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[UristMcWanderer]

I suck at this game. I have no idea how to pull resources from a town correctly and usually end up getting mauled in the night by wild creatures at my home in the forest. Can anyone teach me how to be a pro survivalist? Also, random tips in general will be appreciated.

Here's how I usually go through it:

Step 1 for me is to head straight for a surplus store. I find a backpack and that is the first thing I don. My next priority is armor/tough clothing. I grab a helmet/pants off of the racks and quickly don those, too. This usually gives me ample storage space for a few things. With the backpack providing 80 storage plus the 14 of army pants and 4 of kevlar vests, where 80+14+4=98, that usually gives me enough space for the food and water in the racks, and maybe a water purifier if I'm lucky. I then quickly run to the nearest gun store for firearms and ammunition. I try to pick up a rifle, a handgun, and plenty of ammo. Usually I find a Ruger Mini or an SKS, and don't really bother with other guns. My weapons priority next is to grab a pistol or two, and finally, search the shelves for silencers or other mods.

Usually, if I see a single Z, I start running. Often before I get a full stock of my supplies. But in my experience, if you make as little noise as possible, you can continue your scavenging.

My next priority is a pharmacy. Codeine, oxycodone, tramadol, and maybe Prozac or some Day/Nyquil,  and perhaps some cigarettes, or caffeine/sleeping pills if I'm lucky. Painkillers for me are a must, cigarettes are handy too. Caffeine pills if I need to go on night raids, and sleeping pills for my Insomniac character template.

I then get the hell out of Dodge and look for a house or cave in the forest, or at least far enough away from a city so the zeds won't be a major issue. I once took a cave very close to a town, and very shortly after I got situated, the Z's besieged me. Normal zombies, zappers, spitters, boomers, necros, brutes, shriekers, almost every zombie except for hulks (thank god), grabbers, and speeders.

[alway]

Rain coats also give some storage, so I typically keep one on at all times for that and their protection from getting wet. Though with a backpack, that's 5 encumbrance so melee is out of the question. Luckily I keep a shotgun, a laser pistol and a laser-finger implant ready.

The finger implant is really nice; very quiet, only takes 2 energy, and I have all the useful power source CBMs and 130 in energy reserves. My strategy lately has been nightvision + laser finger infiltration; turrets don't even see me before they explode. Once you get relatively high handgun and firearms skills, you can 1 or 2 shot most things with the finger-laser.

[BigD145]

Rain coats disintegrate fast if you get in a fist fight. Be careful. I seem to find less of them than backpacks or vests.

[alway]

That they do; though the 5 encumbrance discourages melee in the first place.

[BigD145]

Huh. That reminds me. We can't make a raincoat, can we? I think we need a craftable plastic poncho made from plastic bags or something, which are currently useless. At the very least poncho, trenchcoat, and winter coat should give some rain protection. It looks like weather.cpp dictates what gives rain protection.

[Jacob/Lee]

I usually don a backpack, army pants, army helmet, safety glasses, and the starting sneakers, maybe a trenchcoat. I strip my seemingly useless t-shirt and jeans. My first target is usually a parking lot, to locate a ride. No trucks, though. After that, I run for a military surplus store for my clothes, MREs and binoculars. Getting Adderall and popping 2 for a 140 base speed is high on my list. After that, I run around the gun stores, pharmacies, grocery stores, libraries and any other useful stores for stuff and then haul it to the woods.

Also, I'm getting terrible lag playing the game on the VirtualBox Linux emulator, from the guide on the help board on the whalesdev forums. On my phone right now, so I can't give any specifics, but I can do things like run 30 tiles and bash zombies for 10 turns while they surround me, just because I held down a movement key for too long. It also causes things like driving in a circle 5 times then crashing. Massive key delay after a bit, as you can tell, which seems more like I'm watching someone else play the game.

[alway]

Never hold down the movement keys. When it takes longer to process a turn than for a new one to be queued up, all new commands go into said queue; the queue then gets longer and longer as the processing of the turns falls farther behind. You then release the key, and it still has a hundred movement commands to execute before doing what you tell it to next. It's extremely handy, as it lets you navigate through the menus by memory faster than they open and close, but it means you need to move by tapping the button, waiting for the action to execute, then tapping it again.

