How To Thrive in Drive 4 Survival

Survival guide designed to get you started, with descriptions of how to progress quickly.

0. Spoiler Warning and: with updates, some info may no longer apply

Following this guide removes some of the fun of learning a new game on your own, and spoils how some things and locations work. It's written for 0.5.006, later updates may change some things.

This guide is already old info, but many things still apply

0.06.008 added Perk Points, and this affect e.g. how you expand your backpack.

In short: Kill enemies and get Supply Drops for Perk Points and buy the upgrades you need with them. Examine the 3 new menu icons in your backpack below the statistics icon!

Most of the other things work as before.

1. Settings

D4S can be played with controller or mouse+keyboard, you can switch between them with F1 and have different settings for walking and driving.


Mouse control has acceleration built in, and doesn't follow Windows mouse settings, so it's extremely sensitive by default. :/ For the time being, to minimize acceleration drag the sensitivity slider to minimum, aim slider to almost minimum, lower your mouse DPI to about 1000, and adjust to taste from there.

After you've played for a few minutes, you can navigate the settings pages by clicking the icons at top left or top right and adjust.

You have to pick up every single item manually, and there's the dreaded hold-to-activate... so set up ergonomic binds - F and E keys (Gather and Use) being most important.

2. Survival basics

What happens when you die?

This game doesn't have Permadeath, so all that happens when you die is that you lose some of your items in your backpack.



The items you need at all times are:

• Bandages or Red Berries
  
• Bedroll
  
• Gun+ammo.
  
• (For Snow region trips, add Clothes and Building Tool for campfires.)

What can you die from?

The only things you can die easily from in D4S are:

• Climbing ladders (glitch: sends you sideways underground, guaranteed kill)
  
• Explosions (car crashes near barrels, and - do not shoot at barrels) XD
  
• Combat damage (bear + multiple bandits)

3. First step (#1 priority!)

I freeroamed at the start. This will hurt progress. Do the tutorial missions as quickly as you can - you will get rewards that will make you progress faster, and a free car at the end!

4. Get rich quick / Build up resources

Money

Stay in the Home Region until you have Gun+ammo enough to deal with let's say 6 animals and 4 bandits in one day. This is about 100 bullets or 20 rifle cartridges. Later you will move up to Shotgun and Crossbow.

To get your first money together, craft Stone Hatchet and Pickaxe, grab Wood and Stone, and craft more such tools and sell them in a Big Tower or a Camp.

As soon as you can do so safely, travel to the Snow region, jump out of your car near-ish to a bandit car. When they jump out of their car, kill them, steal it and drive it to the Junkyard, into either the $ portal or the parts portal.

You can steal 4 cars per day this way, traveling back the the Home region to sleep warm.



This will give you a GREAT start money-wise and you can even waste money on craftable items such as Bandages.

Resources

Some resources are rare and can't be bought, such as Plant Fiber. This is also used to make Cloth, another rare resource. Together, it means you should pick up all the plant fiber you see every time.

Running around in the forest across the road in The Forest region with 10 animals running after you is a good but dangerous way to get plant fiber. XD (You can kill them one by one at the end, or go inside some door.)

Iron Bars and Blueprints

Hold on to your Crafting points! You won't need Crowbar, Workbench, or most of the building and car Blueprints.

Many blueprints require Iron Bars, and you can't un-craft a blueprint and get the resources back.

You get 1 Iron Bar to start with, and if you don't craft the Furnace first, you will spend 5-20 hours looking for Iron Bars in the world. They are extremely rare and can't be bought.

Your first unlocks should be:

• Blueprint Workbench
  
• Furnace
  
• Iron Bar Blueprint

5. How the 8 (!) inventories work

There are 8 different types of inventories in D4S, and items go into them according to type.



The top 4 in your Inventory screen:

• Backpack (bandages, food, liquids)
  
• Global Resources (Raw Resources such as Stone, Wood, metal go in automatically, and come out only by crafting)
  
• Weapons Backpack (tools, weapons, ammo)
  
• Armor Backpack (clothes)

Plus 4 types in the world, belonging to you:

• Mailbox - 40 slots (Garage, Big Towers, and a few other locations)
  
• Bank - 20 slots (Garage, Big Towers, Bunkers)
  
• Car trunks - 5-10 slots
  
• Craftable storage - 5-20 slots

By stacking items to fewer slots and off-loading them to these, especially the Mailbox and Bank which carry over into the other Regions, you can clean your Backpack regularly to have empty slots to be able to pick up items.

