r/cataclysmdda

We’re about 11.5 hours into the current playthrough, trying to become the best chef the apocalypse has ever seen.

Today’s goals:
🔧 Wire up another lamp
📚 Finally get down to studying and leveling the skills our survivor needs

Our powered LMOE base might mean we’re in the mid-game… though I’m probably very wrong about that.

If you want to come hang out, chat about what you’re watching, reading, or listening to, or drop some backseat wisdom and survival tips, I’d really appreciate it!

I spent the last 3 months slaving away on my latest CataDDA mechanic idea: growing fingernails.

I find it so unrealistic that you can play for 1 year in-game but your finger and toenails never grow? There's literally a "long fingernails" mutation but they don't grow naturally?

So I programmed it. In my addition to the game, your nails now grow over time and must be cut periodically with scissors or the all new item "nail clippers" (you can also use some other items like sheep shears if you're in one of the many emergent gameplay possibilities where you must urgently cut your nails but lack the proper equipment)

If you don't cut your nails, there's a small chance that your gloves/socks will tear upon trying to put them on. This greatly enhances the realism of the game as I personally regularly tear my socks in real life because I don't cut my toenails.

However, if you don't cut them for a long time, then there's a small chance that you deal minor cutting damage when using unarmed attacks/martial arts without shoes and socks.

The min/maxing and tradeoffs this would bring are so exciting and I am baffled that Kev doesn't want to implement this.

Just imagine: you're fighting a horde or zombies but your hands are getting cut up so you try to put on your gloves. But you didn't trim your fingernails last night! Your gloves tear, causing a spiral of your hands breaking so you can't fight then you die.

That'd be just as fun as when you forget to finish your course of antibiotics by one day so you just straight up die, losing your 2 year old character! Don't you love realism???

I'm afraid I have to cease all my unpaid labour on this project as it no longer aligns with my values of muh realism.

I will be joining the CataBN team because I find it considerably easier to achieve my real life fantasy of becoming a bionic cat girl in Bright Nights.

Thank you for reading

Hi,

Apparently now digging produce dirt / stone roughly equal to the volume being digged. What can I do to get rid of em?

They cant stack because garbage from mining single tile is enough to occupy 1 title

Car ramming only destroy the topmost item of a stack, and very slowly; there are thousands of units of dirt in single tile

I dont have deep water available

Hey everyone,
I’m trying to figure out what tools are really worth keeping on me when I’m running around towns. I don’t mean the best for crafting, but the best for scavenging.

Right now, my usual loadout is:

• Hacksaw (metal sawing 2) — for cutting metal to get into gun stores

• Crowbar (prying 3)

• Breaker from the Exodii (prying 6 and metal sawing 8 when powered) — meant to replace the crowbar and hacksaw, but I’m not sure if it’s actually worth carrying

• Screwdriver set

• Scalpel (fine cutting 3)

• Adjustable wrench (bolt turning 2) — for disassembling or upgrading vehicle parts

I found an integrated toolset in a lab and I’m trying to figure out how useful it really is. So far, it only seems to replace my screwdriver. The prying 1 and bolt turning 1 aren’t strong enough for doors or vehicle parts, and while the built-in welder is nice, it still can’t cut metal like an acetylene torch.

I understand the encumbrance argument, but I never find much use for quality 1 tools.

I'm on an 8 day old patch in case that matters. Getting hit with their spell of sorrow drains a pip from my weariness bar.

I used to go by this link to get new tilesets. Now it's gone.
What happend?

Hi, I'm developing a mod for experimental versions of Cataclysm DDA. I'd like to ask the community what you're missing in your favorite game: mechanics, quests, lore structure, or more fun things for clearing out monsters from cities.

I found a gas forge recently in my travels, and am preparing to make the jump to metalwork. However, I noticed that there is no option to place gas forges in the build menu like there is for other forge types, and when I activate ths gas forge it just tells me that I can't use it there. It's been loaded with a propane tank, how do I use it?

