88 Days to Die: Alpha 16 Dead is Dead Recap

One of my finest ever Dead is Dead playthroughs came to an unfortunate end about a week ago. After taking my time to mourn, I figured I'd post a little photo tour of some of the things I accomplished in my 88 days of life before I go on to my next run.

Some preliminary info on my settings - all default settings EXCEPT:

Daylight length 16 --- This is basically the old default, I find the new default days too long.

Loot Respawn Disabled --- I hate magically reappearing loot and searching the same places again and again. Exploration FTW!

Blood Moon 16 --- As far as I can go without bad performance dip.

Air Drops 7 days & marked --- The orange smoke is only visible on ~1/5th of drops for me, so this keeps me sane.

THE SEED: Empire

A truly glorious seed, maybe the best RWG I've ever seen.

As the screenshot shows, you've got every biome you can imagine all tightly packed around a cute little town featuring a skyscraper, motel, construction site, church, couple of fire stations, and most importantly, a bunker. There are also 9-10 traders scattered around in relatively close proximity - one in the desert just outside of town, the rest arranged in a loose circle that you can hit all in one day with a decent minibike. The seed really has everything you could want in a seed and I would highly recommend it to anyone.

As you can probably guess, I spawned in the desert and set up shop in the bunker on the edge of town, slowly modifiying it to fit my needs.

There my main crafting and storage areas with additional cement forges off in the corner. What's up that ladder, you ask?

This was my first defense installation...please excuse the mess, I haven't had the chance to clean up, being dead and all. It's a pretty basic pillar 50 battlebox surrounded by electric wire and spikes. Basic until I discovered the utter joy of blade traps, that is.

The screenshots don't really do justice to the sight of two rows of blade traps in glorious, bloody motion. This defense worked perfectly, but I spent most of my time up on the catwalks repairing the blades rather than actually fighting the horde. I wanted something a little more hands on, which brings us to structure number two.

I'm sure you're all familiar with the quaint little well that serves as entrance to the bunker POI. It wasn't really me, so I hacked it up and made this armored ladder entrance which goes down to the bunker and up to this catwalk...

 

[Psychodabble]

Which leads to a true masterpiece of combat engineering...the shark cage.

As with most of my goodies, it's a little banged up, but I'm sure you get the idea. Climb in the cage and do battle with the horde on your terms while they dance through a field of electro wire.

This is the view from within and before you ask, YES, you can loot from in there. The only real concern with this design is cop-splosions, but if you're clever, you can avoid those. The absolute best thing about the design is you can do it dirt cheap on day 3 or 4 with cobblestone and upgrade it as you go.

So I sort of alternated between those two structures for awhile, sometimes using both if a horde night got really hairy, before I decided I wanted more. I wanted to get up close and personal with our undead friends, so I made this...

- - - Updated - - -

Looks simple, but...aw, who am I kidding? It's SUPER simple. Cut out a cliff wall, install horizontal poles and spikes...base done. This got me face to face with the dead & uglies and was a nice addition to my defensive parkour. I eventually connected it to the other structures with a tunnel so I could kite the horde from place to plaec without having to set foot on the ground.

For awhile, everything was grand, until I wanted more comedy in my horde nights, so I built this...

Doesn't look like much, I know, but oh what fun it has inside! Did I mention my love of blade traps?

So this thing is about as stupid and impractical as a base gets, no loot, high maintenance costs, but it's also frigging hilarious. Explaining it wouldn't really even do it justice, you just have to build one and watch what happens. I guarantee you'll laugh your ass off...assuming you find dismembered corpses flailing around and falling awkwardly as funny as I do.

I built some other stuff that I decided to blow up again, or just isn't that interesting, so that pretty much wraps up the tour. In case you're wondering how I died, I was trying to show off the game for a friend and decided to melee a radiated feral cop. I whacked him without too much of a problem, but failed to notice the wandering horde that spawned while I was fighting him...3 bears and a dog...it went fast.

And so this playthrough comes to an end after many close calls and a lot of fun. I had to take some time off to digest my failure, but I'm ready to get going again. Hope you guys enjoyed the tour!

 

[Psychodabble]

Also, here's my char sheet:

Deaths are at 2 because I forgot to put on god mode while making screenshots and died again! Level 158 and over 100 hours played...not strong enough. I'll do better next time.

 

[SickPuppy]

Nice recap, dead is dead is the only way to play, more tension and memorable moments. That comedy blade tower looks interesting, I'm picturing dismembered zombies falling through the sky, maybe some with no heads?!

So many hours invested yet I'm still learning from others creations, would be good to hear others play throughs, +1 to 'Dead is Dead Recap' sticky thread!

 

[fragtzack]

Hoping the pimp put in an enforced dead is dead mode! Nice write up.

 

[Psychodabble]

Banished to the dark side of the board where nobody will ever see it...sigh.

I guess we had to keep the front page free for more polls and noob complaints... :upset:

 

[Bubo]

I saw it, enjoyed it, and it made me laugh..

 

[canadianbluebeer]

Some of those look really amusing. Zombiechow indeed.

Love the map the seed gives, really heavy on sharp ridges. A few Evel Knevil moments.

Bunker isn't that deep, can hear the forges while above ground, which of course, brings screamers.

Watching the silly witch run in circles over the forges is hilarious, even if it does make it hard to shoot her.

I really want to try that blender tower. Really do.

(wonders how he can add explosives to the mix... hrmm)

Thanks for the writeup and the seed info.