The Way of the Undead(40 Notes to Survive in Rebuild 3)

This is a series of notes that I am sharing that can be used on any difficulty. Most of these tactics and strategems can be used on any map as well.

REBUILDING BASICS

#1. Food is Good for Your Survivors. So are People.......

Pay attention to the amount of food being produced a day. If you are losing food not gaining, click the food icon and figure out how many days do you have to starve. If you suffer from too much starvation your survivors will feast on each other. So keep in mind how much food you need to have to prevent from getting to the point of starvation.

#2. To Rebuild, Materials are a Must.

In order to rebuild, you need materials. No materials, means you can not expand. The amount of materials you have should always be monitored.

#3. Defense is Good but Offense is Far Better

Hordes of zombies will attack your fort throughout various times during your gameplay. It is easier to defend against them but you may want to attack the hordes first. Just because one horde is coming from one direction does not mean another horde won't attack from a different direction. Multiple hordes may be attacking at once. This is why it may be considered a better option to attack hordes if you can safely.

#4. Zombies are Knocking At Your Door

You may not pay attention to zombies but they pay attention to you. It is very important to observe the colors that surround your fort. The colors are representative of the amount zombies. The best thing to see would be is no color, meaning no zombies. But the other colors you will see is red(too many zombies), yellow, and green(very few zombies). It is to be desired to keep your fort surrounded by green or no color areas. Orange and red areas should be attacked as soon as possible. Otherwise your fort is in danger by allowing so many zombies to amass right next to it. So stay green!

#5. Scavenge the Land

Always scavenge the surrounding areas for more materials and food.

#6. Look for Other Survivors

As you expand your fort you can recruit more survivors. More survivors means more jobs can be done at once. However, more survivors means more survivors to manage as well. It is best to keep this in mind on larger maps.

#7. Scout Ahead

It is best to scout the surrounding areas before trying to rebuild in order to see if another faction is near or perhaps there is a red square of zombies nearby. Scouting will also show you potentially where more food, materials, and survivors are.

#8. Farm it, Hunt it, and Fish it

When you can't scavenge for food for whatever reason. It may be best best to have your scavengers to work on a farm or hunt in the forest or fish for food. These options are fruitless compared to scavenging however they do provide a small benefit which may be very helpful if one is close to starvation.

#9. Chopping Trees

This option should only be considered when one is unable to scavenge for materials. Chopping down trees provides a small amount of materials at a slow pace.

SURVIVORS

#10. Marriages, Friendships, and Enemies

Watch the relationships your survivors have with one another. Marriages and people who are friends are likely to receive a happiness bonus from doing a mission together. Enemies are likely to fight each other.

#11. Perks

Perks should be carefully selected because they may effect happiness or a skill. Someone that has the stinky or tough perks may make enemies. While someone with a team player or musician perks may make missions better.

#12. Why Have One Skill When You can Have Many

You can train your survivors in multiple skills. It is very beneficial on larger maps.

#13. Kids, Why You Should Want Them or Not

Kids are very useless in the short term. Children will harm a survivor's stats by -1. Occasionally a child may be useful but in most cases they aren't. Kids are most useful in the long term because they age into adults. When they become adults there is a chance you get to choose multiple perks immediately upon their coming of age.

#14. Build Teams

Stack your soldiers, scavengers, researchers, and builders as teams because work becomes faster and more effective. Building solder teams lowers the dangers of missions. Building scavenge, research, and builder teams increase the speed of missions.

REBUILDING ADVANCED TACTICS

#15. Scout Distant Areas

Scout distant areas to find other factions, materials, and maybe Gustav. It is very beneficial to scout places very far away. It leads to a better way to trade rather than just solely depending on Gustav.

#16. Find Gustav

Gustav will progress to your fort to trade. But it would be far better if you can find out where he spawns on the map. Then you can trade with Gustav a lot faster rather than waiting.

#17. Limit Attacks Against You

Try to rush and build your fort around rivers, hills, and other similiar places. Zombies and rival factions can't attack from these places. But it is important to note rival factions can attack from the forest.

#18. Create Choke Points

Create positions in which enemies will inevitably have to come through to attack. For example, if you want to destroy all the bridges but one on your side of town. This leaves that one bridge to be crossed by zombies or other factions. Now you indefinitely know where an enemy is going to come from and know where to defend or attack.

#19. Create No Mans Land

After you research traps, create traps that surround your fort which will prevent from zombies from amassing around your fort. You can also use the traps to create regions that are zombie free. However, this will not prevent hordes from attacking and ignoring the traps to get to your fort.

#20. When in Doubt Blow 'Em Up

Explosives are good for eliminating areas with lots of zombies and good for eliminating hordes as well. Explosives should be used with caution. When you do blow something up it will cost more materials to rebuild a new building on that square.

#21. Blow the Bridge

Feel free to blow up bridges when you feel it will limit attacks against you. It may be wise to blow up all surrounding bridges if one has already built a city hall.

#22. Bait N' Switch

Zombie bait is good for attracting zombies and hordes away from your fort. Zombie Bait can be used to lure zombies away from particular squares in order to allow your troops to clear out zombies easier. Then after that it would be wise to place a trap where the zombie bait is to kill all the zombies in that area.

#23. Dangerous Missions

Bath Salts that have been bought can help your soldiers win any mission it would seem. Once, I used a leader with no weapons and no soldier ability and had them attack a red square(hoping they would die since they were a cultist). But the bath salts made them somehow overcome the odds and beat the zombies. But be warned bath salts are addictive for survivors that use it.

