This youtuber makes Sky Island playthroughs and I think they are really well done and deserve more views!

My starting evac shelter was close to a small pond that had fish in it. I early on created some fish traps from gallon jugs and have been successfully fishing it. It is now summer day 66 and when I activated my reloaded fish trap as I had been doing regularly I received the message "You doubt you'll have much luck catching fish here."

What would be the explanation for why I received the message? Did I fish out all the fish? Do the ponds dry up? I looked at the water and it says "shallow water" though I have no idea if it was shallow water when I was successfully fishing as I never looked at the water tiles.

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/12374907

I recently came up with a Steam Deck keybindings layout for Cataclysm DDA after someone asked me about it and it gave me the push I needed to actually sit down and do it the way I wanted to. I think there are some really cool implications for accessibility here as well as this is a pretty damn fast way of inputting keys once you get used to it, and investing the time is worth it since the control scheme laid out here immediately has plug-and-play compatibility with not only a ton of games but also a ton of powerful software tools.

::: spoiler post text contained below

Cataclysm DDA, Vim & WASD

edit: I recommend increasing the transparency of the popup steam menus by a large amount in practice, I kept them fairly opaque to make the video demonstration easier to follow

Vim Ring

From this perspective, the Vim hjkl keys (along with the diagonals y,u,n and b because this is CDDA and we need those diagonals) provide us with a clear idea we can ground our Steam Deck mapping in, and unlike a Vimmer with a qwerty keyboard, we can unfold the keys into the navigational ring (up down left right) Vimmer's imagine in their head to understand Vim qwerty controls.

Not only does this provide an easy way to remember our first choice in dividing the qwerty keyboard into Steam Deck mappings, because this first mapping is based on a conceptual perspective projected onto the qwerty keyboard made literal in the form of a navigational ring, it means that the control scheme has plugin and play compatibility with a dizzying array of software and games that all are part of Vim's ~40 year? tradition and evolution of keyboard controls. Once you memorize the Vim Ring on your Steam Deck you will be able to use it for the rest of your life on joysticks and touchpads, and you can rest assured that other people will be developing vim hjkl based controls for software and games for the rest of your life.

WASD Ring

WASD is probably one of the most well known "conceptual projections" onto the qwerty keyboard right?

It might seem a bittt confusing at first that z and x are the diagonals, but if you remember that this navigational ring is based on WASD, than s has to be down, and thus it becomes intuitive that z and x would be the downward diagonals. The letters q and e are almost without fail where left-lean, right-lean controls are for tactical shooters (for leaning out of cover to shoot) but even to someone unfamiliar with these control schemes, q and e are pretty intuitive.

Center Column

Notice here, that between the Vim and WASD rings is 2x6 column of unbound letters on the keyboard, those being c v, f g, and r t. The natural place for these letters which are frequently used by games and software is the four Steam Deck back buttons L5, R5, L4, R4 and the bumpers R1 and L1. True, vim prioritizes the horizontal home row, but given the accessibility of the other homerow keys in the VIM and WASD rings I don't think this is a serious flaw especially because it is easy to visualize how this column maps to your Steam Deck.

Number Ring

Now for our last navigational ring. This ring was inspired by reading about players admitting to making the extremely chaotic-neutral choice of using the number row rather than the numberpad for navigation lol. Importantly, the number row keys not the numberpad keys are used here so that in conjunction with shift this ring can be used to activate the alt number row commands !@#$%^&*().

Caboose Board

The Caboose Board is where the rest of the letters and punctuation keys go. I call this a "board" not a "ring" because more keys can be fit onto steam's menu system by making two rows then making a ring, which provides a natural place for extensibility for additional critical keys needed only for a specific game or program.

*** Controller Face Buttons, and Left & Right Triggers. At this point all the letters from the qwerty keyboard are mapped onto the onboard Steam Deck controls. We just need to tidy up and map a few remaining keys outside of the main 3 rows of the keyboard and make some quality of life mappings for important controls in Cataclysm DDA.

