Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead

[Strange Looking Dog]

Nothing wrong with double checking people's submissions, sounds like the issue is more the in group clique isn't being held to the same standard.

 

[Rent Tin]

Nothing wrong with double checking people's submissions, sounds like the issue is more the in group clique isn't being held to the same standard.

What I meant to express is that if you don't double check and triple check your own submissions, they will use the slightest thing to throw your whole idea out of the window instead of going "Yeah, okay fix it." or completely ignoring it like with the in-group.

 

[RollerGator]

I've been playing this game on my phone and it works really good actually. I love the open endedness. I was able to recruit two human NPC's to follow me and drive around in my whip. On my map I noticed there was a marker for two more humans held up in a house in the woods near me so I go over to see if they want to join up with us. I walk in the door and immediately get shot and injured while another shot straight up kills one of my dudes. So I back out of there and board up all the doors and windows and set the place on fire. Whenever they tried escaping I would start shooting through the windows until they burnt to a crisp. Can't get that kind of adventure in any other game!

 

[Reticulan Joe]

Getting back into this after not touching it since January. I find CDDA is the kind of game I check in on every 6-9 months just to see what's changed.

I seem to be in a bit of a rut, though - I tend to like to start as failed/prototype cyborgs in lab basements. Maybe 1 in 20 characters survives the first day, but if you do survive the first few days you end up emerging from the lab bastard hard.

 

[Screw Danlon]

I want to love this game, because it’s got a lot of gameplay mechanics and ideas that I love in other places. But I find I have really mixed feelings about this game. I also got really frustrated about the fact that I finally decided to switch to tilesets, learned to love tilesets, and then they removed the one I liked.

I agree with Joe - like Dwarf Fortress, this is a game I come back to once or twice a year. And like DF, the game ends one of two ways - quickly and brutally because I made a stupid mistake or got careless; or a slow petering out due to tedium.

I tend to give myself a few bonus points over the basic start, mostly because I like playing the cyborg, and I want to have night vision.

My biggest consistent issue with the game (ignoring stuff from experimental, since it changes) is just “stuff management”. There’s just too much stuff and it’s hard to know where or when it might be needed. Even when I turn on auto-sort, it’s easy to lose track of where stuff is. And then any time I want to move my base, I need to try to take stuff with me, and I have terrible luck with keeping cars from getting totalled, so it’s likely I’ll crash halfway and need to make 20 trips.

I also really don’t like how hard it is to tell if a zombie knows you’re there. With line of sight, at least, you can tell by the !. But there’s been so many times where I’ve had a base on the outskirts of town, with all the windows covered, and somehow still had a zombie find me.

I do like a lot of the game, but it can get really frustrating at times.

 

[Rent Tin]

I want to love this game, because it’s got a lot of gameplay mechanics and ideas that I love in other places. But I find I have really mixed feelings about this game. I also got really frustrated about the fact that I finally decided to switch to tilesets, learned to love tilesets, and then they removed the one I liked.

I agree with Joe - like Dwarf Fortress, this is a game I come back to once or twice a year. And like DF, the game ends one of two ways - quickly and brutally because I made a stupid mistake or got careless; or a slow petering out due to tedium.

I tend to give myself a few bonus points over the basic start, mostly because I like playing the cyborg, and I want to have night vision.

My biggest consistent issue with the game (ignoring stuff from experimental, since it changes) is just “stuff management”. There’s just too much stuff and it’s hard to know where or when it might be needed. Even when I turn on auto-sort, it’s easy to lose track of where stuff is. And then any time I want to move my base, I need to try to take stuff with me, and I have terrible luck with keeping cars from getting totalled, so it’s likely I’ll crash halfway and need to make 20 trips.

I also really don’t like how hard it is to tell if a zombie knows you’re there. With line of sight, at least, you can tell by the !. But there’s been so many times where I’ve had a base on the outskirts of town, with all the windows covered, and somehow still had a zombie find me.

I do like a lot of the game, but it can get really frustrating at times.

A lot of the stuff management is easily handled when you set up rules, auto-pickup and auto-sort. I agree that it can be difficult sometimes but utilizing proper containers to handle items makes things easier. (IE: Putting my emergency medical supplies in a first-aid-kit.)

 

[Screw Danlon]

A lot of the stuff management is easily handled when you set up rules, auto-pickup and auto-sort. I agree that it can be difficult sometimes but utilizing proper containers to handle items makes things easier. (IE: Putting my emergency medical supplies in a first-aid-kit.)

Yeah, I probably put in 200 or so hours before I learned about rules and auto-sort (and the side-by-side inventory menu). And those definitely do make it a lot better.

