It's time to get out of here. I've stocked a couple days worth of food and a bunch of clean water in the car, plus my shotgun and several dozen 00 shot shells just in case. I'm not taking chances. It's gonna be a while to get to the refugee center, where I hope to find friendly NPCs I can convince to come back with me, because, hey, who
wouldn't leave the relative safety of FEMA camp to follow a shotgun-toting, dirt-covered, riot armor-wearing dude out into the Wasteland? I mean, I've got my own Tesla I recovered!... Though it only gets like three hours of driving time at max. We've got horses! Horses, anyone? Ah... if they weren't all murdered by giant wasps by now.
The drive goes pretty smooth for the most part. There's no contiguous road—at least, not one that isn't blocked by military-grade turrets or eldritch horrors. So I go offroad at some points, and zoom past that evac shelter where I first found out about the refugee center, before crossing the river over a bridge into the town of
Swampscott... only to immediately bank right and forget
that noise, because it's crawling with zombies.
Eugh. And here's a glimpse of the dangers you can find even in the wild. Giant spiders can be nasty, but web-spinning ones usually only attack if you get caught by their webs or provoke them. The really dangerous ones tend to be those you find in caves, certain basements, subways, and the like.
I head south towards the town of
Barre, aiming to skirt it and head east to the refugee center... only to find... Wait. What's this ventilation shaft doing all the way out here?
It's... oh.
Oooooooh.I've just broken into a
Science Lab. This... this is top-of-the-line, X-Files level stuff. Labs hold the pinnacle of technology, up to and including mutagenic substances, bionic CBM modules, and every form of chemical compound imaginable! They're the go-to place for pretty much any project you may need, and are a vital resource for items to improve your character past the confines of their weak, pithy humanity.
But for this, we need a proper theme.
The first few enemies I find, mostly zombie scientists, fall easily to my spear. However, I
cannot get complacent. There is
MUCH worse than that down here. Labs are deathtraps filled with automatic gun turrets, giant insects, extradimensional terrors, plasma spills, and worse. A
secret lab, the kind I just found, accessible primarily by hidden ventilation shafts or manholes that can even be hidden in wooded environments, is one of the best.
This... this level of
slaughter, though, is something I haven't seen yet. Something killed all these zombies. Something
exceedingly strong. And I may have found some clues, because among the zombie bodies is the ~442 lb corpse of a giant naked mole rat... and a very much alive
Giant Mole Cricket. Oooh, boy. Yeah, you wouldn't think it, but those things are actually horrific to face in combat. It seems the zombies ran into some extremely powerful giant burrowing creatures, because I'm seeing points where the walls have just been completely obliterated, and holes even dug into solid rock.
Not all of them are dead, though. There's something else coming. More new enemies—a Mad Scientist, basically a feral with a scalpel; and a Phase Skulker, which is apparently a zombie that died wearing a five-point anchor, essentially a device that seatbelts you to reality. Thanks to my USP .45, though, even tougher enemies like that fall fairly easily.
I even manage to snatch an assault rifle off the corpse of a dead zombie security guard! That's a boon, even though it only has 19 rounds out of 30 left. I managed to find more 5.56 from the dead zombie cops & SWAT back at the private resort, after all! The only problem is that the gun is damaged, so it'll suffer penalties until I can fix it up with a Firearm Repair Kit. This is an important reason why I do
not advocate for bayonets on guns, because firearms are
MUCH harder to fix than dedicated melee weapons. A bayonet is useful, but only if you truly get ambushed with no good way out. You're often better off just equipping the bayonet as a knife and fighting with that alone.
I also found some useful—or just interesting—drugs and chemicals in the lab. I wasn't kidding when I said they have
everything, here. With a high enough chemistry skill, you can make ANFO explosives, concentrated hydrogen peroxide bombs, sulfuric acid grenades, and more! I dunno if I can use aluminum sulfate to make molluscide for killing giant slugs or not, but I do know a similar acid exists for giant ants I can load into a chemical sprayer. I also found some mutagenic substances like I mentioned before, but... I'm gonna wait a bit before getting into those. I've never actually mutated myself, for one, and I doubt I could do it properly here in the field, let alone cover it in this episode. So, until next time!
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Topic: Xvareon plays C:DDA - Survival horror zombie apocalypse roguelike RPG (Take two) (Read 1521 times)