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Things are looking bleak


GodWaffle

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Guys.. I'm alive on day 13, this is the longest I've ever survived (I usually commit suicide by feeding myself to hordes because I'm a sadistic son of a bitch), and I'm really trying to survive this time.

So I'm set up in the town centre in West Point (inside the Food Market store or whatever it's called, I'm on the second floor apartment.), pretty dangerous place to live, however it's been going quite well, I'm looted the surrounding buildings (and taken wood from a lot of doors), and I've started doing some construction in the car park round the back of the building.

I've also cracked open the gun store just out of town, however I don't need the ammo right now (I took the fireaxe though).  Things are getting really tense, I have a genuine sense of dread when playing now, since I feel quite 'comfortable' where I am, it's TOO quiet.  I have the sense that a horde will tear through town soon.

That's the least of my worries though.. all of the food is starting to rot! I'd been meaning to start farming, however I'm in the middle of the town and I've never farmed before.  I'm not sure what I should do, it seems like everywhere is full of rotting food and my supply of chips and canned food is dwindling.

I do have a previous safehouse that I abandoned without taking supplies from, I had stockpiled some food there so that's my short term move.  What about long term? What do you guys suggest will keep me alive for the coming months? Preferably without farming since I'm comfortable in my current abode.

And also, say a large horde does come booming through town, if I hide in my apartment (there's a few doors to get up there and also navigating to the back of my store), will they find me if I don't attract them? Could I wait them out?

Thanks.

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there is always food to be found... chips, cans, if you havent been to the hamburger or pizza store then there will be freshly spawned food when you get there.

 

if a hord is at your house and maybe in your house you could wait them out maybe, or wait until they get lured away from a heli or gunshots... and then kill the remaining ones. you would have to reenforce all the windows and such...


i reckon you are staying here ?

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there is always food to be found... chips, cans, if you havent been to the hamburger or pizza store then there will be freshly spawned food when you get there.

 

if a hord is at your house and maybe in your house you could wait them out maybe, or wait until they get lured away from a heli or gunshots... and then kill the remaining ones. you would have to reenforce all the windows and such...

i reckon you are staying here ?

 

Just about there on the map, there's a building further down with 'Food Market' on the wall.  I'm staying in the second floor apartment there.

That's good to hear, currently I've been picking clean a very small area around my place (mainly because all of the shops are here, including the large supermarket literally across the road that I didn't spot until everything in it had rotted away.

As for fortifying my windows I have no intention as all the windows I use are on the second floor, the front of the shop is a no-go zone for me, I use the back door into the car park since I've set up some walls back there, also giving my a safe route into the back door of the shop next door which has a lot of nails in it.

I think first of all I should recover the non-perishables from my starting house (also had a bit of medicine stocked up in there), then expand my search radius.

Also, a side note, last I played, my character got sick from eating a 'rotten salad', I only ate it because it didn't have the negative effects in the tooltip.. am I going to die from that? I hope not, doesn't seem right if I die from eating one rotten salad haha.

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if your char is sick (and not sick from a zombie bite) you can cure him back to health with good food (preferrably crafted food), lots of relaxation and sleep and some meds (can't harm to take some beta blockers ^^) at least thats what i do when my char is sick and hasnt been bitten or infected

Yeah that's what I've been doing so far.. what I do know is I have no meds in my safehouse, left them at the old place so I'm wondering if it's worth making a trip back there for medicine or waiting out the sickness and eating well.

Must say, am I the only one who actually has like a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach when playing? The inevitability of death creeping up on me is really there, and I think that's what makes this game so good, that you really feel that fear of being in a zombie apocalypse, you feel the hopelessness.

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open can of beans + pot of water + flour + sugar = tasty soup.

open can of tuna + pot of water + butter + one of flour or sugar = tasty soup.

 

flour & sugar are "drainable" in that they're not consumed in one use; but will last a while... if you've got butter; use it with whichever you have more of (to even them out some).

 

once you've made a pot of tasty soup, split it into 4 bowls. 

1 pot will last you 2 days (although it will go bad & rot after about 2 days so you need to use it).

Although it is "cookable" it also won't hurt you if it isn't cooked *(guessing electricity is out?); it's just not quite as filling/rewarding uncooked.

 

Stretching a can of either of those to feed you for 2 days with otherwise not useful non-perishables might help?

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Thing is, I really like living in my little apartment, and I find that the town center is a great way to avoid zombies (going through shops, out the windows, into another shop window, etc), plus I've spent quiet a while walling off the car park round back.

 

Perhaps you could set up a tiny farming operation (1 water barrel/5 plants/fence) not too far from your safehouse

OR

If you really don't mind sneaking thru shops etc maybe you could clear a safe passage to the eastern border of West Point and set up your mini-farm there - gonna have less zombies around since its next to a forest.

Plants don't require much attention, so you wont have to visit your farm too often once its properly set up, and, when it rains, you wont have to bother with visiting them at all.

 

If you have enough food for a week or so then don't worry about the non-perishables in your initial safehouse - you can come back for those later.

Instead, focus on getting the tools and securing SUSTAINABLE sources of food and water before the power/water is cut off.

 

Time is your enemy.

