My guide to getting to Day 22 on Seasoned [Spoiler]

[Daang_maang]

I see that some people are saying that the game is too hard. The intent of this guide is to help with that.

- On "seasoned", this game is primary a memory/choreography game. Normal is far more chilled.

- The "Combat" perk is a must. You can kinda make do with the engineer perk, but you'll struggle. Every other perk is inefficient on seasoned as you cannot push hard and fast enough. Having 2 experienced engineers working the left side and 1 working the right on by day 2 helps you collect that much more food and clear more obstacles faster.
- I prefer the flashbang perk.

Broad strokes:
- abuse the mushroom patch refresh every night. Build your defense, but don't complete it until the growth refresh for the first 3-4 days. The moment you complete your defense, any available mushroom patch between your old and new defensive points is auto-harvested.
- Get as much food as you can and get the train going as often as you can. By Day 20 the train will no longer be going. The barrels are a must to run as much between sides.
- The first 3 nights, don't be afraid to push far into the fog. In fact, you must in order to ensure you meet your milestones.
- By day 4, if you try to push through the fog during the night, the mutant dogs or a new wave will spawn on you.
- You cannot afford to have more than 1 defense breach by day 7. Perferably none at all.
- You want to clear all the growth to the left (up to the breach) by day 4; you want to clear all the growth to the right up to the bridge by day 5. Failure to do so means you have to contend with a lot of micro-ing when you start getting mortar growths by day 6.
- Ideally, you want to set up day 4 such that on day 5, you have 2 diggers on each side focusing on nothing other than growth destructions.
- the plus side of removing all growth by day 5 is that the right side will not have an enemy, so you can focus on the left. You can also start making sure your research is up by day 5. Delaying research too much will bite you towards the end.
- You want to get all 6 defenses up on the left side by day 7, right side can be a bit more lenient. You also want the cement plant operational by the time the wave hits.

You need all the resources you can get.
- By day 9, you want to fully push the left side all the way to the edge of the map with at least 3 diggers to get all the parts you can. Especially look for the open door with the reward goodies inside. This will allow you to seal the breach on the left side + start grub + warehouse upgrade

- By Day 10, the moment the bridge is up, you should be pushing all the way to the right side of the map. You should be able to collect enough materials to seal the right breach + generator upgrade.

- By day 12, you want to fully push the right side and collect every bit of scrap.

- My target is to get the flower dead by Day 14 so that you can get the fuel upgrade by Day 15 or 16. Ideally, you are all ready to go by the end of the boss wave at 15 to go to the surface.

- then it's mad wall upgrade time and get as many guns + auto-turrets as you can .

Additional guide to surviving Day 25:
- You need 34 population minimum with tons of stalkers, snipers, and engineers. The smallest mistake will sink you easily.
- Between day 8 and day 22, once you have planted your grub farm, have 2 diggers work them = 10 food per refresh cycle. Having 20 food a day ensures that you don't miss the tram, the surface expedition, and also being able to upgrade your food station to attract tramps.
- After day 18, once the tram stops working, the end-game is aggressively destroying growth on one side each day and rotate to the other side the next.

Managed to survive Day 25 with 2 wall breaches and 1 follower dead.

[Misanthropy Incarnate]

I did the exact opposite of "You want to get all 6 defenses up on the left side by day 7, right side can be a bit more lenient. You also want the cement plant operational by the time the wave hits." - I went all right immediately. By day 6, I was building the maggot farm on the right side, knowing that no more growths would spawn and that nothing of value was to be held on the right side other than building/collecting which made the next 4 days real easy on the left side. All focus can be put on building everything up and mining the tunnel even throughout the night while you're defending it. By the time the bridge shows up, everything on the Left is built up/collected too and it's just a matter of beefing up defense on either side while running back and forth clearing the growths and managing tasks during the day.

I'd also kept rotating my perks with every playthrough. They definitely change up the first 6 days or so, but all of them became nearly the same by that point. I think for the most part the game's about figuring out how to make the most of the early perks available to help reach the Day 6/11 milestones of having the sides built up, at which point a lot of the perks don't really seem to offer much anymore. More scrap, more shields, etc. all don't really matter we're already on top of things. I assume maybe they're more relevant in Nightmare but I haven't given it a shot.

