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7 Days to Die Playthrough: Vikarion

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Vikarion:
Author note: BTW, have I mentioned that this game freaks me out? In general, games don't freak me out. The Fear series? Meh - fun but not scary. Silent Hill? ZZzzzzzz. Dead Space? Booooring. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? Fascinating, yes, scary, no.

But this game - there's something about the desolation, and the isolation, that is just incredibly fucking creepy. It's not at all like Minecraft. Minecraft has villagers, and cute blocks, and even if you're playing alone, it's pretty easy to get to "near-god-mode" and who cares about a skeleton then, right? But in 7 Days, you're constantly in fear for your life, even if there isn't a zombie in sight. Anything you do can attract them - or maybe not. I've noticed trends - like, making a lot of noise - but no pure causality.

And the game punishes you for being/going rambo very harshly, especially at night. A horde is very, very difficult to stop without firearms...which make a lot of noise, drawing more zombies. And all the time, your hunger and thirst is increasing, which means you have to go out there and risk your life for supplies.

Yeah, this game is incredibly creepy. I love it.  :D

Vikarion:
Day 3

I. Love. Painkillers.

I don't know if they were issued "en masse" during or before the outbreak. I don't know if it is just that that many people were on them. I just know that they kept me going today.

As the sun came up, I decided to follow a road south to see if there was anything useful I might find. There wasn't, unless you call "scattered biters" anything close to "useful". I don't. I followed it for a while, and then took a south-eastern route out of the forest upon an adjacent road, leading into the ruined city I'd sped through before running out of gas, three days ago.

On the way there, I had trouble. Typically, it's easy to avoid most of the biters during the day, but somehow, I ran right into one of them - a very large, fat one. When he hit me, we toppled over, him struggling to bite me, me going for my stone axe. He was on top of me, and it was all I could do to shove my fingers into his rotted double chins, holding his teeth away, while I bashed away at his skull with a feeble little bound stone.

Eventually, I got him. I guess. He stopped moving, which was good enough. I squeezed out from under his smelly corpse, stumbled a couple feet, and vomited. I couldn't help it. I know food is precious, but he was so rank, and on top of me...

Well. At any rate, I checked him out. I was pretty scraped up, so when I found some Norca on him, I took it.

Man, that made a difference. All that pain, all that disgust? Gone. Took maybe...5 minutes? How come we weren't all taking this? This stuff is awesome!

I downed a cold can of chili to refresh myself after that, then started north through the ruined city. There were a few spots of interest, but what was best was that I found a gun store!

I couldn't get in - it had been well-boarded-up - but next to it was a hardware store, in which I found some more supplies, a sledgehammer, which is perfect for killing biters, and an AUGER! Seriously, an AUGER! I bet I can use this thing to make a freaking wonderful underground base! It'll be just like minecraft, but all the creepers will be overhead! I'm writing this from inside the store! More later!

...

Well. This should teach me only to ever write in here while completely sober. Taking that many painkillers while on the road was pretty stupid. I'm lucky I didn't get very dead.

What I failed to notice while under the "influence", so to speak, was that my rambling through the hardware store had not gone unnoticed. In fact, I had a few of the damn chompers beating their way through the walls even as I finished my last entry. Fortunately, it was a couple of half-decayed ones, or my enthusiasm over the discovery of a sledgehammer might well have been misplaced.

As it was, the sight of several zombies breaking through the back door of the hardware store started me. Gripping my sledgehammer, I waited until the first made it through, and advanced on me. With sweaty palms, I lifted the hammer, and, moving forward, brought it down, FAST, crushing the skull. The biter dropped, and the one behind him came up. Repeating the maneuver a couple times, I bought myself time to run.

I zipped out of the hardware store, and headed for "home". I used a few small ponds...well, perhaps one was a lake...to throw off the zombies on my trail. The last lake was my own, and I popped down into my tunnel with a great feeling of relief.

I can't believe I was stupid enough to use drugs while on the crawl. I can't believe I survived. But I did, and drugged-me has a point: I have an auger now. I'll need gas, but this will make hollowing out a place to live...well...much easier. Perhaps I should make this a longer term proposition.

Good afternoon, diary. And good luck, me.

Vikarion:
Day 4

Not much to write about today. I spent it using the auger to dig out more space. The auger works really well, but it drinks gas as if it had a V8 engine in there. I've gone through all the gas I managed to scrounge from the local gas stations.

