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drat Dirty Ape posted:Ok so I had this game for a while but only started playing it today. I put combat to 'normal' and the other two difficulties to 'dread' for my first game and started in the valley (whatever the first selection is). You can mostly ignore quests. If their from inside your community, they'll take a morale hit (minor) after an hour or so of being ignored. If they're from outside your community and neutral they'll leave, but that's not a big deal since you weren't friends anyway. If you are friends then they may drop back to neutral if you do it to often, once again not a big deal. Just do the quests that you are comfortable with.
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Apr 4, 2022 03:51
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Yeah, there will always be some quest popping up. I like to try and keep at least two enclaves happy. If anyone starts demanding supplies, they go on the "do not help" list. Those enclaves are usually just freeloading assholes.
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Apr 4, 2022 06:30
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Ok good, thanks. It wouldn't be so bad if the first quests were somewhat nearby but I don't really have the equipment yet to be deep in blood plague territory fighting looters.
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Apr 4, 2022 23:20
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Is there a goon-approved quick start guide for the game?
OP is from 2018 and doesn't have any guides. Just links to SoD1 thread.
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Apr 10, 2022 06:58
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I've been watching guides and playing a bit recently so maybe I could help a little? I'm certainly no expert but I've been having to research a lot of this stuff because SoD2 is a lot more complicated to get into than SoD1 was.
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Apr 10, 2022 14:18
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I didn't have much problem learning organically at Normal (or whatever the default was on launch) and just kind of went around scavenging. Need more food? Go places with food. More fuel? Go to the gas station, etc. Don't make noise, stay away from special infected, keep quiet, and crouchwalk everywhere. Those early days were way better than later when I knew to sell X to buy Y and started new games with free silent water/power and a full base's worth of upgrades. I guess new players will be "robbed" of the "joy" from having to slowly walk back to your base for an hour because your car hit an errant polygon in the road which immediately flipped it. 
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Apr 10, 2022 16:09
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this guy has really good vids and this one had some stuff I didn't even know https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXPU18QtVks I think he has more basic beginner vids too I don't have problems with the accent and he always had subtitles too but I guess he ended up having someone narrate the new videos for him
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Apr 10, 2022 17:29
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Yeah I just got done watching a solo daybreak vid by him. Very useful!
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Apr 10, 2022 17:33
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Start on Normal to learn things. Try to finish the game with at least one community - the "free water and power" thing that Mailer mentions is a bonus for completing the Builder leader quests. Trader will send you a trader with a bunch of stuff when you get to the starter house (and bonus Influence to buy stuff). Sheriff and Warlord are different flavors of "more guns and gear." When you feel like you understand how the game works, bump it up to Dread. There's a bit of initial shock (I think I posted about it when difficulties were first added), but it quickly goes away and, at least for me, feels like the "intended" difficulty setting. Leader bonuses don't carry over to new difficulty settings. Check stats on friendly Enclave members, and if anyone seems promising, help out the Enclave (when their missions come up) until you have enough of a reputation with them that you can recruit from them. This will disband the Enclave and you'll lose whatever bonus they give you. Having no 5th skill is not necessarily a bad thing, because it means that person can read a book to learn a specific skill - I mostly find books for Computers, Engineering, and Mechanics (if you have someone with the skill already, you can read a book to increase it). Some Enclaves are just random folks hanging out, and some have mini-questlines (the Mechanics, the Alcoholics, the ex-military crew, probably a few others I'm forgetting about). I usually tend to build an Infirmary, a Workshop, and a Watchtower in the starter house (watchtower out front, other two in the back yard). If you find a big gun but don't have a lot of ammo for it, give it to the person who's hanging out on the watchtower (if you have one). They don't use bullets when they're not player-controlled. Try to get a fourth survivor and move out of the starter house as soon as possible. All missions other than "clear out the Plague Hearts" and your Leader missions are completely optional. You don't have to help the mechanics move to the auto shop if you don't want to, and you definitely don't have to bring a rucksack of food to those assholes on the other side of the map in the middle of Plague Heart Central. They'll whine about it, and eventually might just leave, but gently caress 'em. Someone else will show up. Don't gently caress around with hostile (red) Enclaves until you have a decent gun, and use distractions to get zombies to fight