State of Decay 2 -- Lichenology for the Win!

I have played both State of Decay and State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition, both zombie survival games, for many years and enjoy the titles. Recently, SoD2 updated to the "Juggernaut Edition," improving game AI, some graphics, and a host of other items throughout the game. Overall, I have really enjoyed those improvements and the game is even more fun to play now.

In both games, there is a chance that you can "roll" a person with the skill "Lichenology," the study of lichens, that gives you the base bonus of +2 Meds Per Day and knowledge of Gardening and Herbalism. This is huge, as you use a set -2 Meds Per Day to stay healthy each day. Lichenology effectively cancels that per-day charge. This means any extra meds you find in the game are there for your use via the Infirmary, to create medications that you can carry with you, or to put in a rucksack for trade with other groups for various missions.

What I've noted in SoD2 is that any time I've been lucky enough to either roll a survivor with Lichenologist or when I've found a book that grants that ability in-game, the game gets harder. Much, much harder! The game targets Lichenologists like no tomorrow.

I recently completed my last game at the default difficulty level and decided to try to get all four bonuses at the Dread difficulty level. I played and finished one game prior to the Juggernaut update. While playing, I found a Lichenology book at a vendor, bought it, read it, and immediately the game stepped up a level. Every time I took that character out of the base, zombies were attracted to her no matter how carefully I played. It seemed like every mission she ran had a Juggernaut or a feral, plus at least one shrieker, nearby. I always had to be extra careful, do every mission with a helper, and drive to even the closest locations so I had the relative safety of a vehicle to get into to either mow down hordes or to make a fast escape. In the end, it didn't matter, as she was caught between two Juggernauts and ripped in half.

Aside:

Strangely enough, I have the same problem with auto mechanics. I had one game where I went through 6, yes 6!, auto mechanics. I had another game where I had one auto mechanic, she was killed by a feral and a horde fairly early on, and I never saw another auto mechanic to poach into my group nor did I find any mechanics books from that point forward to make my own auto mechanic! Boy, I found it next to impossible to complete that game. I kept destroying the vehicles I found with little chance to repair them, as I wasn't finding many repair kits in my scrouging and I couldn't make any of my own without an auto mechanic! Talk about Hard mode -- having to run from one side of the map to the other sucks!!

I finally finished that mission, got the Trader bonus, and started a new game. I selected to start with an auto mechanic and a lichenology survivor from previous games, plus a new character (Medicine). When I started the game, I told my wife, "Well, I'm starting in hard mode! I'm starting with a Lichenologist!" She laughed. While playing, I have had the hardest time whenever I take either of those two out for missions. (If you're wondering why I even take those two skills out of the base it is because you get worthwhile bonuses from having them be Citizens and Heroes. It is worth it to play them enough to get those bonuses.) 

Recently, I came across a vendor who was selling a Lichenology book and purchased it. I found a character with no quirk skills, poached him into my group, read the book to give him the skill, and played him trying to reach Hero status. I told my wife, "Well, the game is going to swarm my base with Juggernauts and tear me apart-- I just made another Lichenologist!" Literally, within 30 minutes of creating him, my base was swarmed and there were two Juggernauts and they each specifically went after the two lichenologists! I managed to survive that encounter, but it gets worse...

Later, trying to get him to Hero status, he was mobbed by a horde containing two shriekers and a feral, which I barely survived even with a sidekick along-- everything ignored the helper character and targeted the Lichenologist. I switched to another character and a horde almost immediately attacked the base, including a Juggernaut. The Juggernaut targeted the new lichenologist character and ripped him in half, killing him! Inside my base! During the attack, of the eight characters I had at the base, only two came to help the character I was running, so it was just three against the horde and juggernaut, even though the other five were right there and should have come to help. Out of all the games I've played, this is literally the first time that a) not everyone came to help out on an attack inside the base and b) that a character died from a solitary Juggernaut attack inside a base! End result: I'm back to only having my original character with the Lichenology skill. Luckily, she's already at Hero status, so I never let her leave the base (although I have to be careful every time a base attack occurs!).

At this point, with the consistency with which the game is targeting my Lichenologists, I can only assume that the programmers have purposefully written code that targets those characters. I played five games to completion at the normal difficulty and, whenever I had a Lichenologist (made via book or rolled), they were unduly targeted. I'm on my second game at the Dread difficulty and the targeting is even worse and feels unfair. I have to be extra careful when using them, I have to take extra help on every mission, and I have to watch out for those characters during base raids. It takes a lot more effort and I'm having to dress them in bright clothing so that I can easily pick them out of a crowd and keep an eye on them.

