After Bubba I picked up on the same world as a randomly generated park ranger, Edward. I swear I had picked Rosewood but I must have misclicked or bitched out because I spawned in Riverside and then I saw, kind of spoiling the role-play potential, that your map (including annotations) carries over. So I said fuck it. I had a narrative justification for going back to the base as on literally my second house of scavenging the helicopter event happens. Remember how I said that the helicopter hadn't come along by day nine? Then I had two step-outside-and-die deaths. Well, the helicopter comes, and this proved the merits of my CQC because I survived it the same way I did the first time as the lady that had to flee into the woods.
I have a procedure I go through. I think the reason I'm doing so well (is my impression, anyways) is that I went in specifically assuming that you should play the game according to real life logic and my favorite zombie fiction is The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z. When I clear a house I peek several windows, not necessarily every single one but I scan it loosely, if I have to enter by a window I beeline for the door, I close doors behind me at all times (I was locking them but I read that's pointless), I clear one room at a time, and I draw curtains (if I have a base I scavenge curtains to finish it) and turn off outdoor lights and all electronics. Clear out any glass from broken shit. This greatly diminishes the odds of drawing zombies in, mostly eliminates zombies getting in cleared houses (they could still theoretically smash a window/door and wander in from something like a chase), and means every single house is ready to go (minus the potential window damage or lack of curtains) as a roof to sleep under any circumstance. So... I just went back in the first house. Through the day the place got mobbed, door kicked in, multiple windows (including my own bedroom, it was one story) smashed, but nobody wandered in.
Then I just walked. And west Riverside being clear, it's not like I was drawing anything from that direction. The place was basically still a ghost town when I got there.
So I wind up dying 8 days in. What happened? Same thing as Bubba, I got bit going for the car. This one's a lot more exciting, though. I decided to approach it by picking my way through the forest parallel to the road (Scenic Grove is the name of the trailer park near the station) and then entering perpendicular to the road when I was right across. I bailed on this almost immediately. Zombies everywhere (you know how they do next to roads out of towns), can't see shit, terrifying. But I decided to bail northwards, not back to the farmhouses, to some places Bubba found when he took a wrong turn. This is all fine. The forest was awful. I only drew one or two zombies at a time but you know how I rambled about forests being dense? This was extreme density, often can't see more than a few steps ahead of you, then these clearings open up in light where you feel at peace and also like every eye is on you. It was awful. 10/10 I loved it. (I've said for ages, there's lots of missed opportunities in making games based around Indian fighting in Eastern US forest environments).
Next day, I'm heavily fogged in in the morning. I'm pissed because I have no reading materials on me, no TV, I don't know how badly this game will fuck me up if I exercise before doing this, and instead of just fast-forward I decided to go out and putter anyways, and I got bit. At that point, I went:
I had bailed to this farmhouse because it was pretty much right across (through the forest) the gas station, so I just crept through (if zombies can't see me either, I figured hearing was the priority) without incident, gassed up and went home.
At that point all that was left was preparing the new base (I figured the generator needed to go in a shed, which I didn't have in my current house, and I'm iffy about it but if nothing else can keep the house near the generator just for VHS parties and a sort of icehouse/smokehouse/kitchen house like you see on plantations, food preparation outside of the sleeping residence). It's real sketchy to me, one house has only a single door, the other has busted windows (not a problem once I board them), both are right on the treeline.
The problem was that now I had basically set up the game to be solved. I could spawn in naively and in all likelihood lose all my frozen foods to electric shutoff (has to be any day now), or I could just cheese it. I've spawned in as electrician Manuel Hidalgo (right on the edge of the neighborhood, LOL) and intend to start the generator up, then probably shelve the world as the low-stakes creative base-building world and do serious runs on other worlds.
I don't know all of the mechanics but it seems to me that with a river, generator, gas station not real far down the road (the road will need to be cleared to make it reliably safe), helicopter event done the game is a solved problem. Which is the problem you all as old-timers have to solve by playing recklessly/roleplaying/making up bullshit to do.
