Overview
i am making this guide so you don’t have to go through the discussion about it to find the answer. it is a guide on how to get Thor’s hammer in the random encounter because i’m sure you are seeking out this guide after getting frustrated by not knowing how to pick it up.
1. The Situation
so when you get into Northtown, you may get this random encounter while traveling. you have 0% chance of avoiding it, and going into it you will find 4 zombies (2 radiation zombies and 2 scientist zombies) around Thor’s hammer sticking out of the ground. when you try to grab it, it will damage and stun you and you can’t pick it up, which is confusing, and there are no items around or any logical way or thing to do to be able to pick it up, other than to try over and over again.
if that last one is what you thought was the case, you are right!
2. WHY CAN’T I PICK IT UP?
thanks to someone in the community by the name of “Liberty man” who looked at the code for the game, he found the part of the code about Thor’s hammer and the translation of the code goes like this:
when you press the button to pick up the hammer, a number between 0 and 1000 is randomly generated, and if that number just happens to be 666, you will be able to successfully pick up the hammer. if it’s any other number, you get damage and stun.
so you can see how frustrating it might be and many people really just give up at one point.
but think about it! if you give up, YOU ARE NOT WORTHY.
so the next section of this guide will make your life much easier.
3. How to Become Lightning Proof
now you might think in that case that you need to carry tons of healing items everywhere you go in Northtown and waste all of them, along with a lot of waste of time to *maybe* get the hammer. well yes it will take time and patience, but there’s actually a way to not get damage and stun from failing.
the idea is that in terms of game design, there is a “damage area” around the hammer the player has to be standing in to get the damage when the lightning strikes, similar to an explosion trap’s blast radius. in other words, by standing far enough from the hammer before the lightning hits, you will be just fine!
here’s 2 ways to avoid being in the damage area:
1. by standing with your back turned to the yellow tent, and standing as far as you can from the hammer while the “use” text still shows, you have to press the button and at the same time start backing up (while sprinting) to evade damage. the range of the damage area extends to about where the bed and shelf are in the yellow tent (as in the picture below).
also don’t go immediately back out to the hammer after lightning strikes! you’ll still get damage. you have to wait where you are about 6 seconds after pressing E, or 2 seconds after the black text of “you are not worthy. try again” (in game design terms, until the animation where smoke rises from the hammer after the lightning strike) to go back and try again.
2. this only works if you have the “Cyber Hands” perk in the game. by standing in the same spot as in the picture with the perk active, you can just sit there and repeatedly press the button to pick it up every 6 seconds or so, without having to worry about standing in the damage area.
with all that in mind, good luck. you’ll need it!
if you don’t want to have to go through the trouble of doing this for hours though, i updated this guide to include another one below which extends upon the 2nd technique, allowing you to just sit back and wait.
4. Automate the process
[link]in case you just don’t want to sit around pressing E over and over, this new guide by user mballr will help you automate the process (using some custom scripting) so that you can just sit back and wait until you get the hammer.
the basic idea is that you write a small program that runs on your computer that automatically presses E every 6 seconds. this, combined with having the cyber hands perk, will pretty much guarantee you get the hammer by just waiting, without having to press anything yourself.