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[Frumple]

Crafting in general is a lot more useful iffin' yeh've got an integrated toolset. It completely removes the non-component aspect of the recipes -- including stuff that would normally take a charge, like hotplates. It makes relying on some things, say, butchering for food, a lot more reliable and less inventory space intensive. Even better, it doesn't use power, at all, even for replacing stuff that'd normally take batteries. I've honestly start-scummed to get th'toolset before.

[Whales]

There are a lot of hints in this thread but it's difficult to track everything at this point since it started over 100 pages ago. I start from now if I can. Meanwhile I gathered some informations, mainly from whales' posts, on frequently asked questions or game mechanics. The wiki could be improved.

Spoiler: FAQs (wikify this!) (click to show/hide)

***GAME MECHANICS***

---If your morale is below zero, you don't gain any exp or learn anything. You might even commit suicide. Very low morale means no sleeping, crafting, reading, or eventually living.
The higher a positive number it is, the more your EXP Pool will fill up (which you can see below the time and date), allowing you to draw from that to train skills. Very low morale means no sleeping, crafting, reading, or eventually living.

---Reading a book once will give you around 25% towards your next level, depending on the subject matter, your intelligence, and a few other factors.  Note that you won't see your skill level until it reaches 1.  So yes, books are intended to be read multiple times (consider each reading session to be a single chapter).

---What exactly does negative encumbrance do?
If you check the @ screen, you will get precise information on what encumbrance does--hard numbers on what they make slower, and what skills they affect.  Sneakers make standard movement cost 5 less action points (so 95 rather than 100); a skirt makes movement cost 3 less action points

---Wearing multiple pieces of clothing on the same body part will result in encumberment, even if the individual articles have 0 encumbrance each.

---Torso encumbrance isn't that bad; it's only an issue for players who melee a lot.  In which case, a backpack may not be the best option.

---Mouth encumberance represents the added difficulty of breathing that wearing objects there has, and causes a minor slowdown in movement.

---Are the dead scientist locations completely random, or do they tend to be near certain areas?
Random.  They won't appear in houses or other "solid" tiles, so on average I guess they're more common in forests or fields, away from town.

---"Run Mode" does not make your character move any faster.  It is simply a way to prevent unpleasant surprises.  Run Mode's ONLY effect is to stop you dead in your tracks if a monster enters your field of vision.  This way, you can hold down a movement key when there's no monsters around, and won't need to react quickly if one suddenly shows up.

---If you have poor dexterity, perception, and throwing skill it's possible for your thrown items to deviate significantly from the line of shot.

---Does killing zombies decrase their population?
Yes, the more you kill, the less they'll spawn, at least in the area where you did the killing.

---Do guns have varying degrees of loudness?
The loudness of a gunshot is taken directly from the damage the ammo does.  You can compare sound effects; from quiet to loud, they are "plink!"  "bang!"  "blam!"  "kerblam!".  Energy weapons generally make a "Fzzt!" sound, which is near silent, and crossbows are completely silent.

---Monsters track you by up to three methods: sight, smell and sound.
Sight works if they can see you; if you can see them, they can see you.  Monsters who can see will use this above all other methods.
Smell is the second preferred sense.  The player's scent slowly spreads outwards from the player.  If you are traveling, your scent is like a comet tail behind you; monsters ahead of you can not smell you until you get closer, or you stand still long enough.  This is why ants, for example, seem to ignore the player at first.  Use this to your advantage.  Also, the maximum range for scent is around 10 tiles.
Sound is a fallback, only used if a monster can not see or smell you (or if they lack both those senses).  When you make any noise, a monster will move towards it for a while.  How long monsters spend moving towards the sound is dependant on its volume.  Running makes a quiet noises, and monsters will only move towards it for a few turns.  Firing a gun is much louder, and most monsters will move towards it until they reach it (or can see or smell you).
Some monsters can not see, smell or hear.  These monsters generally just move around randomly.  Zombies can do all of these things.  Plant-based monsters can generally only smell or hear you.  Robots can generally only see or hear you.

