018 05:49
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Yeah, it was a fairly late addition, I think one of the last major content additions. Like I briefly mentioned, the wraith wasn't supposed to be beatable, so everything related to actually beating it (being rewarded with both legendary skills and the portal) were added once Fedor found out people were doing it, rather than trying to change the wraith to be more unkillable.
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Oct 27, 2018 07:01
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 Another horrible death. Totally had this one coming, I was showing off trying to get off a lethal trap on it.
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Oct 27, 2018 09:05
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Nope. That bit I highlighted is specifically a blob of data on the laptop that's worth $4 by itself. Some data is worth much more than that, it's what makes Hacking a viable skill, being able to make a quick buck with it. Although you're still technically correct that in order to sell data, you need to sell the device (a computer or drive with the data stored on it) it, which would add the value of the data to the sell price of the computer or flash drive.
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Oct 27, 2018 22:54
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queserasera posted:Post-apoc information broker? I'd play it. Unfortunately, you'd run into some stiff competition in that field. The post-apocalyptic info broker of note should be coming up in this next update.
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Oct 28, 2018 22:28
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You Will Never Find a More Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy Captain China just doesn’t have the same ring to it as Captain America.  Told you I was gonna stop and grab that rifle again. I leave little supply caches in easy to reach places sometimes (a set of clothes, a good melee weapon, a multitool, a lighter and some sticks), but something as valuable as this rifle (and comparatively worthless to me in its use as a weapon) is definitely getting dumped off at the ATN for that sweet sweet cash. The dead dogman is a new addition to this space though.  It’s been dead a while and the corpse is fairly deteriorated. Using low-durability items in crafting usually results in the final product having the same durability. So hacking up this nearly-rotten dogman will give me a pile of nearly rotten meat and a ratty dogman fur coat. Not worth it at all.  Especially when there are perfectly good live dogmen around. Doesn’t get much fresher than still trying to rip your throat out!  A dogman fur coat can save your life in the early game when you desperately need every edge you can get to say warm. At this point, as well equipped as I am, it’s just extra cash in the bank. It was a few minutes after this that I can into another dogman, tried to get fancy and wait to kill it with a lethal trap and, well… I posted this one last night, but it bears repeating. As Queserasera put it: queserasera posted:Deadliest killer in Neo Scavenger is hubris. drat right. Thankfully, I only lost a couple minutes of progress there.  Huh. Now that’s just odd. The guys in black are guards who patrol the area around Detroit. They almost never make it this far west. I avoided them for now, only to run into THIS rear end in a top hat!  Please note the warning signs. Dressed in a hospital gown, accented with a bright blue sash. Take this as as important a warning as a rattlesnake’s rattle . This a devotee of the Cult of the Blue Frog. Froggers are all inherently dangerous. First, they’re generally hostile toward everybody outside of their cult, that’s bad enough, but no worse than the other murderous scum roaming Michigan. Oh no, these guys are worse because they’re all carriers of a deadly disease, the Blue Rot. If you spend too much time at close range with one, particularly if he’s also coughing up blood from getting his internal organs ruptured because you’re beating him to death, you can very quickly find yourself infected, it’s eventually lethal, and difficult to cure.  I smashed him to death with my crowbar, which is longer than my club and allows attacks from a little further away. It’s unwise to take his clothes (and why would you want to?), either the gown or the sash (or possibly both) carries the Blue Rot germs and can infect you if you wear it. If you’re willing to take that risk, wearing the blue sash will pacify other cultists in the field, since they’ll think you’re one of them.  Future trips to the ATN Enclave involve 100% less blindfolding, which is nice. This was just a brief visit, sold off my loot and grabbed some of their free food. Where I’m going, there’s food in abundance, but it’s not going to be free. Nothing’s free in the city. From here, I made my way back to Gyges, to finally sort what I need to take with me and leave a token supply cache behind.  Sometimes when you run into Anishinaabe warriors on patrol outside the forest, they’re willing to chat a bit, never anything interesting or useful though.  Realistically, I’m probably never coming back, so I took everything important (particularly the orange transponder I got from the Stoat and my piles of aluminum foil) You can see my destination on the right edge. The time has come to hike over to Detroit Megacity. It’s a bit of a trip, much further away than anywhere else I’ve been so far. I should pack a lunch.  If you’ve previously wondered what exactly limits the game to Michigan, behold, the Ohio border! By which I mean behold, the Great Black Swamp.  Normally, you would find out what the hell this is from the DMC guards… except for some reason none of them ever give me the option to ask about it. Basically, Monsanto happened, and then the government happened. Genetically engineered superwheat got out of control and grew wildly everywhere. The government responded by bombing the entire area with Super-Agent Mega-Orange. The end result is hundreds of miles of toxic ground covered in miasma that will rot your lungs out if you go in there without a gas mask.  Well that’s needlessly eerie. Now, the swamp is actually an incredible place to scavenge. Any scavengable square has great options for stuff you can find, on par with locked sheds. And you don’t have to worry about anybody or anything attacking you. It’s just, you know, lung rotting. So I did a dumb thing. I popped in briefly to scavenge one square. I keep a rag tied around my face to protect me from mold (it’s actually a concern while scavenging), which has a chance of protecting from the miasma. Didn’t work. In the two turns I spent here, I acquired Defoliant Exposure. I am very probably going to die. But not today, and there’s a small chance of survival. I’ll take it!  Ran into a looter fighting a Bad Mutha. The looter won and didn’t want to fight, then I got to loot the dead cannibal. Got me a gun. Colt .45 semi-automatic. Play-doh. Okay, I’m not actually strong enough to crush guns. Besides, this thing’s worth money.  A coup in China when the people found out about the Captains China. Yeah, I’m sure nothing ever came of that.  I actually made it three-quarters of the way, close enough for Phillip to see the city, with zero hassles.  From here, you are basically playing a completely different game. Scavenging is completely ineffective near Detroit, because everything’s picked over. Instead, the name of the game becomes playing the market for profit, mixed in with the occasional quest. Or body scavenging, which is to say murdering guards and stealing their gear. The good news is that, in roughly the same radius as reduced scavenging, the guards are so effective that you never have to worry about being attacked.  As the text briefly mentioned before, DMC is a massive walled fortress full of skyscrapers with a shantytown outside the walls, the Sprawl. One textbox compares it to have shanty town, half refugee camp, half RV park, which is as good a description as any.  There’s an honest to God restaurant here, a place where I pay money and get food that isn’t made of people!  I mean, it doesn’t tell you what the food is made of (except the third one, that’s sweet and sour seagull wings), but it’s at least not people.  I got a bowl of veggies with TVP. $7 is fairly reasonable. There’s better, more filling, but also more expensive, food inside the city, but the Last Chance is more than enough for the adventurer on the go.  The Junk Market works just like the store at the ATN, but with a wider variety of items that can appear for sale. They’ll still buy stuff from me for full price, modified by it’s durability.  Without Medic, I can’t identify pills, so I can’t really make money selling them. But I can hack computers to see the software on them, along with using cracking software on phones and tablets. Unwritten rule: Nobody will buy meat from humans. Don’t try to sell it. You will not like it.  A tracking bracelet is always available for sale here. You need one to enter the city proper. But buying one is for suckers.  There’s also a parking garage hotel.  You can rent a vehicle to sleep in and keep your crap in. It can get pricy, but I dropped some cash on a pickup truck.  This is roughly on par with Gyges (the cab light provides light and there’s a trash can fire providing warmth and can be used for cooking. Once you’ve reached DMC, getting money is more of an issue of time and effort than anything else, so affording a spot here isn’t difficult.  I can’t enter the city without a bracelet and I know it. But Phillip doesn’t know that.  You’re supposed to be able to apply for entry, going through a year-long approval process, but I guess the dev didn’t want to go through all that trouble. Besides, who immigrates legally, that’s what shady brokers are for, right?  