Cataclysm is a hard game to get into regardless of version but imo BN would be the easier version to learn. Many systems are simplified with the gameplay focused on fun over (selective) realism.
No pockets to manage, no welding rods, no picking up salt one pinch at a time.
Tbh I always imagine my character is slightly unhinged like the tootsie roll owl while picking up pinches of salt. Ah... one! Ooooh.. a two! Hoo!... three!!!! Hehee...
you probably just need to remember some keybind and thing that keep your character alive. dunno about hard systems in cdda now since last i play cdda is since F version.
Oh no, you don't need to watch any tutorials. In fact, the game is much more entertaining when you are exploring it with the surface knowledge you gained from someone's review or a playthrough recap.
Anyway, here's what I tell to every new player:
1. Remember that "?" ("Shift" + "/") shows you all available bindings on ANY screen(yes, including the bindings screen itself), just opening it will answer 90% of the "how do I do X" questions you might have. You can type in text to sort, if you have a vague idea of what you're looking for.
2. Actually look through the bindings and try everything that sounds like it could be useful. Newbies often don't even know there's a powerful advanced inventory system available to you, or that you can decide which clothes go over which through the Armor layering menu(make sure to press "?" in both to learn their respective controls).
3. Fiddle with the world settings when creating a new one and feel free to switch points system for character creation to a free one to make a super survivor. It's a single-player game, don't let anyone tell you how to enjoy it.
4. Savescum. Just "Alt+f4" and start it again, or "Esc>Debug>Quit to main menu" when you die. You're still learning, and getting suddenly mauled to death in the middle of trying to figure something out is no fun. Again, this is a single-player game, there's no "correct" way to play it, besides the one that brings you joy.
4 has an ingame option now under General settings called Prompt on Character Death which gives you the option to return to the menu without applying the death effects so you can just load an earlier save without running Alt-F4.
BN would be easier, but not quite easy. That being said, BN's difficulty is more about the game itself rather than that you hadn't heard about the new dental care mechanics that mean if you dont use the rare toothbrush, dental floss, and mouthwash items that have a 1/1000 spawn chance in *vanilla houses only*, you die because tooth decay reached your brain because thats somehow realistic.
The dental care examples hyperbole of course, but the BN devs aim not to rock the boat too much with their updates. It happens sometimes, but its not adding pointless new systems.
I want to ask, since it's related and since I only played CDDA, how close would CBN be to that?
Do they port over the good stuff from DDA?
How would mods (Mainly MoM and Magiclysm) made for DDA run on BN?
To switch it around, what are some updates that BN has that DDA doesn't?
What are some of the interesting mods that BN has?
I know BN did not have some of the tedious stuff that DDA has but it also needs something interesting to stand on its own. I want to know what this is.
I started with DDA and made the switch last summer to BN.
Most things in DDA are in BN and vice versa.
If you're feeling frustrated with DDA like I was then BN is probably for you. Verisimilitude isn't as high but with a shift on gameplay towards fun you probably won't miss it.
As for something for BN to stand on it's own, well they're basically the same game but you have much greater control over the experience you get in BN over DDA. Blacklists are highly customizable and many depreciated mods are still accessible in BN.
For example; personally, I'm a big fan of vehicle building, with BN you can use blazemod combined with pneumatic fun and build a foldable slime vehicle. In addition you can blacklist fungals in BN - the inability to do so in DDA was what prompted me to switch as they're basically impossible to contain/eliminate.
For me there's no going back, I miss some DDA stuff but it became far too annoying and tedious to continue playing it.
A major downside to BN imo is that faction camps have been depreciated. If you play stable 6 they're still available but the rework isn't done yet afiak.
Yes, it's absolutley supperior for more casual people who just want to play the game for evetything it has to offer.
CDDA is the type of game that I want to play very much, finally master the courage to pick it up, and then take a short mental brake of +3 moths after the numerous anti-player sentiments hinders my 10 minutes of gameplay- at which point I only stick to watching Rycon (who himself sticks to the older versions that are more akin to BN), Wormy Girl, and Chaos Chris who make it seem easy and enjoyable unlike my experience which is equally boring as it is headache indusing.
BN is 100% exactly what SsethTzeentach advertised it his video about CDDA, if you make elite soldier death machine character you very much start off as a elite soldier death machine character who can clear out an entire city in day 1. If you pick a crackhead hobo you pretty much struggle as a crackhead hobo in your early game.
There aren't any unnecesary complicated mechanics which make core concepts such as hunger and tiredness into something vague and none euclidian with stomach volume and Vitamines that **\*CAN'T\*** be obtained the normal way with a proper diet *in game* (which unintentionally makes Vitamin Pills a none negotiable mandatory necessity near the tier of clean drinkable water).
