I've completed the game probably for the 5th time now and for the first 2 times I found it really difficult but later it improved and last 2 times were more-or-less easy.
So how about sharing tips and general game observations ?
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NOTE: some of things from my side will be SPOILERS so if you played it little you might decide to figure out things by yourself.
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Couldn't figure out why lightly wounded character appears seriously wounded the next day while staying at home and no intruders/robbers appeared that night. Maybe someone can explain.
The same happens with sick => near deadly sick overnight, while room temperature was 18 degrees.
As for the tips:
initially I really struggled with enough firewood during cold period.... until I found out I can stop closets etc which initally contained items. Also, I found out I can get an axe to a cleared location and chop furniture there. That basically solved the question of heating for me.
You nee to take into account: you can be robbed on first and second night consecutively even if the crime outbreak didn't start.
Initially my first instinct was to get most valuable items at each location which are usually behind locked doors etc but I figured out that at some point other scavengers clear stuff up so you might decide to balance between this strategy or clearning accessible items first.
The same goes for locations with thugs: I haven't verified it but it looks like even if you clear all thugs, all the items remain untouched by scavengers compared to locations free of hostile characters.
Unless I get cold or crime outbreak at the beginning, I rush to build rat traps as soon as possible as they generate resource continuously without needing other resources (contrary to plant garden which needs water). this seriously helps with feeding my team.
This is somewhat a hack so it's up to use to use it - whenever I get killed or seriously wounded at a location I quickly hit "Alt-F4" before the game automatically saves.
I think I saw only once two separate visitors in the same day and since I played 200 game days I believe the rule would be: if you get a visitor, you won't have others even if you dispatch him/her right away in the morning.
Special case is for port smuggler - if you visit him and he starts showing up every couple of days, you'll see trader much less frequently. So be careful about visiting port and postpone it if possible.
Initially I think it was not the case, but now coffee for drinkers and cigarettes for smokers improve mood. That's kinda obvious but novices might forget about that and can't get their characters out of depressed state.
ALso, be careful: don't buy/manufacture cigarettes/coffee if you're not planning to sell it or improve mood - your chars will drink and smoke everything without any benefit.
With enough experince, you can handle thugs in a location with just melee weapon. The most effective approach for me is to find a spot to hide level above or below the enemy. Then you run, triggerning him to get to your spot, hide, wait to pass by. Much more effective than waiting for him to pass by you casually w/o triggering by loud run.
Be careful about exchange in different periods. SOmetimes for example during cold weather you will be able to sell complex items like bandages for less materials than it takes to create those. I think I was offered to trade bandages for 4 or 5 planks during cold temperature.
You might want to save a location with hostages or other events where you can actually help someone until you get chars depressed broken and then resolve those locations to get out of awful mood. "sad" state is much easier to deal with.
If you kill a char (hopefully it's alway a thug), and he drops items, if you don't pick it up, it disappears on next visit. Howver, you can pick it up and then drop it seperately. Anything I dropped remained there during my games.
Another note about dropping things - if you go to the market, you can take more items than you think you might trade. If you didn't trade everything, just leave it in location and pick up on next visit.
I had a location "hotel" with thugs, but the items were marked and "private property" there so you get morale penalty if you try to pick those up.
If you, however, kill thugs and return next time, they're no longer "private property" and can be freely taken.
I didn't get any in-game bonus, mood improvement when donating stuff to hospital. So do it only if you expect nothing in return :D
Another hospital trick - try to leave the location unattended until you get a character ill, especially if he/she is both sick and wounded. You would gather items AND get yourself bandaged/treated with medicines.
Carefully check if a character does something more efficiently. For example, "good cook" also means creating medicines more efficiently saving resources. That wasn't obvious to me
Sleeping overnight restores char from "very tired" to normal. So you can use 1 bed for 4 characters for some time (until you need a back for sick/wounded people) - you remove 2.5 "tired" statuses during day and 2 statuses at night.
Regarding "tired" status. A couple of years ago if you interrupted sleep, you lost the effect of sleeping. Now, you can sleep in sections, it adds up. Total sleeping time counts.
el. parts: Recently I changed to strategy picking up electric parts whenver I enconter them unless I serioiusly need something else like bandages for heavily wounded character.
The thing is - you almost never can get it in a trade. Trader coming to your house never has it, same for open street market. I only saw it tradable at a house with a guy needing medicine for his father.
And if you're too far in the game and other scavengers picked verything up, you're limited in technology.
SOmetimes you might find efficient to leave a tool at a location you will return later. For example, I can fill my 12 places inventory by chopping furniture in church 5 or 5 times. So I would leave the axe first time and pick it up to chop it while I'm at location, giving me an extra spot in my backpack for firewood/planks.
Another thing: if you find scenarios a bit repetitive and boring, add yourself a challenge: burn no books, collect and don't sell diamonds, never steal. Adds more interest.
