Challenge-Really Bad Day

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

This guide will explain how to survive in one of the harshest conditions in the game. We artificially make game A LOT harder and have fun with it!

World Gen Options

One of the most important options is the “Item Spawn scaling factor”. Set it to minimum (0.01). Because the default setting is 1.0, items will be ONE HUNDRED times rarer than normal. This means that you will find very few to no items spawned at the start of the game. Your main source of items will be killed critters, cars, and furniture and appliances in buildings. You will have to work hard for these items!

The next option to change is the “Initial season”. Set it to winter. You will have to act fast and find many clothes to keep you warm. Remember, that most of these clothes you will get from killed zombies, not from some fancy clothing shop or the first house you encounter!

Set “Wander spawns” to True to emulate zombie hordes, also making traps necessary.

To make things even harder and interesting, set the “Surrounded start” option to True.

Character Creation

First of all select the scenario “Challenge - Really Bad Day”. As the description says, you start off drunk, depressed, infected, surrounded by fire, naked and sick with the flu. These are really harsh conditions – and this is exactly what we need. We get 10 points for this scenario.

Switch straight to Profession tab and select “Tweaker”. This will give our character a really annoying feature – amphetamine withdrawal. We get 2 points for this profession.

Choose positive and negative traits as you like, but I personally prefer taking “Night vision” to see 2 squares instead of one (must-have in our game-setting), “Quick” to be able to run away from most of the enemies – 110 speed in ideal circumstances versus 100 speed of ordinary zombies (must-have for early game) – and “Fleet-footed” (not necessary, but neat addition).

Take no skills – you can gain all of them during game, and none are needed right from the start. Instead put all remaining points into stats. You can read about them in any character building guide, so I leave them all up to you.

Choose starting location as “House” for role-playing reasons – let’s suppose you were a meth junkie left at home when cataclysm struck.

Summary:

At the start of the game there are almost no items in the world. It is winter and you are almost naked and have no possessions. You are sick with the flu, and random part of your body is infected. You are depressed and on amphetamine withdrawal. Your starting place is burning rapidly.

Surviving

As you have no clothes on you at the beginning, you should find some as fast as can, or you will just freeze to death. Even having a single chilly part of your body will grant you penalties, and these penalties only grow greater as time passes! You should stick to any intact car (see below for more information) for warming yourself if you can’t find clothes.

Flu will get you penalties to stats. You will likely be cured by your own body to the end of day two – just be sure to drink liquids (preferably clean water) and don’t get in the rain or snow without proper clothes.

Your body can also cure infections, but it has a fairly low chance. If it ain’t happening in a day, you should find some medicine (e.g. first aid kit, found in ambulance cars for example) disassemble it, and apply the disinfectant on the deep wound part. But remember though that if it becomes infected, you need Antibiotics (found in pharmacies) which won't work instantly, instead you'll gradually recover from infection, if you take one every 12 hours.

Amphetamine withdrawal is the Real Bad Thing. An hour or so after you start your game you will begin receive a plethora of bad effects. Most important of them are gigantic decline in speed (down to 25) and morale. So when these effects start to show, you’d better be driving away in your car (see below for more information).

One more thing worth mentioning is a constant pain. You will get tired real soon and will not be able to sleep because of this pain for all the time of withdrawal.

You should escape your burning house as fast as you can – roof will collapse soon and bury you; you can accidentally inhale smoke – and this is not good; you can fry yourself near fire.

There are two variants of what to do after going out: spend some time with your starting NPC or rush to the car. 1) Your starting NPC will try to escape burning house and fight all zombies he will encounter. If you have some time, wait when one of them zombies die by the hand of NPC and carefully approach his corpse to loot it. Do it only if there are valuable items on it – clothing, items with storage, drinks or food – in this order. At this time you will find little benefit from any weapon you might find, so leave it for now. You can also speak with your NPC and try to convince him to give you some equipment.

2) If you couldn’t find NPC on your way out, don’t waste your time on searching him. Go straight to the nearby car.

Your best bet now is probably finding a drivable car. There are many benefits of using a car at this time: 1) You can safely drive away from zombies’ horde that surrounded your starting house and swarming the neighborhood. There is very small chance that you could do it on foot and survive. 2) It seems that every car in the game is equipped with some sort of climate control, so you won’t freeze to death while you are in car, the windshield is intact and the doors are closed – even in nonworking car. 3) Even after you’ll begin to suffer from amphetamine withdrawal and your speed will drop to 25, this will not have an effect on car’s speed. So you can travel large distances with easy even on withdrawal. 4) Car’s defense is better than your own – at this time you likely have no defense at all. 5) At this time car is your only reliable weapon – just ram all the enemies to death. Keep in mind that killing NPC with your car doesn’t count on “Killed innocent” negative morale modifier – even if they were peaceful towards you.

To ensure that this car could be your working life-saving shelter, come close to the car, press “e” and choose direction. What you should pay attention to: 1) For gasoline- and diesel powered cars: at least 2% of fuel – or you wouldn’t be able to drive far enough; 2) For all cars: at least 2% of batteries; 3) Car’s engine is colored and not in grey – so you can actually control this car. The more greenish it will be, the higher speed you can achieve with this car; 4) Car’s controls are colored and not in grey – see above; 5) “Wheels” section saying “Enough” – see above; 6) Windshield is intact: not necessarily, but can make your life at early moments MUCH easier – with broken windshield you won’t be comfortable in car. Also check the doors that they are closable – for the same reason; 7) Seatbelt is intact: not necessarily, but at this period of game with no skills of driving you are very likely to ram everything in your way. Seatbelt will prevent you from flying through the windshield in this case.

Paragraphs 3 through 7 you can inspect from afar – by pointing your mouse over the car. Also be wary that in some cars you won’t be able to find keys, so you can’t start its engine. So you should go and search for other cars.

You can call yourself lucky if working car is staying somewhere next to your house. With your newly acquired car you can kill you starting NPC. Yes, harsh times require harsh methods. There is good strategy – talk to every NPC you encounter and try to barter with him. After that you can drive through him for loot. NPCs usually have good collection of clothing, food or drinks and other valuable things. So killing them for loot is usually a good idea.

Your next strategy is to drive away from the town and to find a solitary place with couple of zombies in the vicinity. You should kill them by ramming – just try not to damage too hard vital parts of your vehicle (engine, controls, fuel tank, windshield etc). Also try not to drive your wheels over the loot – this action damages and destroys it. Keep in mind that you can – and should – take loot without exiting you car. Just drive over the loot (not by wheels!), stop your car, let go the controls, press “e” in the direction of loot, then select “pick up items on the ground”.

Your global tasks at this moment are: 1) Dress yourself up so you don’t freeze; 2) Find backpacks to store your loot; 3) Find food and clean water or other drinks to quench thirst; 4) Find some containers for water so you can boil (e.g. tin cans) dirty water and store (e.g. plastic bottles) clean water in. If you find coffeemaker (always can be found in coffee shops) or some other tool to boil water AND batteries for it or water purification tablets – then you are truly lucky.

Biggest problem now is your amphetamine withdrawal. It can last up to three days – and you can’t walk around safely ALL THESE DAYS. With your speed 25 every critter will make many-many movements when you make only one. So sit inside your car for most of the time until withdrawal will begin to cancel.

Most likely you will not find enough food and water to deal with your hunger and thirst by the time withdrawal will end. So you will have stoically endure it. Of course you can always drink from the toilets in the towns or from the river. Just don’t forget about your snail-like speed of 25 and that you’ll get poisoning effect and probably parasites. And there is a chance of throwing up.