Meanwhile it was the middle of the night, a super creepy time to be in a deserted storage facility.
There were a couple of Zeds in the storage units, and technically there's still at least one in there, because when I found a yellow generator (...I *really* need to start studying what the colors mean, I keep forgetting), I loaded it in the truck of my car and drove away faster than the speed of light XD
I also looted all the groceries I could from various convenience stores, restaurants, delis, etc. that I found, and frankly I'm not convinced there isn't more. I have emptied the local bookshop. I have made a quick run to the Lectromax warehouse in search for a pipe wrench (I'll go back later for more non-urgent tools) and stole every sink I ran into, plus a couple of bathtubs, in prevision of the water shutoff.
Honestly, for a run that started meh, it's going pretty well.
To the point that THIS is my police station base at the moment :
I also have a Spiffo truck with a high-capacity trailer, a car, and a bike outside...
And check this on my screenshot above : IT'S ONLY JULY 23rd !
I have more water than I know what to use it for, I have one generator (though a second one wouldn't hurt, if only to place it across the street with the gas pumps), I have stockpiled food like it's my day job...
...and now I kinda feel, well, now what ?
Normally getting all of this up and running would take MUCH LONGER. And by the way, at the moment I don't even NEED the generator : there's still electricity on the grid (and the water hasn't been cutoff yet, either). So, it's like...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I guess I'm gonna start doing some of the long term stuff then. Which... I have never done.
Plant some crops before August starts ? Look into the building mechanics ?
Actually I'm a bit terrified now, because my setup is so sweet, I don't want to risk everything by going too far too fast.
In a handful of previous runs, it's not the Zomboids that killed me, but the greed. The feeling that "oh I'll just drive from Fallas Lake to Muldraugh and loot the warehouses there" or "I'm just going to empty Ovo Farms so I have more fridges, more eggs, more more more !" and then dying there when I would have been perfectly alive with what I had at home.
But when I think like that ("I'm going to stay home and not move from here anymore"), I'm also afraid that it's my mental illness talking. Agoraphobia saying that staying put is where there isn't any risk, and so it's safe (which... is not necessarily true).
It's really hard to get an idea of whether I am applying the right logic sometimes.
Youtubers for Project Zomboid not being a white male Brit challenge.
Well, Pamela is dead. And as I predicted it happened when I tried to leave town (I went looking for skill books).
Greed. It's always greed.
The mod about introducing menstrual cycles to a game that aims to be highly realistic is going well.
This notice needed to be posted within THREE days of the mod dev uploading the mod to the Steam Workshop...
https://mastodon.social/@ladyteruki/114796305301942758
#ProjectZomboid
That said this has to be my favorite comment, not just on the mod's page or on the Steam Workshop, but in the entire internet this week XD
These manbabies have been crushing zombie skulls for thousands of hours but are disgusted by the existence of periods.
Gamers gonna be gamers.
Anyway, now that my previous run is over, I'm starting a run with that mod. I expect pain.
And also a lot of difficulties ;)
Oh f*ck it is exactly as punishing as I thought XD
I started the save in the middle of having my period... with zero hygiene products around me. So I had to rip a shirt into pieces and use the rags. Fantastic mod.
It has always bothered me in survival games but also shows/movies. Next up we'll have to bring up shaving, but you boys aren't ready for that conversation either.
I was surrounded by zombies, stuck inside a house. As they were breaking in through the windows, I could think of nothing else but to run to the second floor and put another door behind us while I'd think about my options. In the bedroom, while they banged on the door, I turned curtains into a sheet rope to use as an escape route...
...and then absolutely didn't find how you use it XD
So I jumped and limped to my car as fast as I could before they'd find I'm no longer up there.
Thankfully I made it to the car without bleeding to death. I quickly stitched the wound (good, because I hadn't included a splint in my packing ! but I did have a suture needle), bandaged it and got the hell out of Dodge.
I had a bit of a fright XD And I left my favorite purple cap behind, because it fell when I kissed the cement, and I really had to make an important choice between getting to safety and keeping my purple apparel XD
...I think I'm going to look up how sheet ropes work, though XD Because I had it in my main inventory, the window was open, and yet no amount of clicking or right clicking seemed to bring an option for it.
That character is almost one month old, too. A very dangerous time for my characters in Project Zomboid these days XD
I log into my current Project Zomboid run, see that my character is having her period again, decide to keep things simple for the next few days. I start looting a house near my base, it goes perfectly well. I loot the house next to it... two cops and two prisoners (zombies, obviously) break through the windows as soon as I approach (they must have seen me when I looted the other house and I didn't hear them).
Oh, great.
Since I'm in so much pain and exhaustion from my period, I'm slowed down ; I decide that instead of trying to fight them, I'm going to walk all the way around the house to get out of their line of sight.
...Did I mention there's a fifth Zed on the other side of the house ? No ? Probably because I see it only now. I have no choice but to try and kill it before the others hear his calls for reinforcement. I push him a few times, he falls, I stomp his dumb green face. All good.
All good ?
Noooo, because what I haven't noticed in that moment, it's that my rubber boots have imploded when I stomped the Zed ! So now, get this : I'm in socks, walking around in the grass around a house with most of its windows broken !
