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Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is different than most other roguelikes I've played. There's no obvious final objective, but there's an enormous degree of freedom to explore, and there is a LOT of stuff to find. Enemies range from trivial to monstrous, and your character doesn't really get enormously stronger as you survive - most of your advantages come from upgrading your equipment and making appropriate planning. The right preparations can turn a terrifyingly difficult foe into a trivial two-turn victory, and the wrong preparations can mean a two-turn defeat. At the same time, there's no imminent super threat forcing you to face those foes before you're ready. Unlike, say, the hunger clock in Crawl or the rebel fleet in FTL, in Cataclysm the only goal the game sets for your character' is to survive. If you choose to investigate the horrors of an abandoned laboratory dedicated to monstrously inhumane experiments, attempt to destroy the nest of a horde of mutants or plumb the depths of the earth for paranormal artifacts, you can do so at your own discretion. You can also gradually repair a wrecked automobile, outfit it with mad-max armor and enough solar panels to be completely self-sufficient, and just head out on the open road, driving into the sunset to see what the post-apocalypse has for you to see. You can construct a death fort surrounded with pits of spikes and land mines, adopt a pet dog, cat, or blob of goo. You can collect books, rare CDs, American flags, or any of the thousands of items left behind by the departed.

In short, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is sort of a roguelike take on Fallout. I'm quite new to the game myself, but it's heaps of fun, and since Solid Poopsnake was (is?) doing runs more targeted at folks who know the game, I am going to show off some stuff besides dying in a mall.


I'm going to die outside a mall.



Here's my worldgen options, I've left everything on default. The only things that really matter here are how enemies spawn - I've left them all on default. Static NPCs mean that NPCs will be generated at certain places like guarded refugee compounds and other scripted areas, but won't be randomly generated as wandering critters. Folks tell me that random NPCs are quite buggy, and I'd rather the run not end from something as uninteresting as a game crash.



Cataclysm is super moddable! I may experiment with mods at some point, but for this one I've enabled experimental extra Z-levels on certain buildings. If you don't speak nerd, that means the game generates buildings with more than a single story and basement layer. I also let the game generate a random name for the world.



hahaha perfect



Starting scenario affects in what condition you begin the game. Evacuee at the top there is the standard start: starting as a guy who made it to an evacuation shelter before realizing no help is going to arrive. You can begin as everything from a crippled hospital patient to a genetic experimental mutant. I choose to start as a guy who got bit by a zombie a few hours ago, and is going to die of zombie infection unless he finds medical treatment. Fun! This is (obviously) considered a disadvantageous start, so I get 4 extra points to assign to my guy.



Janitors suck at everything, aren't cyborgs, and have crap for starting items! Hooray! I decide to name him Joe Moppin'.



I go all-out on the traits. Green traits are beneficial and cost me points to take. Red ones are the reverse. Starting with the negatives, my traits are...
Forgetful Not only will Joe not start with any skills, he will forget his progress towards the next skill rank slightly faster than most characters. Fortunately each time he attains a rank in a skill, he can't forget below that point.
Heavy Sleeper If a zombie breaks down the door and Joe's asleep, Joe probably won't notice until the zombie is gnawing on his face.
High Thirst Joe needs more liquids than most people do. Probably all that spittin'.
Trigger Happy Joe has poor self-control in high stress situations. If given a gun, he may go full-auto when only a single shot was necessary.
Truth Teller Joe's momma didn't raise no liar. Joe won't manipulate NPCs easily.
Weak Stomach Joe never could hold his liquor. Illnesses and poisons make him vomit more readily than most folks do as well.

What a lot of bad stuff. What did we get for the good stuff?

Light Step You don't Janit very long without learning how to look before you stick your foot in a puddle of stank. Joe makes less noise when he walks and has a chance not to set off traps.
Night Vision Joe's run his share of night shifts. He sees one tile further than normal when in low-light conditions.
Quick Joe does everything 10% faster. Normally this means he gets 10 extra move points, but this 10% gets recalculated if Joe's under the effects of sedatives or stimulants or something.
Animal Empathy Last but not least, Animal Empathy means Joe isn't going to get attacked by random wildlife or pets gone feral. The zombies are going to be quite enough, Joe doesn't need to worry about wolves on top of them.

So we have a harsh start, a lousy profession, the maximum possible negatraits, not that many positive perks, and no skills at all. What did I spend all my points on?



Wham. Joe is above-average to excellent at all stats. In Cataclysm it is extremely difficult to raise your stats. 99% of the time the best you will be able to manage is a temporary boost with a drug of some sort or other, so I've had Joe go all-out here. He's strong as an ox, quick as a snake, smart as a whip, sharp as a knife. All that's left is to choose our starting location and then it's on to adventure!



I choose to start in the default location, a single-family home. I've not been to a bank or a furniture store in-game yet, so I'm not sure what they have. The other stores have readily lootable equipment of the appropriate sort, but houses can contain a grab-bag of all sorts of stuff. BEGIN!