Earlier today someone posted asking what to do about infections etc, and the way they talked gave me flashbacks to my early days of not having a clue what I was doing, and how hard the game felt. So, I'm going to make a 3-parter about how to respond to physical injuries (and related effects) in CDDA, in hopes somebody will read it and get better at games.

Precursor-edit: I somehow managed to not mention anywhere that ALL OF THESE STACK TOGETHER AND SYNERGIZE so yes, sterilizing EVERY wound even when it's bandaged up, is worthwhile and will speed recovery and reduce pain! Also, sometimes if you had a REALLY nasty wound for a long time, it will heal back to 100% but you'll still have "phantom pain" in that limb which will continue to reduce your stats slightly by a few percent.. This is normal, and realistic if you've ever recovered IRL from a broken limb etc, it can hurt for quite a while after it's perfectly healed up..! Don't panic if you're at 100% health and still in pain, just take an spirin and shrug it off for a couple days and it'll go away!

1: Physical damage: ripped-open flesh, bleeding, blood-loss (which is it's own thing), pain and trauma (also they own thing), these all will screw up your stats and combine together. If you lose more than half or a full health-pip in a fight - you should start fleeing and hiding to recover or you'll go downhill fast.

Physical damage/bleeding portion is fixed by bandages, medical gauze, adhesive bandages (band-aids), cotton balls, tourniquets, a lot of stuff (preview the items in the inventory with uhh "e" I think, and it'll give a summaryu of how well it works based on your own skill.)

If you are still bleeding, your character is still losing blood which causes them to weaken and pass out - on top of a zombie smelling blood and finding you, so stop the bleeding!

Apply your 'bandaid' (catch-all term for any bandage-type item, I tend to use the cheapest first when safe) over and over until it works. This may take several tries. In a pinch you can hold pressure on the wound with your bare hands but you have to stop moving and disarm and then use some command I forget (edit: literally just hit '5' button to wait, if your hands are free of held items you'll staunch the wound automatically, I forgot lol!). Once you know to keep bandages around it's useless, and if you're bare-handed and bleeding that bad there's probably a threat close enough you'll get eaten while standing there trying to stop the bleeding.

Once bleeding is stopped that limb will say "bandage quality: poor" or whatever. You can always at any time re-apply a better bandage (they degrade over time so on a really awful injury it's worth putting fresh one on each day or so.)

2: infection. There are two (well, three, if you count death,) stages of infection: dirty and "infected". Each requires different responses. One is a thing you should not ignore, the other is rapidly going to kill you.

First, a blue "dirty" wound, With enough alcohol swabs and antiseptic, a blue wound can be cleaned, it'll give a % chance on how well it has a chance to clean, so like bleeding it may take a couple. Just keep re-applying until it works or tells you you're too far-gone and it went purple.

With purple infected and bleeding wounds, it's become systemic and in your blood so you're gonna start dying.

edit GREEN wounds. These are infected BUT NOT BLEEDING. So it'll still kill you but you can run around without more bandaids before you start getting sick and falling over on your own. Same response as purple, just with less cowbell.

You'll get dehydrated, fevers, chills, lose stats, be weak as a puppy and randomly puke while trying to sneak around looking for medication. What you need are antiBIOTICS.

These come in a few types, you want the broad-swath or medium kind, not the narrow-spectrum ones if possible, (the bigger the gun the better the cure in this situation!) but any might work or not in a pinch.

You gotta take these meds on a daily-ish dose schedule and keep yourself fed and watered and safe, sleep a lot, and if you screw up and skip one day or something the infection will probably come back and kill you just like IRL.

You'll have flulike symptoms and also need to find 6-10+ or so antibiotics and hole up and take one a day until you stop being sick. You'll need a TON of water, enough food for a few days, and something to do like read a bunch of books, so collect mp3 player, vibrator, board games, the "light red" fiction novels, etc. If your morale gets too low you can't even read skill-books so it does take prep or know-how to get through without hating the game.