them. "Zombie Horde Incoming" missions at your home base will cost you Ammo (resource), and maybe also a Morale hit, but Morale is easy to raise by building facilities and killing zombies, especially specials and clearing out Infestations. They're not huge bonuses, but they add up. Plague Hearts will summon blood plague zombies and prevent you from claiming anything in their area (that's a new-ish mechanic and makes Plague Zones feel more dangerous, because you can't just set up an outpost next door to the Heart). Try to clear out any in the building and immediate surroundings before going after the heart itself. It still summons new ones, but you won't have to deal with all the others. When the heart blows up, all the Blood Plague zombies will die, but not regular zombies (not that there are usually many around a Heart). Explosives are good on hearts, fire is less so. On Normal diff, blood plague is pretty much just a background nuisance that occasionally will require you to bring someone in another Enclave a plague cure. On Dread and above, it becomes a more serious issue (Dread is still pretty light, to be honest). Make a couple cures and if you're planning on hitting a Plague Heart or two, maybe toss one in the back of a vehicle (along with more ammo/explosives/a big gun - the .50 cal rifle will take out a heart in 3 shots, I think, but you generally won't see a lot of it). I like to keep an outpost slot free for when I'm out exploring/looting a neighborhood. Make one of the central buildings an outpost, dump everything into the locker, and get rid of it when you're done. There's a base facility mod for the command center that gives you an extra outpost slot (radio antenna?), and I think upgrading the CC gives you one more for each level. When you start getting more survivors and need a couple more beds, take over a house and save your facility space for something better. Special Zombies: Bloaters die to a single bullet/bolt. Don't try to melee them, and dive out immediately when you inevitably slam into one in your car (because it happens to everyone). Screamers and Ferals go down in one headshot. It can be worth being loud with a gun to take out a screamer before he finishes screaming (though sneaking up on them from behind is obviously better). I generally avoid Juggernauts unless I can lead them to my base or another Enclave, and let everyone else deal with the problem. On Dread and up, Juggernauts are always Blood-Juggs. I think they add the other BP specials at higher difficulties, or maybe they're only in Trumbull Valley. Either way, they're all much more durable than the normal versions, so be careful. Fifty Farts fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Apr 10, 2022 |
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Apr 10, 2022 17:59
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So I'm at the starter base and I'm pretty set with facilities and resources. Should I start killing plague hearts (I've already killed 3)? I'm thinking maybe I should start enlisting followers and move into a bigger base or something. Just worried that as time progresses the map will just keep getting more and more difficult while I sort of stagnate. Speaking of which, I can't really seem to find a straight answer on whether or not moving maps increases the difficulty. I was thinking if I wasted too much time I could always go ahead and start over somewhere else if necessary.
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Apr 10, 2022 21:41
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Moving maps doesn't change the difficulty as far as I know - The only factor that increases difficulty over time is your overall influence gain. Moving maps basically just gives you an entirely fresh set of resources to loot, as well as respawning all the plague hearts. Killing plague hearts themselves makes the other plague hearts more difficult, but otherwise doesn't affect the overall map difficulty. The difficulty scaling isn't really that harsh on normal or dread though, you shouldn't worry too much about the map getting ahead of you.
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Apr 10, 2022 22:25
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If you have enough Influence, definitely move out of the starter house. You might need to recruit someone (if you did the tutorial, I think you end up with 4 people when you get to the house; normally it's only 3, and I think everything other than the starter house requires 4). You'll get back all the materials you put into upgrading the facilities and any vehicles parked in the designated spots will be moved to your new place. All of your supplies and loot will also be moved to the new place. If you're doing a mission with/for a community member who's following you (or a stranger who will become a community member), and decide to move into a new place during the mission because you're close to it, you may have to go back to the old place at the end for the mission to complete (the objective will probably be pointing at the old base as well). Another tip that may help save some frustration: NPCs have lovely pathfinding, but they'll get to where they need to go automatically if you get far enough away for them to despawn. This does not apply when you need to personally escort somebody and you want them to get in the car and they just won't stop picking fights. Motherfucker, we've got places to be, the zombies aren't going anywhere, move your rear end! Fifty Farts fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Apr 10, 2022 |
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Apr 10, 2022 23:41
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Can I hire some people just to move in to the base and then kick them out? I haven't really found any worthwhile people to recruit yet. My starters are pretty great though (lichenologist, fisherwoman, and unbreakable).