 

[Reticulan Joe]

So, after losing the first 15-20 characters I created, sometimes within about 3 moves (Hi TALON UGV!) but more typically either through getting worn down by zeds and unable to heal fast enough, or by swinging for the fences in an autodoc trying to get the worst bionics out, I had fairly amazing string of breaks and ended up with a viable character - typically my rule is a starter character has to survive 24 hours before I'm willing to savescum and try to save the character instead of rolling a new one.

This latest character started in a finale room that, amazingly, had no turrets, UGVs or hostiles of any kind. The unlocked center room had a bunch of endgame loot of zero actual use to a starting character, so I started exploring. Immediately after exploring some basically empty rooms, I came across one of the locked libraries, and got lucky with my 2 in Computers and hacked the door. Not only were there books galore, and a few things I could choke down (hello, Junkfood Intolerance!) but there was a set of stairs leading up to the entrance of a locked barracks. Sweetening things further, the door to the barracks (and the magazine behind it!) was damaged, so it was a quick step over the rubble to access the lockers inside. I'd just put on pants and a shirt when a giant mole rat - the cause of the structural damage - appeared. Finding nothing in the locker I was at, I escaped (while being gnawed on) and made it to a different locker, where I was able to grab a combat knife! Using that I was able to drive off the mole rat, which ended fleeing and bleeding out. While I tried to patch myself up, a zombie soldier found me, and while I ended up winning (and learning Brawling) I was in bad shape at the end. Fortunately, there were MREs and a medical kit in the weapons room, so I was able to finish patching myself up, equipping myself, and arming myself.

I was able to handle the rest of the lab without too much trouble; I had some trouble with some kind of tracked vehicle fired incendiaries in another barracks (which I was able to escape and do most of the work of killing the bot) and in a third barracks, a pair of bio-operators which I was able to flee and then re-visit with a .50 from the first barracks. I've now found myself at surface level; there's an anthill a couple overmap tiles away, which means ants are EVERYWHERE outside the lab. Fortunately, they're the regular kind (and not the acid kind) and not especially hostile. Still not sure how I'm going to get a vehicle back to the lab, though. I found a nice LMOE shelter inconveniently located on the other side of a forest. I tried scouting the outskirts of a nearby town during daylight and had to fight a bunch of zombies and flee into the forest for my troubles. Had to flee at least two stone golems (not hard) and an owlbear, which I only survived because a crappy damaged car was nearby - 2% gas is fine as long as you don't need to go far, just fast - and after nightfall, tried to raid a wizard's tower. I managed to run past a number of the plastic golems and lure a few others into fighting zeds, so I got a spellbook and some scrolls, plus two nice rings, and also some pretty bad injuries and a broken arm. I managed to limp back to the lab and have an autodoc splint my arm, so I'm going to spend the next few days rationing MREs and reading while I heal up.

Cataclysm can often be a slog, but when it's good, it's very good.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

Necro post here, my apologizes, but... I was looking into this game recently, and I was looking for decent information. I've done some looking on the game's wiki, but I'm not quite sure about how accurate it is to the current build of the game, and I'd rather not look at the Reddit or Discord given what I've heard about them.

So... for anyone that plays the game, what do you recommend? Any mutation paths, cybernetics, weapons, armor, professions, etc. that you recommend that a player try and go for? Any general tips? I admit, I'm still fairly new to the game myself, learning the ropes and stuff, but I'd really like to get better at it, so any information would be nice.

 

[Rent Tin]

Necro post here, my apologizes, but... I was looking into this game recently, and I was looking for decent information. I've done some looking on the game's wiki, but I'm not quite sure about how accurate it is to the current build of the game, and I'd rather not look at the Reddit or Discord given what I've heard about them.

So... for anyone that plays the game, what do you recommend? Any mutation paths, cybernetics, weapons, armor, professions, etc. that you recommend that a player try and go for? Any general tips? I admit, I'm still fairly new to the game myself, learning the ropes and stuff, but I'd really like to get better at it, so any information would be nice.

Game is most fun before you get to the mutation paths, cybernetics, etc. Late game is the most lacking so a lot of the fun is going to be playing the different starts (especially the puzzle starts like Prison, Island Prison, etc.) and figuring out how they work.

Learn how the inventory management works, (blacklisting, whitelisting, priority, saving presets) it will save you a lot of hassle and keep you from dying because you left all your essential tools in your backpack instead of in your pants. Or it could be that you had your grenade buried in a pack that took 6 seconds to get to, rather than 1 second on a belt pouch and you died because you couldn't get to it in time.

