Best Skills In Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead

Summary

• Prioritize dodge, health, and melee weapons to improve survivability and combat ability. Choose wisely!
• Tailoring Purpose helps long-range characters craft powerful armor, while the Devices skill allows for unlocking doors and disarming traps.
• Health Care increases the healing rate after wound treatment, which is crucial for survival in the early game.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead (CDDA) is a turn-based survival horror roguelike. Released in 2013, CDDA receives regular community updates to this day and can be downloaded for free from GitHub. This game sees players thrown into a world destroyed by simultaneous apocalypses. From aliens to zombie hordes to gory horrors, all kinds of monstrosities can be found in this terrifying world. The only goal is survival, and death is guaranteed.

Skills are important to help players stay alive in the apocalypse, improve their fighting skills, create knowledge and ability to interact with the world. Choose carefully when creating a character. It really can be the difference between life and death.

8 Avoid

No hits, no damage

• Increases escape chance.

A character's Dodging skill dictates their ability to avoid incoming damage, whether it comes from enemy attacks, traps, or environmental hazards. This skill also increases the success rate and effectiveness of acrobatic moves such as parkour.

Starting with a few levels in Dodging is a must. Even basic zombies pose a significant threat to survival for new characters, as most have poor weapons and little or no armor. Remember that pain can quickly disappear! Dodging will allow new characters to endure many simple enemies by greatly reducing incoming damage. Late-game High Dodging allows players to go toe-to-toe with evolved monstrosities, helping them avoid their lethal hits.

7 Food handling

Food efficiency, now and always

• Gives you more and better recipes to tinker with.

Food management increases the number and complexity of hearty food recipes players can make. It also makes butchering more efficient and, at higher levels, enables food preservation.

While not critical to new characters, assigning a level or two to character creation will help make early game exploration more efficient, allowing players to craft more nutritious and filling food from looted resources. In longer games, almost all naturally spawning food will have rotted away, making this an important skill. Food preservation is also essential to help players stave off starvation during the winter when natural food is scarce.

6 A melee weapon skill

Kill them first

• Increases proficiency with a specific weapon type.

In character generation, players have three different melee weapon skills to choose from: Bashing, Cutting, and Piercing. Each weapon type has its strengths and weaknesses, and increasing these skills will increase a character's accuracy and damage with its corresponding weapon type.

Starting with a couple of levels in one of these skills is recommended, as new players are weak and struggle to get hits, especially when using makeshift weapons like kitchen knives. In the long run, having high proficiency in a chosen weapon type will dramatically improve the player's survivability – especially against evolved enemies.

5 Healthcare

Heal faster, survive longer

• Increases healing speed after wound treatment.
• Reduced failure rate of medical procedures.

Healthcare increases the effectiveness of medical treatments such as bandages and antiseptics, and it reduces the failure rate of procedures such as Compact Bionic Module (CBM) insertion.

In the early game, levels in Health Care will provide faster wound healing even when using poor healing items. For poorly equipped and armored new characters who often get beat up, increased healing greatly increases their survivability. It also allows players to stock up on quality healing items for when they really need them. Long-term, high health care allows players to quickly jump back into action. It also makes experiments with CBMs much less lethal.

4 Units

Optimize survival

• Increases lock picking speed.
• Better chance of successfully disarming the trap.

Unit skill dictates the speed and success with which a player can interact with security devices and traps, including lockpicking and disarming traps. While not critical to survival in the early game, a high unit level will improve a new character's survivability, giving players access to higher quality loot found behind locked doors, display cases, and more.

Behind these locks can be found a whole host of powerful weapons and armor. Being able to reliably disarm traps is also a boon, whether it's the character's first or fifth year of survival. Behind such traps are often riches, and failure to disarm a trap often results in death.

3 Computers

Robots are not (equally) deadly

• Better access to terminals.
• Higher chance to successfully hack.

The computer skill measures a character's ability to navigate computers and technology, allowing players to hack terminals and even robots at higher levels. Like the Devices skill, the Computer skill is optional for survival in new or long-standing characters. However, it does provide a significant increase in survivability.

For new characters, successfully hacking a terminal can grant access to otherwise impenetrable metal doors and the abundant loot within. Long-term, reliable hacking terminals allow players to disable security systems, making access to robot-infested scientific facilities significantly less dangerous. High level characters can even hack robots!

2 Tailoring

Survival through craft

• Provides access to more and better clothing recipes.

Tailoring is a skill that measures a character's ability to craft and repair various clothing and textiles. A higher tailoring skill directly correlates to the amount and variety of clothing a character can craft, although they will need separate skills to craft high-level items.

In the early game, characters should have a couple of levels in tailoring to ensure they can keep their clothes and armor in good condition. Breaking armor, especially during combat, can quickly lead to death. For longer games, high tailoring is critical to producing and maintaining defensive armor in a world filled with evolved monstrosities. Strong armor can be looted, but doing so is often fatal.

1 A pistol or a rifle

Get a head start on the Apocalypse

• Increases proficiency with a specific gun type.

The weapon and rifle skills give players greater accuracy, faster aiming, and better gun customization. Based on availability, location, and enemy type, it is recommended that early game players specialize in a single gun type.

While not essential to survival, it is useful to start with or train a few levels in either handgun or rifle during the first few weeks of the apocalypse – doubly so if players intend to rely on such weapons in combat. New characters can die quickly if left to fight enemies in close quarters, as guns make poor melee weapons. In the long term, handguns and rifles are important tools to help players fight increasingly powerful evolutions.