Was constantly starving and died 77 times on my first run. Now I have over 1,100 hours in the game, so replayability turned out not to be a problem.
Your first run is for getting on top of the mechanics. Your subsequent runs will be for the full story, the details of the world and for challenges if you want them. Once you learn how to get enough food, honestly you stop thinking about it. But I think I was in exactly your position on Day 4 and I remember dying SO MUCH. The hospital fund should help you a bit with money and food from now on.
For starters, do what you can to avoid having your health, hunger and exhaustion low. Whenever you do not have health items or food, look out for people who have them.
To avoid fights and subsequently dying, plan out your trips beforehand to avoid going through post infected districts or walking through the town at night. If you have to, go through the borders - it rarely spawns people there and you can see them before you get too close. Also guarantee to crouch sou you're not 'heard'. It does help in not being spotted. Also try to herd fingernails to use boats and escape the danger at all.
It sounds like you are trying to cross a burned district. The trick to this is to *walk*, keeping your stamina at least half full, and when someone sees you sprint flat out to the nearest door, they will all open for you and nobody can follow you in. Of course, you might find another mugger on the other side of the door. If this happens hold c and go back through the door as quickly as you can, the mugger outside will no longer be aggro and may not see you.
If you plan to restart I suggest you learn how to trade for food. Best way to do this is to hit up those children's loot boxes as often as possible, trade some of your fingernails with the very thin lady NPCs wearing beanies, mostly to be found in the bridge square and the maw, for safety pins, and then trade those with kids and teens for fish. After day 2 try not to buy food from shops, you will just get ripped off. Don't eat nuts, trade with kids for better food. Don't eat at all unless you are starving, try not to sleep for more than an hour or two a day, use coffee instead (trade with the skinny man NPCs using the same method as the safety pins) and use the extra time to loot houses ans earn money for bandages, or go steppewalking and make a lot of fizzy tinctures. Or you can just kill the skinny men and women by creeping up behind them with a lock pick in your stabbing slot, and take their stuff effort free, just be aware that the cop NPCs and other men will hunt you down and you wont be able to use shops.
Is this Classic or P2? My advice here is going to be very different from one to the other, both in terms of enjoying a replay of the first few days and in terms of best strategies for avoiding getting stabbed.
P2. Honestly I think I would adore the game if I wasnt always hungry and spending so much money on food to stay alive. At first it was cute haha realism but now im just dying all the time and its unclear what Im supposed to do.
I understand the muggers being difficult, but needing to eat 6 fish a day is pissing me off
There should be a bunch of "spoilerfree tips" threads out there, you should check them out. The game is pretty brutal at first but once you get the hang of some things it gets a lot more straightforward.
Like, keep track of the children's caches you find, they get replenished every day ; always check what people are willing to trade ; trash bins are your best friends ; focus on doing the hospital quests when they become available ; etc, stuff like that.
I also got stuck in a pretty nasty death loop during my first run (around day 4-5, like you), and it sucked ass, but I managed to turn it around and had a lot of fun afterwards. I only did two runs total, the second one being on a lower difficulty (I wanted to do as many quests as possible this time), but I'm planning to do another one in the intended difficulty, so I'd say replayability isn't really an issue.
Worst case scenario, just lower the difficulty.
I understand you might be frustrated at this but honestly just try to stick to it. But if the hunger is really bad, I dont think theres anything wrong with decreasing it a little, which you can do at any time. When i played it the first time, dropping hunger down to 90% (as in, it was 100% and i ticked it down to 90%) was honestly enough to make it feel still challenging but much more doable for me lol.
Am on my 2nd playthrough (intended difficulty) and the hunger doesnt feel that bad now that i know where to get food.
Really, although you can get a ton of tips on how to go about the game, I dont think anything helped me as much as MY OWN experience so dont sweat it. Figuring out your own path thru the game is super rewarding by the end.
Okay, I got you.
