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Okay, so noted: subways bad. I wonder if the "ooze welling up between the tracks" is a Ghostbusters reference? With the underground slime river in the old subways and all that. Also lol the loving art gallery, two toilets flanking a loving statue. That's amazing. I also just noticed you started in April, is that the new default or did you choose a summer/spring start intentionally? I seem to recall my runs defaulting to winter, which made temperatures a bit harder to deal with early on(...and made most water, like from toilet tanks, frozen and needing melting), but had the advantage that any food you found lying around defaulted to frozen and wouldn't have rotted(usually) before you got to it.
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Feb 18, 2022 09:08
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dervinosdoom posted:CHUD use to be, or actually might still be in the game. I've fought them. The feral troglobite enemy we fought was a reskinned CHUD. Same stats mostly and a nod to its origin, but now it makes sense in the lore instead of just being a funny reference. By popular demand posted:Thank you for playing this game for us OP, I'd have quit several times over by now and miss out. I thought about this post while I was fishing lockpicks out of my pill bottles and manually setting autopickup to ignore all of them so I'd stop putting random poo poo in there. When I made the thread I was really hoping I could share the game with people who would never want to actually play it. Quicksilver6 posted:Any chance you’ll do a run of the Bright Nights fork? Unlikely. I'm finding that doing an SSLP of this game is eating up quite a bit of time, and BN just doesn't interest me enough to justify the investment. I will be doing the Magiclysm and Aftershock mods, but that's (hopefully) a ways out. I respect what the BN team wants to do vis a vis holding on to the older/simpler endgame progression systems (which were certainly satisfying), but to me it just feels like playing an older version of the same game. PurpleXVI posted:I also just noticed you started in April, is that the new default or did you choose a summer/spring start intentionally? Two or three(?) years ago they bumped the default start date to April 30 because new players were finding it too frustrating to learn the game while dealing with freeze mechanics. You can choose to start in winter, but it's a bit less onerous now. And you may be right about the ambient subway messaging. I've actually seen a lot more since screenshotting that, but most are just atmospheric descriptions of scary/depressing empty tunnels. worm girl fucked around with this message at 12:53 on Feb 18, 2022 |
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Feb 18, 2022 12:28
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Enjoying the heck out of this, pace yourself so you don't burn out. I also installed it and goggled at the immensity before retreating to warhams 3...
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Feb 18, 2022 13:09
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sebmojo posted:Enjoying the heck out of this, pace yourself so you don't burn out. I also installed it and goggled at the immensity before retreating to warhams 3... Join us, we can teach you ...I have literally done runs where I only used things I could make/gather or base materials like rocks etc, full survivalist, very interesting
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Feb 18, 2022 13:27
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sebmojo posted:Enjoying the heck out of this, pace yourself so you don't burn out. I also installed it and goggled at the immensity before retreating to warhams 3... Join us! It's easier than you and those CBN think! I already described a easy way to get a bunch of clean water by day 2 on the survivor start.
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Feb 18, 2022 14:06
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sebmojo posted:I goggled at the immensity before retreating to warhams 3...
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Feb 18, 2022 14:08
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sebmojo posted:Enjoying the heck out of this, pace yourself so you don't burn out. I also installed it and goggled at the immensity before retreating to warhams 3... I learned to pace after my first LP (Captive) and now am taking it much slower with my new one (Dungeon Master) Please don't burn yourself out Wormgirl. I'm really enjoying your writing style and can wait for any updates. Sorry I nerd out over CDDA, I really like this game. Lady Jaybird fucked around with this message at 14:25 on Feb 18, 2022 |
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Feb 18, 2022 14:19
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We may be dedicated to the tunnel, but I'd even suggest just retreating temporarily for another supply run so you can find more tools for handling injury. Cause lets face it, the survivors of the underground Thunderdome will mess you up when you inevitably cross them.
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Feb 18, 2022 16:49
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Well, this little excursion went splendidly and by that I mean "drat, how are we still alive" and also "thanks earnest" as well as "sincerely, thanks, Earnest" worm girl posted:I respect what the BN team wants to do vis a vis holding on to the older/simpler endgame progression systems (which were certainly satisfying), but to me it just feels like playing an older version of the same game. I might check out Bright Nights myself. This LP's given me the itch to try and figure out this game again, and maybe I'll pick up on it better.
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Feb 18, 2022 17:24
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Ernest is a beautiful human being. Who just happens to be ugly.
