Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

If you really want to get good at Cataclysm DDA, just watch the video below to learn everything NOT to do.

Lol, that’s some serious pain, right there. :)

What were those robots that looked so OP killing you? And where do you find them so I can stay FAR away from them.

Those are sentry robots. Normally you only see them in the Prison and on the bottom floor of Labs. In most of those cases i was also running a mod that gave them night-vision making things…difficult.

If you are supposed to wait until night to raid, what are you typically doing from the start of the game to the first night? Usually I start a game, go down to see if anything is in the shelter basement, use the computer to expose some map, head outside and die.

I’ve only played a little so I’m probably “doing it wrong”, but I start out by checking the basement and the lockers. After that I get a nearby rock, smash 4 benches near a locker, pick up a wooden 2x4, and smash the lockers. Next, I pull down a curtain and move the parts over to the piles of materials I just created. I usually butcher one of the 2 sheets, and maybe some rags after that. This gives me a small set of starter materials. I like to make a makeshift crowbar, something to help keep my hands warmer, and depending on what I found in the lockers and basement I might put together something else.

I found that without the warmer gloves (like glove liners), my hands would too easily get frostnipped outside. Oh, I tried to avoid carrying around my 2 plastic bottles of water outside. They freeze. After that I try scouting around and searching outside for scraps and such from underbrush (I think it’s called underbrush. It grows near forest).

It often rains my first day and my character gets depressed and wet.

You should raise your survival skill to 1 by foraging bushes near a forest and then preparing for your raid by crafting some essential day one tools. Get a pipe and make a makeshift crowbar (smash a locker to get pipe), Take some scrap metal from the leftovers and craft some makeshift lockpicks. Those two will allow you to pry open locked front doors and windows in houses and the lockpicks will handle the locks that the crowbar can’t.

You should also make a knife spear if you can because this allows you to attack zombies from 2 squares away where they can’t hit you.

Once you do all that it should probably be close to night.

I think that’s the one they nerfed? It’s now “flimsy” and breaks really easily after a little bit of use. There’s some other easy to craft spears with extra reach as well though.

Yeah, it can get damaged. But, it has to get damaged 4 times before it actually breaks and stops working. In my survivor runs it easily lasted long enough for me to find something better.

Edit: Oh, also make some throwing sticks on day one. They are awesome.

Another early game favorite of mine is to craft a ‘Makeshift Sling’ using a sheet. It gives you a lot of torso encumbrance but lets you carry a lot of volume at least until you find a backpack.

Last night I tried to hike through the town to the mega-store in the upper left corner. Everything went easily until I actually got up there because I’ve cleared zombies out of a good portion of the town. once I got there though it became a bit of a crazy train.

The first thing I ran into was a turret set up in the street. That was a good thing because it was mowing down hordes of zombies. I waited until it ran out of ammo and then moved in and killed the rest of the zombies attacking it. I thought I’d then be able to deactivate it and use it to light my base but I didn’t see any way to do that. Anybody know how? EMP grenade maybe?

Anyway, after that I headed further north and ran into a necromancer zombie. That’s the first one of those I’ve seen. He went down in two hits. But then right behind him a shocker brute came after me. Also the first one of those I’ve seen. Those things are fast. He shocked me so I switched to a fire axe and closed range to engage in melee. Fire axes are insulated so you don’t get shocked when you hit them. It was ugly but I finally took him out. He burned every part of my body so my pain level was up there pretty good and my stats were way down so I took a bite to my torso and one of my arms as well from one of the zombies accompanying him.

I’d already come a long way so I took some painkillers and kept pressing on northward since I was almost to the mega-store. But then I ran into a skeletal monstrosity. Never seen one of those before either but it looked nasty as hell so I ran away. I was wounded with lowered stats and no way I would have been able to melee him down in my weakened state.

I took a roundabout way home and ran into a regular shocker zombie and a brute. I killed them but more damage was done. By the time I got home, I wasn’t feeling so hot.

