State of Decay Lifeline Ultimate High Score Guide

Here it is, how I'm currently ranked #5 in the world for XBOX SOD Lifeline. This guide will show you how to dominate Lifeline from siege 1 all the way to siege 1000. First off, let me explain a few keys to the strategy:

1. Infinite Influence

This bug was in the original game and Breakdown, so it's no surprise that we see it again in Lifeline. What you need to do is strip your characters of melee weapons (I leave the guns on in case a siege happens and my guys are left helpless). Next, go out into the world with a well equipped character and just kill zombies. When you go to the journal tab and look at each of your members, you will see that the ones marked "Away From Home" have grabbed weapons for themselves. Head back with your vehicle so you don't leave it on the highway, and then switch to those characters. Sell their weapons back to the locker for free influence. Repeat for infinite influence.

2. Outposts

It's important to place your outposts around each of the six major off ramps for the highway. All the other locations you will have to drive to when killing hordes. Do NOT allow hordes to just infest locations. For one, you'll get half the influence clearing an infestation compared to killing  horde (5 versus 10). Second, you'll have more ammo costs per siege to deal with the zombie threat from infestations.

3. Danger Zones

These are great for skill ups but terrible for points. As far as I can tell, regular zombies give 0 points when they spawn in a danger zone while the specials continue to give points regardless. Here is the ultimate shooting spot where you can fire as loud as you want at 5 constantly respawning targets:

Head to the second floor of this building and break the window where the ladder is on the east side. Now, zoom out into the alley (do this during the day) and fire away with no suppressors. All zombies attracted to the noise will run underneath you so you'll easily be able to escape back to your car when you're done. You'll get tons of headstreaks and quickly have a level 7 shooter.

4. Outposts

Here are the locations for my outposts. You want to focus on getting food and materials if possible, but honestly it does not matter due to the infinite influence bug and being able to call in supplies.

5. Weapon Specializations

During a siege, being able to pick off ferals with single head shots is a great influence saver. So if you want you can have someone with focused aim for that reason. Otherwise, go with these specializations:

Reflex - Endurance, spin kick, no melee weapon
Powerhouse -  edged, low slice (use on armored zeds)
Other - Blunt, spin or uppercut (I prefer spin so I have an option against many zeds at once)

Low sweep and low slice are strong but they don't give you kill points unless you execute.

6. Facilities

You must have a latrine, workbench (with ammo production) and infirmary (with field surgery).

7. Grenade Launchers

Find every damn grenade launcher in the game, starting with whatever is in the police station and then move on to all the little delivery trucks scattered throughout the game. I'll let you do the finding as I honestly don't have them memorized (I picked the map clean back when I was around 20,000 points and I have a lot more now!). Use the survey locations to find most of the trucks, then check the highway ramps.

Why do you need grenade launchers? When all of your allies have them at your base, you can literally sit back and only kill the big bastards during sieges (your allies cannot kill big bastards with their grenade launchers, only you).

Keep your team small and limit it to the number of grenade launchers you have.

8. End Game

Once you've completed all the side missions and disarmed the nuke, in the words of Cartman, "Now we can finally play the game." It's time for the end game, which is not nearly as exciting as you'd think.

Besides calling in supply drops, cleaning the latrine, and having your squad look for materials, the only things you have to do in between sieges is kill hordes and wander the highway looking for zombies to slaughter. Remember that car kills only count when you destroy a horde, feral, or screamer. It counts on a boomer but please don't do that!

During a siege  you can sit back and wait until your ammunition is required (thanks to all the grenade rounds flying. When big bastards arrive, use a gun that can kill them for less than 6 influence or your grenade launcher (most likely the grenade launcher will win that influence battle). At maximum siege difficulty, you will have two big bastards to kill, one from east and one from north. Remember, your allies can't kill the big bastards with their grenade launchers.

