I Can't Understand Combat Dynamics.

[Selva [Hk]]

Hey guys! First of all, i'm not a nuthead noobie, i got hundred of games, most of them are about survival, so i'm not a first trip marine.

That being said, i'm having a little bit of trouble solving combats.

Well, some monsters that are more "normal", like the rattle snakes and fungus are easy to take down, but beyond that, it's 100% death all the time, the enemy reaches me and gives me 039230o2839082930230 blows and i can't even managed to him them back.

Yesterday i got killed by a beaver and before that by a child zombie. I was using a pointy stick, spotted them on SAFE MODE ON (which i can't understand the moving fundaments yet) and they reach me in a blink of an eye, 03983083092932902 hits, my turn, no matter what i do, more 3029830830983098230932 hits and bang... "You are dead".

I think i'm missing something here, couldn't find any help on Youtube.

[Neddy]

A lot of things affect speed and action costs in Cataclysm compared to conventional roguelikes. Here's a quick rundown, mainly focusing on combat:

First of all, there is encumbrance. It has different effects on individual body parts (you can see the exact modifiers with you current gear in the player tab [@]. You should familiarize yourself with these and check the numbers when you're switching gear). Obviously you want to keep encumbrance at a minimum, but the really important parts are hands and feet (arms and legs to a lesser extent). It's a classic rookie mistake to put on heavy-ass gloves that absolutely destroy your ability to do anything that requires hands. I suggest you only wear (armored) fingerless gloves and medical gloves, unless you have good full-body armor that covers hands, or you need environmental protection, in which case rubber gloves have fairly low encumbrance. There is also the matter of pockets, mainly concerning torso encumbrance. You want to use backpacks that cause relatively low encumbrance when full, and blacklist pockets that cause too much unnecessary encumbrance when full.

Second there is pain. Pain negatively affects your speed and, when being injured in combat, you are liable to enter a pain spiral. This eventually results in, as you call it, taking "039230o2839082930230 blows". On a side note, mood also has a minor effect on speed, and people tend not to be in a very good mood when getting mauled by zombies.

Third, there is stamina and weariness. You become much slower when you run out of breath, and you need to be very mindful of this when kiting zombies. Weariness adds an action cost modifier depending on you weariness level and the "activity level" of whatever it is you're trying to do. (Don't worry about weariness for now, just sleep regularly).

Finally there are skills. Combat skills have a tremendous effect on your fighting ability. If you don't start with them, you should prioritize finding a nice quiet place and practicing them (melee, athletics, dodging, weapon skills). You can do this in the practice tab in the crafting menu (obviously you may need appropriate manuals and some training equipment but you'll figure this out).

Finally (for realz this time), pay attention to action costs. When you're drawing a weapon, you can see the number of moves required to this. It will be much quicker to pull a knife out of a sheath, than to pull it out of a backpack. It also takes time to put something away, but literally 0 moves to drop it on the ground. Different weapons have different move costs to attack. This is getting off-topic again but they also have innate abilities. For example the "pointy stick" you've been using has "medium blocking ability". You definitely want something with blocking ability (preferably high), but this doesn't have to be a weapon. Arm guards can block, for example.

There are more elements to consider regarding speed, and combat in general, but you should be more than fine just following the "basics" as outlined in a needlessly wordy manner here for now.

[Selva [Hk]]

I got it, but i mean.... I was wandering in the forests right now, emergency jacket and wooden club, walking, no negative effects, bashing skill lvl 2, moving across the trees.

A small grey spider appeared and gave me some hits (i always get a jump scare when that sh* happens) i was trying to move towards it and, everytime i pressed the arrow key, another set of 3082083092 hits and so on untill i died.... Again, without EVEN give a hit to the spider.

It's basically like i am trying to fight The Flash every monster beyond zombie child...

[Selva [Hk]]

Well, tried to go with a more combat character and my M9 was much better handling the enemies, still, taking down ONE SINGLE zombie still seems a great risk and effort. On safemode i can manage to hit them a little, on SAFE MODE = can't hit....

