Newbie Tips | Add Yours

[TrollerCon]

I just started playing. I made a post recently asking for guidance and got some great tips. Wanted to create a thread where we could add tips for best practices or interesting ways to play. I'll start with some examples I got from other posts. When you stumble onto this discussion please add your own tips for the newbies. You never know what someone else doesn't know, and I thought this could be a fun exercise for the community to share knowledge.

My quotes are paraphrased. See the original post for the exact wording. https://steamcommunity.com/app/1534980/discussions/0/4757578733051837059/

Originally posted by Stanley Peterson Lau:

You cannot collect rain water with just an empty bottle you leave in the rain. But later you can craft a rain collector. The collected water will still be dirty. Cook it to make it pure.

Originally posted by OKOK:

Reading books is important but not a primary concern when starting out. Fit it in when you can. Don't necessarily make it a priority.

Originally posted by Knight Lamune:

Finding a park will give you unlimited water, but it still needs to be cooked/boiled before you ingest it.

[Nedra]

Don't sleep on cooking, i see many youtubers completely ignore the entire cooking mechanic but with the cooking perk you can easily multiply satiety by 50%+ of all ingredients. Many recipes add 20-30% without a perk and each level adds an additional 15%.

[Darkringer]

I've got a few newbie-friendly things that I somewhat wished I knew from the offset. -

- Only ending your turn, is the time to be afraid of zombie attacks! You can run and swerve by a massive horde of 50+ zombies, while they'll know where you've gone, none of them will do anything to you. Only when you hit that spinning button to pass the turn, only then will the zombies pose a life-threatening problem. Until then, they're obstacles.

- Cars are your friends! Find one that works and has fuel, and travelling between locations becomes so much easier, not to mention that all vehicles have an inventory weight, so you can store important, but not essential, items on the go. Perfect if you're not planning on hunkering down at a specific location.

- Increase your Trust with Fortified Houses! With a high enough Trust, you'll be able to trade with them at a reasonable rate, and they'll offer up more items that you can trade for. Not to mention the various things you can ask for in exchange for Trust. When you're struggling with anything specific, you'll be glad they're on your side.

- Crafting is still useful, even with no/low Dexterity! It's true that many items are much better when crafted with high Dexterity, but there's a few items that you can make that doesn't care what your Dexterity is: Bandages, Fertiliser, Fishing Bait, Makeshift Armor, etc. So don't be afraid of Crafting if you have no Dexterity.

- Plan ahead, and take your time! This is a turn-based game, the game won't move forward until you tell it to do so. So don't feel like you need to rush your moves. Take a breath, observe what's around you, and decide on your moves before you commit to them. You control the game, the game doesn't control you!

[In Vitriol]

- Use knifes, machetes and spears till they are just about to break, then keep them.
You can use them to craft knife/machete spears (including long) and they will be 100% condition. You can even use crappy glass knifes and save your good ones.

- Use your highest dexterity character to repair with kits etc, they get higher %.
Use them to craft obviously too. ;)

[yeungabad]

- You have to click the shovel icon when you gonna clean up debris using shovel.
- Occasionally you can throw a grenade to clean up debris, especially in the tunnel area.
- Whenever you encounter a random survivor, you can actually pump all items to gain trust, recruit them and take all items back, only thing you need to know is whether your inventory could gain 10 trust.

[Freddy Games]

Nice! Even at 200+ hours and I learned something here.

- You should have a high priority on finding an adrenaline shot for your main character. Every time I have died in this game was because I ran into a zomb with low AP and just got demolished. Before you get to that point, obviously, don't take your main character into a spot (including a new map point) ending with anything less than 3-5 AP!

- The most optimal food source is fish traps. Use two for each park location. Get in a car and approach the pond from both sides to gather your catch in one turn! You can easily never have food issues keeping your traps in the pond with no bait 30 hours and have them filled with fish. Fillet fish, dry fish, and come back to the pond when hungry!

- The higher your trust with fortified houses, the more loot they sell and the more legendary loot becomes available. 30+ trust I can get fire suit, body armor, assault rifle, stat books, it's basically a cheat code. Find bargaining books to get this rare loot for pennies on the dollar. Fortified houses reset their shop every 24 hours to and with a car you can hit every single one of them up in a matter of 2 hours.

- You can only keep 2 companions at a time. So decide ahead of time whether the person you meet is for the long haul or zombie meat. Invest in their skills appropriately... Tip the more advanced the job of the survivor is (in the job advancement tree) the lower starting stats they will have but the more advanced abilities. I currently believe the best job is the Driver. Probably second best is Student.... my opinion!

- The number 1 way to advance your character experience (beside getting fast learning perk) is to have bedding. That's right! You get exp in the exact amount of any action you do (walking, reading, crafting, etc). The only way to get more actions per day is to sleep with an equipped blanket and pillow. Optimally, every night you should sleep with those two items equipped plus a couch for maximum bonus. A major 2nd bonus to this is having the "nocturnal perk', because energy doesn't drop at night! You can therefore have max energy at sunset and receive 10%+ AP bonus every turn at night - use for reading/crafting.

[sirfalstaff44]

If you have a group of companions and you're looking to repair your clothing, the most efficient way to do this is to:
-Find a clothing store.
-Locate the tailoring station.
-Have your highest dex character (ideally with work gloves) stand at the clothing station with the other companion(s) adjacent.
-Give the dex character all the threads and needles you have (you can deconstruct rags for 8 threads - took me FOREVER to realise this.)
-Have the dex character repair everyone's clothes. You can do this by choosing "exchange items" and then just using the needle directly on the adjacent character's clothing. The repair bonus from the tailoring station still applies.
-While the high dex character works, the other characters can make more needles (as needed), craft other items, or read books.

This isn't something you have to worry about on most terminus runs, but for the harder/longer runs with alternate endings, you're going to want to hang on to your good clothing and bags as long as possible, so it's worth it in that case.