I tell you, I don't care how long it takes, I'm strongly considering that for my next Dread-level game I will start with three Lichenologists and see if I even make it through day 1 before an endless horde of Juggernauts and ferals attacks them and wipes them out!

Addendum

I have finished my previous game and started a new one. Of the seven games I've played to completion, all but one had at least one Lichenologist in it, and I have two that survived of my 50 survivors I've kept. I pulled both of them into the next Dread-level game and I rolled until I got a third Lichenologist. We'll see how the game reacts to that!!

Addendum 2

Since starting the new game with three Lichenologists, the game has done some weird things. When you first start a game, even at Dread difficulty, the first game-day is usually fairly free of special zombies. However, this game started with a Juggernaut right off the bat near my base. I managed to avoid it, even though two missions took me right by it.

Next, I was out scrounging for Materials with my newest Lichenologist when the game just quit to Windows. No error messages, no BSOD, nothing but a slight pause, and then I was looking at my desktop.

I simply take this as further proof that the programmers have it out for Lichenology specialists within the game. 

Addendum 3

Beyond my three starting Lichenologists, today I collected three more people for my survival group. Two were mechanics and one had no quirk skills. I was using one of the mechanics to reach Hero level out doing some missions. A horde was between me and the objective so I threw one molotov cocktail-- and, even though it landed directly in the middle of the group, not one of the zombies was killed. I threw a second and a third with the same effect. By that point, the horde was on me and I tried to get away. But my truck struck a huge pile of nothing (literally, I showed my wife -- it was the side of the road, nothing was visible at all, but the front end was torn up and the truck started burning... they type of burning that leads to the truck blowing up after about 10 seconds or so) and blew up, greatly injuring me. The horde tore me apart after that. Now, my one "working" vehicle was half-way across the map and destroyed. I had to pick another character to take over for the dead one.

I chose the non-quirk skill person, so I could start working her up to Hero. She was back at my home base, so I was teleported back there... into the middle of a horde base raid! Crap! I was immediately attacked by a feral that was already inside the base and none of the remaining survivors were helping me. I nearly died before one decided to shoot it. Then a Juggernaut attacked. The base all turned to it and we slowly whittled it down and killed it. Then a second and third Juggernaut attacked! One of my three lichenologists was killed (the new one I had rolled for this game), my other mechanic was nearly torn apart and is grossly damaged, I've used up nearly all of my ammo, and the character I'm using now has more injuries than my Infirmary can overcome. This is all happening on surviral Day 5, by the way. Day freak'n 5!

Again, this seems egregious, especially compared with any other SoD2 game I've played, even the other games at Dread level. The easiest game I played, by far, was the one with a starting Fishing and two starting Recyclers that never had a Lichenologist and only picked up one mechanic.

You will not convince me that it is completely random that when I have a lichenologist (or three!) in the group that the game doesn't target them specifically or become harder in general. Never. 

Addendum 4

I recently started a new game after the major updates of early 2021. I used three existing characters of my 50 survivors, including a Lichenologist. Of course, on the fourth mission out of the gate, I was surrounded by a mob, had three (!) screamers (with one being inside a building, so I couldn't immediately kill him) plus a Juggernaut in the mix. ALL of the mobs immediately keyed on the Lichenologist I had brought as backup and to help carry stuff (it was a "clear for materials" type of mission). I couldn't grab aggro from her to, literally, save her life, even when spraying the mobs of zombies with auto-fire from my machine gun. She was eventually torn apart by the Juggernaut in a very bloody display.

This is just par for the course, as you can see from the ongoing story above. The programmers hate Lichenology/Lichenologists!

Loser, Loser!

Darrell "Bubba" Wallace, NASCAR's only black driver, successfully brought up the Confederate flag with the sport he races for. NASCAR banned it on all of its properties. Just this weekend, Bubba found a noose in his garage and a private plane flew over an event carrying a Confederate flag banner.

EDIT: Turns out the noose was already in the garage and was used to lower the main door. It was not a racial attack.

"Nascar moved quickly and by Monday, FBI agents were at the track. On Tuesday, authorities said the rope had been hanging there since last fall and thus was not a hate crime targeting the 26-year-old Wallace."

I just don't get that. Why would anyone be proud of being a loser and a racist? I mean, I checked my history books from elementary school and they clearly say that the seceded states lost the Civil War and are now, once more, part of the United States of America. They lost. In humiliating fashion.