Don't get mines, firecrackers, or propane tanks, they are a waste of supplies. Do shoot the giant propane tank on the northeast corner of the base and across the street. That's a great way to get a bunch of kills when the north side spawns as well as take care of a wandering horde that gets too close during the siege.

9. How Do Sieges Give You Points

Sieges give you a bonus modifier of +.10 to your score. So if you kill 100 zombies and defeat 20 sieges, you will have 200 points. My math is not perfect but that is the general idea. With this in mind, you should work to get as many zombie kills by gun and melee as you can in between sieges to maximize your points. Killing specials and hordes give you a one time bonus, which is based on the modifier and a base amount. You do not get the modifier bonus after a siege applied to anything except regular zombie kills. At this point I'm getting like 1,500 base points per siege but people at the top of the leader board with 400,000 points are getting like 5,000-10,000. This is all because their siege modifier keeps increasing (no idea if it caps) and their base zombie kill count is going up as well.

Marcus and Lilly are Alive and Well

But they are headed for the same city that lifeline is based on. Oh noooo!!!!

I received this message after the 12th siege in Lifeline:

So it looks like as Lifeline ends Marcus and Lilly blow up the barrier and head into the city... only to find it overrun with the undead. My guess is they are as good as dead! That or we'll end up playing in the city in Undead Labs Class IV mmorpg with characters like Marcus and Lilly as quest givers.

High Score Strategy in Lifeline

I came up with a simple strategy for setting yourself up for a high score in Lifeline.

Many of you probably were around when I created the firecracker/propane tank strategy that got me to the #2 spot on Breakdown high scores (currently 7 even now). Link with strategy guide: http://stateofdecayguide.blogspot.com/2014/02/easy-high-score-in-state-of-decay.html

Well I have the beginnings of another method that appears to be working for me.

1. Take HOURS to complete the first two missions. Spend all this time with your first character establishing outposts, building your base, and hoarding supplies. Once you complete the second mission, you can switch characters and continue with whatever you have left to build up.
(HINT: During the initial battle that you start the game in, kill the zombies and then run backwards. You will find a backpack filled with grenades and munitions. You'll also find a car, but it might not be a 4 seater.)

2. On your third mission, whatever you choose to make it, get to the point where you have whistling box mines researched. These will be your answer to sieges.

3. You can now survive entirely on supply drops and building whistling box mines.

If you do this right, you will have 60+ resources of all types, all the outposts you need, whistling box mines being pumped out, air drops, etc.

Your two starting survivors will be tired, but it's a small price to pay.

That's what I have so far. I've been experimenting with not turning the quests in and it appears that certain quests never allow the threat meter to increase. This gives you a huge amount of time to stockpile and prepare.

On my first run through I made it to like the 1200th place for score, but I rushed through everything and got the nuclear ending by rescuing Sasquatch. I'm now going to try a slower pace with this method. I'll get back to you with my findings!

Videos Strategies Incoming

I finally figured out a good way to film my tv using a camera (sorry the xbox recorder I ordered doesn't actually record in HD, it just uses an HD wire). Sigh, damn advertising tricked me. Regardless, the picture turned out good and I filmed 2 hours of myself playing from one breakdown level to the next. I showed a bunch of great tips even if I didn't play perfectly (lol almost lost someone in first minute!).

I'll work on getting the videos out to you asap. Gotta get some rest now but I'm still here and still trying to get you guys and girls cool videos on our favorite game!

Too Many Happy Hordes

At the start of each mission, I do not turn on my expanded outposts right away. Instead, I run around in vehicles on my unhappy characters, squishing the hordes that spawn. As soon as the character I'm using is in a happy state (smiley face regardless of what the word is), I then go back home to switch to another sad face character.

Doing this will often turn 2-3 of my characters happy from the very beginning of my play through. Once the "too many hordes" goes away on the map screen, I then turn on my outpost traps and go back to work as usual.