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Feb 18, 2022 18:18
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dervinosdoom posted:Sorry I nerd out over CDDA, I really like this game. Never apologize for this.  In the morning, we change our leg's dressing and step outside to grab some stuff. Something horrible is waiting for us, as we should have expected. Burning dead zombies damages the corpses, but if they're not thoroughly burned enough to be considered pulped, they can revive as special burnt zombies. Typically they are similar to regular kinds except they have fire resistance.  It's pretty weak, but when we kill it a huge plume of smoke spews from its broken body. Our filter mask completely blocks smoke, but we're not wearing it for whatever reason.  The art gallery is a pile of smoking rubble. A strange looking zombie wanders the ruins. zapper zombie posted:A very pale dead body with the worst case of static hair you have ever seen. Sparks of electricity frequently jump off it, lighting it up in the dark. You might not want to touch it with your bare hands, or anything conductive.  It trips on the rubble and busts its head open trying to get to us, dying before anything unusual can happen. OK then. Objects (including corpses) placed on rubble immediately become buried by it. You can still smash buried enemies and they can still revive and pop up. Probably they should be unsmashable and even if revived should remain trapped unless they have high strength or something. IDK, it's a bit weird. You can use a shovel on rubble to remove it and get whatever's underneath if you want.  Forget all that though. We want this big rock.  We smash it until it comes apart into several small rocks.  We're going to take some time to practice throwing things. We got lucky that we didn't blow ourselves up in the fight with those horrible flying snake monsters, and we don't have much else to do while we wait for our leg to heal.  11 rocks hit the target, 14 go off course. That's...not great. Even at around 60 focus though, throwing 25 rocks was enough to take our throwing skill to 1.  Now that we have 1 rank in throwing, we've unlocked the throwing practice action. This basically automates what we just did and nets us another two ranks. 3 ranks is generally where you stop being godawful at things.  Now we can get our whole pile of rocks to land on target, at least at close range. We eat an entire box of toast-ems for dinner, then knock out some light calisthenics. Earnest gives us some toast-ems and then we go to bed. The next day, we carve up a new staff. The old one was pretty messed up. Once it's ready, we try heading past the art gallery toward the gun stores, but there's something weird going on.  A bunch of zombies, one of them in a hazmat suit, are chasing a low-flying drone around. These got rolled out a year or two back as part of a high-tech police initiative. We didn't think they'd still be working.  The drone is distracting several zombies, but we need to make sure it doesn't lead them all over to us. We creep along the back of the laundromat and take down a zombified SWAT officer.  We score a stun grenade and a set of SWAT armor. If we get this cleaned up, we could wear it over our gambeson, though it's way too hot to want to try it out on the surface today. This used to be some of the best armor in the game. It was worn on the normal layer (like our gambeson) and had full coverage and tons of pockets. It's still quite good for something you find on a zombie, but the 65 protection means it's not worth much unless we combine it with other pieces. We will be using this when we go back into the tunnels.  We spot a zombie in a bikini, which itself is alarming, but her grasping hands are webbed like some kind of fishman. What the hell is even going on? I don't care who drew this sprite, I want him found, and I want him tried.  The gun store seems well-stocked and intact. We can make out a bulletproof vest among other things, but it's locked up tight and the windows are barred. We'll need a hacksaw or something to get in. We really just need ammo, but I never say no to a kevlar vest. Kevlar vests in this game are lightweight, soft vests that occupy the under layer and offer good all-around protection to the torso.  We keep half an eye on the zombies and the drone as we head for the other gun store. Already we can see that it looks like someone made a last stand there, many windows are busted out and there are crude barricades inside.  An alarm goes off as a zombie in the gun store gets too excited at the sight of us. We retreat back across the intersection, hoping to avoid further notice.  A crowd of zombies surges out of the shadowed recesses of the store, pressing up against the bars. The place is like a fish trap - they all got in to get somebody and now they can't figure out how to get out.  We get a little dinged up in the escape, but nothing too bad. We find several medical supplies, and the hazmat zombie was carring anti-radiation pills. That's a worrying sign...  It looks like the eyebot flew in here to try to get rid of the zombies and they finally brought it down. It's pretty smashed up, but we'll take it back to Earnest, maybe he can do something with it. Once things have quieted down a bit, we go back to the first, non-trashed gun store. We spotted something around back we can use. The days actually get longer in summer which is a really nice touch.  We climb into the dumpster. From here, we can actually lean out and pick the lock on the back door without being seen. Some furniture hides you, making you invisible to anything that isn't within one tile. We will do some funny stuff with this later.  As a no-good kid sneaking into abandoned buildings to set fires, we picked up a few skills. We're no locksmith, but we can jimmy. How much harder can this be? Lockpicking uses the devices skill, which we took a point in at chargen. There are also associated proficiencies which each dramatically reduce the time it takes to attempt a pick.  We spend all day breaking lockpicks on this stupid door. Occasionally, a zombie figures out where we are. Their bodies pile up around us as we work. They surely can't see us and we're not making noise, so they must be tracking us by smell. Good to know... Many enemies hunt by smell. Under normal circumstances, the player (and only the player) emits a scent flagged as human across a several tile radius. This gets moved around by the wind and can be blocked by smoke. Zombies who detect human smell will move toward wherever it is strongest, though if they hear something that may take priority, and if they see an enemy they will pursue the visual target instead. Some abilities and items change or reduce your scent, which can be hugely beneficial or terribly bad depending on circumstances.  FINALLY Our Lockpicking proficiency is at 75% and our devices skill is at 3. If we get the chance to finish our proficiency training later, we'll actually be able to do this sort of thing in a reasonable amount of time.  We feel around in the dark, and find some nailed-shut crates and locked doors. These are wood, not metal, so we can come back in the morning and pry them open with a fire axe. Right now we're just too tired.  Another day, another horrible new kind of zombie. It clambers over the ruins of the art gallery on its way over. "grappler zombie posted:This zombie's elongated arms drag along the ground as it moves. It looks to almost have a hunchback from the swollen shoulder muscles tearing through its skin. These fuckers have killed me more than any other enemy in this game. They're not particularly powerful, but they can grab you from two tiles away and drag you to where they are. They're great at pulling you out of your own moving car or off the edge of a roof.  