---Zombies will try to get in through a window if they see you through the window--you don't have to climb through it yourself.

---Much like real life, abusing caffeine, cigarettes or stimulants such as adderall will make studying easier (by boosting your Intelligence)

---All items have melee combat stats displayed at the top; "Bash: 0   Cut: 0  To-hit bonus: -3" means that the item does no extra bashing damage, no cutting damage, and is more awkward to hit with than just bare fists.

---You can shoot monsters that are off-screen.

---Each season has its own table of weather probability--spring is quite wet and rainy (as you may have noticed), summer's sunny, fall is generally cloudy or clear, winter has snow.  Warmth is very season-dependant, and in the winter snow will accumulate, making movement difficult if you do not clear a path.

---What defines death?
Head HP <= 0, Body HP <= 0, drug overdose.

---Minor pain reduces your intelligence by one, but does not otherwise affect stats.



***ENEMIES***

---Types of Zombies:
*Boomers shoot bile, which blinds you. They have a range of 3 tiles. Boomers explosion make noise, but less than a molotov.
*Screamers well scream, alterting zombies to where you are.
*Fast zombies are faster than normal ones.
*Spitters spit out acid, which when stepped on hurts you. They have a range of 10 tiles.
*Hulks are faster than the player and they are able to smash through a wall (or display rack, or fellow zombie, whatever)
*Dead scientists...
*Shocker zombies shoot thunderbolts. They have a range of 12 tiles.
*Skeletons...
*Necromancers...

---Fungaloids:
They're intended as a long-term problem due to their extreme fecundity, especially given the fact that they can infect zombies, insects, and humans with a cordyceps (wiki or youtube it)-like disease.  Also, some factions may worship the fungus and willingly infect themselves and others.
Fungaloids can be easily defeated through the use of flame weapons, like molotovs or the craftable flamethrower.

---Triffids:
...



***OBJECTS AND ACTIONS***

---To unwield an item press w-

---You can pour out containers by 'w'ielding them, and 'U'nloading.

---Lighter use: 'a', then select lighter, then select direction

---To dig, 'a'ctivate a shovel.

---Is it possible to unlock a door without smashing it?
Use a crowbar on the door.  Or break in through a window, and open the door from inside.

---To disarm a trap 'e'xamine it.

---I have a bionic, called Aero-Evaporator. What does it do?
You can use it to condense water in the air into drinkable water, you can choose to drink it directly or store it in a container. With a reliable power source, you'll never need to carry water containers. It's supposedly unusable if you're in an exceptionally dry area (desert?), but I have yet to experience that.

---Items do not scatter or disappear if you leave.

---To barricade doors or improve defenses you need 3 two by fours (for doors, 2 for windows, and 6 if the door is smashed down), 4 nails and a hammer in the inventory. Press 'a' and select the hammer, then select the direction where you want to construct the barricade

---Chainsaw is very slow to hit with, periodically makes noise, and requires occasional refilling with gasoline to work.

---Fire extinguishers are quite capable of putting out small fires.

---On dangerous pits:
You can  "disarm" pits the same was as other traps, but it still leaves the slowing pit. Of course, there is no visual difference between the two, so you have to remember your path. Good news is that in theory, you can use this to secure a personal house, since no one else will know the safe path.

---You can open Science labs by 'e'xamining the key bad with an ID.



***ZONES*** [Some places are partially implemented]

---Science labs:
...

---Banks:
Basically your standard reception/tellers area; lots of windows or glass walls and some counters.  Perhaps a back office or two.  If anyone has any ideas for items to put in these areas, I'm open.
In the back, a safe, possibly with a new item: gold bars.  Rather heavy and not much good in melee, but can be traded at high value to NPCs.
The door to the safe in banks will be controlled by a computer, which requires intelligence/computer skill to hack into.

---Police stations:
I will also be expanding this to police stations; a central computer will control the doors to the cells, possibly the evidence room (the one near the front, with drugs and stuff in it sometimes).  The computer skill is woefully underutilized (only in labs and missile silos, and even then it's not very important), and I'm going to try to expand the presence of computers in the future.