I'm currently playing with 23 characters and 3 bed facilities (24 bed) so that the only way my people get sad is if they have domestic disputes or recover from illness/injury. Sometimes I log in and nobody is upset at all! Because so many people are happy gathering resources (see infinite resources strategy) and sleep deprivation is a non-issue (see sleep deprivation strategy) I literally could last forever on this level. Last time I logged in I made 1 materials even though I should have lost 19. That's because of all the assertive people in my group making supply runs during the simulation.

I am torn between moving on to the next breakdown level and just seeing how long I could last with this group of 23. If I wanted I could destroy my kitchen (only non bed facility besides built in stuff and medical facility) and put in a fourth bedroom. We'll see ;)

As always I am headache4you on XBOX if you have any questions.

What is the Lifeline in State of Decay?

I have a guess at what the "lifeline" will be for state of decay's newest DLC.

Here goes... The "lifeline" is going to be water/commerce/etc between your home base and satellite enclaves. This is exactly what I was asking for when I started speculating on what SOD: Lifeline would be about.

Imagine an open world where you branch out from your home base like a colony of settlers in a new world. Occasionally zombies will attack your home site as well as the satellite enclaves you've settled or joined forces with. If the zombies manage to destroy one of your sites then they can cut off supplies being moved from your home base to your enclaves. You then have a limited amount of time to re-establish a supply route to your neighbors before they start dying of starvation/disease/dehydration.

Having to manage a growing zombie threat (the zombies will also have little strongholds that spread like infestations do currently accompanied by hordes) as well as hold your supply line will be an interesting mix of going on the offensive and defensive. I really enjoy games where one moment you're top dog and the next minute you're running for your life. Hopefully lifeline will be as epic as Undead Labs is making it out to be.

Besides... I could use something new now that Breakdown is a total joke for me. I log in each day to keep my happiness at full for my characters and when I feel I've produced enough items I move on to the next level. Other than experimenting with happiness (for your benefit), there isn't much left for me in the game.

If you'd like help or have questions, please message and friend me on xbox. My username is headache4you.

Easy High Score in State of Decay Breakdown

With enough patience, ammo, and firecrackers, you too can get into the top 50 players for state of decay breakdown. I made it to #1, but am now #3, using this strategy. I got so bored at 280,000 points that I just didn't feel like doing something just to have a great score any more. But I'm easily bored... so maybe you'll go even longer. I also had a bug where no more missions were spawning, so I had NOTHING to break up the monotony of this easy strategy.

All that being said... here's how you do it in a picture:

Notice all the cars? Yeah this obviously isn't a breakdown game. Just some random screenshot I found googling map of marshall. The red dots are explosive propane tanks, the green dots are bushes for you to hide in, and the black line is a suggestion for how to drive in between the two locations.

All you have to do is pull up to the tank (don't park too close!!!) and throw a firecracker to the right or left of it. Don't place the firecracker right on the tank or you might have trouble hitting it later. Now, go hide in the bushes that I marked on the map and crouch. Once a sizeable force is on top of the tank, stand up and shoot the gas canister. KABOOM! You'll get anywhere from 250-700 points depending on how many freaks are involved.

Once you wipe the goo off your face and weapon, jump into your car and drive to the next canister. Repeat this process going back and forth until you run out of firecrackers.

To prepare for this strategy, I created 560 firecrackers (2 stacks). After revealing this method on the forums, I noticed that four new people magically appeared in the top ten for breakdown's leaderboard within one week. Usually we'll see one in like a month break through to the top ten, but this was four new faces in the same week! Coincidence? I think not.

Obviously this method requires that you spend some time, possibly several levels, stockpiling ammunition on your characters by breaking open ammo boxes as well as turning the rest into firecrackers. My favorite method is to build four workshops and a medical facility at snyders, then just pump out firecrackers as quickly as I can find ammunition. 4x3 = 12 firecrackers every 5 minutes x 12 = 144 firecrackers per hour.

The other half of this strategy is going for infinite resources. I would use that post as well as my ideas on sleep deprivation to create a long lasting survival method that will give you enough time to build up points for a high score before your survivors start starving to death.

