A raid-based gameplay overhaul mod for CDDA, inspired by games like Escape from Tarkov and Dark & Darker.
- "Play Now!" will not work. You MUST make a custom character for this.
- The game uses code to search large areas of the map. That means you may run into load times of up to a couple minutes at times. You will generally be warned of these in-game, so please be patient.
- Save often because there WILL be bugs and even occasionally crashes at this stage.
Changelog has been moved to the bottom! Scroll down!
This mod attempts to completely change how you play CDDA.
You start off high in the sky on a floating island, and using a warp statue located there, will be teleported to a random location on the earth below to commence an "expedition". There, you are on a limited timer of only 6 hours and must fight, loot, and journey your way to the nearby exit portal. Use it, and you will bring all the items you were carrying back to the safety of your floating sanctuary, but you will not be able to return to the place you left behind. The better equipped you are, the more likely you will survive, but remember that bringing out too much gear will make it hard to carry much new loot home -- and dying with all that high quality gear means it's gone forever. Balancing what gear you are willing to risk on any expedition is an important consideration.
Once you warp home, there will be no way to warp back to the area on the ground you just left. Every trip to the surface is fleeting. As a result you will have no way to keep most vehicles, no need to thoroughly clear most areas, and no reason to preserve anything. This will drastically change how most players approach normally routine scenarios. Remember that only carried items can be brought home -- if something cannot be taken with you or used during the expedition, it's junk!
Should you die, your character's story is not over! You will simply return to the island at low health, but everything you had on you will be lost. Recover your strength, gear up from your stash, and head back out.
For the first 60 seconds of every expedition, you will be under the effect of "warpcloak". This leaves you invisible and immune to fall damage, which should give you just enough time to run for cover in case you were dropped into extreme danger. Don't waste it - act fast!
Difficulty is selected in-game when a new game starts and affects ONLY how long you can stay out on each expedition. Every setting has a soft limit and a hard limit. When you hit the soft limit, you suffer Warp Sickness: your stats begin to slowly drain until you leave. When you hit the hard limit, you contract Warp Disintegration: you begin rapidly taking damage until you leave or die!
Normal difficulty is the way the mod was meant to be played. and gives you a soft limit of 4 hours and a hard limit of 6 hours per raid. If you're looking for a more extreme challenge, you can play Extra Hard mode, which gives you a soft limit of only 2 hours and a hard limit of 3 hours. This timer is extremely tight, and you will need to find vehicles, take shortcuts, or fight through the penalties of being late. It will leave precious little time for looting or side missions. If you want more time to loot, explore, and salvage, Casual mode gives you a soft limit of 12 hours and a hard limit of 18 hours.
The eponymous sky island is your sanctuary and home base. You're given a large, magically isolated area you can customize however you want. Stash your items, grow crops, set up production, build a base. Anything you like. While here no threats should be able to reach you. As it is exposed to the sky, solar power works here. As it is very high up, expect cold, windy days.
When you're ready to set out, gear up and examine the warp statue. This will send you to a random unexplored area of the map. Nearby, at random, you will also find a location marked in your mission journal: a return portal, your only exit. You must fight your way to the return portal before warp sickness overtakes you, and examine the statue in the mysterious Red Room you find marked on your map (it always spawns in a field). Do this and you complete that excursion -- you will be returned home safely with everything you were carrying. Take this time to organize, rest, and recover, before planning your next mission.
You will be given four marked missions in your log every time you begin an expedition. One will guide you to the exit portal. One will require you to kill a certain total amount of enemies before returning home. And finally you will get two randomly generated missions to visit a location, usually to clear a specific threat. Rewards, in the form of warp shards, are issued on completion of these missions. Harder missions yield more warp shards. There is also a further shard bonus for location: missions in fields give +0, in forests give +1, and in houses and towns give +2.
These special resources can only be acquired by completing missions. Bring them safely home where they can be crafted into special items. These items provide unique powers, primarily to make it easier to bring more loot home. For instance, there's the Warped Lumberjack's Bag, which can only hold sticks, planks, logs, and other raw wood materials, but holds an absolutely absurd amount and even reduces the weight of contained items. Another bag could let you bring animals home with you. You could invest in consumable pills which can extend the timer on your expeditions. There's even a very expensive item that will allow you to bring an entire autodoc home to your base -- if you can get it out safely! Warp shards can't buy you weapons, armor, food, or most useful supplies. Their primary use is making it easier to claim loot, but you still have to find it in the first place!
To find these recipes just look under the "Warp" tab in your crafting menu, under "Other".
In the event an exit did not generate or you otherwise need to get home you have been provided with a personal spell to warp home directly. This is intended for bug fixing ONLY when your exit has not spawned properly. However, if you'd like to play a much easier version of the mod, I can't stop you from using it whenever you want. Be warned this will remove most of the challenge.
- Warp pulses come at even intervals when you play -- 15 minutes on Impossible, 30 minutes on Hard, 45 minutes on Normal, and 90 minutes on Casual. At 8 pulses, you begin to suffer stat debuffs. At 12, you begin disintegrating. These will remind you that time is passing, and you will receive a warning when you are almost at your limit. Never forget your time limit! A watch or clock can save your life, but if you have nothing else, keep an eye on your warp pulses!