---Mines:
One entrance, located at the end of a road (it will be treated as a town when the overmap generation plots out roads).  Easy to enter, unlike labs and missile silos.  Underground, it will be basically one long tunnel, with one or more passages to lower levels.  Mining tools (jackhammers, hard hats, flashlights, random trash) all over.  Near the bottom, nasty surprises and fantastic rewards--I'll leave that for you to find out



***TRICKS AND SPOILERS***

---I think Hammers work better then Combat Knives. The do 17 bash with +1 to hit, vs combat knives 22 slash at -3 to hit. Plus, they never get stuck. Though, throwing the knives works VERY well.

---What's the best build for someone who wants to try and do nothing but hunt in the forest and survive without scavenging?
Biggest issue with being outside all the time is probably rain. Being wet can add up to some pretty horrendous morale penalties. You might be able to counter that somewhat by keep a varied diet of morale-boosting foods around (strawberries, apples, honey comb, etc.). Second biggest issue would probably be storage, especially if you're trying to do a complete no-looting run. I think you'd have to get at least a few volume-boosting things before you hit the woods, just to be able to hold enough things to craft necessities things with.
Well. The run will end the first day you get an outright acid rain, though. That melts limbs.

---I have to attack a beehive for royal jelly?
If you really don't want to try dealing with the massive swarms of bees in th'depths of a hive, you can make royal jelly out of honeycombs and, I think, bleach. They're craftable, in any case. So you can nab some honey and book before the whole hive comes down on you.

---On rifles:
Yeah, rifles > assault rifles. I have a Marlin 39a fitted with a barrel extension, sniper conversion, enhanced grip, and double clip. I'm one-shotting most zombies with .22 CB rounds, that come in stacks of 100. Assault rifles can deal loads of damage, but you don't get the accuracy bonuses, deal less damage per bullet, and eat up ammo much more quickly. Eventually, you're not going to need burst-fire since you get enough skill to consistently headshot zombies. Higher accuracy is better than more damage since more accuracy increases your chance of getting headshots. One .22 bullet that lands a headshot can deal as much damage as 3 .45's.

---Can someone explain to me where to find the stuff to craft even something really basic?
Hit up the library.  Read "Under The Hood", "What's a Transistor", "Cooking on a Budget", "Sew What? Anything!", and "How to Trap Anything" -- this will give you a wide variety of craftables.  To reach the really powerful stuff, you'll need a high enough intelligence to hit the textbooks!
Once you've got the know-how, ingredients and tools can be found in hardware stores, grocery stores, basements, and labs.

---On fight strategies:
Use bashing weapons over cutting ones, unless you're high strength or high in the cutting skill.  Kill the zombies you have to, then retreat behind a door.  Use windows to your advantage.  Watch what you're wearing--an overencumbered torso makes melee much more difficulty.  And above all, carry a firearm--just a handgun, with one box of ammo, for emergencies.  And a couple molotovs.  Molotovs are very, very effective.  One or two can take out a pack of wolves at distance.

---Where do labs show up? Outside cities in fields and forests?
Generally along roads, outside cities, but occasionally in a city, near the outskirts, or if it's a large city closer to the center.

Has someone survived until summer?

I'm a little surprised so many people can't live for a few days. Must be my ego. Anyway, I'll type up a guide. This guide is assuming you have a few games under your belt and you understand basic game play. Probably moderately spoily.

Spoiler: Guide (click to show/hide)

The best way to start with a healthy, long living character is to make sure you start with a fresh game. Unzip cataclysm again and start a new game from that folder, so the stores aren't looted. The next best way is to min-max with a custom character. While Whales has turned down melee's effectiveness, it is still a deadly tool if you use it right.

The Creation Screen

Bad traits, are not actually that bad of traits. I've found its worth to take the more "bad" of the bad traits, since they provide many points, and their effects can easily be worked around. Some of my favorites to take are Asthmatic, Schizophrenic, Hoarder, Vegetarian, and HP Ignorant.