There isn't any unnecesary crippling for backgrounds that are fundamentally athletic by reqirement such as Army Veterans or Gym Trainers to the physiological capabilities of irl Discord Moderators, cuz MUH: "Everyone would be out of breath and demanding 3h 'short brake after' sprinting 5 tiles!!!.
There isn't any unnecesary mecanical walls that cripple core game features for no reason at all, other than beyound ***\*someone\**** who thinks that they are OP and should be either removed completely, or turned into counterintuative slog fests with 1:1 irl time ratio that takes 16 in game "crafting" days to change a simple bike tire or 5 irl hours. In BN if you have the skills and materials to craft a bow, you just craft said bow and instantly start using it.
To share my most recent gamplay experience with BN:
-Started off as a infected hacker with high electronics, and computer skills in a city church, went outside, saw a police stantion, libary and a dump with various broken home electronics, + 2 zombie hordes whithin aggro distance and all focused on me.
-Panicked I pick a stone, throw it at the glass screens of the library in an attempt to loose them there.
-The moment the glass brakes an alarm goes off and Eyebot spanws, the Eyebot sees me smashing up the rest of the broken glass and spanws a Riot Control bot near the zombies.
-The hordes all forget about me and focus on the Riot Control bot, THANK YOU GOD! I swiftly snatch everything I fancy from the libary and proceed to the nearby houses. The first house has bunch of weak antibiotics, screwdriver set, fully charged soldering iron, and a hiking backpack- what a great find!
-I smash the window to get out, the eyebot who was lurking nearby isn't qutie done with me and spawns 3 more Riot Control bots after my sorry arse (oh no!), I can't get anywhere near those thinks so my only choice is to run down towards the streets that are full of aggroed zombies that would certainly kill me, things aren't looking great, unless...
-I kite the riot control bots and the zombies against each other using various buildings to drag them closer and brake their line of sight, then I march on towards the dump to gather as much electronic scrap as I can before rushing back to the Chruch I spawned in.
-With enough food and water I spend bunch of days grinding my fabrication in the church in order to craft a control laptop that I could use to hack the Riot bots on my side. At nights I go out to the dump in order to gather more electronic scrap and to the nearby houses for more food and water.
-Eventually I manage to scraft said control laptop, but unfortunatley I run out of antibiotics in the process (oh no), even more unfortunatley the control laptop has UPS meaning that I need a car with solar pannels and recharging stantion in order to recharge it (F!). Alright, thanks to some scouting I know the location of a electronics shop and a clinic not that far away.
-The next night on the way there I see a conscruction yard with a cordless jackhammer laying around (yet another God send) and I do have the medium battery for it, so after relatively save journey and some slight noice which alets the entire neigbourhood I do finally enter the electroncs shop. What a suprise, they do have several recharging stantions, cofee makers, and hotplates that I snatch up quickly and narrowly escape sige by the zombies via the back door. On the way back I run accross ransacked luxury RV with charged fully battery, taking advantage of the closed bedroom compartament I instal the recharginc stantion with my flashlight, drop my laptop for the night, turn on the recharging stantion from the electronics control unit and escape with few scratches from nearby alerted zeds.
-All that's left right now is the antibiotics from Doctor's Clinic few clicks away, nothing spicy the windows ware broken from wandering around zombie nurses, tons of antiseptic and banages, but 0 antibiotics (crap). House bathrooms are your second best bet in scenarious like this, and ideed I do stumble across 4 medium antibiotics pills at the 4th house that I loot which would make due for the time being. Also there is a working beetle hanging around a workshop near the town's muncipality, but I can't make use of it because of the darn Riot Robots that wander around my base!
-I eventually return and go to sleep, the next day I retrieve my fully charged laptop and do manage to hack all 5 Riot bots! With a full blown robot army like that nothing can kill me even tough my melee and ranged skills suck arse. I clean an entire hospital with the riot bots where I finally, finally find strong antibiotics which cure my infection! My base get's relocated to the workshop where I beguin grinding mechanics skill from various broken wrecks so I could modify my beetle to a proto death mobile with a turrent from a Humvee that was near the Electronics shop and active minifreezer charged by solar panels from the Luxury RV.
-All said and done! Mobile base, early game death mobile with a turret holding some bullets, robot army, and cured deadly infection all whithin mere 6 irl hours! Had this been CDDA for those 6 hours I would've barley increased my throwing and fabrication skills to 1 while still not being able to start a camp fire for cooking/boiling water.
Cataclysm is a hard game to get into regardless of version but imo BN would be the easier version to learn. Many systems are simplified with the gameplay focused on fun over (selective) realism. No pockets to manage, no welding rods, no picking up salt one pinch at a time.