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Apr 10, 2022 23:46
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drat Dirty Ape posted:Can I hire some people just to move in to the base and then kick them out? I haven't really found any worthwhile people to recruit yet. My starters are pretty great though (lichenologist, fisherwoman, and unbreakable). You can probably exile them after you move, but it's always nice to have an extra body around. Eventually everyone gets tired and you can't pound coffee forever. This also applies to the game.  Unless they're a troublemaker. Sometimes they can be worth it, but don't be afraid to kick that lazy couch potato who "loses" ammo and picks fights with everyone out on their rear end. Just check to see if they have anything good first (and if so, take it as payment for having to deal with their bullshit for even ten minutes). Lichenologist and Fisherwoman is a great combo, though, congrats. I think I had those two and a Recycler once (+2 Materials and +25 parts/day). Took over a gas station and a gun shop and I was set.
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Apr 11, 2022 00:11
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I never did it because A) I didn't know about it at the time and B) without progression I just booted non-awesome newbies as soon as I moved to save food then never took a partner out... but is there still the mechanic where traveling with you makes NPCs talk and eventually develop skills/quirks/whatever?
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Apr 11, 2022 01:12
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drat Dirty Ape posted:Can I hire some people just to move in to the base and then kick them out? I haven't really found any worthwhile people to recruit yet. My starters are pretty great though (lichenologist, fisherwoman, and unbreakable). There are three groups that might appear in your game that are great for expanding the group size. Let's refer to them as "the alcoholics", "the mechanics" and "the army veterans". They'll always offer you the same set of four missions over time. The alcoholics will start with one person that got left behind needing to be reunited with their group. The mechanics kept some repair parts in vehicle they had to abandon you need to retrieve. I don't remember the first missions for the army veterans. One you complete this first mission they will eventually call you up again for a second one. Go to where they live and tell them you won't do that second mission in person. A while later they will contact you, say that their group thing isn't working out and ask to join you. Assuming you got none of them killed, that's +3 survivors to your base. Mailer posted:I never did it because A) I didn't know about it at the time and B) without progression I just booted non-awesome newbies as soon as I moved to save food then never took a partner out... but is there still the mechanic where traveling with you makes NPCs talk and eventually develop skills/quirks/whatever? That was patched out. A character without a fifth community/quirk skill will keep that slot blank until you decide to teach them something. See this patch note from update 25: Plague Territory. "Things We Fixed Earlier But Forgot to Patch Note The Professional Deejay trait assigned by a travel conversation no longer applies the Music skill. This should be the final case of a travel conversation potentially filling that last skill slot. You need fear them no more." Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 09:16 on Apr 11, 2022 |
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Apr 11, 2022 09:07
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Woops, I already completed the 'army veteran's quests and it looks like if I hire one the other two will go away. They have some very good stats but I would lose the 'zero cost follower' perk that they have. Not sure if it is worth it or not. Haven't seen the other two yet but I'll keep my eyes open.
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Apr 11, 2022 11:15
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The first army veteran quest is to go retrieve a gun they left behind at their previous spot IIRC. Aren't the alcoholics completely worthless though? Or is that just a random chance and I got unlucky the one time I let them join? I never gave them another shot because having 3 people chock full of negative traits and no skills was really annoying. Plus a morale hit when they joined.
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Apr 11, 2022 14:10
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Oh, they definitely get crappy quirks. But 3 extra people is going to make the road to getting a bigger base that much faster, especially since the biggest ones require 8 people before you can move. Just exile them once you're done building/upgrading facilities. I'm at a point tho where the morale hit and additional food requirements are rarely impactful, even on nightmare, so ymmv. Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Apr 11, 2022 |
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Apr 11, 2022 17:50
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The Cheshire Cat posted:The only factor that increases difficulty over time is your overall influence gain. Is this true? I thought the only thing that directly affected overall difficulty was # of plague hearts killed, not just the difficulty of subsequent plague hearts.
