Saturday, March 29, 2014

The survivor, pt. 3

Starting map of Southbridge

This is part 3 of my current play of Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. (The previous installments are here and here.) This is just for fun. If you want to learn how to install and play this free, rogue-like, zombie-survival game, check out my earlier posts here.

I'd hoped I'd left those 'blobs' behind, but I was still unsettled by the experience, so I thought I'd continue to explore south, along the west edge of town. I'd found a pair of binoculars, which helped, and when a day dawned bright and sunny, I though maybe it would be safe to explore an open area to the southwest, too. (I was still very worried about acid rain.)

There was forest to my west, and I'd run into more of those giant ants when I'd tried to go that way. This time, I went south to an office tower on the edge of town, then southwest across an open field, and I discovered another science lab, alongside a river, with a road leading north.

The lab had a small barracks, with beds and dressers, on the top floor (and a room filled with pits of goo on the other side - I closed the door and left that room strictly alone!), so it would probably work fine as an emergency base. Again, I didn't even attempt to explore the dark underground. Maybe someday.

Meanwhile, the day was still nice, so I went north along the river road. I really didn't find much. It looked like swamp on the other side of the river, and I could see an evac shelter far to the north of that, but there wasn't any way to get to the other side, bar swimming (and who knew what might be in the water).

After awhile, I found some wreckage in the middle of the road, and the bodies of scientists nearby (one of them animate), then more of those giant ants blocking the road further north. So I headed back to my temporary base.

(I was still having no luck in getting one of those ants to separate from the others. They were clearly hostile, and very angry at my presence, but even the big 'warrior' ants weren't willing to chase after me. After the blobs, that was kind of a relief, but it meant that I couldn't judge how dangerous they were without getting right in the middle of them,... and that didn't seem like a wise survival tactic to me!)

Northern part of Southbridge

The next morning, I was attacked by blobs again. I slept OK, despite the nightmares, but I awoke to find vast numbers of blobs moving my way from the north and northwest. (North, I could understand, since they were probably following my trail. But how did that long line of blobs coming from the west-northwest know where I was? Somehow, they clearly did.)

I spent half the day killing them, but I could still see blobs, far to my north, slowly heading my way. So I needed to try somewhere new.

My first experiment was to explore the sewers, since I'd found a manhole entrance in the middle of the street. It was unpleasant, and slow, but it seemed safe enough. (Obviously, I couldn't take my shopping cart with me, so this was just a scouting trip.)

The sewer went east, without any side corridors, until I found an exit that led to the subway system, coincidentally very near the subway entrance I'd explored in the middle of the night a few weeks previously. This time, it was daytime, and I had to fight a few zombies when I emerged - and then a zombear - but it wasn't too bad. (I'd found a machete, which was faster than my steel spear and did even more damage. Also, I'd traded my crowbar for a Halligan bar - which firefighters use - and I could do a lot of damage with that, too.)

Unfortunately, without my cart, I couldn't do much looting. And although I could move to the east side of town, if I wanted, I'd have to leave most of my stuff behind (again, without being able to use the shopping cart.) Plus, there were giant wasps very close by. I killed one of them when it attacked me, but then I scooted back down the subway entrance, and retraced my steps through the sewer, before I could be swarmed by them.

So the next day, I loaded up my cart and continued south. Past the office tower, I found a hotel that was off by itself, a bit, on the other side of a parking lot. It was full of zombies, but I could take them on individually. Of course, there were individual rooms with beds and dressers, and there was a basement with a swimming pool - and sewer snakes, admittedly - so I thought it would make a good base, at least temporarily.

I picked a room and boarded over the windows, then dragged dressers in front of them, for good measure. (The noise attracted a giant worm - that earlier sighting hadn't been my imagination after all - but I was able to kill it from a window without getting down into the dirt, myself. Actually, I chopped it in half with my machete, only to find both ends continuing to fight! But they weren't hard to kill after that - not like the blobs, luckily.)