New Features of Lifeline

We only know a handful of things for sure about lifeline and they are:

1. There will be a new map.
2. Breakdown and campaign mode will not be compatible with lifelines. This is good news for anyone who decided not to buy Breakdown.
3. "A new way to play the game."

We can't do much more than speculate right now, but I think I found a hint to what's coming.

In the job board page for Undead Labs, there is a listing for experienced coders building economic infrastructure. This would be the equivalent of an auction house designer for an mmorpg. While this could very well be for the mmo that Undead Labs desperately wants to complete within the next decade, I'm wondering if maybe Lifeline will have some economic aspect to it.

I can argue against myself by stating that if it was meant to be in Lifeline then they would already have the personnel, since the new DLC is already being worked on.

Let's talk about Breakdown versus Lifeline. I think that Undead Labs is going to learn from what made Breakdown successful. First off, Breakdown doesn't end so don't expect Lifeline to have an ending either. Second, Breakdown does a good job of recycling content by randomizing your start location and all the other elements of survival. You can expect the same thing from Lifeline.

I think that the primary difference between Lifeline and Breakdown will be the home base setup. The word Lifeline makes me think of a supply line, similar to what you see in wars. I expect that Undead Labs wants you to conduct a salvaging war against the zombies. Instead of a home base you will have a sort of band of brothers who complete missions for npc towns and set up temporary locations to camp. Think of it as if you were able to move the camper around in Breakdown.

The location of npc towns and starting location could be randomized, creating a completely unique play through experience each time. Instead of always listening on the radio for Lilly's advice, you could be the leader of the pack giving it out.

This is what I want to see in Lifeline and I expect that building bases will vanish from this mode of the game. It'll all be about surviving on the go instead of turtlin' as one female survivor likes to call it.

7 Reasons Blunt is the Best Weapon Spec in State of Decay

Blunt is the best weapon spec in State of Decay. Unless my character is reflex (spin kick makes blunt spec redundant) they always get blunt now for their weapon spec. For a while I only played as edge and heavy, but then I forced myself to experiment with blunt. I'm so happy that I did and I recommend this spec for everyone who reads this blog. Why did I choose something that 99% of the player base ignores/hates/etc?

Here are 7 reasons that Blunt is the best weapon spec in State of Decay.

1. It Looks Good on the Leaderboards

Blunt weapons give you points every time you get a kill. If you chop off zombie legs with the other weapons then you must execute again to get your 11 points for the kill. Otherwise the zombie dies off during the battle and you get 0 points.

2. 90% Knockdown Chance

Blunt weapon spec adds 300% to knockdown chance. It's already around a 30% chance when you're a 1 star character, so that means you are going to knock a zombie down almost every single time (close to 90% from my testing so far).

3. Uppercut

While uppercutting (blunt ability unlocked at level 4) you can immediately execute. This will send your character flying after the zombie you just hit with upper cut and then you execute the zombie wherever it landed. This is remarkably fast, keeps you moving forward, and is in my opinion BETTER than any other spec's "instant kill" ability. Obviously this is an abuse of the game mechanics and not intended, but I don't think anyone would consider it cheating.

4. Powerhouses are Better With Blunt

A max level powerhouse using blunt spec will have a decent chance to kill someone as well as the crazy high chance to knock them down. This combination is the greatest chance to disable or kill zombies per swing except for spin kick, which is a 100% chance.

I want to reiterate this point for those people who think stacking the kill chances from edged and powerhouse is better than going blunt and powerhouse. Let's pretend that it's a 10% chance to instant kill and 30% chance to knockdown at level one. So that's our baseline. Now, a powerhouse edged character ends up getting +475% kill chance for a total of 57.5% chance to kill per hit and 0% knockdown. If the powerhouse character goes blunt instead, then they will have a 40% chance to instant kill and a 90% chance to knockdown. Which do you think works better now?