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Apr 12, 2022 00:36
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Mierenneuker posted:There are three groups that might appear in your game that are great for expanding the group size. Let's refer to them as "the alcoholics", "the mechanics" and "the army veterans". They'll always offer you the same set of four missions over time. The alcoholics will start with one person that got left behind needing to be reunited with their group. The mechanics kept some repair parts in vehicle they had to abandon you need to retrieve. I don't remember the first missions for the army veterans. They can still get an extra quirk from conversations, they can just no longer get a skill from said quirk. There are other groups as well - there's the hungry/hopeless survivors who will eventually ask to join you at the end of their questline if you do it all anyway (but these ones are always cripplingly bad, although it is one of the few ways to get your compound over the maximum number of people) and the guys with zombie guard dogs who got added with the 4th map will also ask to join if you show up and refuse to do their second quest." The real downside to these groups is they will all have the same fifth skill, so you will most likely ditch two of them anyway to maximize your bases potential.
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Apr 12, 2022 03:15
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Honestly I'm usually not in any huge hurry to expand, I keep an eye out for survivors with skills that fill gaps I don't already have, or ones with an empty fifth skill that I can give a book to later, and just upgrade bases once I've done that enough times that I've hit the minimum requirement for the next tier.Sab Sabbington posted:Is this true? I thought the only thing that directly affected overall difficulty was # of plague hearts killed, not just the difficulty of subsequent plague hearts. What killing plague hearts does is make it so that more zombies will spawn to defend future plague hearts when you attack them and for the heart's health to go up (although it's not by a lot, the very last heart is only going to take one more explosive to kill than the very first one). That's all killing plague hearts does, on its own. However, your influence gain, from anything except trading, causes the overall map difficulty to increase. So clearing hordes, killing specials, doing enclave missions, etc. This includes killing plague hearts since you also get a bunch of influence for that, but the map-wide difficulty boost is a secondary effect and not explicitly because you killed the plague heart (getting the same amount of influence from other sources will raise the difficulty by the exact same amount). The influence based difficulty affects things like spawn rates of specials and hordes and how big the hordes are allowed to get. It might affect the spawn rate of infestations too but I'm not 100% sure on that since that is also influenced by other infestations being nearby. I believe this is a thing where you generally hit the cap after a few in-game weeks or so (depending on your overall pace), so it's not something that just keeps scaling indefinitely.
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Apr 12, 2022 05:38
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The only time I actually rushed moving was to the container fort, and that's only because (unless they've patched it) you could block the two real entrances and mostly block the third so it was relatively safe. All the other homes seem to be predicated on survivors picking the location with the most possible doors like they have an open door fetish. It's one of the things I hope for in the sequel - making your home less stupid. I've looted a bunch of highly fortified places with one possible entrance but you can only call a place home if it's outstandingly unsafe.
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Apr 12, 2022 14:33
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As far as I remember blocking gates/climbable fences still works, you just have to be careful if juggernauts show up. They can just walk into the cars and move/blow them up. My hopes for the sequel are options for more free form base building instead of just picking a starter then waiting for enough people to get the big places. Being able to build a base anywhere, similar to settlements in Fallout 76, is probably just a dream but man I want it.
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Apr 12, 2022 19:29
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Admiral Joeslop posted:My hopes for the sequel are options for more free form base building instead of just picking a starter then waiting for enough people to get the big places. Being able to build a base anywhere, similar to settlements in Fallout 76, is probably just a dream but man I want it. No one brought this article up in the past month, but don't expect the third game anytime soon: https://kotaku.com/state-of-decay-3-xbox-series-x-s-sexism-microsoft-undea-1848728682 "An internal demo went terribly later that year, and management began to panic in 2021 when there still wasn’t a coherent slice of the game to show Microsoft. “The leadership team claimed that we were ‘prototyping,’ and yet we were attempting to make playable demos to show off to external stakeholders,” said one former developer. “There were contradictions everywhere.” “They kept piling on more features for more demos,” said another. “It was a complete mess. People left and were replaced by juniors. To quote a producer, ‘I’m not an expert at the code or anything, but our systems should be past the prototype stage.’ Even when the experts at code told him, ‘no it’s not even working at all yet,’ they ignored that comment and added more features to the deadline.” And those sentences come after a whole lot of words how toxic the work environment has been after Microsoft's acquisition of Undead Labs. If they ever manage to get the third game out, I imagine it's going to take a whole lot of updates to be good. Like what happened to State of Decay 2, but over a really long period of time. Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 08:34 on Apr 13, 2022 |
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Apr 13, 2022 08:28
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Am I supposed to swap around and play as different survivors or have one main guy?
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Apr 14, 2022 20:06
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Swap - if you use one person for too long they get fatigued and injured and need to rest/recover.