I checked my status and it said my torso bite was infected. This was the first time I’d actually gotten infected from a bite. Fortunately I had some antibiotics so I took one and went to bed. It was the middle of the day and I couldn’t sleep so I took an ambien and that knocked me right out. I spent the next 10 hours alternately sleeping and throwing my guts up. When I woke up I wasn’t feeling a whole lot better. Though my wounds had healed, I was still in pain and was still periodically being nauseous/sick. I decided to stay home and read some books in between periods of being violently ill.

Finally by the next night, the infection was gone and I was feeling back to normal. Lesson learned. The next time I get a bite, I’ll slap some disinfectant on it right away.

Good times!

In the early game, if my supply of medication is low (or non-existent) i will usually attempt at least one cauterization of a bite before i use my precious disinfectant. It’s a 50/50 chance to get rid of the bite without using any medicine. if you fail it just shortens the remaining time until it changes to full infection. If you fail the cauterization twice you are guaranteed to have it switch instantly to infected. It can be useful depending on your stock of supplies.

Good thing you ran from the Skeletal Juggernaut. Those are fairly new and very very nasty to deal with. Very high Armor and Hit points and can hit you from 3 spaces away. They also have the punch-back effect like Hulks. Usually they can be avoided if you aren’t too banged up when they arrive. In my live-stream last night i was trying to get into a hospital and had my Humvee parked right outside a door with my mounted machine gun aiming right down a long corridor into the hospital. A shock zombie was lighting the corridor about 40 spaces deep into the hospital and i was able to see SEVEN skeletal juggernauts in just that narrow slice of hallway near him. SEVEN!!!@#$! (yes, the game world settings on this series are nasty).

Yeah, one thing I’ve quickly learned is that if a zombie in this game is giant sized, do NOT engage. I’m playing a blackbelt build with the ‘left behind’ start and 2 two good martial arts schools. I can slaughter hordes of regular zombies in melee barehanded (which is exactly what I had to do to escape the bookstore I started this run at in the middle of the city). But, certain types of zombies really give me problems. I need to develop a good and effective ranged alternative for those.

I have yet to see a hospital in any of the starts I’ve played. They must be rare. I have some cbms so I’d like to find one and an autodoc. I do have a lab just outside of town to the northeast but I don’t have a jackhammer, pickaxe or science ID card yet so I can’t get in.

This starting town has the fewest books of any of the starts I’ve played yet. I checked the few, tiny surrounding towns too and I did find a low level computer book that got me to level 3 but nothing else. It’s funny but 4 of the 5 roads out of town I’ve tried have dead-ended in forest. I have one more to try and I hope it leads somewhere or I guess I’m trapped here unless I want to to go stumbling through the woods looking for another town.

Vorm, just wanted to say thanks for your new ‘tips’ video on the Zone Manager. I didn’t even know that existed and it will save me a ton of time in the future. I’m a bit of a pack rat

Yeah, that one is particularly useful for Pack-rats and Farmers. Especially with the recent changes to farming and the new 91 day default season length (prepping for that long winter is going to be much more important now).

I finally found a science ID card and was able to get into the nearby lab. I now have a ton of CBMs. Unfortunately, it took forever to find an autodoc but I finally found one in a doctor’s office in the 6th town I explored. Now I have to decide which ones to install since I’ve only been able to find a single anesthesia kit. That is one rare item in this game. Kind of frustrating, really.

Do you know what the Remote Controller CBM does exactly? Does it work like a remote laptop and allow you to deactivate turrets and sentry bots? If so it’s well worth choosing. If it only allows you to remote control vehicles, then meh.

The town with the autodoc is a loooong drive away so I’m going to have to establish a second base down there for a while at least. That means hauling a lot of stuff in my car. The trunk in the working car I found was so tiny I couldn’t carry much at all so I found a vehicle with some cargo carriers on it and ripped one out and took it home. I ripped out the starting trunk in my car and installed the carrier there instead and now I can carry a ton of stuff. It doesn’t look as nice and apparently you can’t install a trunk lid on it for aesthetic value but it’s worth it for the extra 225L of space.