I gathered stones from the fields nearby and built a fireplace with them. I was proud of that - it worked great! Then I looted a nearby library and a liquor store. (I needed reading material, for when the weather was bad - indeed, I was caught in acid rain again, though just briefly - and the liquor store was absolutely packed with booze. But even better than that, I found a road map that gave me some idea of the surrounding countryside.)

Southern Southbridge and surrounding roads

Then I started exploring nearby - trying to clear the zombies out of that side of town, if I could - when I got really sick. It was just the flu, I guess, but when I say "just" the flu, that really minimizes it. I was sick for weeks! (I was terrified that I might have caught some virus from the zombies. I mean, there was no one else around! How else could I have gotten sick?)

I was coughing so much at night that I kept having zombie dogs break through my boarded-over windows - and smashing through the dressers I'd barricaded them with - to get to me. Thank the gods there weren't any zombears, because I was so sick I never even woke up until they'd come that far.

Once I did wake up, the zombie dogs were easy enough to kill, but I had to keep rebuilding my defenses. (Why hadn't I dug pit traps outside the windows?) And one night, I woke up just as I was being poisoned by a giant spider. I was miserable enough already, and the poison certainly didn't help any! But I survived it.

And finally, about the first of autumn, I recovered completely. By then, I'd gone through most of my stash of food (I had plenty of water and fuel in the hotel, luckily), so I was really happy I'd accumulated so much food ahead of time. And I was happy I'd had a reasonably-secure hideout to recover in, too! I was lucky, in both respects. And I needed to remember that.

But with fall already here - and still no sign of other survivors - I had to start thinking about winter. What was I going to do next? And how could I best ensure my survival during the leanest part of the year?

My road map showed two large schools - community colleges, most likely - and those seemed to be likely places to find survivors, not to mention some of the resources - educational resources, primarily - that I'd need. One of them was far to the northeast, north along the road from that first science lab I'd found. But even with the lab in the middle, that would mean a lot of travel a long way from shelter, and I was still very worried about acid rain.

The other school was closer, but on the other side of town from me. Maybe I could skirt the town on the south. The river was that way, and I'd seen some swampy terrain from a distance, but most of that area was still a complete unknown to me. Or I could slowly clear a way across town. I'd been doing that already, to some extent, and the town still seemed to be fairly narrow at this point.

There was also that FEMA camp to the northwest. I had better weapons now, and more skill in using them. Plus, that liquor store had given me the supplies I needed to make Molotov cocktails. So maybe I could burn out that mass grave?

Well, first, when I got well enough to travel, I headed north to my closest stash of food and supplies and brought a wheelbarrow load of it back to the hotel. I wanted to be prepared in case I got sick again. Then I dug some deep pits in the dirt outside my boarded-up windows and set some sharpened sticks upright in them. Maybe that would discourage creatures from breaking in, next time.

Current kill count (my hotel room is in the background)

Finally, a day dawned bright and sunny, so I put some essentials in a shopping cart and headed off towards the FEMA camp. I traveled north, between the forest and Southbridge, as I had many times before, then cut northwest across that huge area of open ground, trying to avoid the slime pit to the north. But when I was halfway there, out in the middle of nothing, it clouded up and started to pour rain again!

Luckily, it wasn't acid rain, but it did turn to thunderstorms before I could make it to my nearest safe house, north of the crater (northwest of the blobs), and it turned to acid rain the next day. That's why I was worried about getting too far from shelter.

In fact, it rained and rained - thunderstorms, acid rain, heavy showers, drizzle. It just went on and on, day after day. I was going nuts, since I didn't have much to do - much I could do. I did explore around that part of town a bit - those few places I'd missed previously - and I found a rapier (yeah, an actual, honest-to-god rapier) and a .22 rifle and pistol, with ammo (with which I thought I could practice shooting a gun), but I was really going stir-crazy.