Holy spit. So here we go! The message at the bottom is just letting us know that we've got about 12 hours to live unless we find the right medicine. All the stuff at the upper right is letting us know that all our body parts are in good condition, we're moving at 110 speed, we don't feel cold or hot, we're in a house, it's lightly snowing outside, etc etc. Oh and, uh, we have a friend!



This guy's faster, stronger, and more durable than a normal zombie. More importantly, he's three tiles away. There are three doors out of this room, a large window to the north, and a small one to the west. The windows' curtains are currently shut, so we can't see out, but also nobody can see in. Enemies in this game track you based on sight, sound, and scent, so staying in the dark and staying quiet can avoid a lot of attention. Zombies don't have precise hearing or a good sense of smell. In general if you can't see a zombie, he probably can't see you. Before I decide what to do with Tough Zombie here, I open the map to plan my move.



Straightforward, right? Oh, alright fine.



We're in a small town or suburb, each little chevron is a structure of some sort, with the tip indicating which way the building faces. Many buildings have back doors, but all buildings are guaranteed to have entrances on their front. There are many many many sorts of buildings, but I've marked the ones that are of immediate interest to Joe. Evac shelters are isolated buildings with poor loot but generally have few enemies near them, - they're a decent location for a base of operations. Gun stores are of course exciting, but have alarm systems that can summon robot police. Robot police aren't necessarily bad - they fight zombies as well as you, - but security alarms make a lot of racket and can attract an awful lot of zombies before the cops show up. Electronics stores and Hardware stores are good sources for tools and many useful items, but right now Joe has some higher priorities. Here's my list of stuff I hope to accomplish in the first day of Joe's post-apocalypse, in order of urgency.

1) Obtain medicine for imminent infection.
2) Obtain food and water
3) Escape to a stable location
4) Procure warmer clothes

All the light green chevrons on the map are ordinary houses, and any one of them might contain the medicine Joe needs to live, but they might not, and it's quite possible I burn the whole day and attract an enormous number of zombies without finding any medicine at all. The one place that is guaranteed to have what I need is that pharmacy to the south-west. That's where I decide to head. Still, before I go I'd like to check out this starting house. I'd like to grab a little food before I go, and the kitchen might have some. With that decided, I need to take care of Tough Zombie somehow. Since I started right next to a fire extinguisher, I have two options.



They're close. They both impose a penalty to hit, but Joe has awesome stats and zombies are easy to hit anyway. Joe's mop deals 1 less damage than the fire extinguisher, but it's also 10% faster, and it has the Parry special ability. That means Joe has a random chance to reduce incoming damage when wielding his mop. For some reason parrying doesn't completely deflect attacks, it merely lowers their damage value so your armor (if you have any) has a better shot at absorbing it all.



With my weapon chosen, the Tough Zombie will still mess me up in a straight fight, so here's my movement plan. Each tile in Cataclysm takes a certain amount of movement points to step on. Basic flat terrain costs 100 move points, or one turn for most characters. Most zombies are slow, and have less than 100 speed, but tough zombie is faster than most, so I decide to kite him onto this table. Clambering over furniture and other obstacles is slow, and if I play my cards right, I can get some free hits in on him with my mop before retreating.



I get in position before he finishes getting off the table he started on, but in the process I hear a noise. That "?" mark you see to the south means Joe heard something moving down there. Looks like I have more than just the one zombie to worry about. Hearing isn't precise, the "?" isn't always at the exact source of the sound, so the zombie might be in the room to the south, or it might not.



Tough zombie clambers onto the table and I get in a couple of cheap shots. I'm doing awful damage - this mop sucks, and tough zombie has some tough skin. Our fight is noisy though, and we have alerted whatever was moving around to the south. "Whump" means the zombie (which is almost certainly what it is), is banging ineffectually on a wall. Crash, Clang, and other such sounds indicate different surfaces.



I back up to the left, and the zombie follows me, still clambering ineffectually across the table. I'm in a bit of a pickle though, if I take my free shots on him this round, then I won't have any easy way to retreat next round, so I decide to take the indicated route. It seems silly to step right next to him, but I know he won't get an attack off next turn, which lets me retreat around back of the large dining room table to continue the fight. If all goes well, I can keep circling the room until he's dead.



A...All doesn't go well! Time to scram!



I decide to book it to the south, forcing the zombies to scramble over the table to get to me. Zombies are stupid and always take the most direct route to you, even if it would be faster to go around. The next room is disappointing. No back exits, and the objects on the floor are nothing I can make immediate use of in this situation. I decide to open the window and escape outside.



My stats are a little down, so I open the character screen to have a look at them. There's a lot of info here, but the important part is yes, I have an infected headwound. That's what's causing my lowered stats for the moment.



Craaaaaaaaap. Opening the window reveals a thick bank of smoke, which means the source of all that whumping was a Smoker zombie. Smokers are surrounded by a cloud of choking smoke, which Joe is NOT equipped to deal with at the moment. Venturing into that smoke would result in Joe coughing a lot, reducing his speed, making lots of noise, attracting more zombies, and giving the smoker zombie a lot of free hits as he slowly clambers out the window. Slow terrain hurts me as much as it hurts the zombies after all. Going out the window is a bust, and the tough zombie is too close for me to escape through the north again before he arrives. I decide to lure him onto the sofa there to slow him up before scooting out the top.



