Stories from a new player

[ionpattern]

Hello. I'm new to the game and totally addicted. It's awesome. I started out playing on Randy and rough difficulty -- yes, I now realize that may not have been the best choice for a new player. Anyway I have enjoyed some crazy early game moments and I thought I'd share my favorites.

- In one game I got a cold snap that instantly killed all my potato plants. It was followed immediately by a giant lightning storm that burned down about 1/3 of my forested map. Food was very scarce. I have a nice screenshot of one colonist cloudwatching in the burning remains of his barren potato field.

- A random wild raccoon made its way into my compound once and managed to get into my fridge and steal some food. Also wandered out okay. This reminds me of real life.

- My first couple was going to get married. Shortly after the proposal, the bride-to-be went out into battle and had her nose shot off. It was friendly fire. Oops.

- In one colony, a wanderer showed up very early, naked and depressed. Having literally no other clothes, I had one of my colonists, Murray, offer her clothes up and go naked for a few days. Murray was fat and hated this, but she continued on doing naked chores like a champ. A while later, Murray took up sculpting and created herself, naked and frolicking, in a -3 beauty sculpture. I think Murray has a good sense of humor.

- Randy blessed one colony with toxic fallout early in the game, lasting 10 days. I had barely gotten my food situation going at the time and had no stockpile. I killed all my pet baby boars, rapidly researched hydroponics (which went in the barracks as I had no other space), and spent all my silver on food. Even still, I only survived because I was raided three times, which netted me extra pemmican. I left the raiders' bodies out front just in case I ran out...

- One colony was still reeling from a raider attack when I received a request for safety from a colonist's father. The father turned out to be abrasive and disliked women. His son died in the ensuing raid. It was about the worst trade you could imagine. Shortly after, he started a fight with his son's grieving fiancee and she beat him to death.

- My most memorable colonist was an Empath named Roach. He was 85 with dementia and Greedy, and he constantly hit on all the women in the colony, getting rejected of course, so he had many mental breaks. He was a non-combatant but one time he wandered into the crossfire and lost an eye. Yet he was always a brilliant doctor and a good chef. I always pictured him as a kind of wandering, grouchy, lecherous old man whose commentary was always off because his mind was going -- until you got him into the hospital, where he was still sharp as a tack. My main goal with that colony was to survive long enough to get him that impressive room he craved so badly. I managed to get it up to moderately impressive before they were overtaken by raiders.

That's all for now. Thanks to the developers and the modders out there for making such a great game!