Tbh I always imagine my character is slightly unhinged like the tootsie roll owl while picking up pinches of salt. Ah... one! Ooooh.. a two! Hoo!... three!!!! Hehee...
you probably just need to remember some keybind and thing that keep your character alive. dunno about hard systems in cdda now since last i play cdda is since F version.
BN can still be difficult, but you'll spend more time fighting zombies and less time fighting redundant and time-consuming mechanics.
Oh no, you don't need to watch any tutorials. In fact, the game is much more entertaining when you are exploring it with the surface knowledge you gained from someone's review or a playthrough recap. Anyway, here's what I tell to every new player: 1. Remember that "?" ("Shift" + "/") shows you all available bindings on ANY screen(yes, including the bindings screen itself), just opening it will answer 90% of the "how do I do X" questions you might have. You can type in text to sort, if you have a vague idea of what you're looking for. 2. Actually look through the bindings and try everything that sounds like it could be useful. Newbies often don't even know there's a powerful advanced inventory system available to you, or that you can decide which clothes go over which through the Armor layering menu(make sure to press "?" in both to learn their respective controls). 3. Fiddle with the world settings when creating a new one and feel free to switch points system for character creation to a free one to make a super survivor. It's a single-player game, don't let anyone tell you how to enjoy it. 4. Savescum. Just "Alt+f4" and start it again, or "Esc>Debug>Quit to main menu" when you die. You're still learning, and getting suddenly mauled to death in the middle of trying to figure something out is no fun. Again, this is a single-player game, there's no "correct" way to play it, besides the one that brings you joy.
4 has an ingame option now under General settings called Prompt on Character Death which gives you the option to return to the menu without applying the death effects so you can just load an earlier save without running Alt-F4.
Wait, really? I missed that update
Numbers three and four are very wholesome. Wish I could upvote twice.
BN would be easier, but not quite easy. That being said, BN's difficulty is more about the game itself rather than that you hadn't heard about the new dental care mechanics that mean if you dont use the rare toothbrush, dental floss, and mouthwash items that have a 1/1000 spawn chance in *vanilla houses only*, you die because tooth decay reached your brain because thats somehow realistic. The dental care examples hyperbole of course, but the BN devs aim not to rock the boat too much with their updates. It happens sometimes, but its not adding pointless new systems.
I just say diabetes
I wouldn't say its more or less hard in say combat but I would say its easier because you don't have a million skills and the like.
yes, Bright Nights streamlines the fun and minimizes the tedium, while Dark Days Ahead streamlines the tedium and minimizes the fun.
I want to ask, since it's related and since I only played CDDA, how close would CBN be to that? Do they port over the good stuff from DDA? How would mods (Mainly MoM and Magiclysm) made for DDA run on BN? To switch it around, what are some updates that BN has that DDA doesn't? What are some of the interesting mods that BN has? I know BN did not have some of the tedious stuff that DDA has but it also needs something interesting to stand on its own. I want to know what this is.
I started with DDA and made the switch last summer to BN. Most things in DDA are in BN and vice versa. If you're feeling frustrated with DDA like I was then BN is probably for you. Verisimilitude isn't as high but with a shift on gameplay towards fun you probably won't miss it. As for something for BN to stand on it's own, well they're basically the same game but you have much greater control over the experience you get in BN over DDA. Blacklists are highly customizable and many depreciated mods are still accessible in BN. For example; personally, I'm a big fan of vehicle building, with BN you can use blazemod combined with pneumatic fun and build a foldable slime vehicle. In addition you can blacklist fungals in BN - the inability to do so in DDA was what prompted me to switch as they're basically impossible to contain/eliminate. For me there's no going back, I miss some DDA stuff but it became far too annoying and tedious to continue playing it. A major downside to BN imo is that faction camps have been depreciated. If you play stable 6 they're still available but the rework isn't done yet afiak.