[Neddy]

It is a great risk if you're wearing no protection and are wielding a sketchy weapon. Guns are far more powerful than melee, unless you have martial arts + maxxed out weapon skill and crazy gear/bionics. A typical early game involves struggling to find some guns and ammo so you can more reliably get more guns and ammo. It's a good idea to start by getting some decent protective clothes and a passable melee weapon. I don't want to say specifically where you can find what, because the game is a lot more interesting when you don't know these things, but you shouldn't be wandering through forests. You want to stay in wide open spaces so you can see enemies ( and avoid them), and to reveal more tiles on the overmap. Elevation also helps with the ladder. It just so happens that very tall places often contain binoculars as well.

[Selva [Hk]]

It seems that battling average to hard enemies on SAFE MODE is somewhat buggy, since it give no hits to them (can't say why) while with SAFE MODE OFF you can hit them but things are dangerously fast.

[Neddy]

Safe mode just stops and alerts you when you spot a hostile creature. It's useful when you're holding down a direction key when travelling on foot, but the game is turn-based, so idk how things could be dangerously fast.

[Selva [Hk]]

For example, if i engage a zombie on SAFE MODE and hit the arrow keys towards the zombie, i always get slashed untill i die, i can only have a chance when SAFE MODE is OFF, when the game seems to understand that IN THAT WAY i can hit the enemy.

[Neddy]

Believe me, safe mode has absolutely nothing to do with it, you just happened to see a pattern where it doesn't exist.
Every melee encounter in the early game is a struggle if you don't start with a melee-capable character. You're fighting off a zombie with a *pointy stick*.
Also, you want to use the numpad for movement, not the arrow keys. You can't move diagonally or wait in place with the arrow keys; the latter being a very important function. Unless an enemy has a ranged attack, you want it to come to you so you can get the first hit.
At this point I recommend you look up "worm girl cataclysm 101" playlist on youtube and watch that. If you don't have prior experience with traditional roguelikes, this is a rather cumbersome one to start with.

[Bloody Arlequin]

Originally posted by Selva Hk:

For example, if i engage a zombie on SAFE MODE and hit the arrow keys towards the zombie, i always get slashed untill i die, i can only have a chance when SAFE MODE is OFF, when the game seems to understand that IN THAT WAY i can hit the enemy.

I can confirm what Neddy says, SAFE Mode should just keep you from doing any action until you deactivate SAFE Mode for all zombies or press the key to ignore the zombie that just appeared. CDDA is a game where you spend A LOT of time pressing towards a direction or wayting while your car advances and without it you could accidentally get accidentally way closer than you intended to an enemy your character "technically" had seen seconds ago.

I'm not really sure what is happening in your case, you could try sending us a screenshot of a situation where it happened and you are about to die, we might be able to check the actions that just happened and know what is going on.

One thing I can tell you: You should NOT see your character receive multiple hits in just one turn vs regular zombies on the early game. If that's the case something is up. Broadly speaking a zombie should only have time toattack you once per turn and even once every 2/3 turns.

For what you have said my best guess is either:

A: you are running, deplete your stamina and then a zombie pops up and you try to attack him with 0 stamina, that's certain death in CDDA and looks like they are attacking you a lot because your turns go from lasting 100 action points to way more

B: You are facing electric enemies and get shock locked until you die (this is a classic, once in the midgame you have multiple options to become immune to electric damage, until them the only safe way is to kill them from a distance or not engage them at all)

C: You are ill: either you have radioactive poisoning, you are in pain because of scurvy or other illnesses or you are starving or too thirsty.

D: You are trying to attack the zombies with something absurdly bad and your attack turns take way more than 100 attack points. (In the item descriptions you can see how many action points a weapon takes. Standard is around 100, less is fast, more starts to be too slow very fast. CDDA will let you use everything as a weapon, even things that are not supposed to be and are really bad at it).