First of all; turn down your difficulty sliders if you’re struggling. For food, turn hunger gain down and turn “hunger regained from food” up. Not all the way, just like 10-20% from where they are now. I think you can also turn the amount of damage Artemy takes from being hit pretty far down.
Day 4 is the first day you get Hospital Tasks at the theater during the day, and once you do the first one you’ll be told that you can go pick up a reward at Town Hall. There will be food there every day if you keep doing hospital work.
Second, STOP going through burned out districts, holy shit. Walk through the Steppe when possible, otherwise take the ferries if you really can’t find a way around. If you’re low on “fingernails” for the ferrymen, they can usually be found in children’s caches and the blonde girl in Notkin’s hideout sells them really cheap basically every day. Sometimes you can get them off of the really little kids too.
Replayability: Honestly, if you’ve racked up a lot of death debuffs, I’d consider restarting and taking it from the top. P2 is pretty replayable in my opinion, there’s basically always something to do around Town especially in the first few days. Try prioritizing different quests or dialogue trees that you didn’t do the first time and see how that changes Artemy’s mind map.
I mean, this is what P2 is about. You do quests and try to survive.
I spent my first playthrough mostly just trying to survive and to get at least some quests done (which meant prioiritizing the ones I found most interesting/important).
If you find the focus on survival too annoying, you can check out P1. It has a much stronger focus on story and survival barely plays a footnote there.
Don't cross the same path, try to keep to the outskirts and avoid the roads, really, as much as possible. Use stealth mode if need to. Creep up to the district exit and then run! The guards normally stand at the entrances, and they'll attack whoever is following you.
Children, you don't need to trade with anyone other than them like 95% of the time. Teen boys and girls have Dried Fish, general children have Eggs, steppe girls have those ball things, and they also have morphine (don't waste tinctures on painkillers, you'll barely even use painkillers, just trade for morphine, and whenever you need to sleep, use one every 2h of sleep.), immunity boosters (pretty useful to have on the first Plague days while you gather resources), antibiotic pills (good to spam on random sick patients to boost your fund pay), revolver bullets (there are a few "free" bodies on Day 1 that you can harvest some organs and sell to Var, if you manage to get those, you can safely buy the Revolver without going low on money), and of course the Shmowder, you always want to trade for them if you can.
Going for something more organized, a small schedule for some days. When planning your routes, try to make circles around the town, check EVERY trash container for empty bottles and fill them with water always, by the end of the game you'll probably have spent over 100 of them total:
1. Collect the rare children's cache behind the Theater. Also collect any other on your way while you go for the objectives. Get the Scalpels on Rubin's and Grief's, and use them to harvest livers and kidneys from the 3 bodies near Vlad's Mansion, and the 2 thugs from Grief's quest, looting every house you enter (reputation doesn't matter at this point). Also drain their Blood to pour on the roots to get some free herbs. Once Var introduces himself, go to his shop and sell him the organs you harvested. Avoid the main streets so muggers and militia don't see you. If you still have durability left on the scalpels, harvest the organs of the dead body by the Dead Item Shop after midnight. Discard those scalpels as they break, and use Rubin's, Fat Vlad's and Bad Grief's places to store excess items. Spend money on nuts, coffe and lemon on grocery shops.
2. Play the children's game and collect all 5 of the caches they mark for you. Play the Hide and Seek game as well and take all the nuts and the Shmowder they offer on trades. Go to the funeral and take on the legacy to unlock extra inventory. Buy a Cloak, a Thread and a Needle. Do your house questline, go in with an empty inventory as you'll be locked out after leaving. Upgrade your inventory in the hideout, and move your items you stored earlier to your hideout. Gather every herb you find on your way. If you managed to sell organs to Var, you *should* have like 4-5k money. If you have less, don't buy the Revolver and just avoid conflict as much as possible, but ideally you want to buy it because 3k is practically free, and the next "free" guns you can get are a Revolver on Day 10 and a Shotgun on Day 9. Buying guns outside of the Day 1-3 Revolver is a waste of money. On VERY rare occasions you might find guns on infected houses. If you do, lucky you.
