Tips to Survive the Undead Horde

Dying Light is no walk in the park. It introduces a massive area, deadly enemies, Volatile Nests and, best of all, the buggy, your own all-terrain zombie-masher.

Introduction

General Tips

Cardio
One of the most important things in Dying Light is mobility. If you can find a nice quiet spot somewhere out of sight, you’ll have a few minutes to craft an item or two, use a medkit or loot some cupboards. But if you’re in the line of sight of an undead horde, one or two superfast virals or, worse, a spitter, you’ll want to hightail it. Daylight doesn’t last all that long in Dying Light, and while there are an abundance of safe houses for the cowardly to exploit, there’s much more fun to be had in getting to an objective, getting ♥♥♥♥ done and getting the hell out before the sun sets. If you want to do that, you’re going to want to book it like your ass is on fire. Kyle is a sprightly customer (especially later when you unlock the grapple wire), and he can handle a long-distance sprint. The more cardio you do, the faster you’ll increase your Agility level.

When There’s No More Room in Hell… Use a Safe House
This one seems obvious, but safe houses are life savers. Not only can you rest until morning, but you can access your stash to swap out damaged weapons or pick up reserve gear like medkits and Boosters. They’re also easy to exploit. See, aside a handful of missions that require you to be out at night, most of Dying Light’s objectives can be completed in the day. It being an open world, you can rest up anytime you’re outside of mission conditions. So, if you arrive at a destination and find it’s a little too late in the afternoon to be playing dominoes in the park, find a safe house and sleep. You can do it infinitely and it doesn’t affect the passage of time in the story.

No Such Thing as Nice Shooting
As in many zombie games, Dying Light’s brain-munchers are very sensitive to sound. So much so, in fact, that if your clumsy ass opens one too many cupboards too loudly or cries out like a girl from something silly like mis-timing a jump and shattering both shins, the dead will come. It’s something to consider when you eventually get your hands on a gun. Messy headshots = good. Alerting every shambling corpse in the vicinity to your abundance of juicy grey matter = bad.

Shop til You Drop
Which is not to say you should ever be sheepish about ransacking every single thing with a lid you ome across. Bodies, boxes, trashcans, briefcases, handbags, bus seats, fridges, whatever. They highlight collectibles, pickable locks, food, crafting materials, herbs and weapons. Dying Light is crazy generous with loot, and it respawns randomly, too. Loot everything. No one else is using it.

More Friends, Better Apocalypse
Harran is a dangerous place. Taking it for granted is a big mistake. You might be able to keep off the ground during the day and avoid all but the special infected, like the Virals (who will climb and jump to reach you), but it’s still still easy to get overwhelmed if you do find yourself trapped on the tarmac. Bringing a friend or three along for the ride is a good way to alleviate the threat. Not only can you watch each other’s back, but you can also run distraction for each other and go back to back against the horde or the specials. Dying Light also has co-op challenges to add a little more juice to proceedings, which will trigger when you perform most activities and include zombie-killing contests and checkpoint races. It also turns cleaning out Quarantine Zones into tense, jumpy exercises in teamwork and corner-watching. Aside from all that, popping heads in tandem is just more fun.

Alive Until Proven Dead

You can’t save everybody. That’s a given, and no one is going to judge you too harshly if a handful of civilians end up floating around in a zombie’s stomach acid or tortured by Mad Max-styled looters. That being the case, leaving them to die is not only a bit callous and cruel, it’s also counter-productive. See, while these people have lost their families, their homes, their normal lives, they do seem to have held onto their wallets, and most will reward you with a a nice wedge of cash for saving their lives. While money isn’t exactly hard to come by, every little helps – especially towards the mid to end-game when you’re crafting more boosters and aiming for the best weapons you can make.

Dead Air

Air drops are fun. Not only do they make you feel like a badass hero in a Michael Bay movie, chasing down flare smoke through an improbably exploding warzone, but they also have a lot of goodies in them. Occasionally you might be particularly busy fighting for your life or sightseeing when the pad starts to shake and a plane thunders overhead, but if you’ve five minutes free, it’s worth going out of your way. Not only do you get the pay off from the drop, but you’ll earn XP while you’re at it.

Do Not Feed the Dead
Fighting is not always the best course of action. At a certain point, you’re just giving the dead a free meal. Sometimes you’ll have no choice; during a Quarantine Zone clearance, for example, or if you find yourself cornered after dark – but usually you can avoid fighting. The purpose of this is two-fold: 1, the combat in Dying Light is one of the weakest elements and until you’ve beefed up your Power skill, it just isn’t that much fun. And 2, you don’t want to end up dead, do you?

A Tall Glass of Siempre Viva

A major boon to your survival in Dying Light is the Booster, a chemical concoction that somehow increases Crane’s natural abilities for a limited time. Another element of Techland’s title that strays a little too far into outright fantasy, these magic potions are an absolute god-send when the gore hits the fan. They can increase stamina and health regeneration, grant you a speed boost or better defence, and all you have to do is gather the ingredients, mix it up and chug it back. It’s easy to ignore things like Boosters, but they can make a major difference when you’re up to your neck in cannibalistic cadavers.

