Guide: Nudist Challenge

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If you're perhaps reasonably good at surviving by now, and looking for a challenge, there are plenty of ways you can make the game more difficult. Many of them can be quite amusing as well. Aside from a given scenario or taking Fun traits, you can also restrict how you play that character.

For this particular gameplay restriction, it's as simple as tossing aside all of your clothes. No you dunce, your character's clothing, not actually yours. Now, how many different ways is this going to suck?

• The big one is volume. I did say ALL clothing, and that includes your precious backpack. This has the largest effect on your survival habits, as you'll normally be restricted to whatever you're wielding, plus any items that don't take up space. Don't ask where you're storing those things. The good news is this can be mitigated if you grab a shopping cart or other vehicle, unless you'd consider it cheating.

• The cold. At least in spring, this isn't as lethal as you'd think. It takes a while to get to the point of frostbite, and merely being chilly doesn't impair you that much. If you're staying in town, darting from house to house can reduce how quickly you cool off.

• Lack of footwear may cause you problems, slowing down your movement. This can be pretty much negated if you take the normally-worthless Tough Feet trait. Thankfully it seems loose broken glass and scrap metal aren't dangerous, but you'll still want to avoid wading in rubble.

• Last but not least, your utter lack of armor. This will make the dodge skill pretty much essential, eventually making it a non-issue. Avoiding anything with a gun is sound advice in general, as turrets will normally ruin your shit even if you're wearing clothing, or most types of armor for that matter.

Character creation

And now we get to Step Zero, the part that comes before we even start stripping. Playing this way makes a lot of normally useful strategies for a good character impractical or worse, conversely it can make bad ideas more practical.

One thing to consider first is that this challenge is far better suited for a melee-focused character, as counter-intuitive as it may seem to charge zombies skyclad. Ammo tends to take up precious volume that you can't afford to carry anymore. While the resulting encumbrance and speed penalties aren't that bad for someone who prefers keeping their distance, you won't be able to carry much ammunition. The best ways around this are to wield stackable weapons or ammo you intend to throw, or to carry a gun with high enough capacity that reloading isn't an issue.

Scenario

Your choice of starter scenario usually won't hinder you as much as the challenge itself will, though a few choices can make things far more Fun, or potentially make things easier. Any challenge that tacks on an addiction will be hard to handle, as carrying around drugs will be hard unless it's something that won't add volume. This is one of the few situations where a meth addiction is less annoying than alcoholism.

The Experiment scenario is another choice that might be useful, as many of the mutant traits suit a melee-focused killing machine, and many of the disadvantageous traits available via that scenario interfere with clothing anyway. The biggest issue with this scenario is starting in the forest, which might seriously hinder the initial fight to stay warm.

Pick the Ambushed or Sheltered scenarios at your peril. Starting in winter will be infinitely more Fun than a spring start. The Burning Building scenario might seem like a better idea on paper, but you can expect it to be rather Fun as well.

Stats

Dexterity is the big stat to pay attention to, as dodgingoffense is your best defense. Strength is obviously a useful trait if you intend to clobber things, while perception will only be essential if you intend to try a ranged character despite the volume issues. Since a couple normally-essential skills will be useless to you, intelligence is also less vital, but still useful.

Traits

Tough Feet is the big trait to pick, to make running around barefoot tolerable. Outdoorsman will help mitigate the unavoidable issue of getting rained on. Anything to enhance speed, stealth, etc will also help with survival. Light Eater is also good for cutting down on how often you need to eat, as not being able to carry supplies will increase your dependance on stashed food. Pack Mule is obviously a useless trait in this case. Disorganized is effectively free points, which you might consider cheating.

If you picked the Experiment scenario, even more options open up here. Padded Feet is your go-to trait instead of Tough Feet, having the same point cost yet also boosting your speed. The numerous mutations that interfere with clothing are basically free points, so long as they don't add any more severe side effects. Hooves are another alternative to Padded Feet that trade the speed bonus for a good kick plus some defense, all while giving you 4 points. Toe Talons and Fangs can make any melee combat encounter much, much easier.