Asthmatic is but an annoyance and its only requirement is to carry an inhaler, which are plentiful, and you start with a full one, which will likely last you the whole game anyway.

Schizophrenic is a whopping 5 points, but can't be healed by purifier, as far as I know. Nevertheless, the hallucinations are easy to spot, and generally enemies created by the hallucinations are easy to pick out from the crowd. Enemies such as ones going through walls, or giant ants appearing next to you, are not about to kill you. Also note, don't kill your mom. That's a bad thing to do. Thorazine can be found in pharmacies, you may have to search through a few pharmacies. One looted "unit" of Thorazine will last you a long time, you generally shouldn't take more than one to save space. Take one whenever you think symptoms are popping up. Occasionally you'll be encouraged to quit the game.

Well, Hoarder is pretty obvious and its mostly just a permanent negative morale modifier. You'll likely have experience problems until you find Xanax. Taking swigs of alcohol occasionally  can help with the morale problem, just don't overdue it.

Vegetarian and HP Ignorant are lighter ones and generally don't affect play style at all. Triffids provide veggies upon butchering and is an easy source of food.

Take off one to two points off perception and you should have a might amount of points built up. Now to spend them:

Put a lot of points into strength and intelligence. Intelligence allows you to install bionics with a high chance, along with the ability to read hard books, and strength allows you to one hit stuff, and increases your HP. Strength and Intelligence AT LEAST 12, though I usually boost intel to 14 for the hardest books. Might want to focus on strength if you don't think you're going to last long.

The one good trait you want is quick. It allows you to run away from stuffs. Fleet-Footed is overkill and expensive, but I guess if you want it. Robust genetics is good for getting an awesome mutation from mutagens. Deft may also be useful. Poison resistance is cheap and extremely nice.

All skills are gain able. While useful early game, they become wasted points after a few days. I put one point in dodge so I don't take tons of damage early game, allowing me to survive and grind dodge/melee up even more. I don't recommend anything more, but once again this is a bit flexible.

..and that's it. Character Creation determines how easy you will have it out there. This set-up works for me every time, unless I take hoarder and can't find Xanax anywhere.

Brief Gameplay Guide

I might make an adv. gameplay guide if there's demand, but this is already a huge wall of text.

The Beginning

So you started in a house. This house is guaranteed to have a basement, which contains all sorts of nice goodies.

Priority Items you need: Storage Clothes. You'll find these in the bedroom. Cargo pants, hoodies, trenchcoats, ect. No purses and such, too much encumbrance.

Now, the rest of these items depends if you actually find anything. But usually you want....

1) Healing Items. A man with no HP is a dead, crippled, man.

2) Any pain killers. Both 1 and 2 are found in the bathroom. These are both required for survival.

3) Melee weapon. Since this will be wielded in your hands, you don't really need to priority it volume wise. Melee weapons are pretty common. If you don't find one, you can just run from everything anyway.

4) A knife. A big one. Not a flimsy butter knife. This can double as your melee weapon to for a bit, however bashing is superior to cutting.

5) Food and Water.  Be careful what you grab, most of it is common and you don't need to grab enough rations for a week. Stuff that spoils quick should be high priority, like milk and meat sandwiches. Plastic bottles of water are also good. This priority also includes a glass of alcohol. If you can, get one. It will help in the long run.

6) Last on the list, which may be a surprise to some, is firearms. It is not useful to fire at a zombie and get swarmed by a horde. They take up a lot of space and require ammo. They don't use the strength skill. The only situation I might have needed a firearm were the turrets in the science lab. Otherwise I just use them for fun. I imagine they might be useful with skills high, but you have to grind through a lot of ammo and spawned zombies to get there.

If you find a bunch of awesome stuff (like healing items) in your basement and can't carry it all, mark it on the map by pressing shift+n. You can come back later.

Also, ignore the dog. It just slows you down and gets you killed. You only have 30 minutes before the zombies start spawning.