When a loser loses a war, the winner ... well, never that I can find... allows the loser to erect monuments to loser generals and loser leadership of that war. If anything, the winner usually erects monuments to the winners of that war. Why isn't there a proud statue of Sherman placed in every town in Georgia along the route of Sherman's March? Why aren't there statues of Ulysses S Grant littering the South to remind them that a drunkard beat their best soldiers? Why aren't there statutes and monuments to Lincoln in every single formerly-seceded state's capital to remind that state of who won the war?

Okay, you say it's not about who won or lost the war. I get that, sort of. I mean, the only other thing that flag can possibly stand for is racism, right? So, if it doesn't stand proudly for being pathetic losers, it stands for being pathetic racists. Why would you want to fly that flag and proudly proclaim, "Look at me, I'm a racist loser"? Okay, some in the South will try to argue with you that the secession and Civil War were about other things beyond slavery and racism. They are wrong. They all boil down to having slaves means you can harvest your crops of tobacco and cotton less expensively and get more profit. That's still slavery and racism. Every argument the Southerners bring up eventually leads to slavery and racism. 'It's our heritage!' Yes, one of racism and slave ownership. 'We have pride!' Why? You lost the war and have a history of racism. 'We defy/defied northern progressivism!' And you lost the war and that progressivism was fighting slavery and racism. It's time to progress. Also, if you are so against Northern progressivism, stop using a phone, don't use electric lights, absolutely don't use automobiles, or anything else that came out of northern progressivism. Put your money where your mouth is, loser.

Every now and then, one of these losers will attempt to draw a comparison between the swastika and the Confederate flag. However, this fails the smell test pretty quickly. The swastika was an enduring symbol of life and fertility for literally thousands of years until Hitler latched onto it and perverted its meaning to one of hate, oppression, and racism. (There's that word again.) The Confederate flag was specifically created to symbolize all that the Confederate States of America stood for... which was defiant racism. After they lost the war, this symbol also added a new meaning: loser. So, yet again, all history and insight bring us back to this stupid symbol ultimately meaning racism and loss. Pathetic.

Around the world, most countries didn't need to fight a civil war in order to recognize that slavery and racism was bad. Most countries had already freed their slaves or were making plans to do so. Most understood that paying for labor brought about better results and a stronger workforce. Only the Confederacy fought against this truth so hard that they had to secede and lose a war to have it drilled into them.

History books today say that Reconstruction was harsh. I don't think it was harsh enough. No winning country should ever allow the amount of rebellion and subtle fall-back to their old ways that the US allowed of the Confederacy. Every history book should be written to promote that the Confederacy stood for racism, that they lost, and that the world is better for it. Every single site of a Confederacy loss should have a plaque or a monument to it in the South. No Confederate leaders should have a statue unless it is in a museum in a Hall of Losers.

Whenever you see a Confederate flag flying, you should stop and start the old High School and College chant of, "Looo-serrr! Looo-serrr!" You should always refer to the people who live there as racists, like in the statement, "You turn right at the racist Smith house" or similar. There is not enough shame you can heap on someone who strongly identifies with a symbol that directly identifies those flying it as losers and racists. So, shame them. Make it known how pathetic that stance is.

Black Lives DO Matter

I get so sick and tired of racist white people claiming "all lives matter." It is such bullshit and indicates either the person saying that is an outright racist or just dumber than shit.

You see, it's not an "either/or" statement. Saying "black lives matter" does not exclude any other lives. It says, 'These other lives are working as intended, don't have issues, and don't need perspective or introspection; however, this subset of all the lives does need looking at -- something isn't working as intended over here.'

For example, when one of these racist assholes has a POW/MIA flag on their truck or flying at their home, are they saying, "Fuck all the military that currently serves, we ONLY care about those who are missing in action or prisoners of war. They are all that matter!" No, of course not. It is so obvious that the flags are intended only as reminders so that people don't forget about this one subset of the entire military who sometimes gets swept under the rug and not talked about during our daily lives -- hell, even during Memorial Day and Veterans Day celebrations.

When we look at milk cartons and see missing children's faces are we saying, "Missing children are all that matter. Missing adults don't matter at all!" No, of course not. But many people aren't aware of just how many children go missing, so we thought it might be a good idea to post this subset of missing people and highlight the problem so more people are aware and more people keep them in mind.

The point is, black people cannot trust that they will be safe around cops. They can't trust themselves that they will be safe around general white people (who may call the police on them for common, everyday activities, like BBQing, birdwatching, walking around their neighborhood, and other things white folks do without any extra thought). A black person may be arrested, beaten, and/or killed for no reason at all. But white folks don't have that fear. White folks don't think, 'Shit, it's after dark. I better not take a walk around my neighborhood wearing my favorite hoodie or my neighbors might shoot me.' It just doesn't happen that way. Yet every black person has to consider that.

