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[Flying Dice]

But I can't go that slowly because Red King needs food (and water and sleep) badly!

I had one character that spent the first half of the first day reading a magazine, then raided a house in the afternoon, killed some zombies, got some food and warm clothing, then hightailed it back to the shelter. Couldn't get any real sleep because kept waking up hungry and/or thirsty. Finally took NyQuil to sleep, only to wake up too cold. Put winter clothes on, woke up from being too hot. Once I finally got my shit all sorted, it was morning.

Went into an office tower the next day, got trapped in a room and killed by a horde. That's the only game that's made it to Day 2.

Don't try to read anything your first few days. Focus on gathering food/clean water and setting up a secure area. By far your best bet is an isolated house/shelter/cabin/public works facility, ~7-8 map tiles away from the nearest city. If there's swamp or fungaloids nearby, bail and make a new character. Just keep in mind that as long as you have 2 watertight containers, a weapon, and a fire-starter of some sort you can keep yourself fed and watered forever with small animals cooked and water purified over a fire. Save preserved food for emergencies whenever possible; if you are badly injured or catch the flu, you won't be able to forage.

Your prime early raid target will be military surplus stores: they can have military rucksacks, MREs, clean water, first aid kits, and other useful things. Don't ever try to fight like that, just dash in, grab what you can, and book it. If you take Night Vision, it can be viable to try to sneak into cities at night, as zeds can only detect you when you're very close as long as you stay quiet.

Oh, and only start cooking fires with tiny bits of rubbish, or they'll produce copious clouds of smoke and kill you dead, at least in current versions.

[Kaitol]

Blargh. Why didn't the new reply pop up and block me.

Don't really have much new advice to add to all that really. I've never had much problem getting started. I mean, you lose characters to bad luck, yeah, but that's just it. Bad luck. The next character in all likelihood will stumble outside and find a dead military patrol with guns and ammo and backpacks and supplies and just loltrain through.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

Only two things to add:

1. Do the old DF rock shuffle to train up your throwing. You can use it to soften up/kill zombies before they reach you, especially if you're a fast character.

2. There are multiple ways to make the game easier in settings. If you just can't deal with the steep difficulty, try starting with more points or cranking the spawn multiplier down.

[Imp]

Oh, and only start cooking fires with tiny bits of rubbish, or they'll produce copious clouds of smoke and kill you dead, at least in current versions.

An exploit which will (surely) be closed sooner or later, but for now when you light a fire, it seems that it's the tile that has the fire - not the objects in that square.  Now, over time they'll burn away if they can - but you can get a fairly long lasting and nearly smokeless fire from dropping an object onto an empty square, starting the fire, then immediately using e and direction to pick up that object.

It won't even have taken damage yet, it won't be an !object!, and the fire will remain lit in that ignited square.  There will be some smoke but in my experience it's minimal.

People having trouble with smoke from cooking - why not make a stone fireplace with *?  41 rocks is rarely hard to find and even if you start far from a forest you can smash any window in your starting shelter for the heavy stick needed for the stone hammer.

The drop and retrieve trick works just fine for fireplace fires too, though I'll be glad when the day comes where fires consume fuel over time and die without it.  I'll enjoy tending fires if that gets added in, and until then I imagine we're summoning fire elementals or something 

[RedKing]

Latest foray:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hmm...I remember this map layout. Oh yeah, this was the guy who found that dead science team! Maybe I should check out the science lab.

Okay, the lab is sealed up tight but there's a card reader. Hey, those bodies all had ID cards, and the last guy didn't take all of them (his body is irretrievable after he got swarmed in a gun shop).

Got the card, hoofed it back to the lab....eureka! I'm in! Man, this place will make a great base of operations. Solidly built, card-locked doors, plenty of tools and gear, even some decent beds to sleep in.
Wonder what's in the basement?

Whoa. Dissection table and all kinds of slightly disturbing gear. Well....suppose if I ever need to chop up a zombie to research the plague, it'll come in handy. Hey, there's a sub-basement....what's down there?

What the f....CLONING VATS? This is some weird shit. Oh shit, I just heard something. Wait...now, I hear voices in the other direction! Human voices! I'm saved!

Hey guys, I'm over he--- WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? AND WHY DO PARTS OF THE WALLS KEEP GETTING REDUCED TO RUBBLE BY LASERS??

AHHHHHHH oh crap oh crap, just follow the voices, follow the voices, follow the....ARGLBLAGH things man was not meant to see oh god kill me *splat*

Not sure if I should bother continuing to play. It's like sticking my face into a rotary saw over and over...quick, painful and messy.
I mean, I just died playing the tutorial. 

[Neonivek]

The more I hear about Cataclysm the more I think the story I came up with is far superior then the silly one they came up with.

Which is that every single apocalypse scenario occurred all at once.

[chaoticag]

I'm not exactly sure why we're supposed to take it seriously in the first place? More to the point, I'm not even sure how many people care about the story of what happened. Though by all means, act with the story you had in mind rather than the one they came up with if you want. I don't think it's all over the place, but then again, never dipped into fema camps and labs before, so no idea if there are story tidbits there or not.

[Tiruin]

Oh, and only start cooking fires with tiny bits of rubbish, or they'll produce copious clouds of smoke and kill you dead, at least in current versions.