E: You are over-encumbered because you equipped a ton of stuff to your character, torso and arms and now your attacks take also a ton of action points.

I suggest you do the copy paste screenshot thing so we can figure out what you are doing wrong.

[Bloody Arlequin]

Oh and something very important, you talk about normal enemies like "rattle snakes" or "Fungus". I haven't really tried to take down a rattle snake in the middle game for a while so I don't remember how bad they were but:

CDDA UTTERLY SUCKS at conveying how dangerous enemies are, something might sound easy and completely ♥♥♥♥ you up, something may sound scary and be actually pretty easy. There are MANY enemies that your are just not supposed to battle in the early game, and many of those things are precisely the ones that you find in the forests and rural areas. Wasps will ♥♥♥♥ up most early game characters, Mooses will ♥♥♥♥ you up really fast unless you re in a car or you engage them at a distance, Giant Beetles and Giant Toads are almost immortal even to a lategame character to the points it's not even worth it to engage them at all.

If in doubt write the monster name on the search bar of this website:

https://cdda-guide.nornagon.net/monster

and check the danger number, you will slowly create a mental danger ladder for all enemies in the game which is one of the most important things in the game.

Don't abuse that website if you don't want to be needlessly spoiled.

[Selva [Hk]]

Originally posted by Bloody Arlequin:

Oh and something very important, you talk about normal enemies like "rattle snakes" or "Fungus". I haven't really tried to take down a rattle snake in the middle game for a while so I don't remember how bad they were but:

CDDA UTTERLY SUCKS at conveying how dangerous enemies are, something might sound easy and completely ♥♥♥♥ you up, something may sound scary and be actually pretty easy. There are MANY enemies that your are just not supposed to battle in the early game, and many of those things are precisely the ones that you find in the forests and rural areas. Wasps will ♥♥♥♥ up most early game characters, Mooses will ♥♥♥♥ you up really fast unless you re in a car or you engage them at a distance, Giant Beetles and Giant Toads are almost immortal even to a lategame character to the points it's not even worth it to engage them at all.

If in doubt write the monster name on the search bar of this website:

https://cdda-guide.nornagon.net/monster

and check the danger number, you will slowly create a mental danger ladder for all enemies in the game which is one of the most important things in the game.

Don't abuse that website if you don't want to be needlessly spoiled.

Thanks for the tips!

What is really annoying me is when in safe mode, i can't hit zombies with melee attacks, it's like i'm the only one to take hits, no matter how much i hit the movement keys towards the zombie. If i go SAFE MODE OFF i can hit them sometimes, but combat ends real fast.

[Bloody Arlequin]

Originally posted by Selva Hk:

Originally posted by Bloody Arlequin:

Oh and something very important, you talk about normal enemies like "rattle snakes" or "Fungus". I haven't really tried to take down a rattle snake in the middle game for a while so I don't remember how bad they were but:

CDDA UTTERLY SUCKS at conveying how dangerous enemies are, something might sound easy and completely ♥♥♥♥ you up, something may sound scary and be actually pretty easy. There are MANY enemies that your are just not supposed to battle in the early game, and many of those things are precisely the ones that you find in the forests and rural areas. Wasps will ♥♥♥♥ up most early game characters, Mooses will ♥♥♥♥ you up really fast unless you re in a car or you engage them at a distance, Giant Beetles and Giant Toads are almost immortal even to a lategame character to the points it's not even worth it to engage them at all.

If in doubt write the monster name on the search bar of this website:

https://cdda-guide.nornagon.net/monster

and check the danger number, you will slowly create a mental danger ladder for all enemies in the game which is one of the most important things in the game.

Don't abuse that website if you don't want to be needlessly spoiled.

Thanks for the tips!

What is really annoying me is when in safe mode, i can't hit zombies with melee attacks, it's like i'm the only one to take hits, no matter how much i hit the movement keys towards the zombie. If i go SAFE MODE OFF i can hit them sometimes, but combat ends real fast.