On the plus side, I've created a rather large area to live in, about 9 feet high (3 meters), and supported by pillars of natural stone I've left about every three meters (9 feet) on the horizontal. That should be more than enough to prevent a cave-in. I've also built an adjoining room with some forges - these are a bit better since I experimented with my first one. Oh, and I built a frame around the tunnel down to the room, and put a metal door on that, too, so there are two doors between me and those things.

I'm starting to run low on food. On my trip yesterday, I managed to kill a pig when it got caught in the mud of a lake's bank, but I think I need to seriously consider making a crossbow, like that book describes. Hunting will become a necessity. Perhaps farming, too - I found some potatoes, and some corn. I could eat them, but if I'm going to be here for a while, perhaps planting them is a wiser choice. I also need to create a vent for this place.

Wow. I just yawned the biggest yawn I've had in weeks. I'm tired. Time to get some sleep. See you later, diary.

Vikarion:
Day 5

I went scavenging today. It was a long day. Good thing I'm in shape.

I decided to go north. Stupid decision. The city degenerates into a burned-out forest in the north, and there was precious little to scavenge, save from a few ruined houses. But, because I'm stubborn as all hell, I kept just going north.

I caught a couple of pigs in some underbrush, and killed them with the sledgehammer I looted from the hardware store yesterday. I also brought along my collection of beer from looting, which kept me going. I knew that being buzzed all day could be bad, but I was out of food, and needed something to keep my energy up.

Eventually, I made it out of the burned area and back into a forest. This one was a bit snowy, as I'd been climbing, elevation-wise, and this answered another question for me: do zombies freeze? Well, they do, and it means jack shit anyway.

At this point, I had to have something to eat, so I simply built a campfire in the middle of the road and roasted some pork on a stick. Charred, but filling. At that point, I turned west, and wandered along a road for a bit before going south, and then east again.

In essence, I ran a huge rectangle, without finding anything of interest other than a few cans of chicken and some scrap iron. Oh well. I think that tomorrow I will try to explore the bombed city to the south east again.

Oh, I almost forgot! I found one of those old "instant-photo" cameras. Going to see if I can make it work, maybe put a few photos here.

More later, diary. Wishing for a radio.

Vikarion:
Day 6.

Oh god. Today was horrible.

I decided to loot the abandoned city to the east and south. Horrible decision. The place is a pit of zombies. Including vicious biter dogs. I didn't know dogs could get infected. But they can.

I did some mild looting on the outskirts. I was doing ok, picked up a nail gun, some gas, and a few other sundry items, and decided to move deeper into the city. My first big target was a parking garage, which was largely empty, and then a tall tenement. It, too, had relatively slim pickings - mostly empty jars, which I crammed into my pack anyway. Empty jars are still useful after all.

It was when I left the tenement and went further in towards the city that I got in trouble. I went around a corner and ran smack into a bloated zombie that must have been a police officer in a former life. In a panic, I pulled out my new nail gun and tried filling him full of nails. And he exploded, showering me with bile and pus.

I don't remember how I wound up at the river. I must have run back, or dragged myself back. I'd dropped my tool belt, and I shakily stood to go retrieve it. As I did, I sneezed. Twice. And I was out of breath.

I'm infected.

Stupidly, I then drank water from the river, trying to recover my stamina. That didn't sit well with my stomach. But I had to get my belt - it had my axe, my only pistol, and precious food. So, in short rushes, I returned to where I'd encountered the police zombie. It stank. I picked up my belt, and slowly made my way back, dodging zombies where I could, killing them with laborious blows of my sledgehammer or shots from my pistol when they could not be avoided. A few times, I simply walked away, losing the biters further off by weaving through buildings.

If there was any possible help for me, it was that I'd collected a few samples of the mold - on bread, no less - needed to create the special antibiotic. I took a few vitamins to help my stomach, and looked around for a way to distill the drug. Nothing. A mason jar wouldn't do. Perhaps someone in the small town to the west had a chemistry set or something? But I had already looted the place. Perhaps I'd overlooked something. I was in a panic. As much as I could, being out of breath, I raced out of my hideout and towards the town.

I ransacked the houses and garages in the village a second time. Nothing. I had done a fairly thorough job a few days before, and little was left. But, as I neared the very last garage to re-search, I discovered that it was still boarded up. I tore through the boards with my fire axe, hoping against hope. And, inside, in a long-unused box, was a set of some beakers and tubes. Not ideal, but it would do.

Right now, as I write this, I'm hunched over a small fire in my base. The smoke is oily and smelly as it curls up from the flames which are distilling the extract of mold I've combined with some potassium nitrate - hopefully in the same way they described on the news in those final days of civilization. By tomorrow, we'll know if it worked, or if I'm a dead man, quite literally, walking.

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