3: Pain. Pain is not "weakness leaving the body" in CDDA... Pain is lost stats, inability to dodge, inability to free yourself from a grab, jump a fence, climb a gutter in a panic, basically almost anything you try to do while in pain, is worse and continually drops your morale until your character will basically be so sad they refuse to pick their own nose.. Annoying! Hard to recover from!

So don't let your dudes walk around in "extreme pain" all day, heck don't even let them stay in "mild pain" if you can drug them up! This is a video game, nobody cares about their kidneys here!

Being in pain (or sad, wet, hot, cold, etc) nerfs everything across the board, but collecting drinking-alcohol, willow-bark (for tea), aspirin, ibuprofen, weed, naproxen, codeine, tramadol, morphine, cocaine (in a pinch, but just a little pinch to wake up..!) we already do to sell just as a habit as a RPG hoarder, but lots of people never actually use their drugs!

This is a crime because a dozen aspirin can change your character from "I don't like playing, man..." to "I'm a goddamned SUPERMAN!" quickly. Only losers skip drugs and die without being high!

So, experiment. Try the drugs you recognize the names of from IRL, and take them in-game when it seems apropos. Then try the others.

Got a scratch? Take an aspirin or ibuprofen (naproxen sells better in-game so it's probably slightly stronger), every half-dozen or so hours.. Check your stats, in the top right and middle right you'll notice the difference pretty fast. Stacking the same drug on top of itself tends to make you sick pretty fast, so don't eat ten aspirin at once. Eat one every 4-6 hours as directed.

Just don't make it a "habit" of "bumping-up" your guys like this (on the more hardcore drugs) or eventually you'll develop an addiction, which is basically like an infection but involves more bodily functions and longer down-time. But it's pretty rare to get until you start pounding hobo wine to kill the pain from a small bite-wound.. Maybe that's for part 4. ;)

Thanks, for the clarification on green v purple!

I have just discovered the existence of this game about 20 minutes ago, and immediately downloaded it. I am fascinated by the concept, and really want to give it a go, but I would prefer not to use my PC (my wife needs it for high-demand games, and from what I've read, you can practically run cdda on an abacus and a car battery).

So, how do I actually go about doing that? Using a mobile keyboard seems really unintuitive for this game, and it also doesn't have an escape key, which seems to be absolutely vital. So far, I've managed to get to the part in the tutorial where you take the spear after about 6 tries (2 of which I didn't even make it through the menu). Most of my failures were from pressing 0, entering the help menu, and not being able to get out of it cause of the lack of an ESC key.

Is there some sort of mod or app I need to download? Am I missing some sort of function that makes all this easier?

I start another game and immediately try to befriend a guy. He had good skills and was carrying a knife and a gun (though I don't really need them either). But before I know it, he seems to be one of those who needs an inhaler. As soon as I realize he doesn't have much left, I sort through the starting shelter (the small one), go to a small town, and try to loot as much as I can. I entered so many houses, died several times (using saves to retry), and in the end, no inhaler.

Resigned, I return home (not before being killed by a few savage lumberjacks), and I start reading mechanics and electronics, so I can get a decent ambulance running.
Before I knew it, my partner finally died. I took out his things and left him outside.

I started reading, resigned to hoping for luck in finding more people in the future, and before I knew it, my partner returned, but as a zombie.

In the end, it seems the responsibility falls on my shoulders. *Bonk*

My character is a kunoichi who likes pain, but doesn't like drugs, only slicing people up.

My character couldn't go deeper into the town because there are too many zombies packed together, and she always starts out emaciated, extremely hungry, and weak. Perhaps I would have had better luck if I didn't give myself this initial penalty simply to balance the character.

PD: I use Google Translate simply because if I wrote in the English I know, it would take a long time and be of worse quality xd.

Why did he transform? I don't remember being bitten or anything like that. Is the virus transmitted through the air? And what tag do I put on the post? I just wanted to write something.