Profession

A profession that gives you a decent amount of skills relative to point cost will certainly help, depending on how hard you min-maxed during trait selection. Your starting items aren't relevant, as you'll be ditching it all soon enough. As mentioned above, any profession with an addiction will be rather hard to manage, as carrying enough of normally-volumeless drug will eventually add up.

Skills

Dodge. That will likely be your priority. Investing in melee is obviously good, but thankfully you won't have torso encumbrance lowering your effective skill. If you do decide to try a ranged character, throwing is a good bet, or you can see how well a naked machinegunner will fare.

As for non-combat skills, how important they are depends a lot on how well you can juggle your weapon with the various items needed for crafting. First aid is a good priority skill, as an incomplete stack of bandages or first aid kits won't take up volume.

Tailoring, for obvious reasons, is right out.

Character overview and final decisions

Now all that's left is your character's name and starting location. If you went with the default of evacuee, the standard shelter is okay enough, but a store with decent weapons might help survive whatever you'll run into initially. If you picked a more restrictive scenario, make the most out of whatever you're allowed to pick. Anyplace indoors is marginally better than an outdoor setting, for example.

The First Day or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Frostbite

Now that you've actually entered play, the first step is to dump your gear. Keep ahold of any inventory items with zero volume, such as lighters or a pocket knife. Feel free to throw your clothes at any nearby enemies (or unwitting NPCs) if you're feeling extra savage today.

Now comes the normal first step of any adventure. Arm up with whatever's on hand, then survey your immediate area. If you started in ye olde evac shelter, the basement is your obvious first place to search, but if you find anything good you'll likely need to haul it upstairs item-by-item. As for weaponry, the humble pointy stick or some other spear is useful for its cooking ability as well as being a weapon, as are any other improvised weapons that double as tools.

If you happened to start with an NPC on hand, keep a close eye on them. Personal property is an alien concept to these idiots, and they will happily grab any useful crap you try to stash in plain sight. When you can't carry the essentials, this is an obvious problem. The evac shelter's basement should be a safe place to stow your stuff. Simply murdering them is also an option, if you have a fast weapon and the right skills. Beware though, trying this on a survivor with a gun is a good way to level up your dying skill.

What to do next depends on the buildings or other resources in sight, and whether any dangerous enemies are lurking nearby. Plan you moves carefully, as you'll be battling the weather every step of the way. Stay indoors whenever it's practical to do, leapfrogging from house to house when you can. Make note of nearby places with stocks of food and drink, so you know where to go when you're getting hungry or thirsty. Eventually you'll want to commandeer a bed, and be sure you have plenty of blankets to avoid hypothermia. Try to remember that dropping them where you intend to sleep is good enough, you don't need to break conduct and wear them.

Yarr, we be in it for the booty, cap'n!

Now to go into what items you'll find useful for survival. Unless you resort to lugging around a shopping cart, what's useful to the common survivor isn't always what's useful to a naked lunatic.

Food and water

Carrying a lot of food isn't practical, but there are three ways around this. The simplest is to raid houses and shops while on the move, simply eating whatever's on hand when you get hungry. Map notes are good for keeping track of cached supplies. Option two is to drag a shopping cart or wheelbarrow around, making volume a non-issue. Both these solutions make grocery stores a great target. Option three is to find any food you can carry without adding volume. Anything in a can or other rigid container is right out. Most junk food in plastic bags, or better yet jerky, can be carried in limited quantities if you avoid taking a full stack.

Getting a drink is another story. Each drink of water is a full unit of volume, making it hard to deal with thirst. Wine is a decent thirst-quencher that stacks, but there aren't any drink containers with zero volume. The only practical option is preparing a large container of clean water and either stashing it, or dragging it along in a vehicle.

Meds and drugs

Bandages and first aid kits are still as useful as always, simply because you can carry a partial stack of them without any volume issues. Most other drugs work the same way, including the Fun ones.

Tools and materials

The basic essentials are exceedingly difficult to keep on hand without any pockets. Keeping them stashed at your base, or at various safehouses, is a sound investment. Thankfully the humble [[pocket knife] and lighter take up zero volume, and you can further enhance your utility by making your weapon of choice a commonly-used tool. However, the best solution is to simply dump all the tools you need in the holy grail of this challenge, the...