Conveniently, there’s one right here who immediately decided Phillip looks like someone he should meet.  Hatter is shady as gently caress, but shockingly, is legit.  Even better, you can totally skip this quest. With my skillset, I have the options to skip it completely (using Trapping to make some Holmes-style deductions about Hatter’s client) or to do something technically proficient instead (using Electrician to replace Hatter’s old CRTs with tablets). But I took the quest anyway.  This would be really difficult if he didn’t label it on my map.  Thankfully, he did.  I took the opportunity to put down four weeks payments on my truck.  Defoliant Exposure is pretty nasty poo poo. Here you can see most of the symptoms hitting me at once, only missing blurry vision and vomiting.  Then I found a kid’s backpack. I’ll stuff it full of ill-gotten gains.  The house at Seven Gables Road on Hidden Lake is a dark and spooky place. I should probably bring a light. Despite having a flashlight and torches, I’m going to light a Gizhik Smudge Stick (I bought it from the ATN the first time I was there for just this reason).  Spooky.  In normal horror stories, the basement’s the last place you should willingly go. I’ll go there first.  Oh well. This place is spooky, but there’s nothing actually here, it’s harmless.  Going upstairs led me immediately to the urn I came here for. Again, nothing here. This place is all spook and no substance. Still, there is one more hallway to check out…  I’m sure the last room doesn’t have anything in it either. Missing image, but it’s just a corpse wearing a burlap sack over it’s head.  Seems harmless enough.  Meh, it’s not worth anything. I’ll toss it. Actually, this whole adventure is super-dangerous if you don’t bring a Gizhik stick. The stick repels evil spirits, you see. If you use any other kind of light source in this house, they kill you. If you go in with no light at all, you spend the whole time through the house being chased, menaced, and attacked by them. If you enter the last hallway without the smudge stick, the spirits will chase you, and kill you if you go in the empty room with no escape route. If you go in the corpse room, you still take the hood, but put it on instead of just picking it up. The Strangler’s Hood possesses its wearer, giving you a powerful attack to “Silence the Rasping Thing”, but will kill you if you go five hours without killing something. Throughout the house, you’ll get battered and stabbed. Doing it the safe way is better.  I dunno, this sounds like a scam to me. Still, I don’t want to offend this guy and risk him attacking me. One of the options available to trade for his phone is a lovely low quality scope only worth $10. I’ll make that trade.  The phone does turn out to have some data on it, without being able to hack it, I have no idea what it is or if it’s worth anything.  Returning to the Sprawl, I stopped at the Last Chance for a bowl of “non-veg stew”. Probably best not to wonder what’s actually in it.  Was still hungry, so I also grabbed a plate of fried tenders.  I dropped the urn off with Hatter and got the bracelet. For now, that’s all, but he’ll have another quest for me later, and there are other things I might be able to do with him.  I stopped at the junk market to see if there was anything useful. They have Zolpidem, a sedative that will allow even my insomniac rear end to get a good night’s sleep, but with the minor side effect of sleeping so deeply you don’t wake up if someone walks into your hex and starts rooting through your stuff.  Finally, entry to the great walled city!  Meh, even fifty years in the future, still kind of a dump. There’s a shitload of stuff to do in Detroit, some super-important gameplay stuff, some story stuff (more of Phillip’s history).  I’m still in a bad way after my trip to the swamp, might as well check into the local clinic.   I signed up for a full diagnostic workup. Just to make sure my problem is Defoliant exposure, not anything else. Although the timing and symptoms are right.  Yep. It’s dormant, which just means that it’s not getting actively worse right not.  A nanomachine treatment will cure almost every disease (except Defoliant Exposure and Blue Rot), and boosts your immune system. After all that medical work? Well, I ate at the Last Chance, but I’m still kinda hungry. And if you’re going to go to Detroit anyway, you should at least enjoy the food.   Soul food, made from honest to God meat? I’m sold.  There are three combo meals available at the Red Gnome. Fried Chicken, Fried Shrimp, or Cadillac Burger, all with sides piled high. The shrimp is the most cost-efficient, but if you care about the most efficient way to spend your money, you won’t be eating here in the first place. I’m here because Phillip’s had a rough couple weeks since he woke up and deserves a treat.  Phillip is so used to lovely food that actual flavor hurts his tongue. That’s horrible. The shrimp combo is the most cost-effective, and is the only one that comes with dessert. I don’t do seafood myself, but Phillip seems to like it, so good on him.  The option: pay, or dine-and-dash? You can totally pull a runner, as long as you don’t intend to ever come back. If you dash and then come back later, you get beaten up, then wander out into traffic and die.  Not tipping won’t get you killed, but every time you do it you risk being thrown out and not allowed back.  I can’t quite do all of the story stuff in Detroit yet, but I might as well knock out the first section while I’m here. You might recall, way back at the beginning at Gyges, Phillip was able to look up his records, and the only thing connected to him was a bank account number at Detroit Savings Bank. If you don’t recall, go read the first part again, or just take my word for it. If only there was a way to…  Oh, good. This is another event where your options vary wildly based on your skills. This is one of very few where the actual series of events changes based on what skills you use. I could just brazenly walk in, for instance. Or I could use try and wait for the banker to leave (but this only works if you have Hiding). I could use Mechanic to block the air vents and make her leave, but again, you need Hiding to pull that off. Or I could use Electrician to trigger a power cycle. The general goal of this part is to try and get the banker’s computer login. At which point you could lure her out again, use Lockpicking to get in (or not have it and have to break the door, drawing a ton of attention) and use Hacking to find the information Phillip wants. If you don’t have Hacking, it takes longer, and spending too long gets Phillip caught by the Skycorps cops. That’s all an awful lot of work. The direct approach is easier.  You have two real options on this route. You can just ask outright about the account… which fails because it’s not Phillip’s account, and anyway he has no ID. Or you can, and I quote, “pretend to be a mentally retarded patient”. Phillip will use his generally good skills at pretending to be dumb and harmless. You can hand any random piece of junk to the banker, and she’ll play along and ask if he’d like to deposit it. When Phillip manages to scrawl out the account number we picked up from Gyges. The banker assumes the account is for somebody who’s responsible for Phillip it looks it up. Phillip looks over her shoulder to get the info and then takes off.  Turns out Phillip’s stay at Gyges was being paid for by one Cale McAllen, who lives in the Concrete Forest Apartmments. It turns out the reason Phillip’s cryo freezing ended is because the account ran dry. With an address in hand, we’re ready to go check this guy out. Well, no, we’re totally not. It takes some doing to see Mr. McAllen without anything going wrong, and I want to prepare more.  I did stop by the Concrete Forest to check things out though. Besides Cale’s apartment, there’s some guys dancing, a food truck, and a convenience store.  All the potable water you can drink, soda, candy, Twinkies, soup, whiskey, Tylenol, batteries lighters, all kinds of useful items. The kind of stuff that would be impulse buys for normal people are precious commodities for Phillip. I’m not done in the city, but I need more money to achieve my ultimate goal. Let us close the book on Phillip the Scavenger. NEXT TIME: Phillip the Tea Merchant What happened to the world? Werewolf attacks in New Mexico Cutbacks led to streetlights being removed in most of Detroit Police overstretched in Michigan, supplemented by private security Detroit built walls to cut itself off from the outside world Smallpox outbreak, started with Coast Guardsmen in South Carolina and spread from there Crop seeds made by a thinly veiled stand-in for Monsanto (Agrisanto) have become so integral to feeding the world that the company got the seed vault at Svalbard shut down so their seeds’ genomes couldn’t be contaminated China started a super soldier program, news of this getting out caused the people to rebel Agrisanto’s superwheat got out of control, needed to be controlled by the army bombing the entire Michigan-Indiana-Ohio border with Super-Agent Orange, creating a deadly toxic no-mans land
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Oct 29, 2018 01:47
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The Lone Badger posted:Can you reliably make at least $363 on a scavenging expedition into the Swamp, allowing you to pay for treatment when you get out? Sometimes, yes, but not reliably. It doesn't matter though, because the clinic can't cure defoliant exposure. I got the nanomachine treatment for the immune system boost, which will give me a chance to fight off any further progression.