I've created a basic cross-platform Cataclysm launcher. It can install releases and auto-migrates your saves and config from the last game version you played.

What other features are important to you?

Betty the death roller keeps rolling. How long do you think it will take to reach the ocean?

I've been having fun modifying my vehicle. I'm still not welding so I've been adding doors and windscreens all around. I know I can add locks but how to find or craft these? Curtains next and cctv I believe is optimal. Sadly there's no way to seal the rear in front of the rollers without removing the storage trunks.

Is the dream of extending and fixing all the crappy broken frames a pipedream?

Have fixed a new alternator and added solar panels. If I can fit a storage battery how do I attach power tools and cookers fridges etc? I figured out the recharging station and plugging mp3 players and handheld games into the dashboard finally!

How long does water take to purify?

Thanks. I'm having so much fun.

I am playing an unarmed-only character, living a peaceful life harvesting cattail and training my proficiencies to give background to my tale. So, I was dragging off straggling zeds from the neighboring town to punch to death when a flesh raptor who will henceforth be referred to as 'Motherfucker' saw me. In a stroke of genius on my end, I attempted to fight the creature. I realized my mistake only when my wounds were too grievous to allow for a clean escape into the forest-line, so I limped to my base. applying cattail jelly whenever the monster gave me respite. Eventually I escaped into shelter, I held hope that my NPC companion would defeat Motherfucker, however, carelessly, I attacked my friend- provoking them to run away; and die -I can only presume- to the evil beast. I escaped to a river close by, but the beast remains in my safehouse. I will be licking my wounds for the forseeable future, however, when the time comes how can I defeat Motherfucker unarmed, I hold a lv. 2 proficiency in Unarmed Technique, have a melee of 2, unarmed of 2 and dodging of 1 aided by Fast Reflexes. However, my STR is 7 and my DEX is 9, which to my understanding is low for a melee character.

There is a plutonium generator at the checkpoint. Disassembly functions do not apply to it. If you examine it, you will see the inscription “The generator is well protected. Without a special pass, you will have to remove it manually.” Of course, there is no pass. If you hit it with a car or a sledgehammer, it will simply explode. Hacksaws and other tools have no effect on it.

Hi! I can't seem to attach my night vision goggles to my military helmet. Can someone explain how to do this?

Thanks!

I was going through my gear today to min-max my dodge and clear out clutter etc, and I realized that, even though I wear basically nothing with pockets and only carry a lighter and band-aids on me, I always have a blindfold.

Now if a cop pulled this character over and searched them, he'd find a couple codeine pills and maybe some meth, but when he pulled that duct-tape-blindfold out of his back-pocket, I would love to see the look on they face IRL as they just try to figure out WTF kind of shit I was into.

If you know CDDA, then you know. But it'd be pretty odd anywhere outside of an airplane or bus terminal IRL to come across someone packing a blindfold.

It appears that proficiency is now dependent on time rather than focus. Correct me if I’m wrong, but if I use recipes that require multiple proficiencies, wouldn’t that be more efficient?

I have the options to do both but im wondering which is better im kinda leaning towards the mutations but the more calories of the expanded digestive system is really my concern but i have the recycler bionic so does that cancel it out?

This reminds me of this for some reason

"Oh no my steak is too delicious and my lobster is too buttery"

Player who has been playing for a while on and off and still have no fucking clue what im doing. I just started the scenario where I start in a cabin in the woods with my friend (Liam). Any tips can and will help :D

Since brazier is not deployable in vehicle, is there any other vehicle mountable stuff that allow burning fire in vehicle for warmth in winter. I am aware open engine make car warm, but I want to burn wood more.

Probably not a good idea IRL due to monoxide so wont be surprised its not supported ..

I've seen screenshots of people having logs that say what you hear, damage you did, what you're walking through, etc. But I can't figure out how to view it on mobile (except when you die and it automatically displays). Can you see it in the game in real time?

I want to craft a crude anvil, but to do that I need a railroad track, I tried the subway, but the reciprocating saw just won't cut it, so please guys, tell me how do I get it?