Just so you know, if indeed my math is correct, you have a 96% chance to disable the zombie (kill or knock down) with a fully maxed out blunt + powerhouse character. Shame so few takes their characters to the point of seeing this!

5. Two Heads are Better Than One

Blunt can hit two targets at a time with just the regular swing. Edged cannot, making it less effective against groups. Heavy can hit three targets but costs more energy to use and is much slower.

6. Get Over Here!

Uppercut will send the zombie flying forward, and in case you don't to warp with them (see reason #3 again if you forgot this trick already) then you can let the zombies body stagger any of its friends that it comes in contact with.

7. Not Just for the Weak

I've seen a lot of people who only use blunt weapons on their worthless characters and one stars. As soon as they hit level four in fighting they graduate to the "better" weapons and take on a weapon spec of edged or heavy. Because of this fact, very few people actually try out blunt weapon specs! I have found that characters who keep using Blunt remain safer than edged/heavy even when their cardio stat is very low.

8. Old Reliable

Here's an extra reason just because I feel like it (and because this is a weaker reason than the others). Blunt is the only spec that doesn't really have a shortfall or weakness, which is why we all use it for our weakest characters to begin with! Heavy is slow and edged is extremely random. Blunt is fast and reliable. Yeah, you have to perform executions, but it's fun to knock down an incoming horde with a few swings and then gingerly execute them all. Feels bad ass!

Another aspect of the game that people ignore are guns that cannot be silenced (shotguns and revolvers are the biggest culprits). I think an article for this blog on why those guns can be the best in the game would be good food for thought as well. But for now, excuse my bluntness and go try blunt weapon spec.

Sleep Depravation in State of Decay

When you look at the tab on your journal that is shaped like a chest, do you notice that one of the stats (among others like fame, population, labor, etc) is beds? If you have more population than available beds, then when the simulation runs all the people who couldn't sleep will deteriorate in mood. Usually to grim, uncertain, numb, determined and brusque. You then have to work hard to get these people happy again, especially if you're following my infinite resources guide. Say you have a sleeping area (not bunks but just the tier 1 area) then you have a 50% chance that each person who can't find a bed will remain happy. Obviously that means 50% chance that the person will become sad.

I am currently experimenting with keeping my population equal to or below 16 beds and I'm being sure to always build a bunkhouse along with built in beds to achieve this. While trying this method out I've been playing at Alamo and/or savini's. I find that I can quickly gather the resources I need and keep my people happy very easily. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if you are guaranteed materials if every member of your little society is in a good mood. Last night when I logged off with 10 happy people, three of them made "finds" for materials. So even though I have zero material outposts I ended up making 5 materials for the night. If this is true then I'm only going to need food/ammo outposts for long term survival with a small group.

Who cares if Lilly keeps telling me I don't have enough people haha.

I'm thinking about creating a video of myself playing a level on breakdown. As of this writing I'm on 39, so maybe the big 4... 0... will be a good time to do it!

Max Inventory and No Influence

This is a real problem that some people run into who aren't used to Breakdown: they hit the maximum inventory limit just as they spend their last influence. It's a soul crushing situation to the initiates, and I'm certain that many people quit because of it. Here's how I dealt with the situation when it happened to me on Breakdown 7 and how you can copy my advice regardless of whether you're in story mode or stockpiling in Breakdown.

Part of fixing the problem is not letting it happen. You should avoid selling weapons to your own storage locker unless you actually will use them. Nobody needs 20 pistols and 12 assault rifles. Stick to a few of your favorites and throw the rest to enclaves. If you have nobody to sell the item to, then don't pick it up unless you absolutely need the influence! For example, I stick to a few favorite 30 round machine guns, 100 round rifles, 15 round shotguns, 6 shot grenade launchers, and a small collection of pistols. At any one time I'll usually try to stick to like 30 guns and 20 melee weapons.

What should you pick up? All the stacking items like medicines, firebombs, etc. These can stack up to 255 each which is a lot of influence per storage space. You see, each storage square is added up amongst all the tabs to determine if  you hit the limit. So 60 rounds of ammo takes up the same amount of space towards the limit as 16 suppressors or a backpack or a machete.

