Newbie asking for a little Perspective

[Trans Football]

Hey all,

finally got around to playing this game. Was really enjoying the first two areas a lot! Now i'm at the Sewer Wastes and having a bit of trouble. It seems hard to progress often as there's lots of enemies in a room seemingly at random sometimes (like 5 or 6 scavengers). I think I finally found a way to another area but I'm practically at zero karma and it's a bit far from my save, I keep dying right before and besides I don't have enough food to save there let alone get more from any close room.

Is the game supposed to ramp up in difficulty by here? The first two areas were fun but tense, but now it's starting to pile on in stress. I can't imagine having to leave my hole several times over to get food when I'm impeded by so much, it seems quite difficult. A lot of times I feel like the only thing I can do is wait.

*hunter difficulty
**WOOPS. Monk difficulty. I assumed wrongly, my bad

[Strangle McDangle]

The game gets insanely difficult very quickly. A couple pointers:

1 - Don't play the hunter. After almost 100 hours I can't even handle hunter difficulty. Play Monk, or if you have to, play Scavenger. Don't be afraid to start out as easy as possible until you're more comfortable with the controls and game mechanics.

2 - If you have the DLC, enable the Remix, and turn on a bunch of the 'easier' settings as well. Trust me, even with all of the assists on full, playing on Monk, it's still insanely hard for a beginner.

3 - Give pearls to scavengers and they will hate you less, though on hunter mode I think they will always hate you.

4 - Spend a couple of hours just practicing combat and killing things. Especially with hunter, you need to be adept at killing lizards and the like. It's better to just spend some time fighting them without trying to progress at all until you're good at it.

5 - Again, if you have the DLC, try playing some of the challenges as they put you in fairly contrived combat situations which will let you practice lots and lots of fights repeatedly.

6 - Don't be afraid to look up guides and the like. Especially the lengthy community movement techniques doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o3gouaiHsHT2H9d2HD5gDhgmoWwoL94gSFt7Ka1-vDk/edit?usp=sharing

7 - There is a "main quest" to speak of, but typically you'll probably just want to explore, fill out the map, learn the lay of the land and such. If you want to follow the mainline progression, then follow the directions of your little yellow wormy fellow. I won't spoil it further as there is tons of hints about this online.

8 - Creatures are not restricted to the rooms they spawn in, so it can be a little RNG whether a given room is full of beasts or not. Usually you can clear the way with cherry bomb plants, rocks, spears, or just baiting them to chase you and then going past them either using the environment, or baiting them into tunnels and then passing them while they come through.

[White Rider]

Originally posted by Strangle McDangle:

The game gets insanely difficult very quickly. A couple pointers:

1 - I second this. Hunter is strong and quick, but his enemy spawns are tough and the looming countdown you have on your head is something that almost requires significant planning of the route you plan to take in order to complete the game before permadeath.

2 - Most of the assists added in remix are fairly minor. potentially personal preference so no comment here.

3 - Trading with scavs is always a good idea. Hunter DOES start with negative reputation with scavs, but you can raise it. They will be aggressive until you get back to neutral rep with them so trading isn't possible right away, but you can assist them in fighting other predators and they will appreciate the help. From there you can trade with them as normal. The only slugcat that cannot raise rep with scavs is the Artificer.

4 - If you are dead set on doing a Hunter run, then I'd do this too. practice fighting, practice movement, try to do some insane ♥♥♥♥ and get good at it. Sandbox mode is good for this. But again, I'd recommend leaving Hunter until you really know what you are doing. His mode is no joke.

5 - I've not even touched the challenges yet myself, but this might be a good idea.

6 - Handy link. I'd also recommend the discord. people are helpful. and yeah, that movement doc has tonnes of stuff. the movement is extremely deep.

[Clail]

Playing hunter for your first playthrough is probably not the best choice. I believe there is a segment of Garbage Wastes that is significantly more active with hostiles for the hunter than it is for the other slugcats for plot reasons which might be where you are stuck at.

If scavengers are giving you a hard time, try to find a way to make friends with them. A lot of creatures can be made friendly.

[Honkiewithaboomstick]

Here's my tips

1- start on Survivor. Hunter is the "hard mode" of this game. Dont play on monk he's actually harder than survivor due to being weaker. and is kind of lame Or go in the remix settings and just make hunters cycles infinite.
Hunter has turbo cancer so he actually functions as kind of like a time attack mode where you die in 20 days, but you can turn that off if the remix settings by setting both of those (hunter cycles) to 9999 Every slugcat will count your days up as in: how many days youve survived
Hunters counts down because he only has so many days to live. but like I said you can effectively disable his time limit to just explore.
If you can get good at the combat you'll eventually learn its actually easier to play with the slugcats that can eat meat: he is one of them. because food is more common.
But for now I'd probably advise against hunter or any of the combat oriented slugcats and starting out for a first playhtrough I'd always go survivor just to learn mechanics

2- That room was most likely a scavenger toll. you can give them little pearls at these tolls to pass. But if it wasn't a toll (you'll know when you see one) and you see a group of them in the wild; eihter stay out of sight or crouch down and use down+shift to drop all your spears so you don't appear a threat. These guys are absolute ♥♥♥♥♥ and will basically skewer you on sight unless you give them a bunch of pearls and gain good reputation with them. They will warn you to back off though and raise their spear at you for a little bit before chucking it.
DO NOT PISS THEM OFF
If you kill enough of them, they will become extremely aggressive and send kill squads after you. Its always best to make friends with these guys unless you've got like 100+hrs and are good at the combat.

3- enable some remix settings. mainly the one that removes swim boost penalty and make cycles a little bit longer. I keep it on 2.0 making every day around 15 to 30 minutes giving you enough time to gather food
Also there's a setting that effects the slowdown ratio. its on 1.0 by default (base speed) (it goes up, so setting it to 2.0 makes the game run at 50% speed) I like to keep this between 1.15 and 1.2 as it slows down the game just enough and REALLY helps with learning some of the movement and generally reacting to stuff. it also just makes it feel more smooth and fluid which you wouldn't think slowing the game down would do that but you'll understand what I mean.

4 download omnithrow. and enable it. it lets you throw spears up and down, and diagonally. This is absolutely HUGE as far as QOL makes the combat way less unfair

5 Also download simplified movement it makes all of the more challenging movement mechanics MUCH MUCH easier to perform