Guide: Broken Cyborg

Guide created using an unknown version of Cataclysm DDA.
The information present here might not apply to the current version of CDDA.

The Broken Cyborg start (which is unrelated to the Broken cyborg monster) is one of the most challenging starting professions. While it may be less deadly within the first 48hrs than a Really Bad Day character, your body is a ticking time bomb. Without proper intervention, your bad bionics will eventually kill you.

Location

Broken Cyborgs can start in:

• Locked Labs
• The Forest
• Hospitals

For more information on escaping locked labs see Lab challenge Guide.

Bionics

You get all of the bad bionics in the game, as well as a few helpful ones.

Really Bad

• Acidic Discharge Causes frequent minor damage and pain that interrupts sleep. Acidic Discharge may look relatively similar to electrical discharge, however when mixed with leaky bionic it is deadly.
• Leaky Bionic This will eventually make your health so bad that you can't heal from sleep at all. In addition, you will frequently catch colds and flu's until you remove this bionic.
• Itchy Metal Thing Doesn't cause half as much damage as Acidic Discharge but still causes a small amount. More importantly, it will cause you to stop whatever you are doing when it procs, including reading, crafting, and trying to get to sleep.

Bad

These bionics are bad, but many turn out to be less bad than they sound. Taking Quick at character creation will negate most of the effects of pain caused by bad bionics. Encumbrance is bad, but can be mostly offset by higher stats, higher skills, and your bionic armor.

• Electrical Discharge Causes Minor Pain.
• Electrical Drain Power Drain
• Noisemaker Interrupts sleep unless you wear appropriate head gear.
• Bionic Nostril Encumbrance Only
• Self-Locking Thumbs Encumbrance Only
• Motor Control Overstimulator Essentially gives a chance to lose moves, similar to being downed by a martial arts attack. Not as bad as it sounds.
• Bionic Short Circuit Causes str and dex debuff. Can be a real problem when it stacks with Bionic Visual Impairment, if you are relying on a high strength weapon such as a reflex recurve bow.
• Bionic-Induced Deformity Being scary will help keep NPCs from attacking you, but you are very unlikely to make any friends.
• Voice Remodulator Decreases your chance to persuade, but increases your chance to intimidate and lie.
• Bionic Visual Impairment Encumbrance Only
• Visual Disruptor Causes a minor debuff of stats about half of the time. This doesn't cause Hallucinations, and only causes the last stage of Hallucinating
• Wire-Induced Stiffness Lots of Encumbrance. Makes aiming a ranged weapon more difficult. Dodge skills can offset torso encumbrance. It will definitely hold you back in combat.
• Power Overload Gives a hidden -3 to Str when power is over 75%.
• Squeaky Ankles Doubles the amount of noise you make from walking. Slightly worse than being clumsy but does not stack. Having light step negates the effect entirely.
• Endocrine Enervator More sleep might actually help you heal more.

See Bionics#Malfunctioning_bionics for descriptions.

Armor

Armor on all parts of your body, make you invulnerable to damage from some monsters. Moose may tear your clothes, zombies may grab you, but chances are they won't do much harm to your body.

• Alloy Plating - Head
• Alloy Plating - Torso
• Alloy Plating - Arms
• Alloy Plating - Legs
• Protective Lenses

Other Bionics

These bionics are the good ones you start with, keep these ones, though Joint Torsion Ratchet may encourage the effects of Power Overload until you remove that.

• Fingertip Razors
• Power Storage
• Joint Torsion Ratchet

Removing Bionics

Removing Bionics requires very high skill levels to have a good chance of success. You can save a small amount of time grinding low level skills, but books are going to be needed to give you enough skill. However, the longer you spend searching for and reading books the lower your health stat will get.

• Hoard Medical Supplies Having a large stock of medical supplies can translate directly into more attempts to remove those pesky bionics. Just be sure to leave first aid kits for the actual removal. You can find abundant bandages, distilled alcohol, and hydrogen peroxide in labs. You can also craft additional medical supplies. For instance with enough cooking skill you could distill alcohol.
• Avoid injury After a few weeks it will be hard to heal from sleep. As a result any damage you take can eat into your limited supply of medical supplies.
• Vitamins and healthy food will improve your health, but not likely enough to stop your health from slowly dropping.
• Flu Shot these can buy you a noticeable amount of time.
• Int raising drugs (probably goes without saying) a number of drugs will raise your int giving you a better chance of successful removal.
• Repair Nanobots Free healing for just walking around. If you can find one of these you are are one lucky cyborg.
• Leukocyte Breeder System Cancels out with Leaky Bionic.
• Mutagen some mutations may help or negate your plummeting health and hp, however keep in mind that Mutagen is bad for your health.

At some point you have to take the risk, or die trying. Your chance of failure is unlikely to go below 30% before you have to take the risk. You need to remove at least Acidic Discharge. Removing Leaky Bionic won't have any immediate effect. It could be days or weeks later before you are healing normally from sleep. If you can also remove Itchy Metal Thing then you won't take any more damage just for existing. Since a single removal won't kill you if you are close to full health you can continue removing bionics until one fails at which point you will need all those medical supplies. If you can remove at least the three really bad bionics before you fail, it's time to celebrate.

Achievement Unlocked

Nothing Official, but you have to remove all of the undesirable bionics. (It's up to you, if you want to keep your creepy robot voice, etc.)