Finally, I woke to a sunny day, so I grabbed my cart and headed northwest again. As it turned out, there wasn't just one mass grave, but multiple mass graves, at the FEMA camp. I didn't even bother with my Molotov cocktails, because I didn't have nearly enough for that! The zombies weren't too tough, though. They'd been wandering through barbed wire so they were already injured, and they'd spread out enough that I could take them on one at a time.

I circled the camp, taking out the weaker creatures, then approached those soldier zombies in the middle. There were a half-dozen of them in a small building, and they saw me as I got closer. But they were so mindless that only two of them had sense enough to leave the building through the door, even after one had smashed it down (the others just bashed impotently on the bullet-proof glass). So it was easy enough to kill them one at a time, too - especially after I led them through barbed wire a few times.

I'd hoped to set up a base there, and I did find a solid concrete building in the center, with secure metal doors (only one entrance, admittedly). And I could see a river on the map not too far away, for water (not as convenient as I might wish, but workable). However, I just couldn't see sleeping in the middle of mass graves! I mean, I've become inured to a lot in the past few months, but that was taking it too far, even without the ever-present threat of zombies.

I did find some supplies, including an anvil! But I couldn't haul it all at once, so I loaded up my shopping cart and headed back to that temporary safe house, arriving just as it was getting dark, then went back for the anvil the next day.

It was getting cloudy by then, so I probably shouldn't have risked it, but I did a quick scout to the north after I got the anvil loaded up, and I found a survivalist shelter in the forest. It was small, and entirely underground, but it had a bed, a wood-burning stove, a source of water, and some supplies.

Frankly, it would have been the perfect place to build a log cabin, using the LMOE shelter as its basement, except that the ground was far too swampy to grow crops. (Admittedly, I'm far from ready to settle down as a hermit. I still need to find other survivors!) And as if it weren't swampy enough already, it started pouring rain again! So I grabbed what I could and headed back.

It's been raining pretty much nonstop ever since. If the winter is this wet, I may have to learn to use snowshoes! Despite the rain - and the ever-present risk of acid rain - I've been hauling cartloads of stuff south to my hotel base camp. It's been slow, wet, and boring, and my room is getting so full of crap that I probably won't fit inside, myself, before too long.

But with luck, I can use that as a base for awhile. I'm going to try to make it to that school, but it's probably going to take awhile. The southeast is still a complete unknown, but it's probably more city - which means more zombies, among other dangers.

Still, the acid rain scares me more than anything else, which seems to rule out the open plains and forests to the north and west (and even to the east, if I loop around that way). And assuming that I can still get food, the city seems like a better option for surviving the winter, too. I haven't seen those blobs in awhile, so maybe the nightmares about getting smothered in my sleep will finally stop.

Oh, and I finally encountered a warrior ant by itself. Those giant ants seem to be moving east, because I encountered what seemed to be scouts as I was hauling stuff back to my hotel room. That warrior ant wasn't as tough as I'd expected. In fact, although it clearly knew I was nearby, it didn't seem to know exactly where I was until I'd gotten quite close.

Of course, these are social insects, so I suspect that they don't do well on their own. Finding one ant by itself is a very unusual circumstance, and I shouldn't underestimate them. But I must admit that I'm far less worried than I was. At the very least, I could probably run away, setting a fire behind me to disrupt my scent trail.

Now, if I can just find a solution to the acid rain problem, the whole world would seem to be open for exploration.

___
Note: Here's part 4. And you can find my other computer game-related posts here.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

I’m not sure if you really don’t know how to fix the Acid Rain issue or if you are roleplaying, but to travel safely I think all you need is to make a tent and carry it with you. It’s a little bulky but not too bad and it should save you in the event of acid rain when you are far away from any shelter. Perhaps trial it out first before trusting in it to save your skin?