Its arms stretch out an impossible distance and haul us into melee with blinding speed. Note our thirst level on the sidebar. I'm growing a little impatient because it's taken us a few days to heal up and find ammo. That's only going to cost us, I need to slow down and make sure we're taking good care of Gray here. We bash its head in and move on.  We've passed this truck a few times now. It looks almost usable, but something's wrong with the engine and it won't start. This is nothing too special, I just like the cars in this game. Every part of this truck does exactly what you'd expect it to IRL, and it's all on this modular system where you can build anything you want. It's so cool!  We pop open the crates in the back of the gun shop and discover some brand-new handguns and some tools for hand-loading ammo. Given how scarce bullets have been, this could be a valuable find. Hand presses are vanishingly rare early game, we just got massively lucky. The guns here are nothing special for us, though if we find a magazine for the Kel-Tec P-3AT, we do have some spare .380 lying around.  We grab the kevlar vest we saw, as well as several useful-looking gun mods. At first, we're a kid in a candy store, but slowly it begins to dawn on us that there is almost no ammunition whatsoever in this gun store. oh my god its just like real life We come away dejected, with a handful of shotgun shells and 9mm rounds, and a heap of powerful firearms we can't use.  On our way to give the other gun store another look, we bump into another bile-bloated zombie who explodes all over us. When we're finished gagging, we find a small box of 9mm ammo. This just might be enough.  The second shop is a disaster, but we're able to scrounge a few handfuls of bullets  oh god oh gently caress  We manage to get away with the goods - a fresh glock 22 mag full of .40 and a few bullets in random calibers. There's a bunch of bullet-making material here as well, but we don't know how to use a bullet press. We'll stash it in case we ever learn.  Now we look like a couple of badasses. Or maybe like a nerd in a cowboy hat and a badass.  Here's our loadout in detail. We keep the guns in the travois or haul them, as our gear is restrictive enough without trying to strap a bunch of pistols to ourself. I'd still rather have homemade armor here as it tends to be more reliable at dealing with low-damage threats, but we're trying to get to the refugee center and don't have time to sit around stitching leather for days on end.  With grim resignation, we return to the tunnel. The refugee center is the only thing keeping us going, and with every new horror, we lose just a little bit more hope.  We bump into the tunnel mutant again, the regenerator in the jumpsuit. This time it's obvious we have the upper hand. He tries to scramble away, but we're right on top of him.   This wasn't a homeless person, or at least he wasn't dressed like one. He was wearing some kind of jumpsuit, and it almost looks made for him. We find no tag or branding on it. What could it mean?  Further down the tunnel, we spot a patch of disturbed rock along the tracks. As we cautiously approach, a monstrous hairless rodent the size of a small car burrows up out of the earth. [imghttps://i.imgur.com/eSw6ykA.png[/img] We freeze, holding our breath. At length, it crawls back into its tunnel, which collapses behind it.  It's a long walk, mostly made in silence. The tunnel stretches monotonously on, the lack of landmarks making it impossible to gauge how far we've really gone.  We spot a gigantic slug stuck to the wall, easily larger than both of us combined. It spits an enormous blob of acid at us, but its aim is off. Ours isn't, and we soften it up with a few .357 rounds before going in with our staff. That pool of acid near Earnest is from one single attack. This thing is super dangerous.  The thought of being killed by something as stupid and gross as a slug is an uncomfortable one.  We walk on for what feels like hours, skirting around the odd spider as we go, but largely finding the second leg of our trip much more quiet than the first. The travois is stuck in the median, which means sometimes we have to wait for spiders to clear off to either side before we can safely proceed. We've discovered that if we get within a few yards of them, they tend to become aggressive. They're certainly intimidating, but in a way they feel safer than the crazed or undead former humans that mindlessly rush at whatever they see. This is still an animal, sort of. It's behaving like an animal. The spiders are theoretically not a big deal, but there are three kinds. The cellar spider has a volume of 15 liters, and the giant cellar spider is 30 liters (that's just how size is measured here, don't question it, a human is 62.5 liters if that helps you understand). You'd think the big ones would be more dangerous, but the little ones are much harder to hit, which gives them more chances to hit you. Every time they do, you get a bleeding wound, pain, and poison, all of which make it progressively more difficult to hit them. I wish the UI was clearer about creature sizes for this reason - if you're dealing with anything smaller than about 30 liters (a medium sized dog), hit chance absolutely bottoms out and you start getting some really ridiculous situations. Earnest has worse stats than us and is a rank behind in melee, but he seems to hit the spiders more often. I'm not sure if that's because piercing weapons have a bonus to hitting little enemies or what, I'll have to dig through the code.  The size of one bloated up to the size of a sofa with legs that stretch clear across the tracks puts a damper on our musings. Get it? 'cause the other ones are house spiders, so this is a warehouse spider. It is bigger.  A giant slug spits at us from the ceiling. We fire back at it until it flops to the tracks and dies.  We're not the best shot, but as long as we remember to breathe between shots, we can get the job done.  We burn some 9mm here in the Beretta PX4 Storm. It's a pretty bog-standard 9mm gun, and fairly common in the game. The main draw is that it has a 17 round magazine. Reloading is slow so that can be a big deal. Personally I think this thing looks like what would happen if MadCatz made a Glock.  From time to time we see blurred sillhouettes that look vaguely human, though they always run before we can get a good look. They don't seem hostile, but we won't let our guard down. So this is uh...I guess it's a reference to a professional starcraft player. His name is Greg Fields, and one time in 2010 a Korean player accidentally called him Grack, which became a bit of a meme in the Starcraft community. Greg retired in 2013. I have no idea why these guys are in the game. Anyway they don't do anything, they just run around aggroing zombies or whatever and usually get killed very quickly.  A dog rushes us out of nowhere. Its head is gone, replaced with a mass of flailing tentacles. We barely have time to pull the trigger.  It dies, but its body erupts into more tentacles that lash us frantically. We keep shooting, and then it's just gone. The Thing didn't have a sprite, it was just an &. Obviously a reference to John Carpenter's wonderful movie. I wish Macready was here. We stop to tend to our wounds. Earnest's spear is practically destroyed, so we give him the fire axe. quote:A few pieces of concrete fall from the ceiling, and you hear the sound of something huge moving above you.  We rest, turning the flashlight on at regular intervals to make sure nothing's creeping up on us in the dark. Our watch says it's 3:30 in the afternoon, so we've been down here for six hours. It feels like forever.  "You think we'll turn into CHUDs?" "I don't." "How do you know?" "I don't."We've got to be past the halfway point by now. We know we can't sleep down here, not with the spiders everywhere, but turning back doesn't seem appealing either.  