Welcome to Quartertown, population 5.
Looks innocuous enough, right? Let’s toggle the filter that shows the concentration of zombies in territories we’ve scouted.
Okay, so now we can see the population is way more than 5. It’s actually 74 if you count the zombies milling around the walls. Yellow squares mean a few zombies. Red squares mean a lot of zombies. Check out the mall to the north (which we’ll henceforth call North Mall).
North Mall is bad news. Any given night we might be attacked by the zombies that have collected around the walls. The chance of zombies getting in or hurting someone are displayed at the top of the screen next to the yellow triangle.
That number is based on the number of nearby zombies and our defenses, which are largely a matter of who’s in the compound to defend us. Anyone out on a mission won’t be able to help us. Later, we might be able to build up our defenses. But even then, there’s a constant tension between advancement and safety. My goal is to never let the danger level get above 20%. But that’s not always possible. Sometimes we can’t afford to leave people sitting around in case we get attacked. Sometimes we’re going to be vulnerable. The trick of Rebuild is getting lucky during those vulnerable times.
We control four city blocks consisting of a police station for defense, a suburb and apartment building for living space, and a single farm. For early expansion, you want to build up your food infrastructure with more farms. We don’t have that option for a while, as there are no bordering farms. Our best hope for adding farms to our territory is on the other side of North Mall, and Jarrodhk and Kyrios aren’t powerful enough to clear it out yet. So Tim James is going to have to do the heavy lifting when it comes to feeding everyone. We’re going to have to rely on scavenging instead of farming for a while.
Overall, our first priorities are 1) stocking up on food, 2) securing a hospital, and 3) then building up a food infrastructure so we don’t starve. Our second priorities are keeping the zombies thinned out so we can withstand attacks, recruiting more survivors, and finding a source of booze or God to keep up morale. Having played this game several times, I can tell from our set up that we’re in trouble when it comes to food and morale. We’ve been dealt a bad hand. We’ll have to do the best we can.
To start the process of stocking up on food, Tim James will scavenge the friendlier South Mall, but he won’t be going alone. Nixxter hands over, Rowlf, the zombie apocalypse pug. Tim needs the boost to his scavenging and combat skill more than Nixxter. And because Tim’s scavenging skill is so low at this point, he’s bringing Jarrodhk and Kyrios to keep him safe and help him carry more food. Nixxter, now dogless but trying not to be a big sissy about it because it’s just a stupid dog – and a pug, too boot – heads out into the nearby suburbs to recruit a survivor.
The results and day two will be posted tomorrow.