Notice that up until this step, other than starting from the assumption that mouse control is unneeded for this mapping, I haven't made any keyboard mappings that are only memorable or salient in the context of Cataclysm DDA. Only after this point am I actually assigning keys to the facebuttons of the Steam Deck based on the specific requirements of Cataclysm DDA. Think about how much easier this makes it to create and memorize the muscle memory of mappings for the next complicated game you want to tackle creating Steam Deck bindings for, if it is a roguelike or other game/software that can be played without a mouse than at least 85% of these mappings don't need to be changed. If mouse control is needed, it is easy to imagine slotting the number ring into a toggleable alternate menu that shares the same control binding. Or the caboose.

These final mappings are pretty intuitive to anybody who has used a gamepad a lot (especially xbox controller). Escape is mapped to the menu face button, tab to the view face button, backspace maps to the x facebutton of course and thus its counterpart, spacebar, naturally slots into the b facebutton, enter should go nowhere else than right trigger and shift on the left trigger allows the shift key to easily be held like it is intended to be on a qwerty keyboard.

Some final quality of life tweaks for CDDA, a single press of the y facebutton activates the / key to bring up the advanced inventory management screen (absolutely amazingly powerful utility in CDDA) and a double press of the y facebutton activates they ? key to bring up list of commands with plain english search. A single press of the a facebutton is mapped to " which brings up the movement toggle (run, walk, crouch, prone). A double press brings up the mutations menu with [ (a somewhat tenous mapping to remember I concede, this is a draft tho). For now I have the thumbstick buttons mapped to + and -.

A Final Note On Menus

It is important to adjust the in menu sensitivity especially for navigational rings like the Vim Ring, WASD Ring and Number Ring. Typically for a ring assigned to a joystick one might want to set menu button activation to continous (with these repeat turbo settings) and tweak sensitivity so it is easy to reach the menu buttons on the far edges of the menu without it being uncomfortable or resulting in accidental activations of other keys.

Cross-post from: https://lemmy.world/post/14724312

Holy cow building a car from scratch takes a lot of this stuff. This is the first game i've ever tried to build a car. I'm scrounging every house for light disposable batteries to craft the rods. Fortunately most houses have at least one in a flashlight. Is there another good reliable source for welding rods or wire?

Something that might be fun to do on this sublemmy is do a collaborative Sky Islands run where a save file was shared and people took turns doing runs. I suppose it could all go on one post or posts could be made for each individual run or day. People could roleplay it in describing what happened on their run or just relay the details and facts like a matter of fact survivor.

Or another option, one person could mainly play but in big moments of a run like deciding which direction to take in order to reach the portal, post a poll with options for which direction to head in.

I think a shared Sky Islands playthrough might be more fun to play than a normal shared CDDA playthrough since one particular player goofing and dying doesn't end the experience for everybody and multiple players could discuss how best to manage the resources on the island and when next to begin a run vs stay on the island.

I don't know, I haven't thought through all the details yet but I think it might be a fun thing to do on this sublemmy that both encourages people to interact and share stories but also provides an approachable way for newer players to learn from other CDDA player's playstyles and experiences.

Yesterday I switched mods on for the first time, and had to test each mod individually, none of them is capable of running on latest experimental, so I changed to stable gaiman, and after enabling all but one mod, it worked. But I've seen some relatively recent reddit posts that say mods can be enabled on experimental. Is there any way to make it not send some error message whenever I try to create a character? I really miss being able to change clothes sprites and having a tidier map with zoom.

Also, in this world there are some strange occurences, I spawned during winter, day 1, yet enemies were very evolved, as if they were from year 2, such as z wrestlers, electric husks, and those god-forsaken acid machine guns, and there is a fungaloid enemy each four overmap tiles with almost no exception. It's moldier than my fridge in here. Is this intended? I'm using magiclysm, dinomod, xedra evo, and lighter weariness, none of their descriptions mentioned these effects as far as I know.

What is everyone's preferred general weapon loadout before getting the high end tech stuff ( i.e. Laser Weaponary, Bionic weapon, etc..)