Bags should be picked up at first, but then you should limit yourself to the bigger version, and once everyone has some plus a few extra you should stop picking them up all together.

Ammo should be picked up and carried by the characters you aren't playing due to the 60 ammo bug that reduces any stack above 60 down to that amount once you log out. It's a good way to store influence between days and even breakdown levels, as it is a 1 to 1 influence conversion. Only other item like that are the improvised suppressors at 2 influence each.

Everything you aren't selling to the storage locker at home should be shipped to enclaves. Once those enclaves fill up, you will have to wait until the next day to sell to them again. Remember how each square counts as one slot for inventory? It works for enclaves as well, so buying their ammo, medicine, firecrackers, etc will free up slots for your more expensive equipment to be sold. An example would be buying 3 firecrackers in order to sell a candlestick. You spent 18 influence and got back like 50 so that's a 32 influence profit.

OK, so you know how to avoid this situation, but how do you get out of it? You need to do something I call purging. First off, realize that you may have to wait until the next simulation in order to get influence from your accumulated fame. You should receive half your fame in influence each simulation. But if you're at 0, go do the following strategies:

1. Climb a tower and look around. Even without a mission you will get 25 influence for spotting all the nearby hordes.
2. Search areas for resources. Once found, call in for scavengers and take the resources back yourself. You'll get influence for completing both missions and it only costs 10 to begin. If you don't have 10, then loot one back to get to 25 influence first.
3. Complete any and all missions you can with just a car. This way you don't waste influence on medicine and snacks staying alive. This includes hunt missions (honk), distractions (honk repeatedly), and infestations (honk some more).

Use what influence you have to buy items in your locker and then sell them to enclaves. You'll lose influence doing this, but it's the only way to make space in your locker. This is the "purge" part that I was talking about. At first, you'll want to focus on your cheapest items, like any 6 influence two by fours or maybe you have a random landmine that you don't intend on using. Also a few backpacks might be burning holes in your inventory. Get the cheap stuff out early and sell it to the enclaves to cut your losses.

While removing the cheap stuff, go look around in material and ammo areas for really expensive items. Like grenade launchers or 5 durability weapons. Sell these to the enclaves and use the influence to buy more items from your inventory to sell as well.

If there are no enclaves then all you can do is build up influence and continue to buy from your own locker. Cut down on how much you use items to reduce costs and try to do missions with your car whenever feasible.

I usually purge my inventory at the end of a gaming session when I have like 800-1200 influence built up. By not accepting my enclaves right away, I leave myself the option of selling to them before bringing them into my team. I cannot stress the importance of not looting everything and utilizing the storage lockers of enclaves frequently.

8 Reasons SoD Needs an Instruction Manual

There are so many little tricks to playing State of Decay, but a lot of them are technical in nature! A simple instruction manual released by Undead Labs would go a long way in this regard. Here are some things I've learned through my countless hours of Breakdown...

1. Directional Throwing

Did you know that you can run in one direction and throw any item in another? This is awesome for tossing firebombs at the pesky horde gaining on you, or perhaps tossing a firecracker out to your right while you run down the road. Just turn the camera with one joystick and adjust your directional movement with the other so as to run at a different angle than the camera's central focus. It sounds complicated, but you'll pick it up pretty quickly. Learning to rotate the joysticks so you can look behind you without breaking stride is an art form ;)

2. Door Slam

Everyone knows that walking up to a door and pushing the Y button will either result in the door opening or you having to bash it up to three times. Did you know that you can just sprint into the door and loudly slam it open? Did you also know that this will knock over zombies or even kill them? It's great for sieges to repeatedly open and slam the door into their faces. Sometimes I'll slam it, execute the nearest zombie, then barrel roll back so I can close the door real quick.