Another jumpsuit mutant comes charging at us. We decide to test out the shotgun, and are rewarded with a fountain of gore. God drat that smarts. The 870 Wingmaster is a pretty neat gun. The 870 line is one of the bog standard shotguns. They can have the wood furniture like this one or the black plastic you see police using, and come in several different lengths. I believe the shortest is the breaching model with a 10 inch barrel and the longest is the Wingmaster at 28 inches. These are all in the game, which is neat. Wingmasters are made for hunting, as the longer barrel would be more awkward in a self-defense situation but improves accuracy. The 870 is tube-fed, which means that instead of having a magazine, you just push the shells into the side of the gun one at a time. This can actually be really nice in CDDA because you can reload as needed on the fly. Overall it's slower, but getting a shell in just in time to drop a zombie feels good.  We take a moment to try to get our bearings. It's a fool's errand underground, but a loose average based on counting railroad ties against time tells us we ought to be more than halfway, but Earnest is really slowing down. Even with a rest, he's too wounded to keep up with us, and we're not doing so hot ourselves. A golden rule of the outdoors is to never tempt fate, and that feels applicable here. If we stake everything on being able to get where we're going before it gets too late, and that place being safe to set up in, then we're going to get burned. No, we have to turn back. If it weren't for these spiders we'd be fine. We could just hold north and we'd get there eventually, or we could sleep on the tracks. They're placed juuuuust often enough that you can't really stay anywhere too long without seeing one. Earnest's wounds are slowing him down to the point where I'm actually having trouble guiding him around them, and we're too beat up to make any more mistakes. It's not all bad. The big threats along the way have all been wiped out and if we come back fresh we may have an easier time killing the spiders. I do have to say the placement and frequency of the spiders down here works really well to keep it interesting. I'd love to see broken down trains, depots, maintenence rooms, etc., but as I understand it, the system that draws procedural maps like the subway tunnels is really fiddly.  We return, exhausted and covered in dust. Earnest slumps into the chair while we tear up some rags for bandages. We awaken feeling much better. Either the acid burns were only superficial, or we're getting better at this medicine thing. We hit a couple houses in the neighborhood for batteries, and wind up finding another handgun and some ammo. The SIG P320 Compact is a neat little handgun that packs a pretty big kick. It loads 18 rounds of .357 SIG, which is a cartridge that attempts to replicate the firepower of .357 magnum but intended for use in automatics instead of revolvers. The .357 magnum remains the more powerful of the two thanks to its larger bullet, but performance is pretty comparable. As a compact, the P320 is suitable for use in concealable and quick-draw holsters, and is just generally easier to grab and use in a hurry. Its only downside is its dispersion - it is one of the most inaccurate guns we own.  Earnest sleeps off his spider bite hangover while we go down and squish some of the bastards. We do alright at first, but as soon as we start to slow down, they shred us. If only we had better armor on our legs...  We settle in back at the ticket office and consider our options. We could go for an armor upgrade, but we've been using a wooden splinter as a sewing needle and that won't cut it anymore.  We head north through Steuben. It's a lot quieter now, we've killed many of the original inhabitants, while others seem to have wandered off. The cemetary is actually peaceful - at least these people get to rest easy, unless they're zombified in their graves... We could actually dig some of these corpses up and get bones out of them to build a better sewing kit. We won't do that, but we could. Zombie bones wouldn't work - something about the reanimation process makes zombie flesh and bone crumble and rot very quickly once it's no longer animated, like time is catching up to it. Along the way we bop a couple zombies and find a wood axe and a CZ 75B. Coooool! The CZ 75 is another Gun Nerd Gun, this one a 9mm. Originally produced in Czechoslovakia in 1975, the gun was eventually exported to the west. An urban legend persists about the mass production models being inferior due to the original run, but I'm not sure how much of that is true. The B designation on ours means it's a one of the later models, and statwise it's heavier and slightly less accurate than our Beretta Px4 Storm, though more durable. It's currently got a 20 round magazine, which is enough to make me favor it over the Beretta. The Wood Axe is effectively the same as the fire axe, except it doesn't have a prybar on it.  We round a corner behind a mixed-use apartment building and see something we've been worrying about since we spotted that drone. police bot posted:One of the many models of armored law enforcement robots employed shortly before the collapse of civilization. Solar powered like many other robots, it maintains its programmed pursuit of law and order, propelled on a trio of omni wheels. This is one of the reasons everyone was protesting before the zombie outbreak. It's also one of the reasons the protests turned into riots so fast. It's hard to say whether this one is left over from the riots or whether it got deployed because the break-in at the gun store triggered an automatic alarm. What we do know is that our picture's on file and Boston Dynamics over here has been kicking zombie rear end nonstop for days. police bot posted:Please put down your weapon.  We have been waiting our whole life for this. We sprint down the alley, but it's very fast. We're not going to make it with our leg like this.  Whirling around, we square up and place two shots right through it. It raises a baton with a mechanical arm and just as we're bracing for impact, it freezes. Something inside sparks and the machine goes silent.  It's a shame. That robot was doing good work out here. We wonder if there's a way to reprogram them or something.  Down the street, there's another one, it looks like a different model, this one even more infamous. riot control bot posted:A nonviolent riot-control bot, designed to suppress riots and make mass arrests of those participating. Though its relaxation gas is by far its best-known weapon, it carries a blinding spotlight and a low-powered stungun for self-defense--in addition to a supply of electronic handcuffs. These things were deployed en masse to deal with the riots, especially after so many of the police broke rank and started rioting too. They caused dozens of deaths in this state alone, and that's just what the news was reporting. People would get gassed and then trampled by crowds, or even killed by the robots themselves as they clumsily tried making arrests without a human operator present. Getting gassed or tazed would probably be a death sentence with all these zombies around. Luckily it seems to be busy at the moment.  The problem is that it's in the way. We decide to try sneaking around.  There's a wreck here - they're all over, really. This one looks like an RV rear-ended a cube van into a streetlight and got smooshed all up under the van. Some car parts are full walls, others (doors, quarter panels, and such) are only half walls. Crouching lets us hide behind the whole thing if we're right up against it. There's no stealth skill, just line of sight, scent, and sound, which actually make for a really robust stealth system on their own.  