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Oct 29, 2018 03:25
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Night10194 posted:How do you deal with the Defoliant? Time. Defoliant Exposure wears off after a year, if the symptoms don't kill you or it doesn't lead to a secondary infection. Defoliant has a tendency to lead to Blue Rot, which can kill you directly after a while. Blue Rot is likewise uncurable at the clinic (although there is one way to cure it directly instead of waiting it out. And before anybody asks, no, it's incredibly unlikely that this game is likely to last that long. I mean, I could just crash in my truck and eat restaurant food work thousands of turns, but it would take a while and get really boring.
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Oct 29, 2018 04:32
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Deceitful Penguin posted:Are there warnings for the house if you don't have a spirit fighting stick or is it a gotcha? Not a drat one, outside of the generally spooky atmosphere. It's generally survivable (unless you try and bring lights in there), but you get absolutely zero warning about the evil hood or the numerous ghost attacks you'll suffer.
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Oct 29, 2018 06:46
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PurpleXVI posted:Yeah, I remember Detroit as being a great place to gently caress yourself over if you're impatient or used to games without permanent consequences. Because a lot of stuff that'd just be a "lol u fail, try again?" or "you lose 2 HP's, try again?" in another game, here is basically: "Okay, now roll whether you survive at all, and if you survive, good loving luck even getting close to Detroit again, suckerrrrr." Technically, there's very little in DMC that will outright kill you. But there are several instances that will get you arrested and exiled for a year or two. Really, once all the story stuff is knocked out and you've gotten all the useful one-time stuff, losing access to the city is more inconvenient than punishing, since they can't kick you out of the Sprawl. I've never actually tried to play long enough to find out, but most reports indicate that you really can re-enter the city once your period of exile is up. PurpleXVI posted:Also without the spirit-repelling sticks, is the only way to survive the Spooky Urn House by basically soaking up a lot of hits and going the right way in the dark? Sort of. Mostly, you're fine as you go through. The basement remains harmless, and entering the room with the urn will just get you smacked around a little. At which point you can either leave, or run deeper into the house trying to escape the spirit or spirits attacking you. At which point you're taking your life in your hands and the wrong move can absolutely get you killed. I think the absolutely ideal you did everything right path through gets you stabbed once and needing to get the mask off, but otherwise unharmed. THe mask inscrutable horse posted:Now that you're back in civilized lands, can you pick up a pair of matching shoes? Or is that up to the whims of the RNG? Ironically, my best chance of buying matching shoes was back at the ATN, where they often sell boots. The Sprawl junk market can randomly spawn shoes, but as Lazy Bear said, it's all about that RNG. Or you can just jump a lone DMC guard, beat him to death, and steal his 100% durability tactical boots. And his armor. And his gun. And his pants. Just kill a guard and take everything he was wearing really, guards get some of the best gear. Although they don't wear coats, so you can still wear your hoodie, dogman fur coat, or leather longcoat with their gear. They're also not stupid, and dressing like them does not make them think you're a guard. But they also are stupid, and they don't think about where you got that gear from. Mechanical Ape posted:Also, I guess it should be no surprise that the Seven Gables murder house is real Michigan folklore, although folks can't seem to agree on the particulars. Huh, I heard that story about the witch with the cursed fence, but never connected to a specific area. This game is becoming educational!
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Oct 29, 2018 21:09
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PurpleXVI posted:Can you actually get the spooky murder hat off, though? I thought you were stuck with it if you put it on. I'm pretty sure (although I didn't test it this run, and it's been a while since I last tried) you can just take it off again, or even dismantle it into string. As long as you wear it for less than five turns. DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Or they're not stupid and think "that guy is wearing Bob's gear, and Bob was tougher than I am, so maybe I'll just let him keep walking." Ashsaber posted:Or they don't have reason to think you bludgeoned their buddy to death with a rock, because seriously, guys will stupidly wander out and get Defoliant Exposure or Blue Rot and just die, and somebody may just take poo poo off their dumb corpse. Both fair points. DMC guards are some of the toughest fights on the map (especially since you only have a short time limit to kill them before they call in backup, and backup is a drone with a gauss cannon), but they're not immortal, and they're used to seeing dudes come wandering in decked out in the best poo poo they can scavenge. Discendo Vox posted:I believe all of the items you picked up in the Merga Wraith portal are famous, lost pieces of knowledge or information. I'm really curious what they each are, the descriptions are hard to determine. I knew about the film reel, but I never thought about the relevance of the rest. The reel is Le Prince's early footage, and suggests that he was being haunted by something (maybe a Merga Wraith?) After his death, Edison tried to steal credit for his camera, I don't believe it worked out for him, but I'mm not sure if any of Le Prince's film survived. The manuscript pieces are from the Opus Postmum, written by the 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, the text itself certainly isn't lost, but I believe I've read that the original manuscript was. The letters are written by Ambrose Bierce, an 18th century American writer whose most notable work was a short story about a plantation owner who tried to burn a bridge to stop the Union army fromm crossing, was caught, hung, and hallucinated escaping and returning to his family in the time it took to drop. The letters claim to be "cataloging creatures and occurrences which lack a rational explanation" and the story was "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", I'm not sure if there's a connection or if I'm just reading too much into it. As for the illustrated childrens' book... not enough information to go on, I got nothing. As for the urn, it's never stated for certain, but the way you can skip the urn quest is by using your skills to note "Hey, do most of your clients show up in their Halloween costumes? Cause you totally had a guy with a cloak walk through here recently, I can tell from these marks in the dust." And then Hatter breaks his rule about confidentiality and shows you the tape of his meeting with the client... in which the client is a formless blob of static and speaks in nothing but noise. It's not stated for certain, but the implication is that this is the Merga Wraith (or a Wraith, I suppose we don't actually know how many of them were after Phillip, although killing the one prevents any more from attacking him) trying to set up Phillip, either leading him into a death trap or just trying to get a bead on him.