So far Acid Rain hasn’t been too prevalent in my game – it drizzles a lot but rarely turns into rain; for which I should thank my lucky stars as I’ve gone on some seriously long jaunts without any form of extreme weather protection. Still, a tent to carry with me on my travels is high up on the priority list. Having this character melt through lack of preparedness would not be great.

I’ve made myself a survivor suit, a harness and warm underwear which enables me to travel without any form of torso, arm or leg encumbrance but it’s warm, keeps me dry and has a fair amount of storage. My mouth is another matter – as it’s cold I need a fur scarf to keep warm and I also don’t like to not wear my filter mask to keep me germ, free so that slows me right down. Although I’m less concerned with that these days as I usually don’t need to run away from anything – I’ve gotten so good with my rapier that I usually stun my opponents with each hit so they don’t get a single touch on me; I carve down even Zombie Brutes in two or three strikes without taking a scratch in return. I don’t often bother using my bow anymore unless it’s for something that I don’t want to get close to me, like Shockers or Boomers.

Occasionally something will hit me, usually because it’s fast moving, but my suit is very good protection and nothing breaks through. I’m still very cautious with anything I haven’t tangled with before though. Until I think I have worked out the tricks of a new creature I try to use ranged attacks and isolate it as much as possible so if it turns out to be quite deadly I don’t have a horde of other things to deal with at the same time.

I haven’t encountered any of the really big bads yet though (hah, Zombie Brutes are now just ‘small change’). I saw a Hulk on my last big wander and was too cautious to take it on at that point in time. I think with care I’ll be fine though. I can see it first, I’ll drop my scarf, filter mask and cart so I can move unencumbered (although considering its size I’m not sure I’ll be faster even with the Fleetfooted trait), drop a bear trap or two, have a couple of pre loaded crossbows and try getting in a couple of head shots as it charges. If that doesn’t kill it a Molotov and my rapier should. How tough can it be?! Hmm, maybe a shotgun as backup just in case…

Anonymous said...

That last wander was a pretty long trip away – several days. I first headed east to check out a slime pit and killed me some blobs. They didn’t seem too bad (although nothing much is these days unless it shots bullets at me) and after killing them I picked up their blobby remains and shoved them in my cart – I have a chemical recipe for ‘Blob Canister’ so that’s probably worth checking out. I found that a river was a little further to the east of the slime pit and had a bridge that looked to be broken(?) running up it so I headed north to try to find the top. That’s where I found this little town and the Hulk. It also had a dojo and I appropriated a couple of training manuals, one on karate and one on judo. I followed the bridge down the middle of the river and found some sort of military vehicle abandoned there. It looked to have turrets and had plating and spikes and all sort of good things. That got marked down on the map for a return visit at some point. When I can actually drive maybe. The bridge did eventually have a broken section that I couldn’t get over so I retraced my steps and followed the river around on the other side hoping to quickly join back up. Some hope – it just kept going and going and going. I ran across a mansion in the middle of nowhere and stopped for a few days to read up on some books I found there then continued on down past some sort of military outpost with a couple of turrets. It was the middle of the day and I didn’t fancy being shot again so I continued past. I also didn’t have any military IDs and I had forgotten to pack my electrohack. I have quite a few science IDs but the military ones have been thin on the ground. More exploring needed.

Another town at the (finally!) end of the river also had what looked like otherworldly critters around it. I avoided those as well and headed on around right into a swamp. Fortunately it was still winter…

Very fortunately as it turned out as there was a FEMA camp slap in the middle of it. I was fair groaning with loot by this stage but I couldn’t pass up exploring one of those things! So that was more delays and eventually I just ran for home – barrelling through any Zeds I encountered on the way.

After that big epic I stayed a bit closer to home for my next trip; checking out the public works and the prison in the town to the west. The prison looks like it could be a very secure base even if I didn’t clear out all of the Brutes imprisoned there. I can pull faces at them through the bars but they can’t get to me. I wonder if it would work with hulks?