The robot keeps puffing out this gas, which doesn't seem to affect the zombies. They don't like being repeatedly electrocuted, though, and it's almost ground through the whole pack.  We jab out the window with our staff and duck inside the shop. There are other zombies around, the robot will probably go bother them while we're in here.  We grab a messenger bag off the shelf and start looting. Unfortunately this place doesn't seem to have a sewing kit, but they do have lots of leather clothing. Remembering that Earnest probably needs some new clothes, we also grab this cool t-shirt that he will like.  It'll go great with this. Leather dusters and trenchcoats are great day one armor. They are warm, have a bit of protection with solid coverage, and give you extra pockets without much encumbrance. Unfortunately they're not flagged as armor, so they get damaged very quickly. Dusters offer 54% leg protection, trenchcoats offer none. Fur is even better than leather (this is probably an oversight), but it's very hot and can't really be worn outside of winter.  We spy a shopping cart. This would be a really useful thing to have, but we couldn't get it into the tunnels, and anyway there's a robot outside we have to sneak past. We'll just keep it in mind for now.  Our quest for a sewing kit takes us northward, toward this house with an obnoxiously fancy yard. We find a rubber hose on the ground, which is something we've been looking for... We kick in the door to the groundskeeper's shed, find a sewing kit, and amscray. I forgot to take a screenshot of that.  what skeletal dog posted:This undead canine has shed all of its skin, revealing a carapace of fused bones and ribs. This walking suit of bone seems to be controlled by a net of veins and sinews which pulse with glistening black goo.  It's all full of blood and rotting guts, like the bones have grown into armor. Meet the skeletal line. These zombies aren't actual skeletons, they're just skinny guys with bone armor. The line about black goo in the description is actually obsolete old lore, that's just meant to be taken as corpse goo.  We make our way back to the station. It feels weird thinking of a public place as home.  We dump out all our new leather stuff and start cutting it apart. The (B)utcher menu lists disassembly and cutting up in the same screen, which is confusing. Disassembling items means meticulously pulling them apart into their components without losing anything and can take hours. Cutting them up means hastily hacking them apart. Furthermore, for some reason "patchwork clothing parts" were rolled out a year or two back as an intermediary step between a rag or patch and a finished piece of clothing, and you get those when you disassemble. We want leather patches, so we're cutting.  We salvage 51 good-sized patches of leather. This should get us started.  We still need an awl. Remember those wolves that attacked us? Butchery is complicated, like everything else. Basically you need something with the Cutting 1 trait (a tool trait, not a weapon trait) and a corpse to get started. Your yield is based on the condition of the corpse, your relevant skills and stats, and the Butchering quality of your tool. In our case we're using a combat knife, which isn't particularly suited to the task. Field Dressing a corpse removes the blood and the organs which will most quickly spoil. This gives the corpse a longer shelf life, and is a good idea if you plan on doing anything with it. Skinning skins the corpse. You also get skin if you do full butchery, but less of it. Quick Butchery hacks the corpse apart for the most accessible meat and organs and leaves the rest. It's inefficient but fast, and doesn't require any special steps. Full Butchery completely processes a corpse for all its meat and organs, or as much as your tools and skill will let you get. It takes a while. If the corpse is dog-sized or larger, it requires a rope, a tree or a butcher's rack, something with the Clean Surface trait (a tarp, a table, etc.). Dissection searches a corpse for special items that would be missed on any other form of butchery. Usually this is like, tissue samples or special organs. We'll touch on it more later. It takes a long time. Dismemberment yields nothing but stops the corpse from reviving. It takes longer than smashing but doesn't make noise and you don't get acid on you if it's an acid-filled corpse. Zombies yield tainted blood/meat/fat/bones, which as previously stated decay very quickly and have limited uses. Regular animals and humans yield regular flesh and bone, which can be used or eaten in a variety of ways. Cannibalism is a super bad idea unless you have the cannibal trait.  The wolf carcass was smashed into pieces, burnt beyond recognition, and left to bake in the sun, but we just need a bone. It's still got those.  We sit down on a rock and get to carving. This game has serious If You Give A Mouse A Cookie vibes. We need to get to the refugee center, so we have to go through the tunnel. There are monsters in the tunnel, so we need guns. Our guns can't hit some of the monsters, so we need better armor. We don't have a sewing awl, so we're butchering a wolf... I've been trying to keep us on-target. In a casual playthrough I'd be hoovering up all the loot I could find and crafting for weeks on end before going out and doing anything serious. Even so, it feels like we're taking forever to get anywhere.  We found a prescription bottle at some point that's labeled Adderall. Why not? We're going to be up all night anyway. We eat one. Drugs are currently sort of broken. The Adderall increases our morale and slightly reduces our sleepyness, but wears off before it can actually become relevant. They used to give stat boosts and stuff, but that's not really how drugs work IRL. Cocaine doesn't make you faster or smarter, it just makes you chatty and alert. The devs plan to simulate these effects better, but for now drugs are sort of in limbo. Painkillers do work to reduce pain, so we'll keep an eye out for those. Mostly I see drugs as an RP thing, a trade good, or a way to do challenge runs. Maintaining an addiction can be really difficult.  We hang out with Earnest upstairs for a day or two, practicing working with leather until we feel confident enough to try sewing some body armor out of it. It's frustrating and hard to stay focused, but we do make gradual progress. Without the principles of leatherworking and skilled leatherworking proficiencies, this is kind of painful. We pick up principles with a practice action, but this wastes a lot of leather patches as we mindlessly sew them together to learn how to work the material. We'll try to muddle through without skilled leatherworking, but it turns this into a 16 hour project.   Taking breaks to chat and sneaking off to light fires helps our mood quite a bit. Consequentially, we can keep some degree of focus on our work.  We sew layers of soft leather together to form a thick, padded jerkin we can wear over our gambeson. Unlike the hard plastic SWAT armor, the leather is flexible enough to cover our sides. It hangs down past our knees in a heavy skirt that should keep the spiders at bay. It doesn't have sleeves, but the gambeson covers our arms. Leather recently got an upgrade (sidegrade?) - it used to provide all-around defense, but now protects mainly against cut (and to a lesser extent, stab by extension) and offers less protection against blunt attacks. We can layer this with our gambeson and (for now) ditch the kevlar vest for some really great mobility and protection. If you're keeping track: Gambeson Coverage: 100 arms/torso. 5 bash, 5 cut, 5 ballistic. Leather Body Armor Coverage: 90 legs/torso. 