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Oct 30, 2018 21:45
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Pierzak posted:Um. Yeah, now I'm really curious. It's interesting that you should post that. Finding data with that kind of value is absurdly rare, but... well, the next update is coming. Deathwind posted:Apparently the bell break up never happened. May as well have never happened anyway. Most of the bells have already gotten back together, it would only take AT&T or Verizon having enough capital to buy out the other and Centurylink to have them all together again. NEOScav may be predicting the future pretty closely. Truthkeeper fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Oct 31, 2018 |
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Oct 31, 2018 04:13
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PHILLY MAYS HERE FOR TANNIN TEA! Last time, we closed the book on Phillip’s scavenging adventures. But his adventures aren’t over yet. There’s so much time and so little to do! I took the time to buy a shitload of Corn-a-Cola from the convenience store. Yeah, they really were just taking out the middleman by switching to a straight blend of carbonated water, corn syrup, and caffeine. This stuff, much like the real product it’s spoofing, is basically useless. The caffeine gives you a quick burst of energy and warms you up slightly… but then you crash an hour later worse off than you were before. At $3 a bottle, one could argue it’s a ripoff. You might think I’m crazy, because I’m not buying these sodas for the soda. I’m buying them for their bottles. Yes, I’m paying three bucks a pop for plastic bottles I can and have been literally picking up anywhere. They’re going to make me rich, you see.  Soon I won’t have to rely on finding bank applications the junk market will give me twenty bucks for. I’m still gonna sell it though, capital is capital. I transferred it to a flash drive I picked up at the market first though, this is the only working smartphone I have until I get some cracking software, I’d rather hold onto it. That GPS software is sometimes handy. In the meantime, the plan! First, I need a massive quantity of water.  Despite being the biggest concentration of water in the area, Phillip doesn’t know how to stand next to Lake St. Clair and fill bottles, so that’s out. Instead, I found a little stream about 10 moves west from the garage. When you’re playing the water merchant game, optimizing everything down to the last move is the name of the game, in an effort to get as much money as you need as quickly as possible before the sheer tedium makes you want to go running off to bare knuckle box a dogman. The principal is simple. Water is free, literally comes out of the ground as much as you like. Boiled water is worth $5 a unit, you can fit two units in a bottle. So boiling huge quantities of water and selling it makes decent scratch. The kick: I have Botany. gently caress yo’ water, I’m making tea!  Botanists have managed to unlock the secrets of boiling ordinary tree bark in water to create tannin tea, a substance that’s less hydrating than water, but bolsters your immune system. It takes three times as long to produce as water, but doubles the profit from the same amount of water as long as you have access to tree bark. And there are still plenty of trees near the Sprawl. Overall, more in-game time spent, less real life time wasted.  While selling my first load, I found a newspaper article about a mass dieoff of fish in the Arkansas River. And that wasn’t even the first mass extinction that week. This is why you don’t go to Arkansas folks.  I filled the ground around the river with water. I don’t know what killed that guy, but I took his binoculars anyway.  This time, I had enough bottles to fill the entire sled. I had totally forgotten to pour the soda out of those bottom eight and didn’t realize until I was selling the tea from the other 32.  A fully loaded travois, which is itself worth a couple bucks. Plus 32 bottles of tea. And 8 of soda because I’m dumb. $800. The most annoying part is emptying the individual bottles of soda into the junk market so I can reuse the bottles. It’s not necessary, I should have just sold them and bought more soda from the convenience store, but ultimately, it didn’t really matter.  You might recall I mentioned that Phillip can’t identify bullets without Ranged, or medicines without Medic. The saving grace is that the junk market dealer always identifies products he’s selling. $50 a bullet is a very good reason not to use guns most of the time.  Since I’m not using guns this run, it’s a good time to note that there’s a fair amount of variety packed into them. There are two handguns, the .45 semi-auto and .38 revolver, a .308 bolt action rifle, and two shotguns, pump-action and automatic, both 12 gauge. Along with choices of bullets. If you can sink the money or get lucky finding bullets early on, it’s effective, just not as reliable as I like.  I lucked out while I was at the market unloading my tea and found some cracking software. It’s for dumbphones, which makes it the least useful, but I’ll take what I can get. Let’s see what’s on that phone I got earlier.  Cracking a device is a convoluted process that’s never explained well. You need the laptop with he cracking software in one hand, turned on, and the device you want to crack, also turned on, in the other hand, and then use the laptop.  I don’t know what it means about insufficient charge, but devices had plenty to get through here.    Thank you for following the brief tale of Phillip the Tea Merchant. We now move on to the tale of Phillip the Rich Motherfucker. That cellphone just saved me probably an hour of tedious tea farming. There’s only one other way in the game to make money this quickly, and it’s super dangerous. I’m doing it later to show off everything. But for now, BACK TO THE CLINIC!   You might have noticed that Phillip’s bad eyes have caused him a lot of trouble over the course of this LP. And I believe I mentioned earlier that Myopia is the only disadvantage you can buy off.  Now, it would have been trivial to just walk in here and drop a grand on some Lasik, get that Myopia cleared right up. Even trades it out for Eagle Eye, not too shabby. The problem…  Is that they put it right next to the Artificial Eyes. They’re super expensive. And it seems like a bad deal, because initially, these eyes are just as good as normal eyes after the surgery.        Except artificial eyes can be upgraded. For an extra $500 on top of that steep price, you can have free always-on (on the world map at least, you have to choose to use it while scavenging) nightvision and telescopic vision. No binoculars, no hoping to stumble across a pair of nightvision goggles and hoping you can find a power cell for them. Phillip just sees in the dark. This is why I always try to grind up some quick cash around Detroit in every single game. This is worth $6000. Also, getting the eyes gets you a few free services, topping off your blood, nutrition, hydration, and rest.  I also bought some opiates, tranquilizers, and antibiotics while I was here. Prescription? Who ever heard of such a thing! Opiate crisis is for chumps!  The bad news is that a diagnostic workup shows my Defoliant Exposure is advancing. This could get bad. The gastroenteritis is less concerning.  Stopping for some fried seagull probably didn’t make it any better.  I’d forgotten that the hot brick does degrade over time. I don’t recall there being any issues, but I don’t take it often enough to be certain… I don’t think I want to be near this thing when it hits 0% durability. My business in Detroit is just about finished , although I’d like to gear up a little more before leaving. Still, might as well go see Hatter, see if he has anymore work.    A mysterious job I’m not allowed to know the details of until after I agree and the client is some absurdly powerful organization that can squash me and Hatter like bugs? Count me in!  If this sounds familiar to you, it probably should.   Hatter is the second of three people to give you the quest to go to Grayling and plug their personal doohickey into the computer there. Hatter certainly seems more legit than The Stoat, but I’m troubled not knowing who he’s working for. Like The Stoat, Hatter suggested searching old newspapers for a clue to getting into Grayling alive. I haven’t found that newspaper yet to show it off, but you’ve already seen me obtaining what I need to pull it off.  I mentioned before that Grayling is the endgame. There’s no rush to go there, just go when you’re ready to handle it. Hell, maybe I’ll wander back over to Zom Zom’s and see if Stoat’s flash drive is still sitting there. If it is, I’ll open the thread up to voting once I’ve met the third party on whose goal I should work to achieve. They’re all mutually exclusive, naturally.  Heh. You always find things like this when you don’t need them anymore.  Just because you found me standing over this dead guard with a crowbar in my hand and a combat log full of messages about me killing him doesn’t mean you can prove I killed him!  I probably should have taken his balaclava too. It’s not anymore effective than this rag bandana I wear around my face, but it is a lot less silly looking.  