As the title suggests, is there a mod that adds a tile that periodically spawns zombies in its radius?

Hello, here is the latest changelog.

Content:

• by sparr

• by sadenar

• by Testudo-Cultu

• by sadenar

• by mwhit030

Features:

• by RenechCDDA

• by Blueflowerss

• by Testudo-Cultu

• by ehughsbaird

• by RenechCDDA

Balance:

• by Standing-Storm

• by andrewhr

• by Kantonine

Interface:

• by db48x

Mods:

• by Standing-Storm

• by Standing-Storm

• by Standing-Storm

• by Standing-Storm

• by Standing-Storm

• by Standing-Storm

• by Standing-Storm

Bugfixes:

• by Standing-Storm

• by Testudo-Cultu

• by RenechCDDA

• by Alatun-Rom

Infrastructure:

• by ehughsbaird

• by ehughsbaird

Build:

• by tessro

None:

• by akrieger

• by gettingusedto

• by Maleclypse

• by BalthazarArgall

• by G0BL1N

• by ShnitzelX2

• by ehughsbaird

• by BalthazarArgall

• by ShnitzelX2

• by GuardianDll

• by PatrikLundell

• by gettingusedto

• by ShnitzelX2

• by ShnitzelX2

• by PatrikLundell

• by ShnitzelX2

• by RenechCDDA

• by Maleclypse

• by Maleclypse

• by GuardianDll

• by GuardianDll

• by ShnitzelX2

• by ShnitzelX2

• by kevingranade

• by BrassRobo

• by Maleclypse

I've seen a few posts talking about the removal of Stats Through Kills from the main CDDA repository, and seen an apparent desire for it to be made available as a 3rd party mod. As the submitter of the PR that re-ignited the discussion leading to the mod's removal from the central repository, I've decided to make the EOC implementation available for anyone interested through my personal github at the link below:

Please note that I will probably not be making updates or maintaining this mod, so if you decide to download it and add it to your game, while it should work for the current experimental, some or all of it may break in the future, so as with any 3rd-party mods, use at your own risk.

I know you can use USB drive and memory cards and move files onto them. But is there a way to do this at scale? When I have 200 books I don't want to have to copy every book on my new laptop each time.

Is there any means to do so? The only means I’m aware of would be the wooden step-ladder. Can be used to go up and can be placed down a level to go down. But surely there’s a way to use a long rope to go up and down a level, right?

Yes, I’m aware of the grappling hook, but that’s locked behind the anvil.

I mean if a rock has that quality then this should too because you know it makes you like a rock

If Kevin really loves realism then he'll add this

Still a beginner to this game do y'all have any advice? Like early game stuff that I should know or something that I should do that will help me greatly all I literally do is stay in evac center loot a few houses outter part of the city and that's it I feel a little stuck and the idea of going deep into cities is a suicide all I have rn is just scrap armor ane a bad spear

, This makes me wonder if the developers of the game ever leave their homes/do any real work. Demolition hammer or whatever semantics they are using to justify this are called jackhammers commonly.

Is this because of people complaining about the shitty LIGMA dungeon walls???.

Also it doesn't take eight hours to demolish a section of wall to fit through, not even with a sledgehammer, are these people huffing something?, no construction would ever get done WTF.

There's hundreds of videos like this.

Also disclaimer before the defenders of the futile come here: I don't mind impassible walls if the developers think breaking though walls is "cheesing"; The definition of cheesing now being trying to avoid spending several hours looking at a screen with the message "press 5 to interrupt" before I craft a tool made of materials more common that a jackhammer instead of spending time watching the "press 5 to interrupt" message while said jackhammer makes a hole in the wall. But please don't use the realism excuse.

FINAL EDIT:

Unrealistic realism

After the defense that concrete walls are 0,5 meter thick in CDDA, just for a coder contradicting it.