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I do have a previous safehouse that I abandoned without taking supplies from, I had stockpiled some food there so that's my short term move.  What about long term? What do you guys suggest will keep me alive for the coming months? Preferably without farming since I'm comfortable in my current abode.

And also, say a large horde does come booming through town, if I hide in my apartment (there's a few doors to get up there and also navigating to the back of my store), will they find me if I don't attract them? Could I wait them out?

 

 

It could go either way. I've personally had both things happen, seemingly through no fault of my own, in any case. Might just depend on the size of the horde too, meaning the larger the horde is, the more apt they're going to be to rip down every door and break every window in the area, as opposed to a smaller horde which will be more concentrated. The real problem though, regardless of whether or not they find your door directly, is that unless they're coming in following a particularly large meta-game event, like the plane/chopper rush, they won't keep moving. They'll come in, destroy all the building entrances in an area, then stop moving. So you could actually just end up with a horde on the first floor of your building, or surrounding you. Really the best defense against this IMO is to build a defensive system that's as complex as possible, like a series of walls and doors in your hallways and outside, so they'll lose interest a lot sooner and end up stopping farther away from you. Also have a good escape plan, like a sheet rope in one of your windows, leading into another little safety structure, and a couple alternate plans of where you'll run depending on where they end up.

 

As far as food is concerned, you can do what I do and go on a couple berry picking trips. There aren't berries right in West Point yet, but I've found a good number of them close by enough to be able to make trips for berries, fill up your bags, and be back at your safe house in the same day. I'll show you where they are, but I'll spoiler it in case you want to figure it out on your own.

 

These are the closest berry thickets to West Point that I've found:

http://pzmap.crash-override.net/#0.7703802881476379,0.1762276045701288,66.24737266949232

You just follow the train tracks south and you're there before you know it. If you bring in a couple hiking bags, and fill both of them, you'll leave with over 200 easily, which will feed you for over a month if you eat them sparingly. After that you'll have to start traveling further south each time for more. There's a few more thickets on the east side of the tracks right in that area too. I'm foreseeing a new problem with this method now too though. I was out berry picking yesterday morning, and the berry bushes were still appearing as shelving units in my inventory. Then last night I went back out to berry pick again, and the game had been updated so that berry bushes now have their own bush icon. This tells me they're doing some work on the berry system, which means berries might become perishable in the relatively near future. To prepare for that you might be better served only taking what you can eat before they spoil each trip, and leaving the rest on the bushes where they won't rot until you pick them. It's rolling the dice at this point, depending on when they actually get in to make that update.

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Not necessarily. If you create safe houses in key locations around the map to use as looting hubs, you could live for years on berries.  You can easily pull 100 out of each thicket, and there are thickets everywhere if you know where to look.

 

It'll be even more true once they implement berry bushes that regrow berries after you pick them, which I'd think that they'd have to do at some point. As realistic as the game is I can only assume that it's in the works.

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if your char is sick (and not sick from a zombie bite) you can cure him back to health with good food (preferrably crafted food), lots of relaxation and sleep and some meds (can't harm to take some beta blockers ^^) at least thats what i do when my char is sick and hasnt been bitten or infected

Yeah that's what I've been doing so far.. what I do know is I have no meds in my safehouse, left them at the old place so I'm wondering if it's worth making a trip back there for medicine or waiting out the sickness and eating well.

Must say, am I the only one who actually has like a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach when playing? The inevitability of death creeping up on me is really there, and I think that's what makes this game so good, that you really feel that fear of being in a zombie apocalypse, you feel the hopelessness.

 

 

Holy balls, no. You are not the only one that feels The Dread. I also find myself getting into character in such depressing ways. In my last playthrough, I wound up getting bitten. Once the symptoms started to show, I barricaded myself inside of a closet in my safe house. Drank whiskey (didn't have any bleach) and smoked cigarettes untill zombification took over.

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Not necessarily. If you create safe houses in key locations around the map to use as looting hubs, you could live for years on berries.  You can easily pull 100 out of each thicket, and there are thickets everywhere if you know where to look.

 

It'll be even more true once they implement berry bushes that regrow berries after you pick them, which I'd think that they'd have to do at some point. As realistic as the game is I can only assume that it's in the works.

 

True. I did read that the new build has re-balanced the berries so you get way less from each bush. Haven't verified this myself.

 

However, until they add all those extra features, farming is the only way to guarantee indefinite survival.

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Well you get about the same numbers from each bush, but each berry fills you up less, providing between maybe 2-10 hunger removal per berry, where before it was maybe 5-15. If you fight hunger smartly it doesn't really matter though. Granted eating stronger foods will provide better healing and strength, as well as more time in between when you've eaten and when you get the hungry status as you have to pass through the different levels of the fed status first, the amount of time in between the slightly fed status disappearing and the peckish status appearing is the same no matter what you eat. So can sustain yourself just as easily by eating a single thing that kills 2 hunger every time you get the peckish status, as you would by eating a meal that kills 25 hunger each time. I find that the only situations that really call for more than that are sickness or injury, where it pays to have better healing rates so you get better/heal faster, or if you're taking on a large group of zeds with melee, where it pays to have that little strength boost. In just day to day PZ living I don't think it makes a bit of difference outside those situations. 

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