Augh! I made a big mistakes here. First is I didn't check, but it turns out sofas are MUCH less awkward to climb over than tables and chairs are, so as a result the tough zombie got a hit off on me. That message "It feels really deep" means that that wound is ALSO infected. Joe now needs to find twice as much medicine to live as he used to. Also all that pain is going to slow Joe down, making it easier for him to take more damage.



You don't often die in a single hit in Cataclysm, but unlike many games where the only hit point that matters is the last one, taking damage DOES lower your abilities significantly. Attrition is a real danger.

Well. I can't see any good escape here. I have no choice but to just run up the west of the room, taking hits as I go.





Ow ow ow ow ow. Joe's mop bravely sacrifices itself for its master. Fortunately the mop still has quite a few good hits left on it before it breaks.



RUN YOU FOOL



Outside at last! Aaaand there's no zombies out here. Crud, I should have just run for the door right at the beginning. Well, there was no way to know. Time to book it towards that pharmacy before the zombies manage to batter the door down. The smoker zombie is slow so I'm not worried about it catching up to me.



As I go, I spot something nice through the window. This bag is an article of clothing that has a storage value of 38. In Cataclysm, your inventory doesn't reside in an abstract space. If you want to carry more stuff, you need to wear clothes with pockets, backpacks, briefcases, things like that. The weapon you're wielding doesn't take up any volume in your inventory, since you're carrying it in your hands. I'll go into the details more when we have more stuff to carry, but for now, I want that bag.



Got it! The rest of the items in this room look like rubbish. There's a new sort of zombie here.



Ugh. I hate shriekers. They are slow, weak, fragile, and their only special ability is they make an appalling racket, attracting every dang zombie for miles. This one shrieks instantly, so I grab the bag, slam the door, and head south.



Food! I steal all the stuff, but most important is the aluminum can of energy cola. Stimulants increase your speed, so look out for them!



I head out the kitchen window and spot yet another new zombie type. Spitters can huck acid all over the floor that burns your legs and destroys your shoes. Fortunately we're well out of range, faster than it, and the pharmacy is the other way.



Good lord look at all this awful stuff. Enemies in the list with an ! before their name have noticed us, so even though the place is CRAWLING with zombies, most of the really dangerous ones haven't spotted Joe yet. I'm right next to the pharmacy. No back door (of course) so I head around south, and as I do so...



Oh spit. I've heard a little about The Fungus, but I don't actually know much about it personally. I know it's incredibly dangerous, can saddle you with a life-ending spore infestation, spreads like an oil slick, and is currently in the middle of a hilarious brawl with a (former) elementary school class.



They tear each other to bits as I round the pharmacy corner. A couple ordinary zombies spot me, but they're too far away and slow to be a threat yet. Wait... through the window!



There! That's what Joe needs! If that first-aid-kit has got two charges in it, that's all Joe needs to live, and I can head for the hills, leaving this nightmarish place behind.



Man, looks like another giant fungal / zombie brawl to the south-west. Hmm? I don't know that tile.





The brawl continues and I make it to the first aid. It has two charges! Yes! I zoom out the door just in the nick of time before the two zombies that spotted me reach it.



RUN FORREST RUN



Here's the map from before. I decide to head north. There's a cluster of houses which tend to be more sparsely populated with zombies than the shops areas, and north from there is a decent stretch of road and an evac shelter. The shelter is my goal. It'll be isolated, I can apply my first-aid in peace, and hunker down until nightfall eating my stolen food and dismantling the shelter furniture for raw materials to start crafting myself some better junk. I make it to the edge of town, and then off in the distance I spy...



A moose. Forget zombies, forget fungaloids, forget police robots. This is the most deadly creature in the far states. Cataclysm moose are Boatmurdered Elephants with antlers instead of tusks. If Joe was any other character, the run would end the instant this moose spotted him, but fortunately, Joe has the Animal Empathy perk. He shouldn't have to worry. Let's see what else I have to worry about.



Ok, it's actually not that bad. There's some sort of collapsed military roadblock on the road to the evac shelter, with zombie soldiers and stuff manning it. Zombie soldiers sound bad, but they're just former soldiers who became ordinary zombies. They're still wearing the remains of their army gear, so they're well armored, but they're slow, and Joe isn't planning on fighting right now anyway. There's zombies due north and north-west, but north-east is only animals so Joe will just curve to the east, head around the zombies, and head for the evac shelter once the zombies are out of sight. They won't spot him at this distance.



Just to be safe, I drink my energy cola to make sure Joe has the burst of speed he needs to lose any stragglers still trailing him.



The stimulants counteract the pain of his wounds and infection, pushing Joe back up to his normal speed. Alright! I set off across the field. Just a few more steps and I'm home fre



Wait wha



No! No I have animal empa



MOOOOOOOOOSE