any useful tips for nightmare difficulty?

[FelixSG]

I'd completed all the four leader types and got their boons on dread zone difficulty and actually it was even too easy.

So I moved on to challenge the nightmare mode but wait this is a whole different story than I expected. Too often a group of special zombies or hordes I often encounter, and even the infected Juggernaut enters my base and kills other survivors.

By now I've given up around four to five times to play on nightmare mode.

Is there any tips for me to enjoy and play the nightmare mode better?

[Vexov]

There is a lot of tips, but you need to take it more seriously. The problem is the other difficulties are just for casual players, basically.

You need to start being more silent. Base noise level in the RED is bad unless you people are rocking high powered automatics (like AK's).

Silence your weapons and use lower caliber, or use a the crossbow (I wish they had bows). .45cal and lower is good.

Have you companions that remain in base equipped with powerful weapons or automatics. Companions, even ones that travel with you: Don't really make noises. They can hold a .50cal with no silencer and be fine.


There are skills on survivors that is just amazing and make the game even easier. Snap Aim is just overpowered and a survivor with it can be giving a gun that doesn't break (revolver or new'ish wester style guns) some can be silenced.



The main tip is to stop being a jackass and making a crap ton of noises. You shouldn't be running around like a cowboy, not till you get good.

[Boboscus]

Give your survivors in the base highest possible caliber weapons you've got, they don't draw in other zombies with the sound they make, but it makes a world of difference. Don't leave them with crossbows or 22. cal weapons, use those yourself.

[Pancake]

What you could do if you are lost:
Day 1: Get 1 rucksack of fuel + fuel cans, 1 rucksack of meds, and a LOT of materials.
Day 2: Get what you want but prioritize materials and go to nearby gun stores/sheds to get some starting gear for your survivors.
...

Honestly I have never played in Dread mode yet so i can't tell how is the difficulty there but when i started my first Nightmare run i died quickly so i went back to Standard zone to especially train strategies/MELEE combat against Ferals (like with only your knife and some snacks).

About Juggernauts and zombies in base, i tend to avoid bulding anything that can hinder movement during siege, like building a garden/hydroponics in front of MeagherValley's starting base's entrance is a bad idea because it is between two fences (main gate and a side gate) and it can be difficult to deal with bad navigation, zombies + freak at this specific spot and can hinder AI movement too.

MANAGE you stamina, like you can run everywhere if you want but when you are wandering off you base i would recommend not using more than half of you stamina bar if you have not a lot of snacks (at the start) because if you have a Feral running towards you and nothing to climb on you will be basically screwed. this advice is "okay-ish" for (about) the first 7 days.

About skills and not making too much noise, you can prioritize Stealth over anything else for almost all of your survivors if you can, it will help you a lot to unlock doors without smashing them and avoid being seen by zombies from a certain distance.
For Cardio skills, you can pick Powerhouse if you want to stun Ferals in melee combat with a little bit of training you can get the dodge/stun timing right. If you don't have Powerhouse, Marathon is pretty good combined with Stealth. Powerhouse is good, especially at the start, Marathon is better for long runs on higher difficulties imo because you have the stuff/weapons to deal with freaks without Powerhouse abilities.

Good builds could be:
- Powerhouse Stealth CC/Swordplay/Striking Gunslinging
- Marathon Stealth CC/Swordplay Gunslinging (can't deal with Ferals without gunslinging and raw skill early on xD)
- Backpacking Resourcefulness whatever Gunslinging/WeaponHandling
Honeslty in NM later on you can use Wits Book in order to replace Stealth by Discipline to decrease melee costs / recover +5 stamina each kill and increase Stamina by +21 on characters.
Note that Powerhouse decreases CC (Close Combat) grab costs.

Ah yeah, a little tip i noticed on my second Lethal run is that:
- using Bladed weapons is one-one, bad against hordes and pretty bad unless you have Swordplay maxed out and/or a good weapon's lethality -> requires more dodge/timing skill and very stamina consuming. Easy to get injured when not NM veteran, especially early on.
- using Blunt weapons is good against hordes (like bats are a must have early on). Good knockdown to less likely to be injured / requires less skill imo if you know dodge basics. Therefore, it is still good for mid/end game unless you go for Close Combat perk.
It is quite hard to say if you should use blunt over bladed at start... of course blunt should be better for < day 10+ but bladed makes less noise.
Also, if zombies are on the ground, don't use your weapon ! You can smash "Space" (on PC) to smash their heads with you foot and save a bit of your weapon's durability.

PLAN ahead. Do like a priority list in your head of what buildings you will need to build first: the infirmary 2 comes first in my opinion because it can PASSIVELY HEAL trauma and injuries (trauma can't be healed by any healing item excepted first aid kit).

PLAN what resources you will need to get first.
(First thing to do would be to spot a gas station/spot to get fuel to refuel the car so that you take less risks and you go faster from point A to point B)
Like I just said you will need to build the infirmary as quick as possible especially if your technical/combat skills are lacking. Soooo, building materials will be your first priority, then some food/meds.