My next swing by the junk market got me smartphone and tablet cracking software. I don’t have anymore expensive purchases in mind, but a little extra in the bank never hurts.  Seriously? For loving algebra?  Whereas a grad school thesis is worth nothing.  Nor is this email.  Beating the guards to death gets kind of addictive after a while. A full set of their gear is worth around $1000-1500, depending on what weapons the individual guard carries. Getting shot is kind of annoying though.  I picked up an absolutely insane number of binoculars just walking to ATN and back.   Funny animal videos are generally higher value. Daniel Fedor’s crushing indictment of Youtube culture? I’m quickly running out of reasons to keep faffing about here. I have one more thing to do in Detroit… I just don’t want to, because it’ll be the last time I can enter the city. NEXT TIME: Phillip the Exile What happened to the world? Werewolf attacks in New Mexico Cutbacks led to streetlights being removed in most of Detroit Police overstretched in Michigan, supplemented by private security Detroit built walls to cut itself off from the outside world Smallpox outbreak, started with Coast Guardsmen in South Carolina and spread from there Crop seeds made by a thinly veiled stand-in for Monsanto (Agrisanto) have become so integral to feeding the world that the company got the seed vault at Svalbard shut down so their seeds’ genomes couldn’t be contaminated China started a super soldier program, news of this getting out caused the people to rebel Agrisanto’s superwheat got out of control, needed to be controlled by the army bombing the entire Michigan-Indiana-Ohio border with Super-Agent Orange, creating a deadly toxic no-mans land Mass wildlife extinctions becoming a weekly occurrence in Arkansas
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Oct 31, 2018 05:43
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The Infodump Alright, enough stalling. I didn’t want to handle the last bit of story in Detroit because the most informative version of events gets Phillip kicked out of the city for a year. Then I realized that I wanted to show both versions, and I just have to do the informative one that gets him exiled first, then the less informative one after. Sorry folks, there will be no story of Phillip the Exile.  I wasn’t just stalling because of that, I also needed RFID spoofing software, which took its sweet time showing up in the junk market. And then I found this not-iPad with two copies on it.  Also a funny animal video worth nothing it all.  When I went to Detroit Savings Bank, I got the address for one Cale McAllen, whose name was on the bank account paying for Phillip’s time in cryostasis. Let’s pay him a visit.  There are numerous ways to get around the locked door into the building, as usual depending on your skillset. With my Hacking or Electrician skill and the RFID spoofer, I can wait for somebody to use their keycard to get in, then duplicated the signal. I could use Mechanic to jam the door, forcing the residents to prop open a back door. If I had Hiding, I could lie in wait until somebody too drunk or tired to pay attention enters and pop in behind them. I’m gonna do this the fun way instead, by looking for another way in.  Like this extremely unwise maneuver. You can’t do this without Athletic, the game sadly will not let you break both legs trying to do without.  Very nearly broke one even with Athletic.  For all the security at the door (seriously, nobody is that uptight about apartment entry), this place is kind of a shithole.    Getting into Cale’s apartment (he’s not home, so knocking won’t work) is another skill check. Using Strong or Tough (or a crowbar) lets you bust the door down, making a lot of noise and prompting residents to call the cops. Or I can once again use Electrician or Hacking with my RFID spoofer to try and brute force the electronic lock.   Bingo bango Bob’s your uncle. I’m pretty sure these locked doors are the only things you can do with the RFID spoofer.  Nice place Cale. Cale’s clearly a loving weirdo.  With medical issues.  And a picture of Phillip.  Oh goody, Phillip used to be in the crazy house. Suddenly, I wonder if maybe the Merga Wraith was never really there at all… I missed getting a shot of Cale entering apparently. Turns out his medical issue is that he’s got nothing from the waist down. He’s a torso plugged into a socket on a wheelchair. Finding a weirdo ragman from the hellish outside world in his apartment caught him off guard, and Phillip gets to take the initiative, either asking about the bank account or about the picture. I replayed and got both conversations.  Taking the hardline approach seems harsh.  ‘Your’ bank account Phillip? I didn’t see your name on the account, just Cale’s.  On the other hand, Cale seems to agree with him, his argument is that he was robbing a dead man, not that the money was his to begin with.  This is where we start descending into things that aren’t adequately explained. Phillip was working on the New Earth Ostracon, and had a plan. He got in contact with Cale’s dad through the deep web (is that the same thing as the dark web?) and got him in on it.  Apparently this was while Phillip was in residence at yonder looney bin. Cale’s dad got him out of there and into Gyges. Phillip’s plan involved Caledad getting him out at an appointed time. Don’t know if that time has passed yet or not.  And then Caledad died while Phillip was frozen. Also, he was so obsessed with whatever the plan was that he paid no attention to his family. The hell were you up to Phillip?   This devolved into Cale yelling to one of the people in the hallway to call the cops, which is how both conversations with Cale go. The other route…  Phillip is an angry armed man who has broken into your apartment (better armed than usual, I broke down and decided to carry a pistol in case of emergencies) maybe let him make the demands?   Again, armed man of unknown sanity, maybe shut up about your loving daddy issues?  I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about here. Babysitting mission? Same result, less informative. And so Phillip had to run before the cops show up.  Poor Phillip. He knows he’s in a poor area of Detroit and knows that means the police response time should be measured in hours, if not days.  This is very inconvenient, leading to a series of skill checks (and random luck) where loving up or not having a required skill at any point will get Phillip arrested. To start, you need Electrician, Hacking, or Mechanic (lucky I have all three) to be able to spot a design flaw in the flying motorcycle the cop is riding.  That’s the first skill check passed.  Second skill check: Be Athletic or go home scrub.  The skybike’s weapon is a combination taser and facial-identification sensor. In this case, I’m obviously avoiding the taser rounds.  At this point, a chance to figure out how you’re being tracked. You need to turn off any active electronic devices and not just take off, not just drop, but destroy your DMC bracelet to get past this part.  No more freebies after this, getting back into the city would cost me $3000 to buy another bracelet from the junk market. Unfortunately, that’s the end of Phillip’s journey this time. Without Hiding, you can’t pass the next skill check, which is also a random luck chance, you have to intuitively guess that between ducking into a crowd, ducking into a building, or ducking into an alley, the crowd is the best choice, and you need Hiding to pull it off. And so Phillip got tased.  And then Phillip was arrested.  In some games, this might be a game over.   Instead, after a long exposure to the sheer boredom useless bureaucracy can cause…  Phillip spills everything he can. Unfortunately, the amnesiac isn’t able to answer certain easy questions. And the answers he can give aren’t good.  It’s a bad rap sheet.  And so Phillip was exiled from Detroit. The reason they took him to the clinic was to implant a tracking device. Even if you buy a new bracelet, and therefore a new identity, they can recognize him and kick him out. I’ve never tried to wait out the exile, but I here you really can get back in after a year.   Yeah, it’s a good thing I didn’t do any of that stuff. That would have been really loving stupid, and for very little reward. Let’s handle this like a normal person, and not a lunatic that breaks into peoples’ homes.  There was an intercom at the front door the entire time, you see.  Yes. This is what normal, sane people do. Phillip Kindred is a normal, sane person. Right?  Let’s just ignore that he isn’t home if you break in, but is home if you call him.  I assume there’s a camera, although the text doesn’t say for certain. More likely than Cale knowing Phillip’s voice.  Should have stayed on the offensive Phillip. We’ve established that once you let Cale get going, he never stops. I assume he’s gesturing to his lack of lower half. I wonder if that’s also somehow Phillip’s fault. It sounds like everything somehow is in Cale’s world.  Yes, please do.  I’m very interested in what the plan was between Phillip and Caledad. No information about it though.  