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Apr 14, 2022 20:14
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zoux posted:Am I supposed to swap around and play as different survivors or have one main guy? Swap around. For one, characters will get tired and have their max stamina reduced, until eventually they have zero stamina. Coffee and energy shots can mitigate this but only for so long. As well, you want everyone gaining skill XP; they'll get some from doing stuff around the base and certain actions but they get more from being out in the world. I usually just dump all their stuff into the locker and pick it back up with another character. Make sure you give characters you aren't currently playing the strongest guns you have because they won't use or need ammo while they're computer controlled.
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Apr 14, 2022 20:14
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Swap around. The survivors you control will accrue fatigue and injuries as you venture out, so unless you want to spend a bunch of consumables/resources to keep one guy going out, you'll need to cycle through your folks every once in a while. It's good to do that anyway in order to get everybody's combat skills leveled and to get unlock their community member perks.
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Apr 14, 2022 20:18
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So, it should be a goal to max level all 9 of my guys over the course of a campaign. Thanks for the answers.
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Apr 14, 2022 21:28
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zoux posted:So, it should be a goal to max level all 9 of my guys over the course of a campaign. Thanks for the answers. You won't necessarily need to max all of your survivors, but you'll eventually start feeling out what large objectives might end up being--things like clearing infestations, plague hearts, long scav runs--and which characters will handle it better based on what skills certain survivors have and your own personal playstyle. I like taking high level survivors with blades or heavy weapons for clearing plague hearts, for example, since those weapon types can handle large groups of enemies via either cutting off limbs or Big loving Swings while I'm waiting for the plague heart armor to wear off and get another explosion in. Stealth characters are my go-to for infestations and scav runs since screamers are easiest to kill when they haven't seen you. And I take characters with blunt weapons never because blunt weapons loving suck. (This is only mostly true of the last time I played, and I won't actually not use someone who rolled blunt for melee but it's the lowest preference). eta: the point with that was: you'll want a couple well-leveled survivors for certain objectives, but most things are totally fine to do with moderately skilled people, and prioritizing leveling over handling important objectives with the right survivor might not be the best play
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Apr 14, 2022 21:54
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Yeah you don't really need to rotate through your entire roster - having 2 or 3 regulars is usually enough to make sure that you always have a well rested character available to swap to when your current one starts getting tired. There are also a bunch of passive training options you can activate in the base depending on what you've built, so you don't need to actually take people out and grind to level up their skills.
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Apr 14, 2022 22:15
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Can I enlist somebody with the computer skill and then exile them after I build a command center 3? Computer skill in general seems pretty meh.
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Apr 16, 2022 13:21
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I don't know if the upgrade stays but I find the drones you unlock to be pretty useful. The drone strike can kill a plague heart in one hit through a wall; haven't actually tested it on the nearest difficulties though.
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Apr 16, 2022 14:32
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Do I want to be using followers regularly or are they more trouble then theyre worth?
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Apr 16, 2022 18:39
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They are great pack mules if you're visiting several unlooted locations in close proximity of each other. Just never have them around when you are taking on Plague Hearts, because they will start chopping at it while you wanted to deploy/throw explosives. And I never bother with people following me on Nightmare and (likely) Lethal difficulty at all unless I would be fine with that person dying. Mierenneuker fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Apr 16, 2022 |
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Apr 16, 2022 19:05
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I almost never bring community members along but will sometimes hire someone from another community if don't care about them. NPCs are good at drawing aggro and keeping specials occupied while I loot or whatever. If they die, they die.
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Apr 16, 2022 19:13
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zoux posted:Do I want to be using followers regularly or are they more trouble then theyre worth? what difficulty are you on?
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Apr 16, 2022 20:20
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Admiral Joeslop posted:I almost never bring community members along but will sometimes hire someone from another community if don't care about them. NPCs are good at drawing aggro and keeping specials occupied while I loot or whatever. If they die, they die. Bringing someone from a friendly enclave along also lets them act as a portable trader, which is handy while looting since you can just immediately dump off trade goods or anything else you don't want to haul home with you.
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Apr 16, 2022 20:58
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Bringing someone from a friendly enclave along also lets them act as a portable trader, which is handy while looting since you can just immediately dump off trade goods or anything else you don't want to haul home with you. poo poo, that's brilliant.
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Apr 16, 2022 21:11
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