6. Expanding your backpack

This can be done quickest by finding an estimated 15 Backpacks as rare loot in minor Locations, such as next to the left leg of a corpse in small towers and similar in the Snow Region. Sometimes items next to a corpse are snowed over and difficult to spot.

It can be dangerous if you start doing this before you are ready. Bring clothes, lots of ammo and water, bandages, bedroll, Building Tool+campfires for a multi-day trip in blizzards. Gas and food you will find.

There is a technique to driving safely in the Snow Region: Drive slowly with the lights on, sometimes this is the only way to see the road. Beside the road you will see Locations to loot. Leave the car on the road and walk to the Location and back. This way you always follow the road and will eventually get to some place where you can camp.

The other way is to level XP, and the quickest method for that is to mine Rocks. There are enough Rocks in the Home Region to get about 12000 XP in one day.

7. Vehicles and upgrades

There are 6 different types of vehicles in the game, and your default Muscle Off-road car has the best-balanced properties. With other cars, you will struggle driving uphill in the Snow Region. There is therefore no incentive or reason to expand your garage and craft another car; I got all the vehicles out of curiosity and tested them.



But maybe there will be an upgrade system, so you can get top engine, grip, and brakes.

You can store a bandit car into your Garage by driving slowly in front of the garage door. (Get the one with high grip tires.)

When you have enough vehicle parts, you can find a non-wheeled vehicle in the Snow Region, repair it, and store it in your Garage the same way.

This way you can get two extra vehicles without building them.

To build a car (in the Garage basement or in The Forest Camp), you must be Driving level 2. (Exception: Farm pickup truck.) To get to level 2 you have to drive around for an estimated 20 hours IRL time. That's a lot.

8. Building

Building anything except Campfires, Big Campfires, and Waypoints is only possible in the Home Region at the time of writing.

You don't need to build your own house, you can just build stations and chests in the Watchtower, but it's nice and easy. You can buy building materials in the Big Tower by the Garage in the Home Region.



Animals and zombies are stopped by placing a Foundation between you and them. You can capture them with a square of Foundations, but they will despawn automatically after a while, so no way to have pets XD

You can build farms, but you have to buy 1 seed per plant and the crops don't multiply. You can only farm Hemp and Carrots, so it's a waste of time. You can grow Hemp to have a few green plants next to your house. They will stay and not wither.

9. TL;DR gimme the Juice!

D4S is easy to pick up and play, so you can find out about most of the things just by playing. The only tricky part is Section 5, I think it's worth reading.

But to progress fast, do this:

• Finish the Tutorial missions fast, #1 priority.
  
• Make tools to harvest Stone and Wood, sell tools for $.
  
• Buy ammo and fly to the Snow Region every day and steal the nearby bandit cars for $$$.
  
• Don't loot too much, off-load items to your Mailbox and Bank, and sell and scrap items.
  
• Equip yourself well and drive around for days in the Snow region just looking for Backpacks.
  
• Build a house full of chests and retire with a lifetime supply of Hemp???

Drive Safe!™
// Gun Tech.

[Kaede Ishimora]

How do you remove Vehicles from your garage?

[Gun Tech.]

insanerr86, under 4. Money I mention this as a great way to make money. Sure, you can put stolen cars in your garage, but why? It's better to kite some bandits to a dealer and just sell the car in seconds I think.

[insanerr86]

You should add that you can steal a car put it in your garage and sell it later if you need money

[Gun Tech.]

Thanks @AzalinNineTwo! 0.06.008 added Perk Points, and this affect e.g. how you expand your backpack. In short: Kill enemies and get Supply Drops for Perk Points and buy the upgrades you need with them. I have written a note at the start of the guide.

[AzalinNineTwo]

Great guide for beginners. Thanks for your effort.

[Gun Tech.]

It turned out longer than I thought, but I hope you like it - I added a TL;DR at the end.

If you're interested in Survival games, you're welcome to stop by when I stream. https://www.twitch.tv/guntech1