The only Grayling we know of so far (it’s a town in northern lower Michigan, for those of you not local) is the national guard facility, Camp Grayling, that Phillip keeps getting asked to infiltrate. There’s also brief references to Grayling University in some newspapers, although there’s no such facility in real life. So it’s hard to say if Cale is suggesting Phillip had a friend in the town, at the Camp, or at the University, the latter seems likely, given the kind of people Phillip was likely to interact with pre-freezing. Sadly, he’s dead.  And then Cale does what Cale loving does.  Clearly, the correct way to interact with people you don’t like is to call the cops because you don’t like them. This conversation also has another branch, where you can ask about the bank account instead of asking of Cale recognizes Phillip.    You still find out about the friend in Grayling, and he still calls the cops. Otherwise, this path is less informative, and the whole conversation is less informative that confronting him in person. BUT! If you leave the Concrete Forest after this, you don’t get caught by the cops. They do hang around there afterward and pick you up as a person of interest if you go back, I’m not sure if they leave after a while or if that area is now permanently cut off. The point is, the important parts of the city are still available.  I’ll celebrate with a plate of fried chicken.  The dev clearly loved him some soul food, these dishes are the most lovingly described things in the entire game. After that, I went back to the parking garage to cycle some of my stuff around, prepare for another short trip. Thanks to information from another timeline that this instance of Phillip can’t possibly know about, we have another location to check out. It’s not marked on the map, but I know roughly where it is. East and a little north from Hidden Lake creepy death house.  As I get away from Detroit, I can scavenge successfully again. Unlike other lights, Nightvision stacks with a light source, making me very good at finding stuff safely now.  I don’t know if you were curious, but yes, in the future we do have space colonies. They devolved into civil war during the apocalypse.  I managed to run into another frog cultist. There’s a lot of them in this area, and there’s a reason for that… I beat the poo poo out of him, but not without injury.  A crazy rear end in a top hat with a sharp stick he stuck in the fire for a while just put holes in my loving legs. The pain is excruciating.  But I am super well-stocked on medical supplies. Enough to disinfect both wounds with high-proof whiskey. And bandage them up. As long as you bandage gaping holes in your legs, you can still walk, right? I also scavenged a laptop in this hex.   Yeah, can we agree now that there’s no rhyme or reason for the value of data?  And there we have it. Saginaw Mental Institution. Which once housed a patient by the name of Phillip Kindred. Hopefully answers will be found within. Is Phillip really crazy? Was he a victim of society’s inability to understand true genius? Was it a long con? Will there be any answers at all? Will I have to replay the same sequence several times to get answers from several conversation branches? The answer to that last one is yes. NEXT TIME: The Naked Truth What happened to the world? Werewolf attacks in New Mexico Cutbacks led to streetlights being removed in most of Detroit Police overstretched in Michigan, supplemented by private security Detroit built walls to cut itself off from the outside world Smallpox outbreak, started with Coast Guardsmen in South Carolina and spread from there Crop seeds made by a thinly veiled stand-in for Monsanto (Agrisanto) have become so integral to feeding the world that the company got the seed vault at Svalbard shut down so their seeds’ genomes couldn’t be contaminated China started a super soldier program, news of this getting out caused the people to rebel Agrisanto’s superwheat got out of control, needed to be controlled by the army bombing the entire Michigan-Indiana-Ohio border with Super-Agent Orange, creating a deadly toxic no-mans land Mass wildlife extinctions becoming a weekly occurrence in Arkansas Space colonies on the moons of Jupiter underwent brutal revolutions and civil wars
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Nov 1, 2018 09:38
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Pierzak posted:Man, Cale is as much of a oval office as I remember him being. That's the entirety of what the game has to tell us about Cale, unfortunately. He seems to be implying that Phillip is responsible for his missing half, but Cale doesn't strike me as particularly reliable. Mechanical Ape posted:I'm surprised and impressed by the writing quality found in this game. It's important to note, and I'm surprised that I haven't already, the the one man dev team for this game, Daniel Fedor, is ex-Bioware. He wasn't a writer (the only credit I can find for him is Lead Technical Artist on Dragon Age Origins), but presumably he got to absorb a lot of good writing power by osmosis while he was there. And really, his expertise shows. There's not a lot of images, but when they appear, they look great. Even the small scale worldmap stuff looks really good. One thing that surprises me is how few random events I've managed to stumble across so far. There are a few dozen you can hit while traveling in various areas. usually where you have to choose if and how to help somebody in need. We've barely scratched the surface on them so far. PurpleXVI posted:I have to admit I never really liked the whole Cale sequence. It feels like you're railroaded into one garbage option that gives you very little in exchange for getting booted the gently caress out of Detroit. Once again, this just feels really unfinished to me. Like there was meant to be more you could do here but the dev was pressed for time and couldn't include as much as he wanted. At the same time, I feel like it was his intention that he be banned from Detroit for pursuing information, as a way of showing that information can have a cost sometimes. We're going to see more of that in the next update.
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Nov 1, 2018 22:16
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Pierzak posted:I remember reading that he spent the money which was supposed to pay for Philip's cryo on a high-tech prosthesis so he could have his legs cut off and work in the aquapark as a merman because he's basically a furry. Or was that something from an earlier version? It's been a few years since I played the whole thing. Not in any version of the game I'm familiar with. Sounds like the sort of thing a mod might add, although not any of the ones I can think of.
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Nov 1, 2018 22:53
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Pierzak posted:I looked around in the encounter files so I'll just post my findings. And that right there explains so much I wondered about! Apparently I've never gone to see Cale while having Medic. Honestly, I'm with Coolguye on this one. If I'm going to have to run from the cops anyway, I should have been able to start by breaking his knee... well, he has other things I can break. I let three people die just so I could steal a backpack, Phillip's not always a good person when the chips are down. gently caress me. I have encountered cannibals, an arena where hungry people and slaves are made to fight killer robots, murderous cultists, people who would stab me in the back so they could steal my shoes, a hopelessly corrupt and uncaring government that seems to be powered by bureaucracy, and yet this rear end in a top hat is the one I wish I could murder.
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Nov 2, 2018 00:21
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queserasera posted:So wait, Philip couldn't break into Cale's apartment building but he could just walk into the one next door? (In the balcony-jumping path.) Shouldn't all the buildings have impenetrable front doors? If it's just the one, what's so important that it needs one? Or did the building next door have a convenient broken lock and I missed it? Seems like a detail without a reason. I skipped including that image, and maybe I shouldn't have because it had the very detail you're looking for. The front door to the building next door was propped open because somebody was moving furniture.
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Nov 2, 2018 00:40
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Pierzak posted:Also, you should totally troll SkyCorps bikers with the mechanical doll. While fun, there's a far more important use I'm holding onto the doll for. And I'm pretty sure you still need Hiding to make that plan work with them anyway. Deathwind posted:What does your rap sheet look like if you wait the 1 year to get into DMC legit and get arrested for using the intercom? Sadly, there is no way to actually get a legit entry pass, because bureaucracy. You can only get working passes from Hatter or the junk market (you can also obtain a pass from the Hades Glade sometimes, but it always gets you kicked out immediately when you try to use it). Next update coming up. I'd forgotten how crazy the inhabitants of Saginaw are. Which, I mean, mental institution, but still.