An exploit which will (surely) be closed sooner or later, but for now when you light a fire, it seems that it's the tile that has the fire - not the objects in that square.  Now, over time they'll burn away if they can - but you can get a fairly long lasting and nearly smokeless fire from dropping an object onto an empty square, starting the fire, then immediately using e and direction to pick up that object.

It won't even have taken damage yet, it won't be an !object!, and the fire will remain lit in that ignited square.  There will be some smoke but in my experience it's minimal.

People having trouble with smoke from cooking - why not make a stone fireplace with *?  41 rocks is rarely hard to find and even if you start far from a forest you can smash any window in your starting shelter for the heavy stick needed for the stone hammer.

The drop and retrieve trick works just fine for fireplace fires too, though I'll be glad when the day comes where fires consume fuel over time and die without it.  I'll enjoy tending fires if that gets added in, and until then I imagine we're summoning fire elementals or something 

Ahh, always wondered on the point in fires. I just bothered with braziers, but in seeing this logic. . .

That's a nice catch!

[Imp]

It won't even have taken damage yet, it won't be an !object!

Minor correction, having bothered to use the same rotten cheeseburger in a paper wrapper several times in a row to start my fires - after using it as tinder, on the fifth try it did successfully turn into a burnt cheeseburger (rotten).  So fires are consuming the object over time like they 'should', just sticking more to the square than the !object!... but eventually you'd need a new bit of flammable rubbish if using this trick even as is.

edit to add after more checking: And that burnt cheeseburger is no longer a functional ignition support.  So I guess what my character is doing is lighting the square on fire, then yanking the flammable object away and somehow smothering the flames before it's totally consumed.  Next firestarting attempt ignites a another portion of the object; the only real mystery is how the fire continues to burn within that square in the absence of fuel... and how our characters are so very good at speedily extinguishing stuff without singing fingers or any other objects worn or carried.

[GrizzlyAdamz]

snip

Ha I remember the tutorial. Used to be you could break out of it and enjoy an empty world before the spawn density setting was in.

If you pull up the map while you're underground, (like in a science lab), it'll mark the stairs leading up.

[Tiruin]

snip

Ha I remember the tutorial. Used to be you could break out of it and enjoy an empty world before the spawn density setting was in.

If you pull up the map while you're underground, (like in a science lab), it'll mark the stairs leading up.

Regarding spawn density...what exactly does that pertain to? How many spawns are done, regardless of spawning area (swamp//forest..static spawn zombies[?])

[Imp]

About that new warning when you go to butcher, that there are hostiles nearby?

Could we please have a config option to turn that warning off?  After a character gets a bit 'tough', I very regularly butcher in full view of other enemies.  Enough so I'm getting to dread having to hit B Y .... and it's even worse if the enemies are being noisy about being around.  Butchery turns into B Y I and really.... I miss the old days.

[DeKaFu]

Still curious if anyone can answer these. I'll probably try to lose the horns if it turns out they're glitchy.

Well, my mutant martial artist is finally getting underway. I just picked up horns and a scorpion tail to go with my centipede style.

A couple questions on attacking now, since it's a bit unclear:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My attacks are now more often than not reported thusly:

You headbutt the zombie with your horns!
You headbutt the zombie with your horns!You sting the zombie with your tail!
Critical! You clobber the zombie for 60 damage. The zombie dies!

Is it actually attacking with the horns twice per turn, or is it just a reporting error? Also, is the damage from the extra attacks being lumped in with the reported damage for my hand-to-hand attack? Because 60 damage seems a bit high for this guy, even for a crit.

I guess I'm also curious if the extra attacks will get the speed boost from centipede style or not. If so, hahaha.

Using the stable release if it matters.

[hermes]

Just started playing this. Some day I hope to survive to actually see sunset. Of the first day.

Seriously, HOW THE FUCK DO YOU SURVIVE?? To survive, I need stuff. Stuff is in buildings. Buildings are crawling with zombies. I can kill a couple of zombies, but that just attracts a metric fuckton of zombies and then death. There doesn't seem to be a way to "sneak", so there's no way to quietly slip into houses and get what I need.

Here's a basic survival guide for getting past day 1: - snip -

Fantastic!  I'm in exactly the same boat as RedKing and am just about to try this out.

On the taboo topic, you know I could sympathise with the troll at first, since I didn't fully understand the point of the kickstarter, but all that feeling has evaporated as I've watched you dev guys working really hard over the past few months and seen the game improve no end.  Keep up the good work!

[miauw62]

Still curious if anyone can answer these. I'll probably try to lose the horns if it turns out they're glitchy.

Well, my mutant martial artist is finally getting underway. I just picked up horns and a scorpion tail to go with my centipede style.

A couple questions on attacking now, since it's a bit unclear:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

My attacks are now more often than not reported thusly:

You headbutt the zombie with your horns!
You headbutt the zombie with your horns!You sting the zombie with your tail!
Critical! You clobber the zombie for 60 damage. The zombie dies!

Is it actually attacking with the horns twice per turn, or is it just a reporting error? Also, is the damage from the extra attacks being lumped in with the reported damage for my hand-to-hand attack? Because 60 damage seems a bit high for this guy, even for a crit.

I guess I'm also curious if the extra attacks will get the speed boost from centipede style or not. If so, hahaha.

Using the stable release if it matters.

Since you're not getting an answer, you should probably hop in the #cataclysmdda channel. There'll probably be somebody that can explain it there.
(Sadly, I forgot which network this channel is on)