There's a reason you see so many women of every color at BLM rallies: women have a similar fear of men. Men have created a hostile world where women aren't in control of their own bodies, are often seen as things instead of people, and who have to navigate around hostilities that men either don't see, don't experience, or promote. So, women get it. 

There's a reason why #MeToo happened. There's a reason why #BlackLivesMatter is happening again now. The marginalized and terrified are sick of being afraid. AND THEY ARE RIGHT. Women shouldn't be afraid of men. Black (and other "colors") people shouldn't live their lives afraid of white people, white justice systems, white juries, and white-run prison systems. We shouldn't assume a woman walking down a dark street at night is okay to rape. We shouldn't assume a black man walking down a dark street is a predator. Hell, we shouldn't assume a black woman sleeping in her bed is somehow a threat that needs to be shot eight times.

Black lives matter. Women matter. And, yes, "all lives matter." But, you know what white people? You've been on top and it has been smooth sailing for you for quite some time now. Maybe it's time to take a look at how far back everyone else is and figure out some way to level the playing field.

And, if you don't want to, if you think whites 'have it bad' in some way, or if you think that helping other sexes or ethnicities to succeed is somehow going to take something away from you... fuck you. You fucking racist.

It's All Part of the Plan

It is so frustrating to see people actually protesting that the US should start reopening. First, because, so far, there is ample evidence to suggest that all of these protests are backed/funded by a few right-wing people (Betsy DeVos's family is linked to at least two of them) and, secondly because these people don't understand what they are asking for.

I can't help but notice that the protestors have been all white, privileged, and from various hate groups. There have been racist signs at most of them. Many suggest there is some sort of conspiracy at work. This all leads to the inevitable conclusion that these people are poorly educated or uneducated, easily influenced, and ignorant. What other conclusions can you reach?

Ignorant, poorly educated people tend to flock to supposed conspiracy theories because they have a hard time reasoning these things out. I mean, the sheer number of people that would have to be involved to make most of their conspiracy theories work would mean that someone, at some point, would crack and the lie would be out there. We may find out more about the coronavirus at some point, but right now all evidence points to the standard biological processes of a virus that wants to live mutating rapidly, jumping species until it was successful in attacking human beings' biology, and then spreading. It happens all the time, it just usually turn into a pandemic because human beings are good at following these things and killing them early. No need for a conspiracy... or, better, the conspiracy is that life out there is harsh and everything wants to kill you; it's always just a matter of time before Mother Nature figures out how to make it happen.

While there are usually a few smart people in leadership roles of racist gatherings and organizations, the bulk of the members are ignorant, poorly educated people who, again, don't reason well. The leaders demonize the ethnicity in question (usually Blacks or Jews) with evidence that doesn't stand up to any amount of real scrutiny, convince the easily convinced, and constantly blame all of the members' troubles on real and perceived things that ethnicity has "done to them." Because they are not smart and can't reason for themselves, the followers latch on and are led to believe this crap.

And antisemitism? I have never understood this particular racist stance. The Jews have been one of the most persecuted ethnicities in the history of the world. Of course, they will turn inward and be a more insular society when nearly every other ethnicity and religion on the planet wants to destroy them. Wouldn't you be less trusting of others if your countrymen consistently turned on you on a dime and sent you to concentration camps and death?

The fact that right-wing money has already been found to be influencing these protests also shows to what lengths the right will go to stay in power. They have no interest in leading, no interest in governing, and no interest in the average, every-day person's well-being. They simply want to stay in office, to stay in power.

This just goes to show you how important education is. The educated (beyond the aforementioned racist leadership) aren't at these rallies. Or, if they are, they are on the side of the counterprotesters and opposition to these racist idiots. Why do you think a classic racist bully and idiot like Trump wanted someone who didn't know how to be Secretary of Education in the position? Or, I should say, why Trump's handlers wanted to tear apart the educational system. Miller, Mnuchin, Kushner, et al, all understand that the stupider the masses are, the easier it is to confuse, control, and dominate them. And look, it's working!

Stop being sheep, people! Educate yourself! The more educated you are, the more independent you actually will be! Stop buying what the Republicans are selling! They want you sick, poor, and uneducated so they can rule over you. While the Democrats aren't much better, at least they want you healthy and educated so you can make decisions for yourself.

Educate yourself.