"Strange", I think to myself as the UI informs me that my left foot is hurting, "did I sprain something when I stomped that fifth guy ?". Not exactly, I am quickly informed : I cut my foot ! So I quickly put some bandages on it, not fully realizing that the broken -
- windows are the obvious culprit here (as well as my lack of attention for my gear). I get up just as the four other zero in on me, and decide to, oh yes, you guessed it, walk through the glass again ! The UI informs me that this time my right foot is hurting, and oh, now I'm computing that it's the glass, that's right, now that both of my feet are repainting the lawn in an unnatural color ! Because I do what anyone would do, naturally : I walk with my second feet abundantly bleeding, as I -
- no time to bandage it because of the other Zeds closing in. I end up losing three of them in the nearby trees, but one of the cops (ACAB) still chases me all the way to my car. I am, thankfully, slowed down but still a tiiiiny bit faster that him.
As I approach the car ("just one more step... ok you're taking small steps, let's say three more steps. Just three more steps !"), I realize two things almost simultaneously. One is that I'm not even sure I won't bleed to death before I'm in the car.
But almost as worrisome is the second one : I am such a terrible driver that I have broken just about every window in that car. It's my "low stakes trips" car. That's why I took it on that trip today, a day I had initially decided would be (and in hindsight it's starting to be painfully ironic at this moment) "kept simple". Death is simple, afterall. The only reason why I took a car out is that I want to use the trunk to haul things back to base. I will not be protected even once in the car !
So, in the split second that it takes for me to think of this as I approach the car, I prepare myself mentally to start the engine as soon as I'm in, hoping, of course, that POS car doesn't take several tries to get going.
While I'm training my brain ahead of the seconds ahead of me, the cop zombie has no such concerns, of course, and is, instead, fully focused on eating my flesh as soon as inhumanly possible. Which he attempts to do by aiming for my stomach, which is fun, because cramps.
Thankfully I finally get in the car, and the minuscule moment during which I open and close the door seems to afford me the tiniest of gains on my assaulter. Enough for me to turn the contact and breathe a sigh of relief as the car immediately starts.
At this point it dawns on me that not only my health bar is about as low as my intelligence, but on top of that, if I go straight to base, I'm obviously leading a mini-horde to my safe haven.
So instead of taking a left, I decide to take a right and drive into a part of the neighborhood I have NEVER been to, which means the FoW hasn't fully lifted yet and I discover the layout of the street as the car hurls itself between the trees.
Because, you see, it's not exactly a street on this side of the neighborhood. It's more of a dirt road. The bushes have started growing there, at random, and soon so will the trees. The bushes don't present a danger for my car, but they do slow it down -
- as well as present a visual obstacle to me as I try to decide where to drive a few tons of metal next. And slowing down is not ideal, considering I still have zomboids behind me. I'm assuming. I'm not turning around to look.
Meanwhile my heart is pounding in my chest, encouraged by the game which adds a stressful pounding sound as my character's life deteriorates at the speed of light. The UI also informs me that my left foot's bandage is dirty, a great sign that infection nears.
Furiously trying to determine what's going to kill me first so that I can prioritize crises, I decide to veer brutally right again to stop on a nearby parking lot, hoping that maybe the trees and bushes will hide me long enough for what I have to do. I have only two clean bandages left, and I use them on my stomach and my second foot ; the first foot will have to risk an infection. I can see that I have glass shards in the second foot (and can only guess that it's true of the first one too) -
- but at this point I can't afford to unpack any bandages to take them out if I want to make sure the zombies leave me alone. Meanwhile, the UI informs me that my menstrual protection is also requiring a change. With my various wounds and other sources of bleed demanding attention that I can't give them in the car, I start the engine again and drive all around the block as fast as I can, drawing a large loop so I can, hopefully, be forgotten by the Zeds, and finally go home.
...
I come home.
I put away the food I just looted in the first house (hey, we're not gonna waste steaks just because we're about to die).
I go upstairs to the first aid storage (GRAND idea to put it up the stairs, by the way).
I sit in front of the storage, on the floor.
In a pool of my own blood, I unwrap my bandages.
I pick up tweezers to extract the glass shards in both of my feet.
I apply alcohol wipes to disinfect wounds that had already started to fester.
I change my tampon.
I swallow a couple of pills for pain management, before dragging my exhausted carcass to the bedroom.
I open the storage by the door and put on new boots.
I put myself to sleep on the bed, on the side where the pillow is.
I gently press ESC.
I log off.
That's enough Project Zomboid for today.
AUGUST 8TH.
Tomorrow that character turns exactly a month old.
Took a sleeping pill IRL then out of habit launched the game.
Well I don't like to waste, so I'm just gonna start a doomed run with a character that I fully expect to kill tonight XD
Happened what was always going to happen XD
I'm glad I had the clarity to not pick my character who just turned a month old XD
I wanted to shake things up a bit, and decided that my latest run would NOT be as an electrician. You know, in a "you've been playing this game for a few hundred hours now, you're a big girl, you can take the kiddie wheels off" kind of way ?
...
So far my entire two weeks of existence have been dedicated to looking for the damn generator manual. I have found FOUR generators, not one manual. And I've already visited three towns.
Honestly next run I go back to electrician.
@ladyteruki I bet that in your next run as an electrician, you will find multiple copies of the generator book!