The Looting

Depending on how much loots you found, the zombies may already be on you. If so, there are a few early game tricks you can use. Remember to take a sip of alcohol if you found some, we don't want to kill these zombies and gain no skills.

1) If its a single zombie, or two spaced out zombies (like one is 6 tiles behind the other), just kill them with your melee weapon. If you don't have one, refer to tip three.

2) If you can get in a shop/house with windows(don't bash the door down), do so and 'c'lose to door behind you. Immediately head for the window and make funny faces at the zombies. You and enemies alike are slowed by windows so much, you can get like 6 or more free hits. 6 hits is a free dead zombie, and free skills.

3) The good, tried method, and the method intended by Whales, just run. The quick attribute allows you to outrun the zombies. Use doors to slow down your pursuers. Do NOT use windows, unless you are surrounded.

Once any zombie pursuers are dealt with, it is often a good idea to hit the sporting goods store. It provides three essentials: Storage, Armour, and Weapon.

Backpacks have a high chance of spawning, and these are the best form of storage and you should never pass one up for something else. Once you have this, you can switch all your storage clothes to something more hardened that protects you more, like Kevlar Armour. You should be aiming for no encumbrance clothes, unless it applies to the head. Kevlar Armour is so awesome, its an exception.

These stores also have baseball caps, baseball helmets, and I believe safety glasses. All are extremely useful, though you can ditch the cap if you don't mind your perception being lowered on sunny days.

Sporting Goods are almost guaranteed to have a baseball bat, a nice moderate damage-moderate speed weapon. You should probably take one unless you found something better.

Next store to hit is the Pharmacy if you took the bad traits I mentioned. It provides three things we need badly:
Healing Items, Painkillers, and "cure" medicine.

"Cure" Medicine and the stronger painkillers are in the back of the store, behind the counter. You should pick up as many healing items as you can, because staying healthy is extremely important in this game. Next are the medicines that "cure" your symptoms, and the painkillers. Tromadol and Oxycodine are nice for a lot of situations, though you may feel to pick up the weaker ones. You are less likely to become addicted, so its your choice. A syringe may or may not be needed for some of the medications, I haven't figured out which ones.

Next is up to you. You can raid a grocery store for more food, a clothing store for better clothing, a police station for Kevlar Armour and an expandable baton, a gun store for some of those not-really-useful guns, or a hardware store for some heavy hitting weapons and hardhat/steeltoed boots.

Now What?

You're now set. I can't really hold your hand much more, only general advice. Typically you want a goal in game, one you created that's beneficial to your character, so that you don't get bored and accidentally get too cocky. A good one I use a lot is raiding libraries for good books. This increases my skill with little danger to my self being. Raid some books, head to a nearby grocery store, lock yourself in the back, and you're safe. Take a sip of alcohol every once in a while between the pages, and you'll have enough experience for your next little killing spree. Reading Electronics books will allow you to have a high chance of successfully installing a difficult bionic.

You should always be on the look out for dead scientists. Purifiers, IDs, Bionics, mutagens, all that good stuff.

Remember to butcher corpses! Unless you're in danger, it provides valuable butchering experience which can't be gained any other way. Butchering triffids gives you chunks of vegetables, essentially free food.

Do not let yourself stay in pain while in the open. Painkillers take time, you'll likely be dead before it works.

Stimulants are valuable for quick escapes. Energy drinks and Adderals should be in your inventory when you get the chance.

Wow that took a long time. I hope its useful.

Wow.  Major kudos and thanks to both of you.  I couldn't have written these better myself; and I'm really happy to see that players have caught on some gameplay strategies that I consider important!
I'm also thankful for any tips on min/maxing, as it's something I obviously want to avoid.  I will be making Schizo worse in the near future, and reducing the points you get from Asthma and HP Ignorant.

I'm also very interested in ideas for mutations and bionics.  As some of you noted, there are unimplemented bionics; I'm interested into turning it into more of a "spellcasting" mechanic, and one that requires a degree of specialization (a skill or two will probably be required for some of them).  Mutation I am considering turning into a "tree" with several categories of mutation, such as fish-like, lizard-like, pollution-oriented, etc.