Oh, I also encountered my first secubot in the prison. Fortunately it was behind a metal grill and all of its bullets didn’t get through. My arrows were a lot more accurate… Still, if I didn’t have that protecting me it might have been a bit nasty. Maybe I should see about getting my power armour and battery connected just in case I want to head into a place like that again.

Anonymous said...

Although I really don’t have time (because cataclysm has eaten my soul) I have been turning over creating another character. He’ll be an English Gentleman. Traits Stylish (of course!), Gourmet (again of course), Optimistic (English Stiff Upper Lip!), Truth Teller (a Gentleman can’t LIE!), Near Sighted (from reading and studying) & Junk food Intolerance.

His goals will be to find a Mansion and convert it into his castle. I’ll enable NPCs so he can trade and perhaps develop faction ties (lets see how buggy it is) and tame dogs (because an English Gentleman loves his dogs.

There will be NO mutations allowed (he’s human thank you very much!), not so sure on bionics. Some especially seem to just be advanced medical techniques and could be ok. I think it will depend on the bionic.

Any non human enclave within a days’ range of his mansion will be a personal affront and he’ll count it his duty to wipe it out. Them or Us!

Suits, Monocles, Dress Shoes, Rapiers and Bowler Hats here I come!

Well, maybe.

Bill Garthright said...

Yeah, mostly it's just role-playing, M1nks. I try to think of what my character would do.

And it really has been raining almost constantly in my game. I'm getting pretty sick of it, frankly. Mostly, though, I think that's because I imagine my character having to deal with it, and he'd definitely be getting sick of it. :)

And yeah, my character is well-equipped and experienced now, so most enemies are hardly even an annoyance (I don't think he's ever been hit by a blob, so I don't even know what kind of damage they do), but that attitude doesn't fit with the story or with my idea of his character (or what being alone in a real zombie apocalypse would feel like, either!).

So he's getting bolder, but just baby steps, yet. :)

Bill Garthright said...

That sounds like fun, M1nks!

I must say that I've been quite disappointed with tame dogs, though. (I haven't yet gotten close enough to a cat to tame it.) The dogs just run off and attack the nearest creature - weasels, raccoons, etc. - and that dog whistle seems to have no effect whatsoever.

The dogs I've tamed never stay alive for even a few hours. I suppose you could have a house dog, though, never letting him outside. Or build a fence, maybe?

You know, this game never fails to amaze me. Did you know that you can die of a heart attack in Cataclysm, if you take too many stimulants? Alternately, you can die of apnea, if your stim level gets too low (-200).

Lots of content in this game, huh? I was just looking up something on the wiki and stumbled across this information. Who comes up with this stuff?

m1nks said...

Oh bionics, bionics! I finally found a power source and it happens to be solar powered. For someone with Light Sensitivity! So, still waiting…

I’m also trying to find a stethoscope for safe cracking. So far I’ve tried 3 doctors and nothing. And so far as I’m aware you can’t craft one. The hunt continues I guess.

Bill Garthright said...

I've never found a stethoscope, M1nks. For that matter, I've never seen a hospital. For all the time I've spent in this game, off and on over the years, it's amazing how much of it I still haven't seen.

Of course, stethoscopes might be something new. There's always new content being added to Cataclysm. But even things which have been around for awhile will still be new to me, when I finally encounter them.

And the variety means that each game is different. I like that!

m1nks said...

I think they've been around for a while, in the forums I was reading a few people were just complaining about how rare they were. One guy said he cleared out 3 towns before finding one. The other guy said he'd gone through a hospital and not found one.

I'll just have to keep my eyes peeled - maybe I can find a bionic which will do the job?

m1nks said...

I finally found a Medical Lab at the end of a road past the town to the west of my shelter. I haven’t been inside one of these before being new to Cataclysm so I was dying to explore even though I was a little unprepared. Wow, what a treasure trove! I loaded myself up on what I could carry which wasn’t that much with everything else I had, but I still found some good books on mutagens, including one for ‘Alpha’. There was a fair amount of mutagen lying around as well as some purifiers and I did toss up a bit on going on a bit of a mutagen spree to see what would happen. In the end though I resisted (for now), I’ll stick with my stubby tail and my marloss berry trait.

