Intro

Prisons are a rather nice place to start, for these reasons:

• Zs are super easy to kill, if you have a spear. You can abuse this as a training method for a couple of Melee levels.
• there's plenty of food in the pantry
• clean water in the basement
• tools in the workshop, and in the basement

After you clear out the zombies, you may even be able to shoot or stab some zombies outside, out of the barred windows.

Getting out

We're starting out in the canteen. There are carving knives available for your stabbing pleasure, as well as different implements (like cast iron cookware and large fire extinguishers) serving in the capacity of lockpicks. This time, I don't need lockpicks, because there's a Tough Zombie here to take care of the door.

It helps to lead the zombies away from the door, then circle back (all the while bleeding them as much as practical). Lead them so they'd pathfind over chairs and tables (this slows them down), then stab them with that carving knife. Movement is paid just after moving onto the obstacle, so the best chance would be after leading a zombie to a diagonal step onto a table or such. I got rid of two Toughs with this trajectory:

In the workshop, I can see an adjustable wrench (good for disassembling washing machines). So far no hammers, and I'm taking damage, so perhaps it's best to find a safe place for resting. Being out of stamina is very, very bad in combat - it almost halves your movement speed (+86% cost, currently), interferes with dodging, and probably something else. You can climb up fences onto single-story buildings - I've never seen a zombie climb anything.

Then you can peek down, find separated zombies, hop off the roof and take them down, if practical. Keep your retreat path to the nearest fence / rooftop access.

... anyway, this character's hands got so damaged that it couldn't wield a plank, anymore, so couldn't bash in doors, and in the end got eaten by zombies. Eh.

I mentioned that the MediaWiki wiki for the game went down:

https://lemmy.today/post/13158414

Someone on Reddit restored a static copy onto GitHub:

https://old.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/1g7k8nj/so_i_restored_the_cdda_wiki_kinda/

This is not a real MediaWiki instance, and search does not function.

They later mention that the original is back up at a different location:

https://cddawiki.danmakudan.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

I'm not sure that this is the original: it doesn't seem to be possible to log into the system using credentials for the original, and new account creation is broken. It's also quite sluggish. But it is running a MediaWiki instance, and search functions, so at least for read-only use, it makes the old information accessible.

Looks like the Stylish trait

a long-standing ability that allowed one to get a small, constant amount of morale by wearing fancy or very fancy clothing

is gone.

Just noticed this after doing a build out of git.

I kind of regret this. I'm not saying that it's the most-realistic trait, but it made it interesting to collect fancy items.

Related PR on GitHub:

https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/79745

Chezzo ran a wiki that was used by the game for some time at:

http://cddawiki.chezzo.com/cdda_wiki/index.php

A lot of useful information, like about martial arts and such, is on there. Unfortunately, that domain apparently went down about two months ago.

A (fairly-recent) copy of the wiki, archived in late March 2024, can apparently be viewed at:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240324103752id_/https://cddawiki.chezzo.com/cdda_wiki/index.php/Main_Page

It looks like archive.org also dumped a several-months-older copy of the site, from August 2023, with MediaWiki-scraper:

https://archive.org/details/wiki-cddawikichezzocom_cdda_wiki

I'd guess that this is sufficient to bring the Wiki back to life if someone with a MediaWiki setup wants to do so.

Does anyone actually use the "move view" keys? These are, by default, the shift-movement keys; they recenter the view persistently on a location offset from one's character. I occasionally hit them by accident.

I just can't imagine much of a use for them. Maybe being in a firefight at long range and wanting to see what's coming temporarily, but it seems like an incredibly niche use, and they tie up a bunch of keybindings by default.

I've been watching Rycon for years and his CDDA content has always been top notch, so I thought I might as well share it with you guys just in case anyone else is interested.

For those who don't know, there exists a sort of multiplayer mode for Cataclysm called WatchCDDA. It's completely ASCII mode however, as it's played through the terminal.

It's not completely multiplayer due to how the game works (it would be too hard to get things to work correctly if players stood near each other), but you can watch others play and the world itself is shared, so if you for example die in a cabin, another player could technically stumble upon your corpse.

You can also watch others play.

There is also a Discord server for WatchCDDA found at https://discord.gg/HhuWWdW

The following explainations have been copied from the website:

Creating an Account

In order to create an account, enter in "ssh newacc@play.watchcdda.net -p 3333" into your terminal. The password is newacc. If you are on windows using putty, use newacc@play.watchcdda.net for host, and 3333 for port. It is worth noting that when you type passwords here, you won't see "*******" print to your screen - it will stay blank. It is still accepting input, just hit when you are done. Your username MUST begin with a lowercase letter. You will be disconnected after your username is chosen, and after you have successfully (or unsuccessfully) created your password. If you are unsuccessful creating your account or changing your password, log in and try again. Anyone who was playing when your account was created will need to reload their game for you to be able to watch it.

Logging in

For Linux/MacOS, type "ssh your_username@play.watchcdda.net -p 3333" into your terminal. For windows users, you should download Putty. Within Putty, select "ssh" and for Host, you can put in your_username@play.watchcdda.net. Port you should set to 3333. To select your options, type the number within brackets (and not the brackets). If you are ever confused what to do at a menu or need a description of the available options, you can always use "?" for a built-in help menu.

Playing

To play a game, select “play” and choose a game. Cataclysm Experimental is the regularly-updated experimental build oc CDDA, and Stable is 0.E. Cataclysm-Group is Experimental except that everyone who watches your game also has full control over it. This can be used to allow shared sessions. Cataclysm-Multiplayer is shared-world play. In this mode you can create a world and other people can play on it at once. You can NOT see their characters, but if you are both in different reality bubbles, you can drop items, clear towns, burn bases, etc. Things get weird when two or more players overlap reality bubbles (get too close in game at the same time). Best to try to avoid it. Cataclysm group / multiplayer have are described in more detail in the Developments page.

Didn't know these existed, but pretty cool to find randomly!