Noob question on Nightmare / Lethal

[Klassy Kitten]

New to the game. Getting handle on the mechanics by starting and dying and then deleting community and starting fresh. No legacy characters or boons (had to look those up)

Dread seemed too easy.

Are Nightmare and Lethal supposed to spawn blood packs within the first hour of the game near the first base? Seems like a big jump in difficulty between Dread -> Lethal.

I've already wiped a few times after moving to new base and getting 4+ heros and high standing too fast. Learned lesson and will take it a bit slower.

Other than the blood packs question - anyone else have any tips for Nightmare / Lethal with no legacy survivors ?

[Neon Noodles]

Originally posted by Klassy Kitten:

Are Nightmare and Lethal supposed to spawn blood packs within the first hour of the game near the first base? Seems like a big jump in difficulty between Dread -> Lethal.

100% yes. Lethal is meant to be State of Decay 2: Dark Souls edition. The unprepared will die. Often.

Originally posted by Klassy Kitten:

I've already wiped a few times after moving to new base and getting 4+ heros and high standing too fast. Learned lesson and will take it a bit slower...Other than the blood packs question - anyone else have any tips for Nightmare / Lethal with no legacy survivors ?

This is a very common experience for Lethal. Sadly, the highest I go is Nightmare so I can't help too much with tips (basically just basic stuff like move slowly, take meds\fuel\toolbox\ammo\food\plague cure with you at all times, look for useful survivor traits like immortal, sleep psychology, etc.) but you can think of the different difficulties kinda like this:

Green: "I don't play video games but would like to try this one out."
Standard: "I play my games on easy."
Dread: "I play my games on Normal."
Nightmare: "I want a challenge."
Lethal: "I'm a minmaxer."

Cheers!

[Nope]

Yes it's normal and on Lethal everything is blood variance, you'll find your base surrounded pretty fast even on early, just no Juggernaut yet

Tips:
- Try to aim for Powerhouse specialize, it trivial Feral
- Minimal sprinting, the game tend to cheat with Feral spawn when you least expected
- Crossbow
- Avoid killing in Plague Heart zones especially Freaks, if you need to kill go stealth, or Standard Bolts their legs
- Back Stamina consumables with you
- Don't sprint open door
- Equip everyone you don't control with Automatic guns
- Avoid hostile human if you can

[csb]

As above +
- If you are in danger run
- Do quest only if they are easy or needed, but still run if it goes messy
- Get or start with a cook and a chemist - produce stamina items in a kitchen. if you have enough of this you will be fine no matter one.
- Car is the best weapon against ferals especially packs, the starting car is one of the best, drive car ahead of the ferals and navigate the car where a fence blocks your driver door then slow/stop the car. The ferals will jump on the back of you car so you can easily smash them on any fence.
- kill 1st hearth asap so it will not spawn feral and you can get a strategic area to loot that will help you a lot, a great loot from the hearth and the quick xp from the 1st cure quest.
- get a radio tower and activate the disruption it will keep the hearts asleep, it makes the whole new content trivial (so do not do it it if you are experienced and want to have fun)
- Traits are more important than skills for the starters especially with a cool hero bonus, stack as much as possible plague resistance, like pathologist, never been sick, spend medicine to get buff...
- If you are new on Lethal start with a full team from previous runs with full experience, it is not a shame to learn first then try the hard mode...
- Stealth all the times if you can, never shoot a weapon without suppressor, except you are far from car and feral is chasing.
- Kill hearths with heavy melee, learn dodge horde with the stam items.

[Xuhybrid]

Nightmare is probably your best bet until you get familiar. Learn the roar sound for Ferals. One might be manageable but a pack will mess you up. Find the best crossbow you can, there's even a random event where you can get a repeating crossbow. Play the game like a stealth game, use firecrackers, molotovs and crossbows to clear out areas. Always know the closest wall you can jump over or container you can jump on. Practice dodging.

There's many more tips above but these are your essentials imo.

[Pasiego]

I don't think lethal is particularly difficult, rather particularly annoying.

[Sc0rpiTr0n]

As soon as you can equip survivors with automatic weapons.
Juggernauts, Plague Ferals and zombie hordes will pose no threat to your base after that.

Here is my preferred weapons:

Stormbringer and Hordbreaker from Red Talon trader or missions.
M4A1 from soldiers enclave
Raider's AR-15 from Plague Hearts
SCAR-H from Ammo trader
MAC-10 from Plague Hearts

Bounty Broker often has good automatic weapons as well,
like FBI Fighting Rifle or Non-Compliant SKS, if you don't mind using his services.

I forgot to add B50FG from Mysterious Wandering Trader is also pretty good.

[stimpatch]

The thing with Lethal zone is that it becomes a stealth game. The more noise you make the worse it's going to get for you.

General tips:

- The difficulty ramps up fast as your survivors gain standing (Recruit -> Citizen -> Hero). You can defeat this by avoiding things that earn them standing in the early game. On most of my play throughs I don't even turn in my first bag of materials (the first quest) until I've looted nearly the whole starting area.