Other than all of that I saw a lot of turrets which I avoided deciding caution was the best policy when I wasn’t particularly armoured up - probably come back with some EMP grenades and see what they do. I hacked into a few computers, mostly successfully although one resisted my efforts. After cutting down about 30 manhacks because I continually kept stuffing up I decided to come back when I’d gained a little bit more skill in computers. I might also try bringing down the two military black boxes I have stashed and see if I can get any more background as to what has been going on to cause this cataclysmic event.

I did manage to hack into a computer which let me into some rooms which contained a lot of bionics, including a metabolic power supply! Gold! Once I had that I tried to get out, but I was two levels down by that stage and the place was a flipping maze! I kept running into turrets all over the place and having to divert course. I eventually got out and headed home. Stopped off at a garage and appropriated a motorbike with 2% gas – it probably would have gotten me home but I had a weeny bit of difficulty getting it past some cars as I was backing it out. Man, I thought I was never going to get free – I crashed into both of them and generally made a complete pigs ear of it; driving in this game is really hard. I finally did manage it though and because I had a Brute on my trail I really opened that baby up to a crazy 32km an hour and blew it off. I ran out of petrol within spitting distance of my evac shelter so I’ll need to fill it up again and probably do a spot of repair due to my superlative driving skills. Although I was pleased to note that I could bash through bushes without going flying over the handlebars. I’m not so sanguine about trees…

Once I was back at base I drugged myself up and installed about 10 bionics in one hit. I think I need to raise my skills a bit, a few of them had quite high chances of failure – 22% for one of them. I was flying at that stage though and there was no going back and quite miraculously nothing failed and I’m the new Robocop. I’ve only installed the one small (4) storage device. The bionic interface warns you that you can’t install too many of them before potentially getting problems and the forrems mentioned something about 30 I think, but it looks like storage ones don’t count as they don’t get ascribed a letter. If so I could potentially install hundreds of the suckers and go on a food munching bash to power them all up. That wouldn’t be hard, my marloss carrier trait is a hand in glove fit for the metabolic interchange bionic.

Anyway I’m quite chuffed with how everything is going really. Faith Perry is really gaining in skill and power but she’s (I’m) still cautious enough to hopefully avoid an overconfident downfall).

I’ll probably craft a few EMP grenades next and head back to the lab to fully clear it out. I saw another one a little bit below it as well. It’s like waiting for a bus…

m1nks said...

P.S. Medical Labs are rather disturbing... I can't bring myself to feel the lest bit sorry for all the dead bodies I find now and as for the scientist zombies...

Talk about deserving what happened to them!

Bill Garthright said...

You're talking about the science labs, right, M1nks? Or is there a separate medical lab I haven't discovered yet?

I explored a couple of them in my previous game, though not all the way to the end. Yeah, there's lots of stuff. And the labs tend to vary a bit - certainly the more dangerous parts vary, if I remember correctly.

But with all your bionics, you should be in good shape. My character is still a wimp compared to yours. :)

Bill Garthright said...

Yup.

Oh, I discovered one reason why it was raining all the time in my game. I tend to play for short periods of time, and I finally realized that the weather was changing whenever I'd load my saved game.

Whenever I'd quit a game and the weather was clear or sunny, it would be drizzling or raining when I started playing again. I suppose it could happen in reverse, too (I'm assuming that the weather conditions simply aren't saved when you save a game), but I still haven't seen that.

So even when it was clear or sunny, it would never last long for me. It took me awhile to realize what was happening, especially since I didn't want to save-scum to test it.

Now that winter is here, I'm getting more nice days, anyway. Fall is apparently the worst season for rain in Cataclysm (according to my own experience and the wiki, both).

m1nks said...

