Starting tips?

[Lord Rizzington of Mewingville]

I have a lot of the controls mostly figured out, but I'm just not sure what to do when starting a new character; dying is usually my first action.

Looking for some general tips for any starter location, but I think a good focus would be evacuation shelter.

[desrtfox071]

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2330750/discussions/0/6197556602759206593/

[✚ Mariel ✚]

Search google for CDDA cheatsheet and you will get a thread with a picture of all the keyboard shortcuts, print it and put it on your wall, it is now your Kim Jong Un portrait.

& is for crafting, look through and see what sort of things you can make. Be sure to look at the stats of things. Wooden spear is good to start with as you can stab things from an extra space away and through chainlink fences or window bars. Good idea to make a cudgel to train melee too. / is for searching, and you can search for things like the skill that a craft requires to make e.g. p:fab will bring up things that use fabrication skill as the main skill. Make the highest thing you can make for a skill to level it up, which will unlock more recipes. At some point you will probably need books to keep going though

Wooden spear or wooden tonfa will probably be fine for the first week. You could use a bow or throwing rocks if you like, especially for killing advanced zombies but those weapons arent great. You should sell stuff to merchants and then buy guns and ammo, then use them to loot military places and FEMA camps (be sure to listen out around military places, if you hear mechanical whirring then leave, not a bad idea to bring EMP grenade and hold it in your hand before you open a door, if there is a grenade drone then activate the EMP and drop it then pray it blows up before the drone does!

If all this is too hard and you are dying a lot then consider doing some wilderness survival for a while, it could be a refreshing change and it is nice to know you can survive without having to go to dangerous loot filled places if needed. That way you can advance towards POIs cautiously and retreat to the wilderness if things are getting too hairy. You learn a lot about the game basics as well just from living like a hunter gatherer for a while

[✚ Mariel ✚]

Also when you feel like you have learned a lot and want to make a serious go of it, try to explore and clear as much as possible in the first 3 months before too many creatures become mutants, then you will be free to loot as much as you please without giant scary mutants getting in the way. Looting a military base or too early on will allow you to clear quite rapidly and secure many resources for you to settle into the midgame with

[slup.kamil]

sneak around and never fight more than 3 zombies (and only fight 2 at once when you're healthy)
destroy zombie corpses so they don't get up next day (tho they die in a single hit if you don't)
if a dangerous enemy ends up following you, keep going to your base, the AI survivor is highly skilled and capable of killing most enemies, meanwhile you stay atleast 2 tiles away from the enemy

[✚ Mariel ✚]

Btw if the AI survivors wants swamp jelly, that one can be a bit dangerous so proceed carefully, but it is pretty quick to do and if you are lucky you can recruit the NPC and get them to follow you, then just put them in a good defensive position and lure zombies to them \o/

[snake]

Train, hard, and deconstruct alot of the benches in the evac shelter and place them in a spot, dedicate a spot as the crafting area. and just...experiment, thats all this game is really, roleplaying and experimenting