Melee Guide

The melee system in CDDA can be confusing and difficult to understand if you don´t go and die a few times, even then, if you can´t grasp what is happening, you will suffer the same fate over and over, so, if you want a few tips about what to do in those situations in which your melee character keeps dying, this guide will serve you well:

General Tips

• Pain Resistant and Fast Learner are two must-have traits. You're going to take hits, so pain tolerance will keep it from becoming too debilitating too fast. Fast Learner because Focus tends to drop VERY fast in combat, even with skill control, and those 15 extra points can upwards of double your xp gains while training/clearing. Thick-Skinned is very helpful too.

• Skill control is important. The more skills that are gaining experience at the same time, the worse you are at training. Go into your character menu and disable all but one skill to train up (such as Dodge). Fighting even a single zombie without skill control means your focus drains VERY fast because you're training Unarmed, Melee, and Dodge at the same time, and after a 2-3 fights, you become incapable of developing for the rest of the day with very little to show for it.

• Don't trap yourself into being a specialist. Unarmed can be effective, but there is no catch-all approach for every enemy. Having access to a stout bludgeoning weapon like a Quarterstaff can be critical for dealing with Zombie soldiers, firemen, and police, while having a ranged weapon will let you take out Shockers at night while they're blind. Never be too proud to whip out a quarterstaff, axe, sledge hammer, or homewrecker when the situation calls for heavy weapons, or a bullet crossbow for Mi-gos.

• Blocking isn't always good. Don't use martial arts that have techniques with Arm or Leg block if you don't properly/thoroughly armor those body parts. Focusing damage on your arms and legs can be advantageous if you can mitigate that damage, otherwise, you're just increasing the time it takes to recover

• Train your First Aid Skill. Take advantage of first aid manuals early and try to get your skill up to 3. Nothing slows down melee combat more than having to wait to get back into the mix because your body parts aren't in a good enough condition to risk fighting more, you need to improve the healing rate of those body parts.

• Control your fights. Carefully toe towards hordes and retreat so you're only attracting the attention of 1-3 at a time. Stay on top of your stamina, and don't be afraid to retreat or avoid problem engagements, such as soldiers, shockers, or groups that are too large to safely engage.

• Always have an escape plan, and use it. Don't fight to the end of your stamina bar. At about half stamina, if the end of an engagement isn't in sight, seriously consider retreat. You can always come back as long as you're alive, but becoming winded in melee is certain death.

• The Indefatigable and Deft traits are a MUST have if you want to fight continuously. Since the melee combat update, the player stamina is depleted really fast in melee combat. The "Deft" trait reduces the stamina spent in each melee attack, and it also helps you to recover from a miss.

• Take advantage of low armor, high dodge. Early on when good armor isn't available, stay VERY lightly encumbered and keep that dodge score over 6.0. Wearing weak armor and bringing your dodge down will only end up causing you a LOT of chip damage and puts you at greater risk for infection.

• Take advantage of obstacle penalties. Getting opponents to goat on top of difficult terrain like boulders, rosebushes, fences, and vehicles can give you a huge defensive advantage. If you are looking at taking down a lot of zombies, consider prepping some nailboard trap or pit traps to further that advantage, since you'll be fighting in that area for a while.

• Retreat early, retreat often. Retreating battles are to your advantage. Don't sprint longer than it takes to break LOS and get a door closed behind you, and take every opportunity to catch your breath, no matter how petty it may seem. Don't keep fighting when your focus hits rock bottom. Fast Learner helps a lot, but once you drop below 15 focus, it's time to worry about food, firewood, and inventory management.

Mutations

Mutations! The desire of everyone, the gambling of life! These can contribute greatly to your playstyle, and help or harm your abilities in combat, specially in Melee...

• The Special player attacks from mutations are a force by itself. If you have certain specific mutations, these will give you additional special attacks! The attacks have a fixed amount (and type) of damage, varying between each specific mutation, and can only trigger if you hit an enemy with a normal attack (But are not guaranteed to trigger).

Each one of these mutations are connected to a body part or category, the current ones are:

• Mouth (Fangs, Beaks and Mandibles//Muzzles).
• Head (Horns and Antlers).
• Feet (Hooves and Toe Talons).
• Tail (Tails).

These can only execute one attack per body part, but there are some mutations that are different and can make multiple attacks, like:

• Tentacle Arms, you attack multiple times, one for each additional arm (with one more if you don´t carry a twohanded weapon)
• Vine Limbs, you attack with your vines, 2 times for this mutation, and 3 for its follow up mutation.

The full information about these special attacks (How much damage, what type, and what specific mutations do) is here.

• You don´t have to attack to make damage. If you have certain mutations, the enemy will be damaged when they hit you!

Certain mutations give you additional methods to make damage, not very powerfull by themselves, but every additional damage is better than nothing.

The following mutations give damage or some kind of effect when you are attacked:

Whenever an unarmed opponent strikes a part of your body that is not covered by clothing:

• Thorns, deals a random (1 - 4) amount of cutting damage to the opponent´s torso.
• Spines, deals a random (1 - 8) amount of stabbing damage to the opponent´s torso.
• Quills, deals a random (1 - 20) amount of stabbing damage to the opponent´s torso.
• Urticating Hairs, the opponent will get stunned for 2 turns, and it also has a one in three chance to get in the opponent´s eyes and blind it for 2 turns.

Whenever an opponent strikes makes cutting damage to you (And more than "4" of total damage):

• Acid Blood, deals a random (4 - 16) amount of acid damage to the opponent´s arms, head or torso.

And whenever an opponent bites you (And makes any damage):

• Toxic Flesh, inflicts poison or strong poison in the opponent for 5 minutes.

• A little venomous bite is better than a no venomous bite. The Venomous and Strongly Venomous mutations inject poison (Or strong poison) on a successful special attack that deals cutting/stabbing damage, this includes a bite from any of the mouth mutations (Even the Muzzles alone), and even your Toe Talons, Horns and Spiked Tail can inflict poison in the target! Sadly, we still don´t have venomous thorns or venomous claws... Yet...