4 bash, 12 cut, 8 ballistic. Army Helmet (badly damaged) Coverage: 85 head. 17 bash, 21 cut, 24 ballistic. With a holstered gun that's 20 torso encumbrance, which negatively affects our melee speed and accuracy by about 18%. That's well within acceptable parameters. That sounds like a lot, but pain would hurt us way more and if we're reducing or ignoring enough hits, the equation starts to stack up in armor's favor very quickly. In addition, we find a pair of yellow rubber boots that fit us. They're not as comfortable as our sneakers, but Earnest suggests they might help with the acid. Rubber boots slow us down a bit, but they give our feet 5 acid protection. That's just enough to stand in acid without taking damage, so as long as our boots don't get torn, we're in great shape here.  gently caress YOU SPIDERS  gently caress YOU WAREHOUSE SPIDER  Make no mistake.  If you are a spider, we will come to your house and bash your face in, and then we'll set your hairy little balled up carcass on fire.  It was supposed to be a short scouting trip, just to test the armor, but we get a bit carried away. Our melee ranks up to 4 as we go.  Confident in our chances now, we return to the station to rest. When we wake, we grab Earnest and begin the long, long hike north.  The spiders are crawling all over our stuff when we get back to it, but the Travois seems otherwise unmolested. They skitter into the darkness as we take an account of what we've got. Getting here took a couple hours, but it'll be much slower going now that we have all this stuff to haul. Dragging the travois is a bit slower than walking, and the few items at our feet we're hauling with (\) add a few seconds to every step. Plus there are monsters in front of us.  Earnest was right about these boots. Now the slugs are just big wet punching bags.  Eventually we spot a new kind of slug, this one looking different from the others. Despite its unusual appearance, it exudes what appears to be standard slug slime, not boiling acid. It's just finished killing a spider, and worryingly, the spider didn't seem to be able to hurt it at all. sludge crawler posted:A sluglike creature, eight feet long and the width of a refrigerator. Its black body glistens as it oozes its way along the ground. Eyestalks occasionally push their way out of the oily mass and look around. Instead of acid, these bad boys leave sludge everywhere. Sludge is a viscous liquid that slows your move speed by like 300%. Most of the time it's not an issue, but in the wrong situation it can lead to enemies pummeling you while you helplessly try to struggle away from them. For a while, there were a ton of sludge-producing enemies and sludge was everywhere and would last for days. It's rarer now and dries up faster, so that's nice. Still, this enemy is some bullshit. They have 300 hit points and regenerate a full pip of health every second. If you can't do more than 60 damage every time you attack, you're probably not going to hurt them. Also they don't bleed (one of the usual ways to deal with this sort of thing) and they don't have heads (so no gun crits). There's a hint about how to kill them in their description, but it's not something we have access to at the moment, so we're going to run.  It's a lot slower than the other slugs, so we try to run. Unfortunately, it came from up ahead, so in juking it we wind up criss-crossing the slug trail. Soon the whole tunnel's gooped up. We double back to grab our flashlight and have Earnest watch the travois up ahead.   It's not slowed down by the goop at all, and even scrambling to get through it has quick as we can, we're outpaced. Luckily we anticipated this - we left a clear gap on the east side of the tunnel.  Panting, we leave it somewhere on the tracks behind us. Words cannot express Earnest's relief when we return. We press on, but can't shake the idea that we're really on some giant treadmill that will never go anywhere. Eventually something moves at the edge of the light.  mi-go posted:An alien creature of uncertain origin. Its shapeless pink body bears numerous sets of paired appendages of unknown function, and a pair of ribbed, menbranous wings which seem to be quite useless. Its odd, vaguely pyramid-shaped head bristles with numerous waving antennae, and simply gazing upon the unnatural beast fills you with primordial dread. We're stunned at the sight of it. It looks totally unearthly.  "It's...beautiful." Of course it charges at us and tries to kill us, like everything else. We both go in on it and it retreats down the tunnel, scattering spiders. There are several human bodies down here, perhaps survivors, though judging by the state of them it's been quite some time since they stopped doing that. They nearly all died with weapons in their hands.  The pink thing disappears down the tunnel, and from that same direction another one of those horrible flying black snakes appears. This time we have more than enough ammo.  There's one problem solved.  More drugs.  "Maybe...the drugs were turning people into CHUDs?" "I don't think the drugs are involved."The MAC-10 is a machine pistol that fires .45 ACP. It has a single and auto-fire mode. The damage is a bit higher than 9mm and it comes with more armor-piercing. Nice in a pinch, though there are better .45s - this gun is woefully inaccurate.  We shoot down two more of the flying snakes as we go. Ammo's not tooooo low yet, but we can't do this forever. We sorted out Earnest's AI so he won't even try to fight unless we tell him. It helps.  Maybe a half-mile farther (it's hard to tell) we find more corpses, but these are different. They've been ripped to shreds and lie splattered all over the tracks, but it's obvious. "These were scientists, look at the coats."What were scientists doing in a subway tunnel?  They don't have any weapons, but we find a visitor's pass and an unlabeled ID card, the kind that openes electronic locks. There's no indication of where they go to, but this handwritten note says something about "subway tunnels under Orrington." Orrington? Did we walk all the way to Orrington? Does that mean we're close to a station?  We almost can't believe it when we spot the bend in the tunnel. It's like an oasis in the desert. We start laughing and cheering, delirious from our long captivity.    This mutant gives us some trouble, so we try out the MAC-10. It does the job. I cannot describe to you the sublime joy I feel at seeing horizontal tracks instead of vertical. I am so sick of this goddamn tunnel.  We pass through a knee-deep pool of blood that stretches across the entire tunnel. The rails are torn and bent here. There are a couple of dead spiders, but this doesn't look like bug blood...  We're beaten down and tired, and now the spiders have the advantage. We're back to waiting for them to clear out of the median so we can proceed. It is not unlike sitting in traffic. "loving MOVE!" Finally, after hours of walking, we come to another bend in the tunnel and find...a station? The power's still on here. The # are just missing diagonal tiles for the railroad ties, don't mind those.  There's a little office there behind the spotless bulletproof glass, that looks like the perfect place to rest. This place actually looks really nice, there are fake plants and rows of padded benches, but no signage. We have no idea what stop this is. "H...hello?" "Gray, wait..."We're in a bad way. We need shelter and time to rest. We literally leave a trail of blood as we approach.   "Don't."Do? We could also turn back and try to find an overland route from Steuben, or we could leave this whatever it is and look for a normal stop further down the tunnel. worm girl fucked around with this message at 10:16 on Feb 19, 2022 |
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Feb 19, 2022 09:57
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This sounds like an incredibly bad idea. Is it possible to get into the small guard shack nearby instead? That might be a good place to rest and recuperate.