- Remember that anything carried or worn is brought home. Since you can wield very bulky items, it might be worth grabbing the biggest thing you can find before coming home. A corpse to butcher, a heavy piece of furniture to build with, an entire engine block. You may not be able to stand up, but if you can hold it, it's coming with you!
- You're expected to die. More than usual. Each expedition will see you dropped into potential danger, racing the clock to push through hostile and unfamiliar terrain, cut off from home base, impeded by unseen obstacles, and with only the gear on your back. Many factors combine to make this experience harder than normal CDDA, so you will probably die more often. Don't feel bad, just pick yourself up and try again!
- Stockpile multiples! Many things you only needed one of before will need to be replaced if an expedition is lost. Stash extra guns, backpacks, shoes, clothes, watches, pocket knives, lighters, and anything else you may risk losing! Many tools and utensils can be kept safely at home, but for everything else, be mindful!
- You can spend as long as you want in the safety of your home. Sooner or later you'll need to restock on something, but if you need to take a few days off, no one will bother you.
- You start with a free tent and a special salve which will take you immediately to full health. This salve will only last until you have completed 5 successful expeditions. After that, it becomes useless. Use this grace period to get a decent stockpile of basic supplies going, and be ready to heal yourself afterwards!
- In case of extreme injury, Quickheal pills can be crafted from warp shards. These will patch you up to full health and cure most conditions, but can only be used on the island!
- Life insurance! For a very high price, you can craft a Homeward Mote. Bring this on an expedition and if you die, you will instead be healed to full and warped home with all your items. However, this mote is only good for a single expedition. Even if you survive and extract successfully, the mote will be gone. It'll be used up either way, so there's no reason not to press your luck!
- Grab everything you can carry! Any empty space in your pack is wasted. Lots of items you could easily take 20 seconds to step out for in a normal game are now much more inaccessible. Getting things like a pot to cook with, a basic cutting implement, and a warm blanket to sleep with are all invaluable early on.
- Leave in a hurry! Even if a horde is bearing down on you, or you're literally being eaten alive by dogs, touching the return portal will instantly bring you home. No need to make a last stand, sometimes even with hell on your heels it's best to just run for the exit!
- Have fun! Please report any bugs or leave suggestions for balance changes.
A mod I wanted to play so bad I just made it myself -TGWeaver
v0.2.2 This version may not be compatible with old saves! But old saves don't work on the new versions anyway, so use your own judgement.
- Updated mod to be compatible with newer CDDA versions (as of 2023-06-01-1256).
- Missions to kill groups of enemies now require you to actually kill ALL the enemies. Previously they would complete after killing ANY of the enemies.
- Random Artifacts are now crafted directly, instead of crafting an "artifact box" and then unpacking it.
- You should now properly lose your radiation sickness when dying or using the Salve of Forgiveness.
- Infinitrees are now considered furniture, not terrain, and can be dragged around your island.
v0.2.1 This version should be compatible with old saves.
- Being hit by a warp pulse now tells you exactly how many more pulses you have left until negative effects begin.
- Two extracts spawn per mission instead of one.
- Added Portal Storm Warding Stone that will dispel portal storms, but only when used on your island.
- In-game difficulty selection now offers Normal as first option. Saying no to every option loops the menu over again; you have to say yes to something to proceed.
- Two extracts spawn per mission instead of one.
- Normal difficulty is now 6 hours soft cap, 9 hours hard cap.
- Added new hard difficulty with 4 hour soft cap, 6 hour hard cap (same as old Normal).
- Stat Stone now tells you your difficulty settings.
- Rewrote a lot of in-game text to be more consistent and less wordy.
- Fixed warp disintegration hitting one pulse too early.
- Fixed missions not cleaning up properly.
v0.2 This version should be compatible with old saves, but may require you to update C:DDA.
- Added multiple difficulties, changed default timer from 24 hours to 4 hours.
- Extracts can now spawn much further away.
- Added many more mission types, monstergroups to fill them with, and more.
- You now receive multiple missions per expedition.
- Added warp shards as mission rewards, and items to craft them into
- Added warped bags to bring bulk materials home.
- Added warped carrier to bring animals home.
- Added warped hauler to strap a single item into for bonus hauling.
- Added "Infinitree" to harvest logs and sticks at home.
- Made Quickheal pills craftable.
- Added Homeward Mote for "life insurance" on specific expeditions.
- Added Earthbound pill to extend your current raid's timer.
- Added a way to get an Autodoc on your island.
- Added a way to cash in warp shards in exchange for random artifacts.
- Replaced starting Quickheal stockpile with Salve of Forgiveness, which heals you for free until you win 5 expeditions.
- Added unlockable progress. Initially, only some mission types are available, and you will only deploy to fields. After 5 wins, more mission types will unlock, and you may start deploying to forests. After 10 wins, all mission types are unlocked and you may start deploying to houses.
- Added a Stat Stone that can tell you how many expeditions you've gone on, as well as total wins and losses.
- Cleaned up your island! All the misc. trash will now spawn pre-gathered on a single tile so you don't have to go sweeping every time you start a new game.
- Warp disintegration is more lethal.
- Many text prompts are more clear.
- Added a way to regrow grass at your home island, just for looks.
- Numerous bug and balance fixes.