3. Passenger Side Evasion

You know how when you lose your car door zombies will try to pull you out? If you bash X repeatedly you will sometimes be able to dislodge the zombie from your arm without falling out. But get this... the same thing works when you passenger side door is gone and the zombies are reaching for you on that side! Obviously if a passenger is there you won't be able to smash X to get away, but it's something I discovered in desperation when a feral jumped through my missing passenger door. Boy was I pleasantly surprised!

4. You can put one more bullet than maximum capacity for most weapons simply by manually reloading while not interacting with the storage container. It's "one in the chamber" basically.

5. While flipping someone with body slam you can press X to smash the zombie into the ground. If you wait too long then the zombie will just fly over your shoulder unharmed.

6. Press A while aiming to change between full and semi automatic, depending on if the gun has this option.

7. (This is a Bug) Holding the aim button while zombies are killed (by grenades, outpost traps, firebombs, etc) will result in XP for shooting. You can swing your melee weapon as well apparently for XP if you time it properly. I haven't done it myself though to confirm.

8. I think everyone went through the whole 'you must select characters for the RV before clicking the green RV icon a second time or else you end up going to the next level with 1 person' annoying situation. Nothing seems to happen when you click to use the RV, so a lot of people hit it again thinking something didn't work right. Well that sends you off to the next level!

I like that so much of this game requires effort to discover, but some of these mechanics should be explained in documentation. For crying out loud, almost all of them involve the controller! You should at least be told some of these with the random tips!

Using Temporary Allies to Kill and Loot

Here's some food for thought:

1. Lilly is usually sending you on an impossible number of missions as well as requests to improve the base. This leads to failed missions due to time restraints or a crappy base.
2. Missions do not run out if you are on another mission. In fact, time seems to freeze.

Hmmm... so I can take advantage of the little posses missions create in order to do side quests for resources, outposts, killing hordes, clearing infestations, and general murder? Sweet!

What I am referring to is the use of free buddies during missions to go complete all the other crap you usually save for when the missions have calmed down. For example, I just took an enclave that wanted to come back to my base (that's three badass helpers at once) to clear two infestations, build an outpost, call for a runner, and head back to base with a bag full of materials.

If I had done the mission to pick up those new members and then tried to complete the rest of my tasks, I probably would have failed the diversion and zombie hunt missions that Lilly was clambering about on the radio.

Use free buddies from the various missions in order to complete your side stuff. Makes the game more enjoyable, safer, and you'll complete more missions. I never, ever pay the 100 influence to have a buddy watch my back. If anything, when crap hit the fan that person would just end up getting shredded while I ran away! So save your influence and use your mission posses to kick zombie butt.

Screamers, Bloaters, Big Uns, and Ferals OH MY!

Here are my tactics for killing every single special / freak zombie in the game.

Screamers

• car
• firebomb
• explosive
• silenced gun
• melee weapon
• stealth kill

With regards to the melee weapon, I highly recommend sprinting at them and using a regular attack. You have to be careful to let go of the sprint so that you don't perform a special attack which will in turn give the screamer enough time to bellow.

Bloaters

• gun

Yeah they really didn't leave you with many options here did they? You either shoot these balloons of gas or you end up getting sick. Even using the car doesn't work because the gas will stick to your vehicle! One exception to this is when the bloater explodes himself because he's near  your car, but not because you hit him. Then you just get a little gas and drive past the rest.  This is why I recommend using a gun among the other items you should carry!

Big Uns

• high caliber gun
• grenade launcher
• explosives
• firebombs
• melee with nearby walls

DO NOT waste a car killing Big Uns. Instead, use high capacity ammunition with focus aim or explosives to shred these monstrosities quickly. Two steel pipe bombs will kill them, and that's my preferred method from a distance. Big Uns are the only freaks that will occasionally kill my characters. Either they spawn on a nearby runner or worse, they come charging in while another freak has me down/distracted. Most people hate Ferals, but I hate the wide hit box of the Big Uns. You can survive a Feral's pounce with a barrel roll, but that's not always the case with a Big Un who's off screen charging in!