A lot of help comes from general game knowledge, just knowing what certain zombies do, how many zombies are in certain areas, what kind of zombies spawn where, where to find certain items, etc.

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

Okay, so, another slight necro here, but this one was about one of the "official mods"; namely, Magicalysm, which is an official mod that adds magic and monsters into the game, along with new mutations and such.

What I was wanting to ask, is; has anyone here tried it out as of yet? I've heard a lot about it from various sources, but I've yet to play it myself, so I'm curious if anyone here has any experience.

 

[msd]

Okay, so, another slight necro here, but this one was about one of the "official mods"; namely, Magicalysm, which is an official mod that adds magic and monsters into the game, along with new mutations and such.

What I was wanting to ask, is; has anyone here tried it out as of yet? I've heard a lot about it from various sources, but I've yet to play it myself, so I'm curious if anyone here has any experience.

Friend plays it, adds golem and myriad of magical monsters, they range from clay golems to teleporting trees.

Also he found a survivor with dyrad mutations.

It looks fun, so I'd say go for it.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

I never got too far in Magiclysm myself, but I did a little with it and watched a couple Youtube series with it included. The fantasy stuff feels surprisingly not too out of place, given all the other crazy stuff that shows up in Cataclysm. I think it's got something like 8 magic paths, in opposing pairs (Druidism/Biomancy, etc.) and a lot of new locations and monster types. Think learning the magic is sort of like learning martial arts, gotta luck out in finding the necessary scrolls, might get lucky in a wizard's tower or magic library or whatever. I'd say it's worth checking out just for the novelty, similar to stuff like DinoMod or Innawoods. Just be careful running into new monsters/locations you aren't familiar with. Stuff like orc camps are, of course, pretty deadly.

 

[Strange Looking Dog]

Oh hey I'm not dead and neither is this thread (sort of)

Okay, so, another slight necro here, but this one was about one of the "official mods"; namely, Magicalysm, which is an official mod that adds magic and monsters into the game, along with new mutations and such.

What I was wanting to ask, is; has anyone here tried it out as of yet? I've heard a lot about it from various sources, but I've yet to play it myself, so I'm curious if anyone here has any experience.

Yeah I did a playthrough of it years ago, It's okay. Faint praise? Maybe. It integrates surprisingly well into the world (the fact that CDDA is already a mushy mess of ideas and unlicensed properties helps) and the magic system can be fun a fun subsidy to your character's offensive and defensive capabilities. Has big issues though: Lack of direction; how do I craft this magic cauldron thing that is essential for progression? It doesn't say, wiki doesn't say either; join the help forum (a discord channel full of usual suspects) and ask I guess? The magic school system is also poorly implemented; there are four domains of magic and two schools per domain, learning magic from one school locks you off from the opposite school and they don't tell you this until it's already too late. Getting started with magic is also a huge road block; you basically need to pick a magic character from the outset since spells are only found in special rare tiles.

It's okay, worth a try. Little piece of advice though; the hat rack in magic basements is a secret switch (you will understand what this means when the time comes (also, they don't tell you this anywhere and I'm not sure how you are expected to guess.))

Just be careful running into new monsters/locations you aren't familiar with. Stuff like orc camps are, of course, pretty deadly.

Erm... one word; machinegun

 

[Scream Aim Fire]

Yeah I did a playthrough of it years ago, It's okay. Faint praise? Maybe. It integrates surprisingly well into the world (the fact that CDDA is already a mushy mess of ideas and unlicensed properties helps) and the magic system can be fun a fun subsidy to your character's offensive and defensive capabilities. Has big issues though: Lack of direction; how do I craft this magic cauldron thing that is essential for progression? It doesn't say, wiki doesn't say either; join the help forum (a discord channel full of usual suspects) and ask I guess? The magic school system is also poorly implemented; there are four domains of magic and two schools per domain, learning magic from one school locks you off from the opposite school and they don't tell you this until it's already too late. Getting started with magic is also a huge road block; you basically need to pick a magic character from the outset since spells are only found in special rare tiles.

It's okay, worth a try. Little piece of advice though; the hat rack in magic basements is a secret switch (you will understand what this means when the time comes (also, they don't tell you this anywhere and I'm not sure how you are expected to guess.))

From what I've seen and read about Magicalysm, apparently the mod in general is supposed to be pretty hard when you first start out, but you quickly become rather overpowered once you start getting the higher-end gear and such. Haven't heard too much about the magic system myself, but I heard the mutation paths added with it, such as the Dryad and the Black Dragon, are supposed to be super overpowered and such.

I'll try taking a look at the different forums for the game; from what I've seen, the wiki is pretty outdated and got more-or-less abandoned years ago, so it's probably not the best of sources for info, sadly. Anything else to share?

