Third post in a row. Hope this is not a major blunder.
After watching ninth part I wish to express my gratitude again. PRIME has just received a modification which shows prices of items in shop without requiring player to pick them up exactly as you suggested. There are several more improvements you mused about. I heard you wish to collect knowledge about the game so In return let me present you with some facts about ZapM. One commenter said spoilers for ZapM are not widely available. This is true. Knowing the code in and out I am pretty much spoiler library on two legs so do not hesitate to ask questions.
I'll try to brief you with some facts but still leaving out the most fun-destroying spoilers. Mild spoilage is okay I think since you've experienced most of the game yourself.
Important gameplay bugs:
- Geiger counter in ZapM is not reliable. It works so-so for single counter but trying to use two or more is bound to produce artifacts. You've seen one of them.
- Bat'leth is classified as melee weapon, not a sword. :-(
What items do:
- Roll of duct tape is a consumable repair item. What you can repair: disabled <robot_name_here>, malfunctioning (red) doors, damaged pet robots.
- Restraining bolt is applied at robots to "tame" them. Basically it is additional circuit which forces obedience to you.
- Mega computer works exactly like mini computer except for one situation. You cannot execute floppy disk programs while you are blind with mini computer. Try it some time to see why. Your weak programmers should carry only mini computer to avoid becoming burdened. Mega version is good for selling.
- Canister of mutagen is radiating you like gamma ray gun. You had green jumpsuit which was radiation suit so in result it did not hurt your health. Ordinarily it would.
- Nano cola gives you temporary boost to charisma. This is its only purpose. Psions use it to spam Mental Blast several times in a row. In short Charisma emulates mana in ZapM. Nano cola is mana potion that can overcharge your mana pool.
- Empty ray gun should be 'a'pplied. It asks you to pick a canister for filling it up. All the bad canisters to drink are fine as fuel.
- Heap of space junk is absolutely useless. In PRIME it is the best food for matter compiler but ZapM has no real function for it.
What mutant powers do:
- Telepathy mutant power shows creatures with minds. This means you won't see grid bugs or dogbots show up but bore worms, redshirts and the like will be marked as such.
- Haste just increases you speed at the cost of 2 charisma points. There is no reason at all to turn it off ever. It has no other costs or disadvantages.
Questions you asked in videos:
- There is a way to prevent an automatic door from opening. Zap it with gauss ray gun which destroys its electronics.
- Pulse rifle needs to be 'a'pplied to have its firing mode changed.
- Toxic taste means you have been irradiated. Usually single such event is not enough to trigger radiation sickness.
- Non-optimized floppy disk of debugging checks for bugs your armor, implants and wielded item. To debug something wield it first and then run the disk. If you wield a non-weapon it is not going to weld itself to your hand. Grenades also do not glue themselves.
- Gauss ray gun is good for damaging robots. It also has effects on certain item class thus making zapping yourself less than recommended action.
Buggy/debugged/optimized:
- If you ever get your hands on digestion power abuse it. Digestion allows you to eat almost any item so experiment freely with wielding weapons and if something refuses to get off just eat it.
- Buggy floppy disks are rarely bad. Only unfun buggy floppies are enhance XXX because those decrease plus of XXX and bug it. On the other hand identify, debugging, mapping, detection, diagnostics and all others simply do their job. With the execption of ...
- ... buggy transportation which is dangerous. It has a little chance of causing instadeath. It tries for random coordinates five times and if it is always wall or occupied you die in transportation accident. Stupid thing, we did away with it in PRIME 1.9.
- Enhance XXX floppy can remove bugginess too. Docbot can't.
- Most canisters ignore bugginess. Buggy ones work exactly like optimized versions. Exceptions are: gain ability (buggy: -1 to random ability, debugged +1, optimized +1 to all), speed (affects duration), jarred brain (no int bonus if buggy).
Mutant Powers:
- Skill in mutant powers only increases chance to successfully use it. Nothing more.
- Concentration skill does not increase chances of using power. It decreases chances of automatically turning off persistent powers when you get stunned or confused.
- Every character level increases use chances for all powers.
Weapon damage:
- Plus on weapon adds one to its damage output. +0 pea shooter: 1-4. +3 pea shooter: 4-7. Enhanced pea shooter is great. If you start with enhance weapon floppy it is good to use it right away.
- Optimized weapon gets +2 to hit. This is like you would pump another two skill points in its skill category. Each level of corrosion or burns modifies to hit by -2.
- Each energy weapon uses some cells per shot. Phaser, blaster, laser pistol use five. Laser rifle uses eight. Laser cannon uses thirty five. Guardbot has the laser cannon but it may also be generated randomly.
- Categories: (ok, this may sound obvious but please bear with me)
In parentheses is raw damage. xNUM means NUM shots fired and bullets used per firing round.
-- handguns: pea shooter (1-4), blaster (1-8), phaser (1-8 + 2-12 blinding), laser pistol (1-8 + 2-12 blinding), pistol (1-8), assault pistol (2x 1-8)
-- light guns: sniper rifle (1-10), shotgun (4-24), laser rifle (1-12 + 3-18 blinding)
-- heavy guns: pulse rifle (3x 1-8), chaingun (6x 1-10), laser cannon (4-48), railgun (3-30)
-- sword: katana ("antique sword") (1-10), light saber (2-12 + 1-6 fire)
-- basic melee weapons: anal probe (0 damage), mop (1-8), club (1-6), cattle prod (1-4 + 1-6 stunning), dagger (1-4), nunchucks (2-8), bat'leth (2-12), chainsaw (2-12)
-- thrown weapons: football (1-6), rad grenade (4-32 radiating), stun grenade (3-18 stunning), concussion grenade (3-18), frag grenade (4-24)
- unarmed: punch (1-6)
- A railgun shot takes 150% time it would take to fire any other gun.
- Melee attacks receive damage modifier: (Str - 10) / 2. Str 14 means +2 to damage, Str 8 -1 to damage.
Random tips:
- Do everything to avoid becoming burdened. Adom penalises you with -5 speed which is 5% slower actions. In ZapM being burdened means -50% to speed. Ten times more.
- Do not worry about buckazoids that much. Later levels have plenty of them. Constant trips to Robot Town erode your attention.
- Flashlight uses so little energy I usually walk with it constantly on. Especially if I have a power plant which regenerates energy way faster than flashlight burns it.
- If you see a monster shooting you with a weapon several times without it misfiring it means his weapon is not buggy. You can use it without fear.
- If you have disintegration ray gun consider robbing a shop. Keep in mind the ray gun annihilates things -- the clerkbot was gone with all its money so good course of action is to attack the shopkeeper that you have not bought from. Ideally one you sold lots of stuff to so you can carry the loot next door as you did.
- Experiment with items more frequently.
- You can drop canisters into a vat to trigger pouring them into it. Make sure you are pouring a single canister as opposed to whole stack so you can benefit from the clue.
PRIME invalidates half of those already but for the most part information is made available inside the game. So when you eventually come to see what the fork has to offer prepare to be surprised a little.