Summarised I enjoy using:

• Melee -- Loaded Stick ( bludgeon weapon and works nicely with specific weapon martial art) -- Kukri ( Cut weapon, nice with a good martial art and decent accuary for "knife" weapon)

• Depending on ammo availability I take 1 secondary and 1 primary

• Secondaries -- Glock 19 ( modability, gun and ammo availability) -- FN Five-Seven ( good penetration) -- Sig P226 (personal preference)

• Primaries -- M4A1 (ammo and gun availability, good mod profile) -- M14 EBR ( Decent all-purpose Marksman Rifle)

• Throwables -- Throwing Knives : 3 to 12 ( depends on loadout, silent, reusable and can cause bleeding) -- 2 Molotovs ( Emergency crowd control, building demo) -- 1 Grenade ( homemade or military grade, emergency use)

I do use other weapons and switch it up when situation demands, but for general purpose exploration and loot runs I can rely on the above loadout to handle most situations to my personal preferences.

If you're going in blind like me I recommend reconsidering reading this, I don't really spoil anything all that much, but I wouldn't have wanted to know about some of this stuff and prefer to just fuck around and find out.

So my first half a dozen-a dozen runs were absolutely disastrous, first time I think I got too friendly with a bee who just stung me to death. Then when a couple of deaths later thought I had it at least a little figured out I found myself run to a basement full of cochroaches by a zombie and losing all of my cool stuff.

After that one I just smashed my way to the roof of the evac shelter in a "fuck this shit" manner - I'd been avoiding making any noise at all and what do I find? A nice big bottle of whiskey just waiting for me. So I gargled down all the pills I could find with the bottle as a runner and jumped off of the roof figuring it'd kill me (thinking since it's so easy to die surely this'll do it!). Nooooooo. The one time you try to die you can't even find a single creature to finish you off after your pitiful attempt at suicide.

I finally managed to make at least some kind of a camp at one of those survivalist cabins and survive fairly easily, even after finally confronting the paramilitarist zombie locked in the basement by blowing it up with a grenade - which I messed up of course and instead of throwing it instantly, I RAN AT IT with the grenade in my hand, correcting and then getting my leg half blown to pieces. That was when I was sure I was going to die. I figured it was karma after that catstalk-mission asshole stole all the rest of the stuff in the duffel bag he gave me and was charging me to get it back so I killed him with his own gun and made nice little hides for my Ed Gein style cabin and ate his brain (I had no food and the lesbian prepper zombie was going nuts in the basement, so I excused myself).

Fast forward to today. I got tetanus from my own bear trap earlier and it was getting annoying, so I located a hospital in the nearest city, figuring I'm probably going to die anyway getting these tetanus cramps when something or other is trying to eat my face, but at least I knew how to fight them now and survive. At least under normal circumstances. And lo and behold I stumbled upon a car, a working car, pristine condition, no alarms, and a bunch of gas in the tank as well. So I headed towards the big city. Except there's a tiny little town on the way that's having a post-apocalyptic free-for-all I guess. So again I figure, well this run has been a weird one and full of luck followed by something even worse.

So naturally I ram most of them down with the car (the first one I killed had the antibiotics anyway so I figured I'm in less danger here than in a big city) so I wouldn't have to deal with the military z's or cops with just a butcher's knife and no real armor, destroying my beautiful new SUV's exterior, nothing vital lost. The rest of them were just fat so I just chop them up, everything goes swimingly, I go through all 9 houses and haul all of the shit to the back of the truck. All this amazing stuff, no more eating catstalks and fiddleheads and stuff.

All this cool shit, tools, anything I could've never even thought to have so early into this fucked up experience, the back of the truck is literally as full as it can be and I head back home on a couple of liters of gas after one of them just decided to go through the car and damaged the battery so I kind of had that one try to get it all home.

The way I came there was through a forest trail at the end of which the car was parked, so I had to take the big road. There's a goddamn riot blockade with the turrets. Fuck it. Floor it and hail Mary and Jesus take the fucking wheel. I can't believe how suspenseful going, just, a bit, by, bit, one, key tap, at, a, time... could be. I make it and I make it home and I'm over the moon. I literally haven't had this much fun in yeeeeaaars. I pull up to the yard as slowly as possible so I can later still salvage what's left of the otherwise functioning skeleton of a car. With my luck I was sure I was gonna hit a rock and the whole thing would just explode.