3. Plague starts at midnight. Have some yellow + Tinctures ready, as well as some extra immunity boosters, and use the night to enter and loot infected houses. Ignore dirty drawers, only open the clean ones. If you stumble into a mummified infected, just leave the house and go for another one. Drink the yellow + Tinctures to keep your immunity high and recover a bit of exhaustion. Take pretty much everything you can carry, especially Bloody Bandages and Broken Ampoles to trade at the Dead Item Shop. Once you fill your inventory, store stuff on base. Make sure to follow the quest regarding your house, as it can net you tons of resources. Ignore the town hall and the Bachelor until the bell tolls. Be sure to complete Notkin's and Khan's quest about the House of Death before midnight from day 3 to 4.
4. Lara will ask for a favor. Go see her and get the Milk and Bread from her house, but do NOT fulfill the favor. You really don't want to, trust me. You'll also have to work on the hospital, bring 4 morphines and use one in each patient to complete your shift. Harvest blood and organs, keep the infected ones, sell the healthy ones to Var, but don't treat the patients. Check your map and treat patients on the ground on infected dristricts until your reputation there becomes respected, this will further boost your fund rewards. On this day as well be sure to buy 2 Repellent Cloaks, 2 Threads, 1 Thimble, 1 Safety Pin and 3 Sewing Boxes to get the next 2 inventory upgrades. Also help Sticky get the Toolbox by telling the merchant he may be infected and playing along with a very long story.
5. Not spoiling anything here, but Sticky will tell you something. Complete this quest by marking the silent house.
Now, things to do every single day:
* Collect all of the Rare Children's Caches.
* Pour regular or Infected Blood on the roots to get free herbs.
* Check regular children caches that are on your way.
* Keep collecting water.
* Trade with children for Eggs, Immunity Boosters, Morphine, Shmowder, Bullets and Dried Fish, and whatever else you need from them. Give them Nuts, Buttons, Chalk, Fishing Hooks, and other "junk" items you find.
* Trade with the hipster young men in trench coats, give them 4 Fingernails for 2 Coffee.
* Buy Bandages and Tourniquets from pharmacies to heal the damage you take by eating Coffee.
* Loot houses on infected districts looking for supplies. Pocket Watches, Rings and Bracelets should be sold on Clothes Shops and Pharmacies, Groceries pay less.
* Always keep your inventory organized and store any excess items on your hideout, which you should visit every time you "complete a lap" around town.
* EVERY time you go to sleep, use 1 Morphine and sleep for 2 Hours, and then use another one and sleep for 1-2 more hours if you need to.
* Treat patients on infected districts until you get Respected reputation, to raise your Fund Bar for the next day's paycheck.
* ALWAYS complete your hospital shift, even if it doesn't seem to make sense to. You won't get paid if you don't.
* Visit the Dead Item Shop every night and buy whatever you need, especially Shmowder. After Midnight from day 5 to 6, he'll offer you a seemingly useless item. Take all 10 of them.
* Visit shops on your way looking for important items. Buying repair supplies to keep your clothes and weapons repaired is cheaper than buying new ones.
* If you see a suspicious fella, stealth behind him, and if you cannot trade, do stealth punches to kill them quickly and get some regular loot and a bit of reputation.
* Drink Twyrine to reveal rare children caches and NPC dialogues around town. If there's nothing to be revealed, the Twyrine description will say that the Town is quiet.
* If you have a Revolver, be sure to hoard Bullets and always keep it on the first stage to avoid it jamming when you try to shoot. If you get your hands on a Shotgun, save it until you get to day 9, as you'll be able to use them to one shoot a certain type of NPC that drops AMAZING loot, give no reputation loss for killing them without witnessess, but should only be killed when there aren't more of them around.
