Cheating

Cheating is the use or abuse of the debug system, of various exploitable bugs, doing something another player would not approve of, or anything that causes you to suddenly loathe your own avatar. Only three of these things are true.

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Cheating and you!

Many new players use the things discussed here to assist in survival. While this is 'approved' for new players, these god-like powers shouldn't be relied upon as you learn to handle problems through the tools available to your avatar.

This page is organized to roughly match the degree of fun you're giving up by cheating on yourself. The methods range from neutral to severe, and the consequences of using them from momentary joy to a complete loss of respect for your performance. Like mutations, cheating creeps up on you. You have been warned!

Being too prepared

Call this a pro-tip to remind you that there is no reason to rush anything in this world. Taking the time to cook up decent amounts of Zombie pheromones so that they will high-five you as you are cleaning out liquor and clothing stores to make a million bandages is very very good form by which your character can gain a high degree of character to ameliorate the deleterious effects of the actions described on the rest of the page. If you just grinned or went to look up the fancy words then you might just be ok with the info on this page.

Using Game mechanics to the fullest

Warning! Understanding that turrets shoot you from 24 or fewer tiles away, messing with the viewport and font-settings so that you get to actually see on-screen what your in-world avatar sees, pulling mobs from far away instead of stumbling into them blindly, digging pits in strategic places and gloating about how you cleaned out an entire town -- doing these things could be thought of as cheating by some people. Ultimately though understanding items, reading the rest of the wiki, starting 20 new games just so you can understand the variety of tweaks offered by Cataclysm, that's to say, being interested in playing this game the way it was designed to, will boost your skills and wean you off of bad habits you might have picked up in other roguelikes.

Overdoing it

When you first start playing Cataclysm you get what seems to be very few points to invest into your character. So you crank up that number and look for the least damaging negative traits to boost your guy/gal into the stratosphere. This will work at first but off all the options on this page, its the one that ruins your long term fun if you keep it up for more than a few games or in-game years. Since you're on this page, chances are that you have already discovered this way of overdoing it. So here I'm suggesting that you wean yourself off of it slowly by starting the next character with all the skill-points you want .. but without taking a single negative trait to buy you further advantages. Its like a bad in-game addiction at first, but you will get over it. Next, slowly reduce the number of starting points you take so that you're forced to specialize your character's style a bit. Doing this will give it 'character' that enables you to wind up using some or all of the following ideas without suffering real-life morale penalties! So, go on, investing fewer points at startup is like taking your vitamins, it keeps you going strong!

Abusing Save-Points

By pressing S to save your game as you run into a difficult situation .. and then closing the program window before you die, you can explore different time-lines and strategies with the only risk being that you will lose your avatar should you die. If you're new to the game, have no idea how a weapon or a drug works, this will speed your learning a lot. Just restrain yourself from using this to min/max outcomes and you might actually be ok with this for your first few games.

Creating a Story

Making a save-point and then archiving your ./save folder can allow you to play the meta-game of chronicler. Just name your archives '01 (notes)' to '99 (notes)' and you can get a memory jogging log of your travels through the land for very little effort. It gets problematic and cheaterish if you wind up relying on your chronicles to explore the map or engage in reckless actions that result in many death. It might be ok to explore 1000 ways of dying in a newbie situation, but there will come a point when you're better off starting anew. EXIT the program before you restart from an archived game.

Exploiting the Dead

You will die. And if you revert to a chronicled point you might find yourself in a situation where you are looking at your own dead body. The proper thing to do in this case is to wish for an acid bomb lest you incur the wrath of the RNG by picking up the cloned items. (This does not apply if you have the Cannibal trait and do the unspeakable.)

The Debug Messages

~ — Toggles the sometimes annoying debug messages which can give you some deeper insight into the game mechanics on and off. Gain insight into the health mechanics here. Eat all your vitamins right away (read about health effects of the provisons too) and revel in the fact that you understand how you have just beaten the number one new player affliction - the common cold! Watch them for a bit longer and maybe you learn some other stuff too!

The Scent Map

Unassigned — Scent map. Shows the trace that forms around you as you linger in a building or move through town. Asks you what scent sensitivity you would like to view your surrounding with and requires that you enter a number from 1 to 9 specifying the 'sensitivity of your nose.' This ranges from 1 for the greatest smeller to 9 for the dullest nose. (Entering 0 divides by 0 and causes a crash').

The Debug Menu

This menu is the most terrible way to CHEAT yourself out of a fun game. Unless you are in a situation caused by bugs (e.g. you spawed in a windowless doorless room) or are testing game features. To enable these keys in game you should decomment them in data/keymap.txt by removing # in front of debug at the bottom of the file.

Unassigned — Wish menu. open's up a list and asks you what Debug you want to do.

1: Wish for an item. — type /hammer to search for "hammer", then press up and down to cycle through jackhammer, hammer, sledge hammer, etc. Hitting enter will exit search, hitting enter again will add the selection to inventory. q exits.

2: Teleport - Short Range — moves to a random nearby position, it uses teleporter function, so teleglow disease will be gained and there is a risk of lethal outcome.

3: Teleport - Long Range — asks to what map square you want to move to, then places you randomly in the selected map square.

4: Reveal map - Instantly explores a large radius around the player.

5: Spawn NPC

6: Spawn Monster — it works the same as item wishing for the most part; pressing f will let you make the monster friendly if you want. After making your selection, move the cursor to pick a location to place the monster.

7: Check game state...

8: Kill NPCs

9: Mutate — allow to toggle your traits & mutations.

0: Spawn a vehicle

a: Increase all skills by 3.

b: Learn all melee styles

c: Check NPC

e: Spawn Artifact — creates natural artifact and forms anomaly around it.

f: Map Editor - opens map editor, use q to cancel.

h: Lua command - opens a Lua command console.

i: Cancel

Exploits

These are still some bugs and oversights that people can use to help themselves in seriously cheaty and completely unfair ways. For example, many things with NPCs are broken and are exploitable. Trading with NPCs is one example as it is completely unfair to the NPC. That's not the only thing however and if you read to here and are seriously bored you will eventually discover just how borked the NPC dialogue mechanics are at this point. Another exploit though tolerated in the beginning is that cooking rotten meat makes it fresh.

Operators of completely spoiled and exploited characters have even been known to read the Cataclysm DDA 'Issues' page on Github. The worst offenders will even download the source code and study it to discover even more of the hidden dynamics of this fantastic game. Once you have reached this ultimate level of cheatiness your only redemption is to help the project by fixing the code or posting detailed reports of your devious strategies in the forum or on github.

Jaqueshammer

Knowledge of this device and its operation is so completely off-limits that you can expect a visit from the Forum-police any time now. But since its too late to save you now, know nothing can withstand it. You find a hard thing in the endgame, call upon its power. Just be quiet about it. The only rule for Jaqueshammer is that we don't talk about Jaqueshammer.