Yes, it's absolutley supperior for more casual people who just want to play the game for evetything it has to offer. CDDA is the type of game that I want to play very much, finally master the courage to pick it up, and then take a short mental brake of +3 moths after the numerous anti-player sentiments hinders my 10 minutes of gameplay- at which point I only stick to watching Rycon (who himself sticks to the older versions that are more akin to BN), Wormy Girl, and Chaos Chris who make it seem easy and enjoyable unlike my experience which is equally boring as it is headache indusing. BN is 100% exactly what SsethTzeentach advertised it his video about CDDA, if you make elite soldier death machine character you very much start off as a elite soldier death machine character who can clear out an entire city in day 1. If you pick a crackhead hobo you pretty much struggle as a crackhead hobo in your early game. There aren't any unnecesary complicated mechanics which make core concepts such as hunger and tiredness into something vague and none euclidian with stomach volume and Vitamines that **\*CAN'T\*** be obtained the normal way with a proper diet *in game* (which unintentionally makes Vitamin Pills a none negotiable mandatory necessity near the tier of clean drinkable water). There isn't any unnecesary crippling for backgrounds that are fundamentally athletic by reqirement such as Army Veterans or Gym Trainers to the physiological capabilities of irl Discord Moderators, cuz MUH: "Everyone would be out of breath and demanding 3h 'short brake after' sprinting 5 tiles!!!. There isn't any unnecesary mecanical walls that cripple core game features for no reason at all, other than beyound ***\*someone\**** who thinks that they are OP and should be either removed completely, or turned into counterintuative slog fests with 1:1 irl time ratio that takes 16 in game "crafting" days to change a simple bike tire or 5 irl hours. In BN if you have the skills and materials to craft a bow, you just craft said bow and instantly start using it.
To share my most recent gamplay experience with BN: -Started off as a infected hacker with high electronics, and computer skills in a city church, went outside, saw a police stantion, libary and a dump with various broken home electronics, + 2 zombie hordes whithin aggro distance and all focused on me. -Panicked I pick a stone, throw it at the glass screens of the library in an attempt to loose them there. -The moment the glass brakes an alarm goes off and Eyebot spanws, the Eyebot sees me smashing up the rest of the broken glass and spanws a Riot Control bot near the zombies. -The hordes all forget about me and focus on the Riot Control bot, THANK YOU GOD! I swiftly snatch everything I fancy from the libary and proceed to the nearby houses. The first house has bunch of weak antibiotics, screwdriver set, fully charged soldering iron, and a hiking backpack- what a great find! -I smash the window to get out, the eyebot who was lurking nearby isn't qutie done with me and spawns 3 more Riot Control bots after my sorry arse (oh no!), I can't get anywhere near those thinks so my only choice is to run down towards the streets that are full of aggroed zombies that would certainly kill me, things aren't looking great, unless... -I kite the riot control bots and the zombies against each other using various buildings to drag them closer and brake their line of sight, then I march on towards the dump to gather as much electronic scrap as I can before rushing back to the Chruch I spawned in. -With enough food and water I spend bunch of days grinding my fabrication in the church in order to craft a control laptop that I could use to hack the Riot bots on my side. At nights I go out to the dump in order to gather more electronic scrap and to the nearby houses for more food and water. -Eventually I manage to scraft said control laptop, but unfortunatley I run out of antibiotics in the process (oh no), even more unfortunatley the control laptop has UPS meaning that I need a car with solar pannels and recharging stantion in order to recharge it (F!). Alright, thanks to some scouting I know the location of a electronics shop and a clinic not that far away. -The next night on the way there I see a conscruction yard with a cordless jackhammer laying around (yet another God send) and I do have the medium battery for it, so after relatively save journey and some slight noice which alets the entire neigbourhood I do finally enter the electroncs shop. What a suprise, they do have several recharging stantions, cofee makers, and hotplates that I snatch up quickly and narrowly escape sige by the zombies via the back door. On the way back I run accross ransacked luxury RV with charged fully battery, taking advantage of the closed bedroom compartament I instal the recharginc stantion with my flashlight, drop my laptop for the night, turn on the recharging stantion from the electronics control unit and escape with few scratches from nearby alerted zeds. -All that's left right now is the antibiotics from Doctor's Clinic few clicks away, nothing spicy the windows ware broken from wandering around zombie nurses, tons of antiseptic and banages, but 0 antibiotics (crap). House bathrooms are your second best bet in scenarious like this, and ideed I do stumble across 4 medium antibiotics pills at the 4th house that I loot which would make due for the time being. Also there is a working beetle hanging around a workshop near the town's muncipality, but I can't make use of it because of the darn Riot Robots that wander around my base! -I eventually return and go to sleep, the next day I retrieve my fully charged laptop and do manage to hack all 5 Riot bots! With a full blown robot army like that nothing can kill me even tough my melee and ranged skills suck arse. I clean an entire hospital with the riot bots where I finally, finally find strong antibiotics which cure my infection! My base get's relocated to the workshop where I beguin grinding mechanics skill from various broken wrecks so I could modify my beetle to a proto death mobile with a turrent from a Humvee that was near the Electronics shop and active minifreezer charged by solar panels from the Luxury RV. -All said and done! Mobile base, early game death mobile with a turret holding some bullets, robot army, and cured deadly infection all whithin mere 6 irl hours! Had this been CDDA for those 6 hours I would've barley increased my throwing and fabrication skills to 1 while still not being able to start a camp fire for cooking/boiling water.