- Don't get caught without a car. If you're 500m away from your ride and you accidentally run into a pack of blood ferals (or worse) you're done. Repair kits and fuel are really important.

- Get a survivor with Computers, capture a Cell Tower outpost, and activate the Plague Disruptor when you need to work in an area controlled by plague hearts. It lasts for about an hour, so it's plenty of time to get in there and get some stuff done without waking up any plague hearts.

- Never melee a Juggernaut. It's best to avoid them, but if you have to deal with one the safest way is to use your car to kill it (ram it in reverse, drive forward, repeat).

[Klassy Kitten]

Thanks for all the tips everyone!

[smokey]

Good tips above, I think the jump from Nightmare to lethal is the hardest. Nightmare doesn't have blood ferals, (at least I've never seen them on nightmare) and normal ferals are an easy one shot kill. I've been trying out adjusting the difficulty to play a mix of nightmare/lethal.

[Vixennz]

im new and only have a few hours i think but these helped me a lot

1. use cars they're gonna save you. if theres a group of zombies overwhelming you just run them over but make sure to use the back of the car so you don't take damage. (hate bloaters).
2. make sure to get a mechanic and lvl 2 workshop so you can make a tool kit to repair your cars. (i hate lethal ferals).
3. enclaves will save you if you have zombies chasing you and they will usually have guns and they don't take as much damage as us so they will just sit there and spam bullets.
4. you can use your car for killing jugs just get enough speed backing up to make them limp over and youll have to do it a few times but it works.
5. idk what to tell you abt ferals but i usually just have a gun but if you don't then you're out of luck unless you have powerhouse.
6. when killing a heart make sure to use a distraction like a boombox because you can draw all of the zombies away for miles and then just go to work but you may have to run away n come back later. (theres no shame in it)

[Protectron]

1. As long as you don't build a new facility when you have just moved into the starter base, there will be no other missions spawning. So spend the first hour finding a Crossbow for yourself and good guns (assault rifles, shotguns) for your the two NPC crewmembers. To do so, hit gun shops, military sites and barns. First of all, take your damaged car to a fire station to get the two repair kits + more fuel and even meds (if on Providence Ridge or Trumbull Valley, hit car workshops instead).
2. Then start looting Materials until storage is maxed out, go out and fill the car with rucksacks again, and return before finally building the Infirmary. When it is done, upgrade it to lvl 2. Restock the storage and go out for more materials.
3. Take 2 Plague Samples with you to the new enclave that showed up. After this, the game opens up to regular open world rng.

Combat, infestations and plague hearts:
* In general, avoiding waking up Plague Hearts is a good idea early on because the infestations spread everywhere and become annoying, and with only 2 NPCs with suboptimal guns at the base, and you with only a Crossbow (because you won't really have enough Parts to maintain firearms at this point), a full Siege could actually become a wipe-out threat if you're unlucky.
* Sneak kills don't wake up Hearts, so efforts should be made to not alert zombies at all in this initial phase. Take your time.
* Once you have 4 or 5 NPCs at the base and you have at least one .50 gun OR full-auto-only guns (like FBI Fighting Rifle) among your crew, they should be able to mow down any Siege with ease. At that point, you may wake up as many Hearts as you want.
* In this mid-game stage, you should also begin to get good Plague Heart-killing weapons like Fuel Bombs, ScentBlock, Bloater Gas Grenades (ignited) and stuff like that, which will make that part of the game much more effective.

Basically, Lethal is the difficulty where you are rewarded for using all the "tricks up your sleeve". Planning ahead is rewarded, and so is being cool-headed and tactical. The lower difficulties are letting you get away with doing things "valiantly" and "properly", But Lethal is bloody unfair, so all that falls away as you learn to not fight fair.

[CynicDragon]

Lethal on all difficulties is the best to me, love it like crazy, I suggest recruiting some allies to smash up zombies as a team

[Cioby]

make a lot of hardened veterans or buy and train red talon characters, then spawn them in your new game, it's the only way you will survive at all. The fact that you make no influence is going to be a pain, the way I solved it, I had really good characters with bonus influence as heroes or as traits, besides that if you ever just get swarmed and can't get up or have a companion being swarmed, just Alt+F4 fast.
You shouldn't be playing on lethal if you can't handle it. Also you can switch around the settings for the difficulty to fit your preference, not everyone is supposed to have 100% achievements or play lethal.

[Protectron]

Originally posted by Cioby:

make a lot of hardened veterans or buy and train red talon characters, then spawn them in your new game, it's the only way you will survive at all.

This is just not true. I and many many others start with a fresh batch of characters on Lethal all the time. I haven't lost a player character in this game since 2018, although NPC characters have been lost.

If you are in a situation, in any difficulty, where you are being overwhelmed, you have not learned the most important skill in the game: knowing when to run away/not engage at all.