Nothing should happen when you find an enemy with SAFE MODE ON. Your game should block and show you a message saying "Spotted x enemy x tiles to x direction. Safe mode is ON. Press ! to turn it off or ' to ignore enemy."

If you press none of those two keys the game should not let you do anything to neither you or the enemy until you have pushed any of those 2 keys. Paste the screenshot for more guidance.

[Neddy]

Originally posted by Bloody Arlequin:

CDDA UTTERLY SUCKS at conveying how dangerous enemies are, something might sound easy and completely ♥♥♥♥ you up, something may sound scary and be actually pretty easy. There are MANY enemies that your are just not supposed to battle in the early game, and many of those things are precisely the ones that you find in the forests and rural areas. Wasps will ♥♥♥♥ up most early game characters, Mooses will ♥♥♥♥ you up really fast unless you re in a car or you engage them at a distance, Giant Beetles and Giant Toads are almost immortal even to a lategame character to the points it's not even worth it to engage them at all.

This is completely off-topic, but why would you expect to be able to just fight a MOOSE. They can ♥♥♥♥ up grizzly bears.

[Selva [Hk]]

Originally posted by Bloody Arlequin:

Originally posted by Selva Hk:

Thanks for the tips!

What is really annoying me is when in safe mode, i can't hit zombies with melee attacks, it's like i'm the only one to take hits, no matter how much i hit the movement keys towards the zombie. If i go SAFE MODE OFF i can hit them sometimes, but combat ends real fast.

Nothing should happen when you find an enemy with SAFE MODE ON. Your game should block and show you a message saying "Spotted x enemy x tiles to x direction. Safe mode is ON. Press ! to turn it off or ' to ignore enemy."

If you press none of those two keys the game should not let you do anything to neither you or the enemy until you have pushed any of those 2 keys. Paste the screenshot for more guidance.

It's true, but shouldn't i be able to hit the enemy while in SAFE MODE ? I mean:



CHARACTER
MELEE SKILL 01
WOODEN CLUB OR SIMILAR WEAPON.


SCENARIO 01

SAFE MODE ON
SPOTS AN ENEMY
SAFE MODE OFF
ENEMY SAW ME AND "COMES TO ME AS THE FLASH" (Zombies fly in this game)
SAFE MODE ON
PRESS NUMPAD TOWARDS THE ENEMY (NO EFFECT, START TO GET HITS)
PRESS NUMPAD TOWARDS THE ENEMY (NO EFFECT, KEEP GETTING HITS WITHOUT HITTING THEM BACK)PRESS NUMPAD TOWARDS THE ENEMY (NO EFFECT, KEEP GETTING HITS WITHOUT HITTING THEM BACK)
PRESS NUMPAD TOWARDS THE ENEMY (NO EFFECT, KEEP GETTING HITS WITHOUT HITTING THEM BACK)
DIE


SCENARIO 02


SAFE MODE ON
SPOTS AN ENEMY
SAFE MODE OFF
ENEMY SAW ME AND "COMES TO ME AS THE FLASH"
SAFE MODE ON
PRESS NUMPAD TOWARDS THE ENEMY (NO EFFECT, START TO GET HITS)
SAFE MODE OFF
WIDLY PRESS NUMPAD TOWARDS THE ENEMY (HIT ENEMY TAKING MULTIPLE HITS IN RETURN)
WIDLY PRESS NUMPAD TOWARDS THE ENEMY (HIT ENEMY TAKING MULTIPLE HITS IN RETURN)
WIDLY PRESS NUMPAD TOWARDS THE ENEMY (HIT ENEMY TAKING MULTIPLE HITS IN RETURN)
ZOMBIE KILL ME OR GET KILLED (IF I'M WITH A BUFFED MELEE CHARACTER)

[Neddy]

I think what he really wanted to see were screenshots, maybe video