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Feb 19, 2022 10:24
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DoubleNegative posted:This sounds like an incredibly bad idea. Is it possible to get into the small guard shack nearby instead? That might be a good place to rest and recuperate. It's completely walled in and none of our weapons can damage the bulletproof glass. The M4 might be able to do it on full auto, but we're out of ammo for it. The only door to that room is on the other side, presumably past wherever this card reader door opens to.
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Feb 19, 2022 10:28
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Swipe.
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Feb 19, 2022 10:32
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It seems like a bad idea, but it also seems like a funny idea. Is it safe to camp out on the platform for a bit to get ready for entering? I know that personally I would not be able to stop myself. So... DO.
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Feb 19, 2022 10:32
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worm girl posted:It's completely walled in and none of our weapons can damage the bulletproof glass. The M4 might be able to do it on full auto, but we're out of ammo for it. The only door to that room is on the other side, presumably past wherever this card reader door opens to. It couldn't hurt to stick our head in the door at least, maybe see if we can't find a way into the guard shack. Go for it!
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Feb 19, 2022 11:08
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Ah, C:DDA, I remember seeing one person making some kind of arcane death machine using vehicle construction/modification...well, before a mutie got them, but it looked cool.
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Feb 19, 2022 11:25
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I'm here for a good time, not a long time. DO
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Feb 19, 2022 14:43
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This is C:DDA we DO
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Feb 19, 2022 14:52
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We DO things not because they are easy and safe, but because they're dangerous and unknown.
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Feb 19, 2022 18:24
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Here for a !!Fun!! time, not a long time Rest for a bit here, if possible, then do it I don't know precisely which of the changes got me into it better, but I accidentally spent all afternoon on Cataclysm: Bright Nights yesterday. Alas, personal projects and LP work, you've met a dangerous foe. I'm having a ton of fun holing up like a rat in a science facility, skulking around in the darkness, and making my horrible clothes out of bedsheets. It's good stuff. It's also only been like, 2 days somehow. Maybe. At least I think so, I haven't seen the sky in forever!
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Feb 19, 2022 18:26
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BN keeps getting brought up and I really should say that I would prefer we keep this a DDA thread. It's a different game.
worm girl fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Feb 19, 2022 |
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Feb 19, 2022 18:34
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worm girl posted:BN keeps getting brought up and I really should say that I would prefer we keep this a DDA thread. It's a different game. Fair enough. That was really all I was going to say about it, just happy I finally got into any Cataclysm for once. I'll probably find my way back to DDA soon enough, now that I kinda know what I'm supposed to be doing better now. Left 4 Bread fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Feb 19, 2022 |
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Feb 19, 2022 19:03
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Do, but from the tile directly north of the reader, instead of directly in front of the door. C'mon, even curiosity still has some survival instinct baked in, yes?
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Feb 19, 2022 20:04
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This thread has inspired me to give DDA a shot. I'm currently playing a SWAT CQB specialist who found a LMOE shelter practically right next door to the evac shelter. I cleared it out without too much fuss thanks to my baton and armor, and found a boatload of guns with almost no ammo! The downside? I took pain pill dependence on start for more points and now I have an effective Dex of 1 from the withdrawal symptoms. This is after a multitude of other starts where I was just learning the system. This time I think I've got a much better grasp on inventory management and won't load myself down with as much random crap all the time. Probably gonna make the LMOE shelter my homebase because it's loaded with food and some big tanks for water storage, assuming I find a good source of water nearby. So I guess next time I boot it up I either find things to do while my mood is bottomed out and quivering from opioid withdrawal, or go on the hunt for a pharmacy nearby. Opioids (and ammo) was about the only thing his shelter is missing!
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Feb 19, 2022 20:13
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I know this thread will eventually make me pick up CDDA again and I'm dreading it because I have an LP and assorted other projects that need finishing first.
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Feb 19, 2022 21:00
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PurpleXVI posted:I know this thread will eventually make me pick up CDDA again and I'm dreading it because I have an LP and assorted other projects that need finishing first. Too late for me. I'm now running a leather armored murder machine. I've learned a lot from the LP!
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Feb 19, 2022 22:45
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Is it OK to post pics of things from our games? I don't want to distract from the LP.
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Feb 19, 2022 22:47
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worm girl posted:We climb into the dumpster. From here, we can actually lean out and pick the lock on the back door without being seen. I'd be interested to hear more about this. Do enemies remember the last location they saw you or do they just forget instantly and start working by smell/hearing at that point?
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Feb 19, 2022 23:09
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Oh hey this is neat  I'm a long time player and regular in the thread for the game so I'll curiously read along. Gotta say though you're playing it a bit dangerous since you got into the tunnels lol. Also for educational purposes DO!! Btw anyone that's interested in the game is welcome to swing by the thread. We happily write small dissertations to answer any and all questions you might have and help you survive and master the steep learning curve. Edit: spoilers and some misunderstandings on my part The gracken is a cool and good friend. I have spent many games with a gracken as my mate in my base though you wanna wear hearing protection so their noises don't clog up your crafting/sleeping. Or you eventually just trap them in a shed outside. But imo you always respect the friendly gracken in this awful new world Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Feb 22, 2022 |
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Feb 20, 2022 00:08
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Fire is also useful against zombie soldiers. You can engage them in 'melee' while they stand in a fire and they'll eventually burn to death. Make sure to immediately grab any grenades etc they drop.