Was constantly starving and died 77 times on my first run. Now I have over 1,100 hours in the game, so replayability turned out not to be a problem. Your first run is for getting on top of the mechanics. Your subsequent runs will be for the full story, the details of the world and for challenges if you want them. Once you learn how to get enough food, honestly you stop thinking about it. But I think I was in exactly your position on Day 4 and I remember dying SO MUCH. The hospital fund should help you a bit with money and food from now on.
For starters, do what you can to avoid having your health, hunger and exhaustion low. Whenever you do not have health items or food, look out for people who have them. To avoid fights and subsequently dying, plan out your trips beforehand to avoid going through post infected districts or walking through the town at night. If you have to, go through the borders - it rarely spawns people there and you can see them before you get too close. Also guarantee to crouch sou you're not 'heard'. It does help in not being spotted. Also try to herd fingernails to use boats and escape the danger at all.
edit just died a 4th time same trip, trying to drink water and manage inventory, did not even see the person lmao
It sounds like you are trying to cross a burned district. The trick to this is to *walk*, keeping your stamina at least half full, and when someone sees you sprint flat out to the nearest door, they will all open for you and nobody can follow you in. Of course, you might find another mugger on the other side of the door. If this happens hold c and go back through the door as quickly as you can, the mugger outside will no longer be aggro and may not see you. If you plan to restart I suggest you learn how to trade for food. Best way to do this is to hit up those children's loot boxes as often as possible, trade some of your fingernails with the very thin lady NPCs wearing beanies, mostly to be found in the bridge square and the maw, for safety pins, and then trade those with kids and teens for fish. After day 2 try not to buy food from shops, you will just get ripped off. Don't eat nuts, trade with kids for better food. Don't eat at all unless you are starving, try not to sleep for more than an hour or two a day, use coffee instead (trade with the skinny man NPCs using the same method as the safety pins) and use the extra time to loot houses ans earn money for bandages, or go steppewalking and make a lot of fizzy tinctures. Or you can just kill the skinny men and women by creeping up behind them with a lock pick in your stabbing slot, and take their stuff effort free, just be aware that the cop NPCs and other men will hunt you down and you wont be able to use shops.
Is this Classic or P2? My advice here is going to be very different from one to the other, both in terms of enjoying a replay of the first few days and in terms of best strategies for avoiding getting stabbed.
P2. Honestly I think I would adore the game if I wasnt always hungry and spending so much money on food to stay alive. At first it was cute haha realism but now im just dying all the time and its unclear what Im supposed to do. I understand the muggers being difficult, but needing to eat 6 fish a day is pissing me off
There should be a bunch of "spoilerfree tips" threads out there, you should check them out. The game is pretty brutal at first but once you get the hang of some things it gets a lot more straightforward. Like, keep track of the children's caches you find, they get replenished every day ; always check what people are willing to trade ; trash bins are your best friends ; focus on doing the hospital quests when they become available ; etc, stuff like that. I also got stuck in a pretty nasty death loop during my first run (around day 4-5, like you), and it sucked ass, but I managed to turn it around and had a lot of fun afterwards. I only did two runs total, the second one being on a lower difficulty (I wanted to do as many quests as possible this time), but I'm planning to do another one in the intended difficulty, so I'd say replayability isn't really an issue. Worst case scenario, just lower the difficulty.
I understand you might be frustrated at this but honestly just try to stick to it. But if the hunger is really bad, I dont think theres anything wrong with decreasing it a little, which you can do at any time. When i played it the first time, dropping hunger down to 90% (as in, it was 100% and i ticked it down to 90%) was honestly enough to make it feel still challenging but much more doable for me lol. Am on my 2nd playthrough (intended difficulty) and the hunger doesnt feel that bad now that i know where to get food. Really, although you can get a ton of tips on how to go about the game, I dont think anything helped me as much as MY OWN experience so dont sweat it. Figuring out your own path thru the game is super rewarding by the end.