[hops]

For a good headstart, you can also throw your grenade into the gasoline pump in the tutorial room after you grabbed everything.
Go downstairs and wait for 5 hours, then walk out (and avoid the cluster of fires) to your freedom.

You just only do this once and then all your other players will be able to walk out.

It is also a good coordination point to drop powerful & useful tools for later players.

[Man of Paper]

Reading this thread has led to a growth of my skill as a player that dwarfs that of what I did on my own. I now can steadily manage to outfit myself with, optimally for my playstyle, a backpack, army pants and helmet, and a kevlar or utility vest (I haven't compered the two though. Which has more storage? Utility, right?), as well as a nice melee weapon (well, nice for my standard, which is anything better than a pipe found in the street) and some firearms. I focus on the smaller caliber weaponry, as I have yet to get good enough to be able to efficiently loot towns of all their good stuff (silencers, CBMs [never seen one, never breached a Lab, too busy not dying]).

I've been using random characters so that I can break out of my standard character builds that I tend to pigeonhole myself into. My latest had skill in dodge and melee, and I managed to beat the brains out of a horde of another 50+ zombies (Where in the crap do they keep coming from!?). Saw my first grabber, too. Ran though, as I usually do the first time I see something new. What is it that they do?

[iceball3]

Saw my first grabber, too. Ran though, as I usually do the first time I see something new. What is it that they do?

They grope at the air, and anything/body that happens to be where their hands are at the time.

[puke]

my god, what good are artifacts?  Its like picking up a suicide beacon.

I thought I was so lucky when I found a certain object in a pawn shop -- I headed into a temple as soon as I thought I was able.  It was surprisingly simple, even though I forgot to bring batteries for my flashlight.

But god, those artifacts!  one brought in all sorts of nasty things about once an hour or so.  The other was a set of things, not sure what they did except create fireballs centered on me.  I almost survived the first artifact except I tried to use the second in escaping some monsters and got nuked.

Another time I tried for a Mine.  Lucked into a CBM which was nice, and found a cool artifact there too.  It made me magically silent and had some other benefit -- but it summoned something to attack me like EVERY FIVE STEPS.  Even when I stopped wielding it.  Died horribly before even getting back out of the mine.

Are any of these things worthwhile?  is there any way to tell by examining them or safe experimentation?

Where do you find the Combat and Survival CBMs, Military bunkers?

[Jacob/Lee]

Yep, artifacts are supposed to be useful and dangerous. I'm pretty sure the risk scales up with the reward, so that hyperdimensional god device you just found will likely end up killing you too.

[Vucar Fikodastesh]

Where do you find the Combat and Survival CBMs, Military bunkers?

You can find those two specific bionics in, lab finale rooms, military bunkers, and crashed helicopters.

[The Scout]

Entering the strange temples crashes my game...
Got one to not crash. Is there any way to figure out the effects of artifacts?

[Jacob/Lee]

I had a decent run my first day. I moved around a large town, went through a clothing store and got a backpack and cargo pants. I then raided a military surplus store for some MREs, binoculars, and some books, then raided 4 pharmacies for a ton of drinks but no Adderall or anything like that, so I smoked some crystals to move fast. I looted more stuff, found an ATV, walked a bit and found a car, loaded my stuff in there then went to a nearby gunstore and grabbed a Ruger Mini-14, Browning BLR and Glock 19, along with some ammo for the Mini-14 and Glock. At this point, my meth crash made me move slowly since I was out of it. After having to point-blank a bunch of Zs with my pistol, it finally wore off and I started to run like hell. I got in my car, drove out to a nearby cave and jumped down the half-gone stairs... Landing in a sewer. I walked back to the middle of town and climbed out of the manhole, then ran for the ATV being chased by a horde faster than I was. I got on, ran them over then went back to my car, drove to a nearby evac shelter then saved and quit for now.