 

[Strange Looking Dog]

From what I've seen and read about Magicalysm, apparently the mod in general is supposed to be pretty hard when you first start out, but you quickly become rather overpowered once you start getting the higher-end gear and such. Haven't heard too much about the magic system myself, but I heard the mutation paths added with it, such as the Dryad and the Black Dragon, are supposed to be super overpowered and such.

I mean yeah maybe but you have to find random hedge maze tiles in the wilderness in order to specialize into one of those advanced disciplines and they're well, rare and random. Even if you find one there's a good chance it will be incompatible with your schools and an even better chance you won't even want it.

I'll try taking a look at the different forums for the game; from what I've seen, the wiki is pretty outdated and got more-or-less abandoned years ago, so it's probably not the best of sources for info, sadly. Anything else to share?

There's the hitch hikers guide. It's updated constantly from the game's JSON and doesn't provide guides or anything, but it does provide some stats and item listings

 

[Rent Tin]

There's some interesting drama on the GITHUB page. The head developer Kevin Granade, is targeting a tranny(?) contributor and reverting some of their changes. It sucks because it looks like this tranny actually put their programming socks to good use and added some GOOD content. (I'm assuming they are a tranny, their voice is just so weird in their earlier Youtube videos)

They added this troon's stuff for like four months and then just ripped it out without giving them a chance to fix it.

(The contributor seems to be called WormyWormGirl on REDDIT and FairyArmadillo on GITHUB)
REDDIT
GITHUB

ITS PERNICIOUS AND DANGEROUS AND HE WILL NOT BE A PARTY TO ITTT. REVERTED!
This one in particular is really funny, I haven't played or contributed recently so I wasn't 100% sure what it was referencing initially.



Turns out that the tranny contributor put in a chance for the player to avoid psychic attacks if they are schizophrenic and not taking their schizophrenia meds. You also had a chance to avoid them if you were like super drunk. The head developer got pretty butthurt and I'm assuming this was the start of his revert spree. From the way they are speaking I'm assuming they are a schizophrenic/alcoholic or somebody they know is.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

There's some interesting drama on the GITHUB page. The head developer Kevin Granade, is targeting a tranny(?) contributor and reverting some of their changes. It sucks because it looks like this tranny actually put their programming socks to good use and added some GOOD content. (I'm assuming they are a tranny, their voice is just so weird in their earlier Youtube videos)

They added this troon's stuff for like four months and then just ripped it out without giving them a chance to fix it.

(The contributor seems to be called WormyWormGirl on REDDIT and FairyArmadillo on GITHUB)
REDDIT
GITHUB

ITS PERNICIOUS AND DANGEROUS AND HE WILL NOT BE A PARTY TO ITTT. REVERTED!
This one in particular is really funny, I haven't played or contributed recently so I wasn't 100% sure what it was referencing initially.

View attachment 5794644

Turns out that the tranny contributor put in a chance for the player to avoid psychic attacks if they are schizophrenic and not taking their schizophrenia meds. You also had a chance to avoid them if you were like super drunk. The head developer got pretty butthurt and I'm assuming this was the start of his revert spree. From the way they are speaking I'm assuming they are a schizophrenic/alcoholic or somebody they know is.

Granade is one of those guys whose ego has been unchecked for years as the big cheese of the project, it's absurd. It's not the first time he's pushed away contributors because of it. Another contributor had a fight with him last year over changes and basically stepped away to do their own fork, but I can't remember the name.

 

[Strange Looking Dog]

What a total retarded faggot. That's actually a pretty funny mechanic on the part of presumed tranny (they are so totally 100% a tranny no wombman plays this shit)

 

[Ghost of RBG]

Another contributor had a fight with him last year over changes and basically stepped away to do their own fork, but I can't remember the name.

Not exactly a rare thing with Kevin but this sounds like Night-Pyranik, the creator of the No-Hope mod who also tried to add the option to change spawnrates of individual item categories. Kevin smited his PR for no reason, so he made the There is Still Hope fork which died within a few months.



The exact same thing happens every year or so. The first to my knowledge was Kevin nuking some guy trying to buff shields for "tantrums" despite him being completely cordial. Of course this isn't even including the other dev pastime of making retarded changes, sometimes out of spite so that people will add in long requested features. 0.C released 9 years ago, so there's a lot of autism if you look for it.

Magiclysm

It's okay. It's pretty unbalanced, but to my knowledge the most-egregious things like plastic golems clearing entire cities or owlbear spam were fixed. I personally prefer Arcana, but both are worth a try at least once. Magiclysm is sadly unupdated on Bright Nights though.