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Your character, {{igs|@}}, is made up of a combination of [[Stats]], [[Traits]] and [[Skills]], all of which are very important to the game. While Skills can be trained and some [[Traits]] altered by [[mutation]]s, [[Stats]] never change, although there are some temporary effects that affect them. Things such as [[weather]], [[effects|status effects]] and [[medication]] may change your Stats and Traits temporarily. Bear in mind Cataclysm is a rogue-like in which permadeath is always on. There are only a few items that can actually change your Stats and Traits, but they are quite rare and they can go wrong!

While the characters are the main protagonists during gameplay, their story and personality is entirely up to the player, they can be a heroic fighter hoping to save mankind from the many horrors of the cataclysm, a neutral person just doing what they can to survive, or a pure monster who aims to make what's left of humanity's life miserable as they take what they want by force.

[[NPC]]s are characters who are not controlled by the player, as of the latest [[experimental]] versions, players have the opportunity to take control of any NPC followers if the original player character dies.
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== Character creation ==

Creating your character is easy, but does involve a few steps.

=== Play now! ===

This is a great way to jump in to Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. There is deep customization available in your C:DDA experience, but having a basic understanding of the game first will better inform how you choose to tweak it for yourself. It is recommended that you start playing first and then move into the huge, and sometimes obtuse, world and character creation options.

:From the initial menu you have a list of options: {{igs|[MOTD] [New Game] [Load] [World] [Special] [Options] [Help] [Credits] [Quit]}}

:Choose {{igs| [New Game]}} to see a sub-menu: {{igs|[Custom Character] [Preset Character] [Random Character] [Play Now!]}}

:If you choose {{igs|[Play Now!]}} here you will be loaded into a default world with no mods and a randomly generated character with random stats, traits, and skills in the [[Evac shelter]]. 

:Good luck survivor! See [[Controls]], [[FAQ]], and [[The First Day]] for some help getting started.

=== Create World ===

Each character you create lives in a world. Any number of characters can live in that world and pillage each other's corpses, but first you must create a world and choose the mods and world generation options that will define this sandbox. You must do this before you create the player that will inhabit the world.

:From the initial menu choose {{igs|[World]}} to see a sub-menu: {{igs|[Create World] [Delete World] [Reset World]}}

:Here, choose {{igs|[Create World]}} and you will be sent to a new menu with tabs for Mods, World Gen Options, and a Confirmation. Use {{key|?}} here for help on how to navigate each of these tabs as they do sometimes have tab-specific functions like moving around the Default, Blacklist, and Balance sub-categories for Mods.

:Generally these tabs and options are well documented, but there is one instance that seems to raise the most questions. "Tall Buildings" mod and "Experimental z-levels" world gen option are two different things. Tall Buildings adds buildings to the game that are built into the z-levels above where the player begins; nothing like this exists in the game if this mod is not turned on. If Tall Buildings is turned on without z-levels then you can still visit and climb these buildings, but anything outside of your current z-level is frozen in time. Enabling Experimental z-levels allows z-levels outside of your current level to be active including monster movement, detection of sound, and running vehicles to name a few. This applies to buildings already in the game which go into negative z-levels like [Lab|Labs], but allows for more experimentation with Tall Buildings turned on. There are edge cases that come into play, like NPCs not following you across z-levels unless Experimental z-levels is turned on, but that's what we get for an experimental function at this point in the game's development. Like most of the latest features in the [[Download#Experimental_Builds|Experimental]] versions of the game releases z-levels aren't generally buggy long (if at all) so don't let this scare you away from trying the most current version of the game even if z-levels aren't fully functional yet.

=== Create Character ===

Once a world is created it is time to populate it with your avatar. There are many ways to customize and challenge yourself with your character creation including [http://tools.cataclysmdda.com/ircbot-rules self-imposed rules] from the [http://tools.cataclysmdda.com/ web tools] page and the [[scenario]] challenges in-game.

:From the initial menu choose {{igs|[New Game]}} to see a sub-menu: {{igs|[Custom Character] [Preset Character] [Random Character] [Play Now!]}}

:{{igs|[Preset Character]}} is used when you reach the end of character creation the first time. There you can choose to save your choices as a template with {{key|!}} to re-load all your stat, trait, and skill choices again should you fail in your attempt to survive C:DDA. (Note: It may be necessary to recreate your templates after changing to a new version of C:DDA. Measures to handle full characters going between versions unfortunately do not extend to templates.)

:{{igs|[Random Character]}} is what it says on the tin. This is good for a challenge or getting into a different play style, but it is also good to have a filled-out character brought up ready to complete your first time through. Here you can easily see how a completed character may look and you can randomize ({{key|%}}) it further or, following the documentation and help ({{key|?}}), move back through the tabs ({{key|<}}) to see how the choices added up when they were randomized.

:{{igs|[Custom Character]}} is a blank slate for you to work with from start to finish.

=== Point Pools ===

Point pool choices are a relatively new addition to the experimental versions and really only need detailed explanation for the "Multiple Pools" version of point allocation.

==== Multiple Pools ====

Multiple pool point allocation was designed with balance and flavor in mind. Generally, with the single pool allocation, skills are ignored by players because of the relative ease by which they are raised with books. This system allows points to move down from their importance in stats where points are very important, down to traits, and finally skills, but not back up the list.

:This progression can be clouded by the fact that the tabs of the character creation menu do not follow this order, but if you recognize that fact it can remove some of the confusion.

:2 points by default:

:{| class="wikitable"
! Stats !! Traits !! Skills
|-
| 2 points to allocate within stats || 2 points to allocate within traits plus any unused points from stats || 2 points to allocate within skills, plus any unused points from stats, plus any unused  points from traits, plus any  points from scenarios, plus any points from professions
|}

:This means you can go 3 negative in your traits pool, for example, by taking only positive traits that add up to a 5 total cost as long as you create a surplus of points in your stats pool by reducing the number of points allocated in one your stats by 1 and leaving 3 un-allocated.

:The skills pool is subject to additions and subtractions from [[scenarios]] and [[professions]].

:[http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=12243.msg269473#msg269473 This thread] has a discussion about this feature, you can browse [https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/15591 commit comments] on the feature, and an [https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/15918 understanding discussion] for further reading.

== Stats ==
{{:Stats}}
== Traits ==
{{:Traits}}

[[Traits|Take a look at full list of traits.]]

== Skills ==
{{:Skills}}

[[Skills|Complete skills list.]]

[[Category:Character|*]]
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