Alone in the Dark
In case it hasn’t been iterated enough: night time in Dying Light is an utter nightmare. Wander around without your wits about you, and you will become food for a Volatile. These terrifying abominations can hear your every move and will react to your flashlight from a ridiculous distance. There a few things that can save your life, like your UV torch or a well-placed molotov, but this will always attract attention from elsewhere. If you get stuck out at night – or worse, have to perform one of the night-based missions – stay on your toes, keep moving and watch your map (the Volatiles are shown on the GPS like any other stealth game). If you do end up out for a night time stroll, at least you’ll benefit the longer you survive: XP gains are increased after sunset.

Dying Light: The Following

BLOOD DONUT
The Following comes with two new skill trees: Driving and Legendary. While the latter is a series of incremental stat boosts that won’t unlock until you’ve maxed out the first three trees, Driving is the one that determines which buggy upgrades you can build as well as your vehicular talents. You’ll earn a tiny amount of Driving XP for simply flooring it, slamming through fences and bouncing over bumpy roads, but the quickest way to boost it is to mow through the undead at speed. Pulling donuts is tricky and satisfying, but the easiest way is to plough across a packed field and hit every biter you can see. Watch out though, as Vitals will jump on for a ride and every bump damages your buddy’s integrity.

GET STUCK IN

Everything carries over from the main campaign (and you can jump your save file back and forth as much as you like without losing anything), so you’ve still got all your skills from vanilla Dying Light, and they’re just as useful in the country. Certain talents like the Stun Vault, Ground Slam and the two-handed Whirlwind are brutally effective in amongst groups, so don’t be afraid to go nuts – especially if you’re level 18 or higher.

TOWER POWER

Hunting Towers are multi-purpose locations, symbolised by a little white tower on the map. Not only are they respawn points if you get eaten to death, they’re also a handy place to sit and cower if you get trapped out at night away from your buggy or a safehouse. Each one has a chest, too, with free goodies to loot.

DRIVING ED
You’re buggy won’t last long if you don’t look after it, but it’s just as important to be careful with it when travelling from A to B. As I said, the easiest way to level up your Driving skill is to run things over, but that will damage your ride pretty fast. Balance it out by driving carefully between locations when you’re not smushing the re-animated into mulch. Handbrake turns and maintaining high speeds are a good way to earn XP with minimum wear and tear.

CHOP SHOP

Focus on upgrading your buggy as quickly as you can. The Following’s story mode is much shorter than the main campaign, but the new area is huge and full of things to do. You’ll enjoy it all more with a decent rig, so get pimping. You unlock the ability to build better parts by levelling up, but Bilal the quartermaster quite often has upgrade parts for free. The driving challenges are a good way to earn extra XP, but they can cost valuable resources because they’re rarely easy on your buggy. The better equipped you are, the less damage you’ll suffer and the less resources you’ll need to waste.

CROSS(BOW)-COUNTRY

Early on you’ll gain the blueprint for the Compound Crossbow, and it’ll become your favourite weapon in no time. A headshot is an instant kill even on Volatiles, it’s fairly quick to load, bolts are plentiful and, best of all, it’s silent. It only takes a few well-placed bolts to drop a brute, and even a Destroyer can’t weather many headshots, so crossing back over into the main campaign with it makes Old Town much more survivable. As with the bow, you can retrieve the standard ammo from the dead to use again and again.

NIGHT SHIFT
Volatile nests are everywhere in the Countryside, and there are lots of side missions that require you to destroy them. Now, a sane person would go in the daytime when they naturally feel safer, but that’s a mistake. In daylight hours they are full of Volatiles and incredibly difficult to survive; at night, however, they’re almost empty since the Volatiles are out hunting you. Reach one safely at night and they’re much, much easier. The only problem is the time: night only lasts for around 7 minutes in Dying Light, and if you’re not quick you’ll find yourself surrounded by returning Volatiles, and very, very dead.

[Ushotan]

Real gangsters don't need a buggy, puta's

[Watereaters]

A tip I would add is to use active items (molitovs, firecrackers and flares to name some) since they are incredibly useful however most games out there have trashy active items where the only useful items are health items, which may make some players (such as myself when I first started playing) think that the items in this game are useless too.

[DanishScorpio]

@raresliviu - well its a funny game all in all

[avg623]

The jokes caught me off guard! XD!

[T1F4]

Thanks!!!

[esde]

Interesting & helpful hints for this new player.
Thanks.

[Nistica]

"cries out like a girl from something silly like mis-timing a jump and shattering both shins"
I know right? Great guide, very well written.

[DanishScorpio]

Thanks, will do

[pablo]

nice tips, keep up the good work

[DanishScorpio]

Glad you could use the info - and have fun running through the zombies :)