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Feb 20, 2022 00:13
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I always enjoy trying to fortify a larger location so it's zombie proof and I have a secure place to return to and store all my stuff in, but it feels like it always ends up attracting larger swarms of zombies that are eventually impossible to keep out. It makes me a bit sad since I enjoy building fortresses.
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Feb 20, 2022 00:25
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Turn off wandering hordes and enjoy your fortress of solitude. I do this too btwThe Lone Badger posted:Fire is also useful against zombie soldiers. You can engage them in 'melee' while they stand in a fire and they'll eventually burn to death.
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Feb 20, 2022 00:35
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PurpleXVI posted:I always enjoy trying to fortify a larger location so it's zombie proof and I have a secure place to return to and store all my stuff in, but it feels like it always ends up attracting larger swarms of zombies that are eventually impossible to keep out. Aren't mansions pretty good for doing this, since you can board up the windows in the outer rooms and keep your loud/light intensive activites to the inner rooms?
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Feb 20, 2022 00:42
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Tin Tin posted:Gotta say though you're playing it a bit dangerous It's an RP playthrough and I'm doing what the thread tells me. If I wanted to armor and train up to the point of early-game untouchability that was an option, but that's not what the thread picked. Tin Tin posted:When you introduced armor you mentioned that damage reduction works by % No I didn't, I said that coverage is a percentage chance to apply the armor's flat damage reduction. Tin Tin posted:You mentioned basements as a potential means of escape but that is a risky strat imo. Contents of basements can vary wildly I showed our character going in and clearing the basement before using it as an escape route. I'm not spoiling things before they come up and I've ask that people replying here don't either. Tin Tin posted:Filthy clothes actually have a bit of a mechanic to them in the sense that they will make infections more likely since the grime gets into wounds. Don't think that was mentioned so far? We haven't been wearing filthy clothing so this mechanic hasn't come up. It was something I intended to touch on if we did. Tin Tin posted:Zombie soldiers are the bane of new players and they are indeed kind of a threat. But it helps to know that their armor is lowest against bash so a quarterstaff is actually good to use there Zombie soldiers have 12 bash armor and the staff's base damage is 26. Rapid strike (which procs frequently) reduces that to 1 damage after armor. A fire axe does 34 cut damage and 17 bash damage, plus it procs bleeds. It does not have rapid strike. That means that even damaged, our average axe attack was doing base damage in the low teens (before strength) and applying DOTs, while most of our staff attacks were doing single-digit damage. Attacks cannot crit if they deal under 4 damage, so all of our axe strikes were eligible for critical hits (taking our damage into the 30s as shown in the screenshot) while when we demonstrated our quarterstaff against another soldier later, 3/8 of our attacks did not break the crit threshold. The quarterstaff was able to briefly stunlock the soldier, but it took our stamina nearly into the red to defeat it. It is a vastly inferior tool for the job. Tin Tin posted:Subway stations will always have a group of zombs in them so it's something you should prepare for. On the other hand the maintenance room is a great and next to perfect source for certain tools like the allmighty jackhammer I'm trying to educate while sticking to an in-character exploration of the game world, and for the most part if something hasn't been covered it's because I'm hoping its unexpected appearance will help turn the sandbox into a story. As stated in the OP, please avoid spoiling areas or mechanics. For the most part I'm not looking for any gameplay help or advice with this thread. dervinosdoom posted:Is it OK to post pics of things from our games? I don't want to distract from the LP. Perfectly OK and welcomed, though I ask that people not spoil monsters or endgame locations/items we haven't seen yet. You know the ones. "IthilionTheBrave posted:I took pain pill dependence on start for more points and now I have an effective Dex of 1 from the withdrawal symptoms. Ouch. Addiction had some bugfixes in the last couple years but it's still really overblown. How are you going to loot more pills if you can't fight 'cause you got no pills? worm girl fucked around with this message at 12:52 on Feb 20, 2022 |
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Feb 20, 2022 03:00
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Nostalgic for meth and cocaine that were totally worth the risks. And the deathly comedown. Not going to miss lighting a cigarette before any use of guns.
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Feb 20, 2022 04:40
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worm girl posted:Ouch. Addiction had some bugfixes in the last couple years but it's still really overblown. How are you going to loot more pills if you can't fight 'cause you got no pills? Funny thing is, I almost got myself killed via torso damage (seriously, I had a / of health displayed on my torso despite my SWAT armor), and in my efforts to convalesce from that I ended up riding out the opioid withdrawal as well. Went through all almost all the food left in the LMOE Shelter I made my homebase in the process. I basically wore a blanket and slept constantly, waking up to eat, drink, and redo my bandages before stumbling back to bed. Ate canned and tinned foods because I was too moody to even bother cooking and didn't really have the tools/materials to cook anything decent anyway. I also found a truck and ended up promptly crashing it in the woods as I tried to run down some monsters that have not yet been encountered in this LP. If there's a city near my starting point it's pretty gosh darn far (or just not connected by roads), so this playthrough may lean heavily into the survivalist bush living side of things.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:10
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I got an immature laugh out of "Thirst level: Turgid". Also, DO swipe that card!
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Feb 20, 2022 05:17
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IthilionTheBrave posted:Funny thing is, I almost got myself killed via torso damage (seriously, I had a / of health displayed on my torso despite my SWAT armor), and in my efforts to convalesce from that I ended up riding out the opioid withdrawal as well. Went through all almost all the food left in the LMOE Shelter I made my homebase in the process. I basically wore a blanket and slept constantly, waking up to eat, drink, and redo my bandages before stumbling back to bed. Ate canned and tinned foods because I was too moody to even bother cooking and didn't really have the tools/materials to cook anything decent anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm4fsi6OvFI
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Feb 20, 2022 09:46
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Edited: Too spoilery!
PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Feb 20, 2022 |
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Feb 20, 2022 10:28
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