After hearing "Look, it's not me who tries to argue that 50 pound jackhammer is completely fine to be wielded and holding against the wall for an hours " we do take down walls with 50 pound jackhammers ask anyone in construction, we just don't do it in one go, we do it bit by bit...

After the defense of "code a smaller jackhammer" when the change was removing demolition from the jackhammer tool tag.

I'm done, I hope you have fun with your game.

But this is very clearly a spite change because people didn't like a specific dungeon, it's clear as day.

ive always wanted to make it to summer in this game, id like to take you all on that journy.

So I have stock hatchback in perfect condition and would like to know any useful upgrades for the vehicle (I currently have mechanics level 6)

So last night my character met his end and I decided to update to the most recent 0.I release candidate only to find when I install my soundpack the sound is all distorted, default soundpack isn't producing any noise at all when there should be clicks at least while navigating the main menu. I see a post describing similar issues on github but some say its fixed with updates and some say it isn't so any ideas?

Playing on Samsung S25+ with latest 0.I candidate and also tried the very latest experimental version.

I came where the doctor said, but is just a normal house with no terminal

I installed experimental 2025-10-03-0223 an android. How can I see description of items oO

Long time ago (0.G?), when I played it a little bit on my phone, in advance inventory management (/) I could use examine (e) if I remember correctly, it changes side panel to item description + list of activities I can do with it like active, read, unload etc. Now? Examining item from inventory management show me android style list with how I can interact with the item. It's an android dialog so I can use my finger (instead via pressing key in virtual keyboard like in 0.G). On the list there are activities I can do with the item but no description or option to show it.

Similar story with normal inventory (i) and examine (e)

How I can read item description? Is there a way to have old-style menu instead of the one that is handled by android?

Any other tips for playing on android?

Hello! Hope this post finds you well! Pardon my dust for asking questions that may/may not already be answered, but I swear I've tried to find prior results and this is the first moment I have off work for serious investigation & testing to try out some things I'm curious about.

Firstly, I'm vaguely aware that if I wanted to, I could make a 'mod' to tweak something in base game, as I am alert of where in the code I need to edit details to deliver desired results. However, I wish to instead make a 'mod' to overwrite the basegame code whenever possible, making it easier than diving back into basegame code to tweak (say after an update). Example; the 'Steel Mace' recipe is set to book-learn only, not auto-learn. If I wanted to make a mod to always toggle the recipe to autolearn, is it as simple as duplicating the original recipe, tweaking to desired preference, then putting my 'tweaked' recipe into a mod file?

Secondly, of a similar note; would it be possible to alter the sprite of an item in the same vein as 'put changed item file into mod'? For example, the Down Bed (the best bed I can make in my beloved Innawoods playthroughs) always has a sprite like a 0; I'd like it to look like a 'regular' Bed. I know how to tweak base code to do so, but I'd like to simplify that via my 'tweaked' mod. Is that possible?

Lastly, and again of a similar note, editing the values for a comestible. For example, I'd like to remove the 'nausea' penalty from willowbark tea, I know what code to snip out, but if I could just transplant the 'tweaked' comestible json into my mod, would it overwrite the basegame item and ensure 'my' item will exist, the non-nauseating variant?

Thank you to anyone who can help me, I like to type out code tweaks at work and email myself the txt's, I just can't check reddit to Q&A; now I'm off work, I have some time and a few things to test out! :)

I just loaded into a new world and saw that it has TOO MANY zombies in cities.

While I didn't play CDDA seriously before, I'm in high doubt I have ever met such amount of zombies in any world previously. This is also experimental 2025-09-29-1100, so this may be some experimental thing, and that's exactly the reason why I'm asking here.

yesterday i tried downloading build 0.6.0 but it crashed and said something about error 50 so i waited a day and download 0.5.2 as a recommendation from reddit because they said there's problems with latest build, but when i did it gave the same error message code:50 then i tried an older version but the same thing happened. so i don't know if its a problem with the launcher or my gaming laptop (its a relatively new model and is only 2 years old).