I take a break and calm down and return. Start unloading the car and swooning over all the stuff and wondering about all the things I could with all of it. There was so much stuff. Unloading the food in the pantry and I accidentally mispress a key and something happens.

(here's a tiny spoiler, if it doesn't work on mobile, for anyone who wants go in blind like me)

and BLAM!

A shotgun blasts half my torso away, and, I'm quoting, I'm gushing blood like a fountain and it keeps telling me "a tourniquet might help :)", but the only tourniquet I know how to make is for an arm - but it says it can be adjusted for other limbs. So, panicked I crawl all over looking for a fucking stick so I can make this tourniquet and try to readjust it, but it's - only - for: ''¨limbs'¨^'¨* and it cycles back to "tourniquet (arm)" like it just wanted to fuck with me one last time.

I keep trying to apply pressure and hope it'll work. It worked with the grenade wound even with those shitty remarks about a tourniquet my little psycho cannibal Ed Gein didn't know how to make, but this was worse. I bleed to death and burst out laughing. I had it all set up and with such luck I made it back home with a new car, food for probably months and all the tools I could need for a long time, just to practically die on the doorstep of my own home getting shotgun blasted point blank. R.I.P. Damian.

I haven't played roguelikes in like, two decades and I'm very rusty (and I was very young and honestly sucked), but holy shit is this fun. I can't wait to see all that's to come. I've missed this.

Sorry for the wall of text, I'm just super excited, even though no-one is probably bored enough to read this shit. Cheers!

I'm a little lost when it comes to the new armor stats found on experimental builds.

Here's what I'm assuming what each stat means, please correct me if I'm wrong:

Total Coverage: Chance of the armor protecting the body part when it's hit.
Defaults/Vitals: Chance of the armor protecting a hit to a normal part/any part that makes you bleed or cause critical?
Protection: Chance of each part of a non-uniform armor being hit. For example, when armor blocks a hit to the lower arm it has a 10% of only using the lower value for damage reduction.

On experimental, I've a common cold that's lasted over 2 weeks.

Any idea what's up with that? I've never had a cold last so long in prior versions before.

Edit: Coming up on 4 weeks now, ugh.

So recently I have come off experimenting with mutagens and took the boring, but resource intensive alpha mutation line to post-threshold with bionic character as a means to test how mutagens work.

Seems mutagen effects can be guided to better outcome by responsible dosing and letting the body heal after mutating.

Mutated:

• Good hearing
• Prime Stat-boosts
• Robust Genetics
• Very Beautiful
• Very Little Sleep ( from Less Sleep from video gaming background)
• Weak Scent

From my understanding when undergoing mutations via mutagen the most effective way is to prime the mutation via primers which act like a storage for the mutagen and for quicker results use a mutagen catalyst to allow the game to draw mutations from the storage of mutagen primer.

I was fiddling with mutagen dosing via normal mutagen and then primer, primer then mutagen and took things very slowly to see the effects.

Everytime you mutate you incur mutation damage, the more you mutate in quick succession the higher the mutation damage value rises. Higher mutation damage increases the chance for bad mutations.

It seems one primer is good for about 2 mutations with a mutagen catalyst and any further mutations fail as there isn't enough "mutation vitamin" to mutate more.

Post-threshold can be risky as you have to macro-dose primer to "overdose" on the "mutation vitamin" to force mutation but seems that the post-threshold advancement uses a lot of said vitamin

Overall, either my experiment was either super lucky or just being very methodical produced my character with all the positive mutations and no negatives, robust genetics help and fortunately alpha evolves that pre-threshold as that quickens the heal rate of mutation damage it seem.

The meteorologist asked for me to bring him radio controls, what are the items that he will accept for the mission? I've already tried talking to him with both a radio and a two-way radio in my inventory but he didn't want either.