Do not hesitate to use infirmary's beds when your survivors has partial plague infection to treat them quicker or simply to stop full blood plague infection countdown. <- I discovered this functionality in Nightmare day 30 or so lol no kidding.

I recommend beginning with a lichenologist on your first Nightmare playthrough because it gives you +2 meds and nullify the -2meds from the infirmary so that you won't have to search for more than 1 rucksack of meds at the start (just to have meds > 0 for morale).

You can begin with the following 5th skills:
- Lichenology (+2 meds is nice so that you can focus on other resources, and meds for plague cure crafting).
- Chemistry (needed for a bunch of crafts and can be a pain to find one | also very good for Pharmacology) or Medecine (for Pathology or infimary 3 mid/end game). Honestly it is up to you but you can take the two at start because the comb Pharmacology/Pathology is OP: the former increases the yields, the latter decreases the costs !
- Gardening=>Agriculture (for Garden 3 on first playthrouh) or Utilities (Builder boon activated, recommended for second run at least). Especially for early game, I prefer to redirect food production towards outpost (2x1.5food at start with 2 outposts) and to do a little "Enact Rationing for -50% food consumption". Okay it costs you morale but imo it is the most cost efficient way to begin the game because the garden is not the first facility you should build AND there are plenty of food rucksacks out there, even in NM/Lethal difficulty.

Of all the 5th skills listed above, I often start like:
- Lichenology, Chemistry and Medecine
- Lichenology, Chemistry and Utilities (not for first playthrough)

But most people start like:
- Gardening, Mechanics, Medecine. Mainly because it is convenient.
But when you get better with cars you don't need a mechanic as a starting character.
And when you get better at resource management you don't need Gardening anymore xD.

USE OUTPOSTS, it is OP to:
- switch characters then order to go to infirmary to get treated right away is a plus.
- put items from your bag into your storage. You can take an outpost to scavenge a whole little town by putting every item in outpost's locker and every rucksack in your car, then travelling back to base with a car fully loaded of rucksacks ! Saving time is important because hordes and zombie amount increases over time :D !
- taking down plague hearts
If you take outposts at strategic positions across the map. As I am playing with food a lot, I often take food outposts only, but sometimes I take the closest outpost to a plague heart to destroy it.

When you think you are ready to deal with Plague hearts, you can prioritize the hearts that are very close to potential outposts. You can take the closest outpost to a plague heart to create a good safe zone around it, preventing zombies from spawning when you enter in the plague heart's building. When you are done, just leave the outpost. It is not very cost efficient, like you won't win a lot of influence from this technique, but it is a relatively safe method for about 1/2 to 2/3 hearts across the map. I especially use this technique in NM/Lethal zone. It costs me money in Lethal but the resource rewards are more than okay.

Tell me if something is wrong in what I said, 'cause people might not agree with how i play without Mechanics / Gardening xD

[Protectron]

Check out my Tips, Tricks and General Advice thread a couple of pages back on this forum. Closing in on a hundred tips mostly aimed at Nightmare.

Edit: actually, it's on page 7 right now :p

[Pancake]

+1
The tips are very good, but I don't know about the 3 Soundproofers, i heard this tip too much and i think it is such a waste ! It is good early game or for your first playthrough (e.g. getting the boons) but it is a waste of skills when you get experienced <-- maybe i should have posted this in your topic ^^

[Fenris]

3 soundproofers is not necessary. Soundproofing helps avoid sieges, but sieges are one of the easiest aspects of the game. What determines how good you are in all honesty is how effectively you can find the ferals on the map before they find you, and then avoid them or kill them. You can flat out out run a zombie horde, bloaters are easy to deal with if they dont sneak up on you, and then jugs are problematic but were nerfed in the last patch. There used to be packs of jugs but now the largest hordes just have a single jug. You can dodge his lunge attack or just use walls to avoid them, but I wouldn't use ammo to fight them. The ferals are the biggest issue since they find you fast and engage on you quickly. If you can avoid them or kill them you can loot whatever you need to survive.

Tips for not dying to them? Maybe invest ina headset if you don't have one, and pay close attention to the sounds they make (you should be able to hear them running towards you). Use high caliber weapons on single fire with silencers to kill them. You have to headshot the plague ferals multiple times to remove the armor and then to kill it, so high caliber is important as is high rate of fire, but you don't want to waste ammo or use too much inventory space, so 7.62 caliber weapons that have high rate of fire and high capacity magazines are useful. Just don't use full auto since most shots will hit the body which is useless. And then if you do those things it just takes practice. The reason I would discourage 3 soundproofers is those traits only scale well in the beginning of the game. Once you have 6+ survivors having things like munitions or utilities or gardening really help you feed and arm ur survivors. There are a lot of ways to play Nightmare since plague hearts die from most weapons fairly easily. the one thing you need to get good at is not dying to ferals

[1nvictoz]

Easy help - start a community on a low difficulty, max it out, collect weapons, ammo and level your survivors, then switch to nightmare.

