Quick Game Guide

[Silly Clown]

Soooo... There's a lot the game doesn't explain. Here a few bits of tips and stuff:


Game goal - ????, The game gives you a few missions at the beginning, but that all stops after the first weak storm. It does not seem to have an ending, and once you have your team fully geared it kind of just... keeps going.

Missions:
1. Build a base.
2. Kill X zombies.
3. Get X headshots.
4. Stop a fire portal - destroy 5 fire orbs around the portal - near the ambulance/grocery store in the far corner of the map, near the houses.
5. Survive a large zombie wave - Zombie Waves stay large after this mission.
6. Survive a weak poison storm (final mission) - Poison all over the map. Have enough gas masks for your crew (make at workshop or...). They can be found in the floating cargo ship & trailer park. Can be avoided by staying indoors, but the debuff is negated with a gas mask.
7. The end??? - Freeplay.

Tips:
In order of priority.

Play a custom game:
Max out perk points and inventory carrying capacity.
Perks take an unbelievable amount of time to get, and scavanging take forever to do (4-6 turns for an expertise loot). So unless you want to play a skip-a-turn simulator, do this to improve game experience.

Build everywhere:
You can only build in houses, there are 3 types, each can fit X amounts of base buildings. (1 room, 2 room, and 3 rooms)
Have 1 Workshop, 3 reading rooms, and scatter Armoury & Medical rooms everywhere else.
Reading rooms take a looooong time to respec & study a survivor, so have plenty available.
Workshop only needs 1 dedicated survivor with max engineering perks to function/max.

Survivors:
-Have a few dedicated roles: 1 engineer, 2 medics (in case one gets injured).
I cranked my custom game to give max perk slots because the maxing a role takes forever. Unless you want to spend 300+ turns studying, play a custom game.
-You get a free perk point from studying and during a time wave (purple wall floats through map every 2 days or so.)
-Find a recruitment board, you can spend scrap/medicine to recruit. Every new recruit increase cost. (50, 100, 300, 700 scraps). Its important to find early because you want as much crew to get free perk slots from a time wall -> 8 perk points earned/studied to upgrade library to lvl 3.
-Lvl 3 library lets you specialize a role(retrain), other than my dedicated medic/engineer, my go to are (melee weapons 1, ranged weapons 1 & 2, max scavenge, increase movement 1 & 2 -if you can fit it in-, health and carrying capacity curses). Active skills are a chore to use, avoid if possible.

Gear:
Gas mask is a must. Ignore poison fog/trails.
For the most part, I ignored ranged weapons since the game UI is a pain to deal with. (swapping ammo, inventory management, etc)
Workshop lvl 1 - Any blunt weapon, stuns help with action economy if lucky.
Workshop lvl 2 - Machete (deal with armor)
Workshop lvl 3 - Katana (pierce armor, chance to bleed = free kill on downed zombie)
Workshop lvl 3 + unique blueprints - Chainsaw (150+ damage + 100% bleed chance = insta kill most zombies & those that survive will bleed on the ground) & G28??? (its a unique sniper, does 200+ damage = I only use this to deal with electric zombies.)

Crew:
I run teams of 2 - 1 fighter and 1 looter. or 1 fighter and 1 studying. If studying gets interrupted, you have to start from the beginning again.
I have a medic stay near the hospital at all times. This person also acts as the base guard, so have at least melee 1 trait on him.

Blueprints:
Each can be found in the far corners/edges of the map, heres a few:
1. Ambulance - free lvl 3 medical trait for the library - Near houses / grocery store
2. Burning army station - Minigun & ump45?? - South of the restaurant, have to pass through flaming tiles to get to, make sure you are healthy & have spare turns to put out flames on your survivor.
3. Poison factory - Chainsaw (best melee) - Need a gas mask, its in the only barricaded building in the poison mist area near the chemical plant. Need to take down barricades.
4. Cargo ship - G28 sniper (best ranged primary) - Appears and disappears every 2-3 days, bunch of free goodies in the containers. Best part, the loot here respawns.

Zombies:
Infinite, don't bother with killing unless you have to. Only an X amount of zombies can be on the map at a given time (based on difficulty settings)

Regular - most will die from poison/flame/electric from enviornment, orbs, or special zombies. basic mob.

Armor police - Have some sort of armor pen/destroying weapon. usually has 150+ hp. Takes a few actions points to deal with.

Poison/Fire zombies - Immune to their own element, leaves a trail of element where they step on. Nothing special, just avoid the tiles and don't get attacked. Easy to deal with.

Electric Zombies - Annoying, counters any attack made withing 3-4 tiles from them. Use a ranged weapon.

Shadow Zombies - Turns invincible every alternating turn, can only be killed during its vulnerable turn. Just time your attack right.

Night/Enraged zombies - Happens at night & during the storm. They will chase your survivor until day time, but if its a zombie trait, you will have to kill them to make them stop.

Storm-blessed zombies - Gets 250 hp, 100 armor, and enraged. Not too hard to deal with as long as you have a decent weapon & 2 survivors.


Floating element orbs:
Poison/fire/lighting orbs - Leaves a trail of their element & anyone who enters their orb range gets damaged. Poison can be ignored with a gas mask.

Chrono orb - Turns on/off every 4/6 turns, stuns anyone who enters for 2 turns, annoying but most of the time you can just walk around.


Final tips -

There is only so much scrap in the map before you searched everything and run out of a consistent source of loot. (other than the ship, which only then brings like 100-200 scraps and 50 meds every 3 days).

Only regular and police zombies have a small chance of dropping loot from my experience, and they start becoming rare in late game (only getting poison/fire/electric zombies). Use melee whenever possible.

If you plan on playing for a long time, avoid spending scrap on low tier gear, and save up for a chainsaw + unique blueprint primary gun.

[RyanLQ]

Hi Silly Crown

This is amazing, thank you for putting this together!

I've made a quick response to one of your feedback points:

Originally posted by Silly Clown:

Perks take an unbelievable amount of time to get, and scavanging take forever to do (4-6 turns for an expertise loot)

I'm going to rebalance studying by making it so that studying for successive ability points does not take too long. Hopefully that helps address this pain point!

I feel like you have really understood the dynamics and interactions of the game! Again thanks a bunch for putting this together.

Cheers,
Ryan