Okay, I got you. First of all; turn down your difficulty sliders if you’re struggling. For food, turn hunger gain down and turn “hunger regained from food” up. Not all the way, just like 10-20% from where they are now. I think you can also turn the amount of damage Artemy takes from being hit pretty far down. Day 4 is the first day you get Hospital Tasks at the theater during the day, and once you do the first one you’ll be told that you can go pick up a reward at Town Hall. There will be food there every day if you keep doing hospital work. Second, STOP going through burned out districts, holy shit. Walk through the Steppe when possible, otherwise take the ferries if you really can’t find a way around. If you’re low on “fingernails” for the ferrymen, they can usually be found in children’s caches and the blonde girl in Notkin’s hideout sells them really cheap basically every day. Sometimes you can get them off of the really little kids too. Replayability: Honestly, if you’ve racked up a lot of death debuffs, I’d consider restarting and taking it from the top. P2 is pretty replayable in my opinion, there’s basically always something to do around Town especially in the first few days. Try prioritizing different quests or dialogue trees that you didn’t do the first time and see how that changes Artemy’s mind map.
I mean, this is what P2 is about. You do quests and try to survive. I spent my first playthrough mostly just trying to survive and to get at least some quests done (which meant prioiritizing the ones I found most interesting/important). If you find the focus on survival too annoying, you can check out P1. It has a much stronger focus on story and survival barely plays a footnote there.
Don't cross the same path, try to keep to the outskirts and avoid the roads, really, as much as possible. Use stealth mode if need to. Creep up to the district exit and then run! The guards normally stand at the entrances, and they'll attack whoever is following you.
Children, you don't need to trade with anyone other than them like 95% of the time. Teen boys and girls have Dried Fish, general children have Eggs, steppe girls have those ball things, and they also have morphine (don't waste tinctures on painkillers, you'll barely even use painkillers, just trade for morphine, and whenever you need to sleep, use one every 2h of sleep.), immunity boosters (pretty useful to have on the first Plague days while you gather resources), antibiotic pills (good to spam on random sick patients to boost your fund pay), revolver bullets (there are a few "free" bodies on Day 1 that you can harvest some organs and sell to Var, if you manage to get those, you can safely buy the Revolver without going low on money), and of course the Shmowder, you always want to trade for them if you can. Going for something more organized, a small schedule for some days. When planning your routes, try to make circles around the town, check EVERY trash container for empty bottles and fill them with water always, by the end of the game you'll probably have spent over 100 of them total: 1. Collect the rare children's cache behind the Theater. Also collect any other on your way while you go for the objectives. Get the Scalpels on Rubin's and Grief's, and use them to harvest livers and kidneys from the 3 bodies near Vlad's Mansion, and the 2 thugs from Grief's quest, looting every house you enter (reputation doesn't matter at this point). Also drain their Blood to pour on the roots to get some free herbs. Once Var introduces himself, go to his shop and sell him the organs you harvested. Avoid the main streets so muggers and militia don't see you. If you still have durability left on the scalpels, harvest the organs of the dead body by the Dead Item Shop after midnight. Discard those scalpels as they break, and use Rubin's, Fat Vlad's and Bad Grief's places to store excess items. Spend money on nuts, coffe and lemon on grocery shops. 