So after many failed attempts, and just outright going to last save automatically done - I present after 20 days the "Chimera" mutant idea that is illiterate... raised intelligence to 5 and used bombastic perks to raise it to 6 because low intellegence is painful to level stuff. No mutagens yet and looked up chimera traits and added

Strength 11, dexterity 10, intelligence 5, Perception 10

Self-defence : Krav maga

Traits: fast learner, fangs, long fingernails, quick, robust genetics,terrifying, fast healer, night vision,substance tolerance, tough, bad temper, ugly, chemical imbalance, genetic chaos, illiterate, weak stomach, strong scent, high thirst, sleepy, fast metabolism

The character has already killed 1551 and wiped out an orc camp with fang and claw no problem.

Once saprovore mutated then food problems dissappear as I just eat whatever I come across in houses regardless of what it is, water can be annoying but I am sure that if I lab raided enough and push for post threshold chimera I could get "eater of the dead" then I can drink water from anywhere and eat any kill for food

Using magiclysm, mind over matter and xedra evolved

Does it automatically prevent npc's from taking items from the tile the container is located? Or do I have to activate it like door locks in order to lock it?

I've just failed to throw a grenade past my NPC friend while on the bycicle, twice it hit her/him turning it hostile and the last time the grenade exploded point blank and killed us both XD.

Are bandits universally evil? I just murderized and entire encampment of bandits by leading a group of mi-gos towards them first for the softening. And then promptly shot in the back a fleeing bandit. Could I have talked to them? I've never interacted with bandits before but are they more like scavengers than evil individuals that will mug/kill other humans?

Do items have maximum durability that goes lower and lower the more it gets damaged like vehicle parts? Or can I repair a piece of clothing forever with no drawbacks?

I think intelligence should matter more than it actually does... Why can we just dump the stat and still be able to hack computers, install cbm and create mutagen c'mon...

I found a place in a research lab, traversing it really hits home how FUBAR Earth is once things start to fall apart.

Makes me think that Exodii have the right way of thinking to do what they do

::: spoiler spoiler

Science physics lab, and if I didn't read the warnings - put on 5-point anchor before going forward - would have died to whatever the hell went wrong there

Place is full of black empty space, there is stupid amounts of shade ghosts that seem to be spawned by a bigger shade ghost, minotaurs, and owing to the broken nature of the place you bet the shoggoths are there.

I swear the shoggoths were teleporting or something.... place is crazy, a lot of artifacts and there was a elevator to -10 floor that was just foreboding emptiness

There was a locked chamber with a very specific card requirement, but now that I have Probablity Travel, will probably take a peek what is behind that sealed door once I have completed my current projects ::

I've never run a mutated character before--usually if I do anything, I install stuff to become a cyborg.

What are your favorite mutations? And why? And are there any interesting combos you've found that work well together?

I'm just curious what things are must-haves for you in a base.

Could be an item, or a certain layout that makes something easy.

Is there something you do or get as fast as humanly possible in a new game?

Making a post to display general hints and tips, feel free to add

• Disassembling ovens and its components is a great way to get some useful material like heating elements and fiber insulation batts

• Subway maintenence rooms, usually past the subway entrance gateways, usually have maintenence maps which you easily find labs by the "subway station?" pin on the map

• Extension cords + Outdoor extensiom cords are useful to wire a building with power without having to worry about building wiring in case you wish to place a electronic device away from a wall or have a building without wiring

• Playing or listening to any musical instrument makes your character happy ( flutes, pianos, mp3 players, stereos, harmonicas, etc)

• If infected by fungus, fungicide can be used as a treatment, just beware of your health

• Wasps can't dodge sprayable insecticide ( goes for dermatiks too)

• Reading memory cards can provide mood boosting items such as pictures to look at, music to listen to or recipes

• Mounted workshops and Kitchens are a great place to store a lot of useful electronics and when connected to an electrical grid removes the need to replace batteries

• NPC camps with a functioning blacksmith can make weapons and armour that you don't have the recipe for such as halberds, broadswords, rapiers, zweihander, cuirass, fire axe, war hammer, Awl Pike etc.