Shopping cart!

Or a wheelbarrow. That works even better, more storage space. This takes the sting out of the challenge's biggest drawback, letting you haul tools and supplies around on demand. It's up to you to decide if this counts as cheating.

Bionics

Bionics are always a nice thing to have, even moreso in this challenge. Utility bionics like the Integrated Toolset or Electropick are essentially tools that don't take up volume you don't have. The Internal Storage CBM might be cheating though, even if it's only 8 space.

Weather

To make your job easier, you can set the worldgen options to start out in the summer. If it's your first time doing the challenge, it is a good idea to do so.

Blankets

If you find yourself freezing with no good way to heat up, you can make a big pile of warm clothing and blankets on some hard ground (pavement, floor, dirt - anything uncomfortable) and attempt to sleep. This will quickly (30 minutes) heat you up to comfortable temperature without risking choking on smoke or forcing you to burn a forest. Insomniac trait will prevent you from getting too comfortable and actually falling asleep, unless you're tired.

Rain

As all the clothing you're wearing is water-friendly, rain will cause a morale bonus instead of penalty here. You can boost it a bit more by taking the Slimy trait. Morale bonus is dependent on ambient temperature, so it will be bigger in the summer. You can also take a swim in the pool for a quick bonus if it's not raining right now. In the summer, the bonus can easily reach 50 points, replacing you the mp3 player you can't carry.

Killing things

Your privacy will be invaded quite a lot, so fending off the creepers is an important skill every nudist needs to learn. Lack of armor isn't much different from having very weak armor, but lack of warmth can be much more dangerous. Lack of environmental protection turn many annoyances into danger. You will need to kite a lot, lead monsters into bushes, cars and windows.

Weapons

Your weapon selection is heavily limited. Unless you luck out and manage to install a storage CBM early on, you're limited to just one weapon with positive volume. And even that weapon should have low volume and weight, as you don't regenerate dodges on any turn you skip (and big weapons strike slowly, meaning you can easily skip turns). You can't carry much ammo, meaning firearms should only be used against the really tough stuff. A fast, accurate bashing weapon will stun zombies, letting you kite more effectively.

If you can't find a Combat knife, your best bet is the weapon you started the game with: fists (and mutant body parts).

Tough enemies

• Shocker zombies aren't much tougher than in normal game. Grab a plank, let it zap you (don't wait till melee! you don't want to lose turns while the zombie is next to you) and smash it apart. Mutant body parts don't trigger zapback (fists however do, so tentacle arms don't give you a free pass here) and if you find yourself far from any planks, use an improvised weapon like a plastic bag.
• Zombie brutes and Zombie hulks are far more dangerous than usual, as their attacks deal moderate damage to all body parts (usually stopped by armor). Don't give them a chance to strike: lure them into a car, keep your stamina up, strike only as many times as you're sure you safely can, then disengage (running with ") and lure them into the car again from the other side.
• Spitter zombies will melt your legs way faster than usual and the spit attack can't be dodged. You can however enter a car - while standing on a car tile, you're immune to acid field damage. "Car" includes your "car"t.
• Smoker zombies and Bloated zombies are far more dangerous than usual, as you can't just put on a Gas mask (or few bandanas and scarves). Lead them into fires, acid fields from spitters, into living animals and other danger. If you don't mind exploits, being inside a car (tile has to be marked as inside - surrounded by roofs, closed doors, boards or windshields) protects you from smoke (100% chance, even from thick smoke) and partially from toxic smoke (smoke density treated as 1 lower).
• NPCs with guns. If they're hostile, just run ("). Lead them to zombies so that they waste ammo, then loot the corpse.
• Turrets can kill you with a single burst. Lead zombies to them, while maintaining safe distance. Zombies will attack the closest target they can see, so ducking inside a house will make them instantly forget you if they can see the turret.
• Moose - at 200 speed, you can't outrun those without running-related traits. They aren't afraid of fire, of being hurt and they hate everything. You can exploit that last trait by outrunning some innocent animal or a zombie instead of trying to outrun the moose.