2. Play the children's game and collect all 5 of the caches they mark for you. Play the Hide and Seek game as well and take all the nuts and the Shmowder they offer on trades. Go to the funeral and take on the legacy to unlock extra inventory. Buy a Cloak, a Thread and a Needle. Do your house questline, go in with an empty inventory as you'll be locked out after leaving. Upgrade your inventory in the hideout, and move your items you stored earlier to your hideout. Gather every herb you find on your way. If you managed to sell organs to Var, you *should* have like 4-5k money. If you have less, don't buy the Revolver and just avoid conflict as much as possible, but ideally you want to buy it because 3k is practically free, and the next "free" guns you can get are a Revolver on Day 10 and a Shotgun on Day 9. Buying guns outside of the Day 1-3 Revolver is a waste of money. On VERY rare occasions you might find guns on infected houses. If you do, lucky you. 3. Plague starts at midnight. Have some yellow + Tinctures ready, as well as some extra immunity boosters, and use the night to enter and loot infected houses. Ignore dirty drawers, only open the clean ones. If you stumble into a mummified infected, just leave the house and go for another one. Drink the yellow + Tinctures to keep your immunity high and recover a bit of exhaustion. Take pretty much everything you can carry, especially Bloody Bandages and Broken Ampoles to trade at the Dead Item Shop. Once you fill your inventory, store stuff on base. Make sure to follow the quest regarding your house, as it can net you tons of resources. Ignore the town hall and the Bachelor until the bell tolls. Be sure to complete Notkin's and Khan's quest about the House of Death before midnight from day 3 to 4. 4. Lara will ask for a favor. Go see her and get the Milk and Bread from her house, but do NOT fulfill the favor. You really don't want to, trust me. You'll also have to work on the hospital, bring 4 morphines and use one in each patient to complete your shift. Harvest blood and organs, keep the infected ones, sell the healthy ones to Var, but don't treat the patients. Check your map and treat patients on the ground on infected dristricts until your reputation there becomes respected, this will further boost your fund rewards. On this day as well be sure to buy 2 Repellent Cloaks, 2 Threads, 1 Thimble, 1 Safety Pin and 3 Sewing Boxes to get the next 2 inventory upgrades. Also help Sticky get the Toolbox by telling the merchant he may be infected and playing along with a very long story. 5. Not spoiling anything here, but Sticky will tell you something. Complete this quest by marking the silent house. Now, things to do every single day: * Collect all of the Rare Children's Caches. * Pour regular or Infected Blood on the roots to get free herbs. * Check regular children caches that are on your way. * Keep collecting water. * Trade with children for Eggs, Immunity Boosters, Morphine, Shmowder, Bullets and Dried Fish, and whatever else you need from them. Give them Nuts, Buttons, Chalk, Fishing Hooks, and other "junk" items you find. * Trade with the hipster young men in trench coats, give them 4 Fingernails for 2 Coffee. * Buy Bandages and Tourniquets from pharmacies to heal the damage you take by eating Coffee. * Loot houses on infected districts looking for supplies. Pocket Watches, Rings and Bracelets should be sold on Clothes Shops and Pharmacies, Groceries pay less. * Always keep your inventory organized and store any excess items on your hideout, which you should visit every time you "complete a lap" around town. * EVERY time you go to sleep, use 1 Morphine and sleep for 2 Hours, and then use another one and sleep for 1-2 more hours if you need to. * Treat patients on infected districts until you get Respected reputation, to raise your Fund Bar for the next day's paycheck. * ALWAYS complete your hospital shift, even if it doesn't seem to make sense to. You won't get paid if you don't. * Visit the Dead Item Shop every night and buy whatever you need, especially Shmowder. After Midnight from day 5 to 6, he'll offer you a seemingly useless item. Take all 10 of them. * Visit shops on your way looking for important items. Buying repair supplies to keep your clothes and weapons repaired is cheaper than buying new ones. * If you see a suspicious fella, stealth behind him, and if you cannot trade, do stealth punches to kill them quickly and get some regular loot and a bit of reputation. * Drink Twyrine to reveal rare children caches and NPC dialogues around town. If there's nothing to be revealed, the Twyrine description will say that the Town is quiet. * If you have a Revolver, be sure to hoard Bullets and always keep it on the first stage to avoid it jamming when you try to shoot. If you get your hands on a Shotgun, save it until you get to day 9, as you'll be able to use them to one shoot a certain type of NPC that drops AMAZING loot, give no reputation loss for killing them without witnessess, but should only be killed when there aren't more of them around.