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Nov 2, 2018 06:05
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The Naked Truth Last time, I promised you adventure and excitement as Phillip enters the Saginaw Mental Institution, where he was once a patient, now an amnesiac looking for answers about his past. There’s just this one little problem with that. Remember this? ”From the last update” posted:
Yeah, the reason there’s a lot of them around here is because the SMI is also their primary church. Phillip is a pilgrim in an unholy land. Luckily, there is a way out of this that doesn’t involve dying horribly. You have to be very careful, and it helps to plan ahead. The first step:  I stuffed all my gear in a stand of trees in the next hex up. This isn’t always necessary, but helps if things go poorly.  I can only assume that Phillip is now naked as the day he was born. No reference is ever made in-game as to whether or not underwear still exists, presumably so you can decide this for yourself.  This is technically another skill check. Fighting the guards brings the full might of the cult down on you, and a quick death. If I had Tracking or Hiding, I could use them to sneak in, with various results. Both eventually lead to more spooky stuff, Tracking requires having another Gizhik stick to avoid being killed by some sort of spirit, but Philip does manage to regain some of his memories. Hiding is similar, except you run into the ghost of a little girl who helps you escape the spirit and then restores some memories (less than from the Tracking path). Those are both less than ideal routes, restoring fewer memories, rewarding less loot, and being inferior from a story perspective. No, for once the smart money is on not using your skills at all. Instead, I’m converting to a new religion. They murder people, I murder people, they wear hospital gowns, Phillip woke up in one, seems like a good fit.  And this is why I stripped down first. If things go well, you get your stuff back at the end of this, but how often can you count on things going to plan?  Back to start it is then.  And now nobody needs to imagine they can see Phillip’s junk.  Here we have what I lovingly refer to as “the bad option”, “the worse option”, and “holy gently caress what is wrong with you you loving idiot?” Honestly, that last description fits them all pretty well. The froggers test your purity to see if you’re worthy of joining their church. By torture. Your options here are waterboarding, being shoved in an oven, or taking a round in the electric chair. The chair will kill you outright without Tough, and causes pretty horrible internal injuries if you live through it. The oven is survivable, but again, injuries. Waterboarding is bad, but it’s the least horrible thing on this poo poo buffet.  This is really what makes it bad from a gameplay perspective. Yeah sure, waterboarding sucks for Phillip, but it doesn’t have any effect on Truthkeeper. Being waterboarded with nasty-rear end rainwater, on the other hand, can give Phillip gastroenteritis if he accidentally swallows any of it, which does affect Truthkeeper.  Oddly enough, the dev bothered to write two versions of this segment, depending on whether or not Phillip swallows the water. I never noticed that before until I was doing it several times in a row tonight.  You can tell them Phillip’s real name, or pull a name out of his rear end, Isaac Hall. There was an Isaac Hall in the American Revolution, associated with Paul Revere’s ride, I’m not sure if that’s the connection they were going for, if there’s another I’m missing, or if it’s just a random choice. In this case, I gave them his real name. It’s not like they know Phillip from Adam, right?  Huh. Well. That is a thing.  Turns out Phillip is Frog Jesus, and the King is going to help him regain his memories. Sweet.  Also turns out there’s dissension in the ranks.  It’s about now when you should start becoming very curious in the holy scriptures of the Blue Frog church and how Phillip fits into them. It’s when I start piecing stuff together my first time getting here, at least.  I am not a psychiatrist and not prepared to make broad claims about how effective or not regressive hypnosis might be. But I question if the King has a license for this.  Lovely. The implication I’m getting here is electroshock therapy, though I suppose there are other treatments in mental institutions where they might need to stick something between your teeth. We know from Cale that somehow Phillip was able to get out of here with the help of Caledad, and had some kind of grand plan in mind which involved being frozen at Gyges. The timeline is still pretty spotty.  This right here is an incredibly important decision, and not just because one choice leads to a game over. You have four options: Tell him the Church of the Blue Frog is doomed Tell him to believe in the Blue Frog Tell him you have no answers Tell him the Church needs a new king. This answer will get you killed, game over, please insert Bitcoin to continue. Tell him you have no answers doesn’t get you killed, only kicked out. But you do get some interesting holy texts…   The holy book of the Blue Frog is written on, among other things, Phillip’s discharge paperwork, which is why he’s such a prominent figure in their religion. This also shores up the timeline a little, Phillip was committed after he went to the Anishinaabe and got the talisman. This is about as informative as things get here, but it isn’t the best sequence.  Interestingly, this path and a couple others result in King Elias leaving Saginaw and wandering the world map for a bit. Hmmm… But what if instead we choose to tell Elias that he needs to believe?  Well, this is one of many times when you might wish you could tell a video game character to screw themselves… and that’s an actual option here!  Not such a great idea, it turns out.  There is a brief screen where it explains that they’re locking you up, but it fades so quickly into the “you dead” screen that you’ll have to take my word for it. So maybe don’t go with your instincts there.  So instead, we’ll tell the king something that sounds more meaningful and profound, but ultimately means nothing. The bishop is totally right about Phillip.  This one gets… a little more interesting. We start with another three way choice: Tell Elias that you can be trusted Tell Elias to decide for himself Challenge the Bishop to a purity trial These are all good choices (for varying values of good) If you tell Elias to trust you:  Imprisoned and then dead again. The wiki says there is a way to survive this and be released, apparently random chance based, but I’ve never seen it happen. Maybe try letting the king make the choice himself then:  Oh gently caress me what have I done.  So, Elias is barely on the edge of just snapping on shooting the place up, and the whole cult falls off that edge with him. This is one of the routes where you don’t get your stuff back. Okay, those both got pretty bad. Clearly, the safe answer here is to challenge the Bishop to trial by  Apparently there is a system in place for this exact series of events. How convenient.  And once again this looney bin is a giant balloon of crazy ready to pop.   Depending on your skills, you might have to decide for yourself whether or not he’s really worried or faking. But I have Trapping and Eagle Eye.  Probably for the best, Phillip can’t survive a Trial of Light.   Phillip’s already been waterboarded once today, what’s another round?  And then Elias had a heart attack.  In pretty much all the ways that matter, this was completely pointless. It doesn’t matter who happens to run the Church, except that now we’ll never know what Elias was going to do when Phillip beat the Bishop. We get to pick a reward from a short list: Phillip’s discharge papers (the holy texts) To be made the new bishop (absolutely loving not, but you get a consolation prize of a sash that marks you as “Do Not Kill This Man”) A cache of drugs and nanomachine healing kits A hunting rifle with ammo and nightvision goggles   Huh. Well. Never seen that one before. I guess that means Eddie’s not going to be an issue. Little concerned about getting a delivery from another Merga Wraith though. This is an alright result, but I kinda feel bad about getting Elias killed. Besides, I’m after a bigger prize. So let’s back way the gently caress up.  “Elias, your whole loving religion is hosed up. Best to burn everything to the ground now.”  Apparently, the Frog cult is based around a prophecy written on Phillip’s paperwork about a flood that they’ll survive. You get to either tell Elias that the prophecy is real but the flood already came and went, or that it’s a lie. Either way, he’ll choose to leave the church forever. But I’m going to tell him the straight up truth: it’s all a lie.  From this, we can at least determine that the cult was stated by Elias’ father, and that Eddie’s not much of a believer. My first time playing, I thought that because the holy stuff was written on Phillip’s papers, that he was the one that wrote it and started all this. But that doesn’t really add up at all.  I did this route to get the Blue Rot cure. It’s important, but still not the real prize. Although… why would this random leader of a murder cult have the cure for a horrible fatal disease that even the most advanced civilized area can’t handle (in fact, if you show up at the clinic in DMC with full on Blue Rot stage 2 or higher, they kick you out and shut the place down for two weeks for decontamination)? Also, you’ll note I’m fully dressed. I did this last run without leaving all my stuff in the woods. So that I could get dressed as soon as I left the building. King Elias has left the SMI again (and randomly ran into another cultist wandering the area, unimportant).  My nightvision gives me the initiative in almost every night battle, able to start close or far as I choose. I’m going into melee, but Elias carries a loving automatic shotgun.  The object here is to pulp his head before he can hit me, because a 12 gauge of buckshot will ruin Phillip’s day.  