She’s not super powered yet I don’t think. At the moment her main strength (apart from her basic skills which are pretty good) is the amount of gear she has at her base. I certainly wouldn’t want to tangle with anything too strong without preparation and a good escape plan. If one of those Jabberwocky things appeared next to me I’d probably get my head ripped off. I follow your maxim of ‘you aren’t stronger so you have to be smarter’. And more cautious. I think that if you can survive the first few days it’s really bad luck and over confidence kills you.

I have no mutations at the moment apart from the Marloss Carrier (which is highly useful) and the bionics I have installed are mostly of the supporting type rather than directly offensive. I now have a 16 power supply, a +2 to my intelligence, +8 to my storage capacity, a protective plating under the skin which provides a very small amount of protection, a bionic to protect me from extreme external temperatures (ie fires I’m presuming) and something which is described as a protective eye lens – I’m really not sure what that does. Hopefully protects my eyes from damage but I really don’t know. The only combat related ones that I have installed that I can remember is one which sends an electric shock when I’m fighting with fists or a metal weapon and a temporal dilation which I haven’t experimented with yet. It might save me from that hypothetical Jabberwocky by allowing me to run away from it rather than by fighting it though. I think the description mentioned something about going so fast you catch on fire which makes me feel a bit wary…

I’ve just picked up a bionic which is meant to regulate internal temperature which might be handy in Summer as I sweltered horribly last time. I’ve also been debating installing an alarm system to wake me up when I sleep. Normally it wouldn’t be needed as I sleep underground safely but I am a heavy sleeper. I think I’ll hold off on installing any more for now, I’m conscious of the supposed 30 limitation.

I’ve also just managed to install a welder onto my flatbed truck. The town to the west had two garages and one had a couple of welders so I took my motorbike over to pick those up. Unfortunately I ran over a mine on the way back which destroyed my front tyre and I had to drag it back to base. Still, got there eventually, crafted my on-board welder and it’s working a treat. My driving skills are still rubbish but they are improving and it will be quite nice to be properly mobile. Now my vehicles aren’t going to be held together by prayers and spit I’ll see about squishing me some zombies!

Anonymous said...

Oh I forgot to mention, after my bionic binge where I took, if I recall correctly, A marloss berry and music for 200+ morale, an oxygen hit, a cigarette, one aderall tablet and two meth, I got some sort of crazy torso itch and started attacking my own body to relieve it and getting bleeding sores. I bandaged myself up and took an antibiotic and a pain killer (cos my pain bar skyrocketed) and I went to sleep and it wore off without any lasting ill effects but it did freak me out a little.

The trouble is, after taking such a wide variety, it’s kind of hard to pin point which particular thing caused it or if it was a combination. Ah cataclysm, you sure know how to keep our relationship interesting!

Bill Garthright said...

I'm still playing Cataclysm every day, but I struggle to find the time to play for long, and nothing much that's interesting to write about has happened. (I still plan to continue this story, though.)

Since I'm role-playing, my character needs to change his thinking somewhat before taking up bionics, but I think that will happen soon. Right now, he's trying to practice archery, since he finally decided he needed a ranged attack.

Funny thing, but I tried to make the seasons longer in the options, since I'd left them at the default - only 15 days long - when I started. But when I loaded up my saved game again, it was summer - and snowing!

I was afraid I'd broken something, so I switched it back. But now, a few days later, it's the first day of spring, but still snowing. I hope that's normal! :)

Oh, and that truck sounds great! I'm struggling with equipment and supplies scattered all over the place, so a mobile storage site would be wonderful. Admittedly, I don't want to give up my luggage cart (which holds more stuff than a shopping cart, but still functions the same way).

Bill Garthright said...

Two meth might have done it, I suppose, but I suspect that it was just too much stimulant of all kinds. It's neat that you'd get a reaction like that, isn't it?