I’m playing with 91 day seasons and it’s getting toward the end of spring. I need to start planning for winter. What do you recommend? What things should I be getting for food stores that will will last through the winter? Should I be planting stuff at this point? If so, what, exactly? Do you have a video episode for this, maybe?

I found a Chicken Walker blocking one of the roads I was exploring down. I stopped and turned around when it said I was being laser targeted. What do you need to be able to take those out?

Labs can have Autodoc rooms as well and always have 3 anesthesia kits in them so that’s the best source generally.

Ignore the Remote Controller CBM as it does just effect remote control vehicles and your not likely to ever use it.

Upgrading your vehicle with cargo spaces is always good.

I don’t have any experience yet with the new 91 day default seasons so it’s hard for me to give recommendations. I have no episodes for this or for farming (yet). I would suggest you start preserving meat/food though. Charcoal kiln > smoking rack (or charcoal smoker) > smoked meat > pemmican. that’s my usual route to stockpiling healthy food that won’t spoil. with all the new changes to butchering, meat abundance, freezing mechanics, and season length i don’t yet have any personal experience to draw from.

Chicken Walkers are one of the things its best to just leave along. yes, they can be killed, but it’s rarely worth the danger/effort. Roadblocks are the only ‘normal’ place you will run into them (there is a special site where they are abundant, but your not likely to find it anytime soon) and you should just give them a wide berth if at all possible.

Hmmm, that’s maddening because I’ve searched every inch of that lab 3 times and no anesthesia kits anywhere. The lab only has 2 levels. At first I thought that couldn’t be right so I searched over and over for stairs down but nada. There’s a central room (highlighted cyan on the world map) where there are 3 sentry robots and a bunch of nice CBMs in the center with a scientist ID on the floor next to them. I took this to be the “special” room that’s supposed to be on the final floor on labs. After that I finally stopped looking for stairs down.

There is a barracks section in the back full of bio-operators and military zombies that I had to hack a computer to open up. It’s possible that they could be in there since I didn’t kill them all (kind of impossible to do at my current skill levels).

I do have a few charcoal smokers which I used to smoke meat. I ran out of charcoal though. I guess I’ll need to make a charcoal kiln too.

Lab floor plans are random. Autodoc rooms are not guaranteed in any particular lab they are just possible. I seen labs with none and other labs with 4. The number of floors in labs is also random (1-6 floors). When you find that light cyan room with the sentry bots, id card, and loot you have found the ‘treasure’ room and are on the bottom floor of that particular lab. Btw, that is just one possible ‘treasure’ room out of several variations that are randomly selected.

When you go to make the charcoal kiln…set it up in the center of a group of trees/bushes near your base. feed it a bunch of long sticks or logs to burn then haul the finished charcoal back to your base. It’s much lighter and easier to transport than bringing big piles of sticks/logs to your base to burn.

I had a quest to get a black box transcript at that lab so I went back yet again. I went through it top to bottom again looking for the anesthesia kits but once again nada. There was only one section that I hadn’t fully explored and that was the barracks section. So, I went in and cleaned that out too.

I took a bit of damage from the bio-operators in there but they had some nice CBMs when I butchered them. One of them is a recycler CBM that reduces the amount of food and water needed so that sounds nice.

The zombie soldiers had some nice equipment and there was a big armory room with all kinds of ammo and weapons so it was worth the effort, even without the kits being in there either.

I took the decrypted transcript back to the NPC and now I have to go to the location of some hazmat sarcophagus which is out in the middle of nowhere. I think I’ll wait to do that one until later.

So last night I finally found a hospital after exploring a huge chunk of the map. I fought my way in, having to kill 50 or more zombies including 4 shockers and a few spitters. When I got inside, 9/10 of the hospital was destroyed. nothing in there but rubble and even more zombies. I cleared everything out except for a zombie hulk and there was absolutely nothing in there worthwhile. Just a few books and magazines laying around and some smashed electronics.

Is it normal for hospitals to be ruined like this? If it is, I think they should fix that. That might be the only hospital I can find and any autodoc/stem equipment and anesthesia is just rubble. Very disappointing and frustrating.

There’s also a FEMA camp nearby so I guess I’ll try that next.