Elias is very well equipped, mugging him for his stuff is totally worth the effort. But the real prize is his key fob, and his phone… which is locked. My laptop with cracking software is back in Detroit. drat and blast. Looks like a hike back there then. And by “back there”, I mean “let’s do a loop around the map, hit the ATN and Gyges, then back to Detroit”. I was hoping that maybe Stoat’s flash drive was still lying on the ground outside Zom Zom’s, but no luck there.  Technically speaking, I’m more or less at peace with the Frogs now. Insofar as they attempt to talk when I run into them. I still kill them all, because they’re still a horrible murdercult. On the plus side, the Blue Rot vaccine means I don’t need to worry about getting into melee with them now.  Apparently the game heard my earlier comment about not getting a lot of the random events and decided to throw me a few. The thing with random events is that you might expect that the game wants you to act a certain way. Maybe you’ll be punished for being evil and murdering everybody you come across so you can steal their stuff? Or maybe you’ll be punished for your idealism if you stop to help everybody you see? Nope! There’s no rhyme or reason, poo poo just happens and life is hell. In this case, there are squatters trapped in this broken down tank. I have four options: Try and pull enough rubble off for them to be able to escape Bang on the outside of the tank to give them false hope, then leave Just leave Shove whatever garbage I can find in the air intakes to give them the quickest death I can There’s no real right or wrong response to this one. At worst, you’ll just feel bad if you try to help them, because you can’t. Phillip doesn’t have the ability to move enough rubble to make a difference. If you try to dig them out or if you mercy kill them, you get tired from the effort, any other response is no change. If you tried to help, you get tired for no effect and Phillip escapes just as a gang of slavers spots the tank. So maybe the people survived, but is that really a good thing?  Then I ran into this injured man, an injured gun for hire. Again, you get four options: Try and help take care of his foot Give him a shoe Get the hell out of the path of that rifle Try and kill him and steal the rifle In this case, you actually can help and are rewarded for doing so. If you take care of his injured foot (which oddly doesn’t require Medic, just basic first aid stuff), the ronin gives you some bullets or some candy. Giving him a shoe lets you leave with your life. If you dodge out of the way, he takes the shot and misses. If you try to kill him you get shot and bail. In the game data, this encounter is called “Good 1.1”, it’s easy to tell from that what the intended course of action is. Besides, helping people you meet in the world makes this post-apocalyptic hellhole less hellish, right?  He gave me a handful of rifle bullets, which are useless to me, but worth $100. My circle did eventually lead me back to Detroit, where I was able to use my laptop to hack into King Elias’ phone.  He has the same GPS software that’s commonly found on a lot of devices, but the address book is unique, and interesting…  Well now, that’s worth a look.  And this is why it’s very annoying that I forgot to bring the laptop with me. Clearbone Valley is right by Saginaw.  It’s an easy enough place to get to. I wonder what kind of horrible, twisted menace could be lurking in a place so dangerous I can only find out about it from killing the King and hacking his phone?  Horrible!  You need to be wearing the Frogger uniform to get through here. Luckily, there was a cultist nearby I was able to kill and steal his sash. NEXT TIME: The terrible secret of Clearbone Valley What happened to the world? Werewolf attacks in New Mexico Cutbacks led to streetlights being removed in most of Detroit Police overstretched in Michigan, supplemented by private security Detroit built walls to cut itself off from the outside world Smallpox outbreak, started with Coast Guardsmen in South Carolina and spread from there Crop seeds made by a thinly veiled stand-in for Monsanto (Agrisanto) have become so integral to feeding the world that the company got the seed vault at Svalbard shut down so their seeds’ genomes couldn’t be contaminated China started a super soldier program, news of this getting out caused the people to rebel Agrisanto’s superwheat got out of control, needed to be controlled by the army bombing the entire Michigan-Indiana-Ohio border with Super-Agent Orange, creating a deadly toxic no-mans land Mass wildlife extinctions becoming a weekly occurrence in Arkansas Space colonies on the moons of Jupiter underwent brutal revolutions and civil wars
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Nov 2, 2018 23:35
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:How long in-game does it take to get from Detroit to Saginaw, cause that's like 80-100 miles. And where are all the dang highways? I didn't post it with the other newspaper articles because it was kind of a minor thing compared to the rest of the world going to hell stuff, but the highways got too expensive to maintain so the state tore them all down to gravel. So not really much change from the highways we know and love. Over time, those stretches of gravel likely turned into the nice long flat stretches of easy terrain Phillip travels fastest on. As for travel time... well, it's a hell of a lot faster than it really should be. As long as I keep Phillip in good shape, well-fed and hydrated, with plenty of sleep, and not carrying too much, he can move four hexes per hour (5 if i wasn't such a drat packrat who obsessively carries everything on me), with two moves needed to get through forests, hills, or rubble. Saginaw is roughly 40-50 hexes north by northwest from Detroit, so call it about twelve hours walking, maybe half again as much given patches of rough terrain. Even if we assume that SMI is just in Saginaw County and not the town, and take the lowest end estimate (about 80 miles from Detroit to Birch Run, the closest bit of Saginaw County), Phillip still motors along at about 6-8 miles per hour and can keep up that pace for 16-20 hours a day. That's assuming that Detroit Megacity only covers roughly the current day Metro area, which seems reasonable, it's definitely bigger than actual modern Detroit. PurpleXVI posted:Do you need a Frog Cult outfit to get inside, or to even approach_ Just to get in. I didn't have a sash the first time I approached, and had to walk a couple hexes and kill a cultist to get one before I could enter.
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Nov 3, 2018 01:39
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Siegkrow posted:I was under the impression that Detroit currently looked like the set of a zombie movie. Oh no. Detroit looks like this. It's basically Robocop meets Las Vegas. It's everything else in Michigan that looks like a zombie movie. Telsa Cola posted:Im confused on just how hosed everything is. It seems to go from everything being hosed to everything is kinda fine besides the walled city and the enviromental disaster outside it. I guess its post post apocalyptic. The multiple apocalypses happened, they're over. Society is building back up, it's just slow going. Eventually, the dogmen will either be wiped out or domesticated, the Froggers will get a TV station, the melonheads will be enslaved as peasant laborers, and society will reclaim the lost territory I've been adventuring through. Rockopolis posted:Do the Cultists make you take off your protective charm when joining? As I'm given to recall, no. At least I don't remember dying horribly the very first time I went there where I got the path where Elias goes nuts and starts shooting everything and I had to bail naked. The Lone Badger posted:You seem to be doing pretty well in combat with just a club and no relevant starting skills. Keep in mind the Anishiinabe war club is probably the single best blunt weapon in the game, maybe tied with the crowbar (crowbar has superior range, but the warclub puts out more damage). I can keep a lot of opponents stunlocked long enough to pulverize some internal organs. Piercing weapons are generally the best, and inflicting a lot of bleeding wounds with a cutting weapon is always a sound strategy. But I lucked out in being able to get a decent set of gear together before having to do a lot of fighting. I got super lucky with that first Enfield Horror, that could have very quickly gone wrong. A run like this with no combat skills (Strong, Tough, Melee, Ranged) is super possible, but requires being very careful, equipping yourself well, and not being afraid to run like a little sissy. Of course, now I have both legendary skills and nightvision, so most fights, especially at night, are easy-peezy if I don't try and get fancy. Still got my lungs perforated the first time up against Elias.
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Nov 3, 2018 03:00
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It's no worse than any given roguelike. Given the variety of playstyles and reliance on certain items to reach the endgame, I see more than a few similarities to Nethack. Then again, I've never managed to beat Nethack.
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Nov 3, 2018 05:48
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PurpleXVI posted:Is there actually ever any clue or explanation as to why a Merga Wraith annihilates Eddie at the end of that one sequence, though? The last time I said there was absolutely no more information about something, somebody came along and broke open the game data with a crowbar to scavenge the relevant dialogue, so I'm not going to say that there's absolutely nothing. But to the best of my knowledge, there's no more details to Bishop Eddie's death by Wraith. I have many thoughts on what's going on here, but I'll sit on them until the next update when we get the last couple bits of Elias' story. Lazy Bear posted:FTFY The hell you say. I only need one hand for it! ... Because I wrote a couple quick and dirty batch files I just need to run for backing up the save or restoring the backup.
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Nov 3, 2018 20:45
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