I return to Cataclysm after a year+ of not playing it. Checking out all the changes. Several brief learning lives.
My umpteenth new character, I pick the crack-addicted prostitute, and really try to save her. Start in a 'safe house' so close to a city that there's zombies visible through the windows already. Talk to the person in the house with me, get told about some job. My prostitute's already starting to shiver, she needs her drugs. Doesn't even listen. She heads for the stairs. The other person charges towards the zombies.
Get a couple bottles of water, stumble back up the stairs and out from the safehouse on the side away from the town. The fight starts, a spitter and an electroshock zombie, others; my prostitute doesn't wait to see the likely conclusion. She gets away.
The edge of the area she knows has a gas station well outside of the town. The shakes are getting bad. She stumbles to the station, circles it. Perception, intelligence, dex; they're all down to 0. She doesn't -see- any zombies, not that I trust her observations at the moment.
I let her go inside, bully her into moving the various food and drink stuffs into the back room, try to get her to sleep. She complains about the light (seriously? This room has no windows....), then about the cold. And always about the withdrawal. I murmur reassurance to her, keep her from her drugpipe. She's having so much trouble sleeping I finally urge her up, and try to walk it off with her.
This seems a little better, maybe easier on us both. Something else for us to think about, she's not so cold now, maybe it'll make her tired soon. We keep walking a little more, then she stops breathing and just, dies. Still on the first day of play.
Still such an awesome game, with so much to learn and try to survive.