I know it's cheesing but it helped me a lot to finish Nightmare and not get frustrated rather than having fun. You keep everything except your base, so you can enjoy more challenging combat without needing to scrape by while everyone in your base is about to hang themselves. Still had some really tense moments straight out of a movie, it's a good balance.

+ it's as hard or "easy" as you want it to be depending on how well you prepared before changing the difficulty. I'm really glad the game allows for this without penalty. You can even unlock boons and achievements.

[1nvictoz]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Fenris:

3 soundproofers is not necessary. Soundproofing helps avoid sieges, but sieges are one of the easiest aspects of the game. What determines how good you are in all honesty is how effectively you can find the ferals on the map before they find you, and then avoid them or kill them. You can flat out out run a zombie horde, bloaters are easy to deal with if they dont sneak up on you, and then jugs are problematic but were nerfed in the last patch. There used to be packs of jugs but now the largest hordes just have a single jug. You can dodge his lunge attack or just use walls to avoid them, but I wouldn't use ammo to fight them. The ferals are the biggest issue since they find you fast and engage on you quickly. If you can avoid them or kill them you can loot whatever you need to survive.

Tips for not dying to them? Maybe invest ina headset if you don't have one, and pay close attention to the sounds they make (you should be able to hear them running towards you). Use high caliber weapons on single fire with silencers to kill them. You have to headshot the plague ferals multiple times to remove the armor and then to kill it, so high caliber is important as is high rate of fire, but you don't want to waste ammo or use too much inventory space, so 7.62 caliber weapons that have high rate of fire and high capacity magazines are useful. Just don't use full auto since most shots will hit the body which is useless. And then if you do those things it just takes practice. The reason I would discourage 3 soundproofers is those traits only scale well in the beginning of the game. Once you have 6+ survivors having things like munitions or utilities or gardening really help you feed and arm ur survivors. There are a lot of ways to play Nightmare since plague hearts die from most weapons fairly easily. the one thing you need to get good at is not dying to ferals

I just finished a Nightmare run yesterday and for me I had I'd say 70% of the time double Jugs in hordes. Maybe they reversed the nerf again?

[Fenris]

Diposting pertama kali oleh 1nvictoz:

I just finished a Nightmare run yesterday and for me I had I'd say 70% of the time double Jugs in hordes. Maybe they reversed the nerf again?

oh maybe. I figured the changes they made to nightmare and lethal were the same. the lethal hordes maxed out just have one of each

[Pancake]

Thanks to the last update the devs have increased the gap difficulty between Dread and Nightmare (as i tested today) because the gap is huge and now you have blood freaks as well as hordes of freaks in nightmare xD.
Yeah the changes between nightmare and Lethal are about the same but Lethal is like "every bonus/malus x2 compared to Nightmare" for almost everything.

As Fenris said as long as you have the mechanics to not die to Ferals it is okay. I think once you know how to deal with Ferals, you can tackle every difficulty with time and experience of course.

[Protectron]

The problem with the 3-minute sieges and double Juggernauts is that there is the risk that a dumb-as-hell NPC will get himself stunlocked by those jugs and die. That happens in certain bases, and is by far the way that I have lost the most survivors all these hours.

That's not "dangerous" per se, but it is a nuisance, and so is running back to your base (or doing the Outpost trick) once every half-an-hour.

You end up with 10 survivors most of the time, which allows you to have all the production skills you need and then some... those 7 are Agriculture, Pathology, Pharmacology, Automechanic, Nutrition, Electronics and Munitions. There is no need for the rest, so you'll end up taking useless stuff like Fishing, Driving or stuff that you don't really need like Lichenology (upkeep costs won't be a problem anyhow). Then it is much better staying in the green or yellow zone and avoid the nuisances of the sieges. It is not a better start - it is a better end.

I tried a community without them recently and while it didn't make the game more difficult or anything, it was bloody annoying.

[Pancake]

Pipe bombs can deal with multiple annoying jugs but honestly it feels like a waste because the ammo required to craft these can exceed both the -3 ammo from not doing the siege AND a part of the influence earned from the siege.

I sometimes do the outpost trick when i am far away on a mission / scavenging (e.g. YES DRUCKER COUNTY xD).
But i do sieges too when i can because a bit of partial plague infection on your survivor is very good to earn about +15/+20 influence from curing partial infection at infirmary ! Sometimes I even go to get myself infected like 5% (scratch or something) just to gain the +20 influence (not recommended day 1 as zombies can alert others).

And I found why Drucker County seems harder than other maps in NM/Lethal. It is mainly because of the long drive distances. You travel more, so more zombies/freaks spawn so you get this feeling and encounter more of everything.