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.
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Topic: Cataclysm: A Zombie-Survival Roguelike (Read 1317528 times)