I tried Left->Right strategy quite a few times at first, but it all felt a bit easier once I finally decided to buck conventional thought (build towards the opponent, best defense is a good offense) and try going at it from the opposite angle once I'd realized there was a bridge. I'd initially figured I could easily and lazily work my way to clearing up the right while fending off against the left... but after so much experimentation and realizing how their spawns work, it just made more sense to me to then start preventing all enemy activity on the right side while manually defending the left side. By day 6, if it's all built up, there's no more enemies until two days after the bridge if I remember correctly. Prior to day 6, if you clear out the growths, there's no enemies. You're free to use all those hands to do whatever you want day/night. You can leave diggers mining on the right side throughout the night while you defend the Left if you don't take Combat Training.

I think I lost 6 walls and 1 person in that first win.

[Daang_maang]

On seasoned, you get 1 enemy wave on the left on day 9, but that's it.

Also, more than 1 way to skin a cat.

On my strat, I fully cleared all sides (both left and right) of growth by end of day 5. The key is to have pushed sufficiently far enough on day 4 *on both sides* such that day 5 are all on growth clearing. I find you need 2 diggers on left, 2 diggers on right to be able to pull that off, and none of the other perks allow you to do that *while* ensuring you get your food delivery every day. The reason why this is important is because the mortar growth can kill your diggers/dwellers without shield, and oneshot your 1-tier defense.

- not a big fan of the grub farm. If you cheese the mushroom patch sufficiently you'll end up with 20+ food by day 7 anyway. I feels it's important to get your 2nd-tier defense, warehouse, and generator upgrade be in place.

- clearing both sides of growth by day 6 actually allow you to push towards far left around day 7, and being able to fully clear all the left loot spots by day 8 + patch left breach + maggot farm. This means you get to go on a patrol on day 9 to the left to get rid of any growth that may have popped up and able to be be in place for an aggressive push to the right on day 10.

[veracis987]

Care to upload a video?

[kyza]

No, never push left first. Always push right first. After you setup all 6 walls, you dont have to worry about right side til they grow the bridge. Just keep 2 walls on left that's all you need.

[Ranger]

we have all bin scam when we buy this devs not care any more and no work no more

[Daonitre]

Originally posted by THE DESERT RANGER:

we have all bin scam when we buy this devs not care any more and no work no more

yes work fine still. :P
I haven't hit d22 yet (should be there tomorrow) but i can reliably get past d18.
days 1-4, push and build walls right, while building a wall take 2 diggers out and mine the shrooms, Start killing right growths on wave 3 religiously. Leave them to dig at the next wall segment overnight while you run to the left to manually fight. only need 1 wall left so you can get 2 engineers (one to build, other to research). building 2 walls left means having to run farther and possibly losing a wall to quick waves.
Day 5 take only diggers and push all the way through left; should have 18-20 gears available if you haven't lost any walls and didn't build anything unnecessary which lets you close the breach early avoiding any spitters and if you've been keeping up on right a single tramp is enough to defend right side... pretty much bring everyone to left wall 1.
Day 6 finish right walls if you haven't already (it's possible by day 5 but needs near perfect movement to have enough gears), build right farm, put 2 diggers on it and forget about that side until the gap opens.

big left wave on d7 - but since you closed the gap it's a joke. If you want to be risky you can rush towards the end with an engineer and a few diggers to clear it out more and collect more stuff; if you've been researching the whole time you may unlock engineer door open here (really helpful). just beware the dog at the end of the open room near the end.

Use day 8 to finish a bunch of projects (turn one of your recent diggers into an engineer if needed) and send the stalkers topside if you haven't yet. don't bother going into the mist just chill and finish up projects; push left if you're out of other things to deal with.

then on day 10/11 you should easily be able to have multiple stalkers on both 6 count walls, killed flower on day 7-8 and sent stalkers up (remember to wait a day between the first and second order), and started upgrading the outmost walls... it's just managing the growths and getting into shields so you can more effectively deal with spitters. Once the bridge appears push far left again (clear it out), then next day clear out right. Back and forth. not terrible... just don't waste gears on letting walls break or waste troops sending them to their death.

...honestly this is one of the easier "difficult games" I've played. It's really well balanced in terms of pushing you to stick to a strategy (mine is just 1 of a few that work) and not waste time; I know that if something bad happens it's because i screwed up somewhere and it's not just a scripted "we're punishing you for doing well" that a lot of games have. If you want an easier game play on normal. Plenty of people have beaten nightmare so I don't know what the "it's a scam" deal is.