Medkits are not as valuable as other resources since they have a limited usage. Medkits can be used if you decide to send your troops on dangerous missions and they are hurt.

#24. Fireworks

Fireworks can be used to help make your population But again, like the medkits there is a limited usage. The fireworks does not effect every survivor, only some survivors.

DOMESTIC POLICY

#25. What to Build and When

Farms and apartments will always be need to be built since food and places to live need to be accomadated as the fort expands. But they should only be built if there is materials to spare.Otherwise materials should go towards expanding.

#26. Rebuild Around Farms First

As I implied before and multiple times, food should be the highest priority.

#27. Rebuild Around Large Stores like the Mall, Drug Store and Allmart Last

Large stores have various squares around it. Various squares that may have a high population of zombies. It may be wiser to conquer the surrounding stores first or at the same time while taking the larger stores.

#28. A Happy Populace is an Effective Populace

It is best to try to keep the population generally happy, in the yellow or green would be best. If the happiness is below that it may cause problems but that is not guranteed. If a survivor has the rebellious perk they may stop working even when they are happy. Survivors are also more likely to leave to when happiness is lower as well.

FOREIGN POLICY

#29. Gustav's the Man

Once you trade enough with Gustav, he will give you special deals. It is best to build up respect with Gustav as soon as possible since he has various goods and it changes every so often.

#30. Meeting the Neighbors

As mentioned before it is very important scout distances. This allows you to trade with other factions' caravans.

#31. Be a Good Neighbor

Trade with other factions as much as possible in order to get better deals. If another faction asks for help it may be wise to oblige them. Your respect goes up every tme you help them and every time you trade.

#32. Sharing is Caring

Feel free to give other factions resources for free if you want to build up your respect faster.

#33. Friends with Benefits

Once you have established an alliance with another faction they will continuously send you a resource. Some factions have certain items they like to trade as well. Such as the Pharmacists and their bath salts.

#34. Undermine Your Neighbors

If you find yourself close to another faction while expanding you may want to undermine them. You may want to put zombie bait around their fort to prevent them from expanding. They may be getting too close to you or you may be getting to close to them. If Gustav shows up with the opportunity to provide muscle. You may want to use that muscle to attack this faction. All of this can be done without harming relations with other factions.

#35. Trade is Good but a Raid may be Better

It may build up respect to trade but if you are running low on resources feel free to raid another faction. This however will hurt your respect and may cause retaliation.

#36. Strike First, Ask Questions Later

If an enemy is sending a raiding party or an attack party to attack your fort. Feel free to attack them before they get there. It will harm your respect with that faction. Yet by allowing them to get close it allows them a possible chance to succeed in stealing goods or attacking your fort.

#37. Make 'Em Pay for Protection

Go to another faction's fort and declare war, some factions will try to offer you some resources in order to prevent a war from breaking out. Accept the goods and don't go to war if you wish. This is good to use to bully other factions in to giving you resources.

#38. Everything is Permitted in War

When you are in a war, feel free to put zombie bait around an enemies' fort. Inevitably, their fort will be attacked by zombies. This is a good way to slowly eliminate your enemies.

#39. Who is Better Friends or Enemies?

Becoming friends with other factions would seem to be better. Friends provide you with materials or other resources weekly once you have established an alliance. Your enemies will only serve to bring about your demise. Even after you have wiped your enemies off the map, what do you receive? Maybe their land if you are right next to them but aside from that you will receive nothing. Keep in mind the friend who keeps on giving and the enemy who may only provide you with land.

FINAL NOTES

40. Always Plan Ahead

Most of the tactics and stratagems I have offered should be used to plan your moves in the game. These tactics and stratagems are tips and just that. Which ones you choose is exclusively up to you.

[Lupal Fillyus]

Also, huge farms/malls, great on your perimeter:

1. Clear out a huge farm/mall.
2. Use bait on it.
3. As soon as it's possible, start another kill mission(which is easy and fast, as there aren't many zombies yet). During the mission, zombies from the surrounding 8(or more if big buildings are adjacent) squares will walk into the mall, but this does not affect time or risk.
After the mission is completed, all the zombies in the mall are killed.
4. Repeat the easy kill mission to clear at least 12 squares of land of zombies.

Huzzah!

[Lupal Fillyus]

Wiping out an enemy, not that useful.
Raiding an enemy once in a while? Great source of stuff.

[FourGreenFields]

I might be wrong, but I think traps can be destroyed by roamers.

Also, having loads of buildings right beside a big building is bad. If zeds decide to attack you from that direction, you'll need to protect all those buildings, or attack them.

[-shhfiftyfive]

also, i feel this guide should mention how useless most buildings are. as in they serve no purpose... other than to provide you materials when you demolish them.

do not hesitate to demolish them for materials. i find this my main source of materials, more so than scouting.

[-shhfiftyfive]

note for #27. it can be very beneficial to take huge farms and malls if you are very low on materials, just to demolish them and get a ton of materials. far more than demolishing smaller single tiles. basically you get a ton of material in short period of time. then after that you can choose to not bother with trying to defend that area. as you said, it has a lot of adjacent zombie tiles...

[townkrier]

Great guide!

One tip I also use in impossible story mode is to equip my 4-7 survivors with children (hopefully the oldest children who may be 10-14 years old). These kids will grow up fast and be that extra boost your town needs to defend or take new area. They will take up food, but 99/100 times, survivors always > less survivors.

[Gentlemensgentleman]

Thanks for the notice. I will fix it.

[prowler707]

excellent tips but i noticed a few typos js:
#13 immedicatly (immediately im guessing) , #39 the the