Crafting will receive an overhaul, and will allow for partially-completed crafts, using any resources found up to a few tiles away, using fire instead of hotplates, etc.

I am considering setting up a rudimentary forum for cataclysm, since the interest seems to be there.  If anyone can suggestion a free forum hosting option, please let me know via email.

P.s. yes the paper wasps suck, but they have a strong chance of holding several "rare" items.  See mapitemsdef.cpp ('mi_rare') for specifics.

[beorn080]

A minorish suggestion. Using scissors on rope should net you a decent number of 3' lengths of string.

[Gamerlord]

we need to be able to make fires that don't kill us or go out right away, and fires need to give off light allowing us to read at night. this should ward off wolves and the like, while attracting zombies. also, maybe a tent item would be good for traveling long distances where you'll get acid rain.

[GlyphGryph]

If we're getting a crafting rewrite, I'll throw my wishlist into the ring. From what you've done and said, I assume you're planning most of this already, but I figured I'd give it a go:

Salvaging stuff for metal and tubes and pipes. Large broken down items you can find around (cars and stuff) that can be broken down for raw materials with a wrench and hacksaw, or even destroying your own guns to get pieces of scrap metal. You should be able to use hatchets on trees to knock them down quicker, and screwdrivers and wood saws and hammers to take apart furniture for nails and wood. Rope should become a lot of string. String should reload sewing kits. Bigger strings should become smaller strings.

Part and parcel of the above - Variable return based on item used for destroying and building stuff - scissors should give the most rags, but it should still be possible to cut something up with a knife or even with your bare hands if you need a quick rag to make a bandage with. Maybe a time bonus too, making things take really long to salvage or build if you've got crappy equipment for the job.

And obviously, more recipes. ^_^

Construction of doorway and gate objects that can be set, or installed with hammer/nails.

Screws- like nails, take a little longer but better chance of retrieval when the object was destroyed if built with screws. That might be impossible to track with this system though, so maybe just make them interchangeable for most things (but required in place of nails for mechanical stuff)

[Gamerlord]

also: walls, and bikes. or some other form of fast transport like maybe a horse.

[beorn080]

also: walls, and bikes. or some other form of fast transport like maybe a horse.

I like this idea, specially the horse part. Tie your horse up outside your safe house, morning comes, you mount it, and bam, zombie horse eating your stomach.

[Grakelin]

I'm confused. With that progression, the horse would have to bend its neck 180 degrees backwards.

[Bdthemag]

I'm confused. With that progression, the horse would have to bend its neck 180 degrees backwards.

Its a zombie man! It could dislocate its neck and bite you!

[Gamerlord]

it says that i can mix ammonia and bleach makes toxic gas, but how do i do this?

[Bdthemag]

it says that i can mix ammonia and bleach makes toxic gas, but how do i do this?

You get ammonia and bleach and the other needed materials, then you hit enter.

[Gamerlord]

oh, it's a crafting recipe? I've been dropping onto the ground together. 

[Blaze]

Yep, it makes teargas, but you'll need a fairly high skill level to even attempt it. Molotovs are pretty much the same in terms of effectiveness; not to mention much easier to make and get ingredients for. I'd save bleach and ammonia to make purifiers, which can increase your attributes.

What I'm really hoping for in the next build is the ability to well... build. Currently, being outside a city during rain is a death sentence, acid rain being even more so. So we're generally stuck in the city and the occasional science lab we run into.

Also, anyone know how much trapping skill it'll take to disarm a blade trap? I tried it and ended up with a blade in the gut for my trouble, my trapping skill is level 6.

[beorn080]

According to the source, the blades seem to have a 99 difficulty, which basically means impossible to disarm.

[Blaze]

Found a slime pit. I'm surprised at how easy they are to kill with a .22 though; I thought they were like FF's Flans and were nearly immune to physical damage.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Throwing a molotov in a slime pit is both a very good idea and a very bad one.