• Npcs can be fed anything as long as it has enjoyability greater than or equal to -6

• Npcs can meet all your food requirements when you've got a good food ration storage system in place

• Npc faction camps can help with streamlining a lot of game functions and depending on type of camp can provide a lot of associated utility ( military outpost and fire house are structurally sound and have limited entry, firewatch towers main section is elevated, pottery cottage last I have seen usually have a below ground basement section)

• Ctrl+ y and Ctrl + o can save you a lot of time in micromanaging tedious tasks and with a camp system have camp npcs do tasks for you

• Shift + 8 has a lot of convience tools and actions such a placing appliances, things such as Stationary Scutcher (which cuts down crafting time on plant fiber work considerably), parkour bars, wall, door and window construction and modification and pit construction to name the more commonly used stuff I use

• Aphids will eat your crops, but produce a useful sugar substitute

• You can ride tame cows, if you are a small mutant such as a mouse you can ride dogs

• Manuals can be saved and stored on a device such as a smart phone and that information can have a back up made with a memory card

• Your character leaves a scent trail and zombies and other creatures can use that to track you, so you can be attacked if you decide to sleep in a city/town basement

• Taking photos of any entity you see can provide you with knowledge of estimated danger, what senses that entity has , their weighted size, what type of creature is it and any notable abilities when viewed through the Shift + 3, Creatures tab. I think the closer the creature is the more information is provide however cannot confirm

• Armour layering is important and sometimes you can reduce encumbrance by changing layering priority, Shift + =

• I always take wallets, they sometimes hold stuff such as scientist cards or visitor passes and you can use an ATM to be the deposit all money into your account and make a really fancy all-you-can-buy cashcard, especially useful for the fancier not-vandalised gunshops which have ammo dispencers where you can buy ammo without making a scene.

• A Grappling hook can be a great tool for escape and exploration, have escaped many a zombie gank by activating it near a building and climbing to safety just beware of climbing/flying creatures and possibility of the roof also being dangerous too... and also of the larger creatures demolishing the building too

• Shift + x to peek and peeking allows you to throw things from relative safety

• Shift + X and Shift + . Or Shift + , allows you to peek up and down stairs respectively

• % armour coverage can be just as or more important that big armour numbers as attacks have a chance to hit areas of armour that isn't well protected and certain enemies seem to have a higher changer to hit generally less armoured parts I have noticed

There is probably so much more but it is not coming to me or I don't know and please note this information is more from experience and reading here and there so if there is any mistakes or inconsistencies or even changes feel free to correct them or contribute to the knowledge

Hope the great wall text is helpful

I like the vehicle construction In CDDA, however I am somewhat poor at vehicle conceptualization.

So if you have a build you like and willing to share, especially on the smaller scale construction although any is welcome, feel free to add

So I’ll start:

Recently after reading a Wormgirl lp, I got inspired to build an APC vehicle smaller than I usually build

Built it from scratch

Features:

• Fully amphibious - Tested at about 5 tonnes over deep water and no issues
• Lifestock carrier built for large animal transport, cow or horse
• Seats driver + minimum 3 npcs comfortably
• Uses vehicle shelving from Blaze mod
• Carries a foldable solar array for emergencies and base charging
• Motorised curtains and doors with 360 camera viewing with limited frontal lighting for covert operations

Still plans/ potential additions

• Add a Smart Engine Controller for more effecient hybrid control
• Aisle lighting, either atomic or regular
• Complete 360 light coverage for night operations
• Turret configuration, not sure what gun to setup on the mount
• Potentially adding light weight plating and frontal rams or blades with shock absorbers ( but I try to avoid
  vehicle damage whenever possible)

It is a little barebones on features than I would like, but wanted something relatively light weight and more fuel effecient than the usual fixer upper Security Van 5x7 mobile bases I do.

Of course the vehicle could be cut back by at least another 2 rows for a more compact design and a single lighter and more effecient engine chosen. But I mostly frankenstein’d it together from the cars collected and built it with long term travel in mind

Aisle usage is more an aesthethic choice as the engines are build under them and to cut back on my looting impulses.