If you want to melee then you need nearby walls for them to crash into. Wait near a wall for a Big Un to charge, then dive out of the way after he begins to sprint at you. If you do it too late he'll get you, too soon and he'll change direction. Maybe practice with someone you don't like hehe.

This one time, two Big Uns ran into each other with their charge and one killed the other. It was the most glorious moment in my gaming history. I nearly died from laughing at the screen.

Ferals

• dodge then execute
• focus aim
• car
• melee "dance"

I don't recommend attempting to use firebombs, explosives, etc on Ferals. They are too fast so only use those options when they are sitting still. But then, wouldn't you want to shoot them in the head for an easier kill? Focus aim is necessary once the Feral is closer to you because otherwise he will attempt to dodge your shots. You can get a shot in quickly when he first yells, but after that it's quite hard. Instead of shooting, you should be running either at the feral or away from it as he pounces. Once his feet leave the ground, barrel roll out of the way to the side or away. Then roll right back onto the feral and execute it. If you're surrounded by zombies, it is better to take a few hits from them getting your execute on the feral than taking a pounce to the face.

If you have to melee a feral (possibly you already were pounced) then you need to follow a very basic strategy: attack the feral until you miss, then press dodge. Once a feral dodges your attack, he is going to immediately jump forward and smack you. Dodging at this point breaks up his attacks and allows you to once again hit him. Continue this dance until the feral falls so that you can execute him.

Items for One Star Characters

Once you get past level 11 of Breakdown, the game doesn't appear to get any harder. Possibly spawn rates go up, but the numbers behind damage and health do not change. At this point, you need to learn what to bring with you when you leave your base in order to have the best chance of survival. Especially when your characters are 1 stars! They feel like sitting ducks when you first play at high levels with these new recruits, but soon you'll turn the odds in your favor.

The one thing you have going for you at later levels is a plethora of items. Personally I have a game going right now with 100+ suppressors, 500+ firecrackers, 250+ steel pipe bombs, 1000+ assorted meds, 1250+ firebombs, etc. So you can use this kind of stockpile to your advantage, especially with the newer members of your team. If you're using my Level 30 Breakdown Strategy, then you're going to end up spending the majority of your game time playing people outside of your six man team.

Slot #1: Bring a Gun

Always bring a gun for killing bloaters and screamers at range. DO NOT use firebombs on the bloaters because they will eventually let out a super loud explosion. What kind of gun should you use? If your only goal is to kill bloaters and screamers then you'll want a high capacity pistol with a suppressor. For now, let's start with that. I'll have to cover killing specials in a separate post.

Slot #2: Heavy or Blunt Weapon

If you're playing a new character then I recommend the heavy or blunt weapons. When going with a heavy weapon, use something like a wood axe (the best) or hockey stick because they are light weight. Trying to use an edged weapon can quickly become a disaster because it's hard to predict when you'll actually kill the zombie. Plus the alternative melee weapons enable you to hit multiple targets per swing. Remember to use big swings (Hold L1 while attacking) on solo targets to dispatch them quickly. After the first big attack, follow up with quick regular attacks to stagger your opponent faster. Doing big attacks in a row is too slow, so the zombie resets to a standing position before each swing usually.

Slot #3: Food

This is even more important than remembering medicine. What sucks right now is that the game won't let you keep more than 6 food after each simulation! You actually create the food each time, as it's reset to 0, so you can end up with 2-4 food as well. Sucky I know, but we must survive this apocalypse no matter how unfair things become. Bring 2-3 food on your character and be sure to use it BEFORE you get into trouble.

Slot #4: Medicine

Rarely do I ever play under 100% health at the higher levels, so I pop 6 influence medicines like crazy. Bring 3 with you and use frequently.

Slot #5: Firecrackers (Optional)

Those four items are the keys to staying alive, but they don't cover every danger that's out there. For example, getting surprised by large hordes of zombies usually means death for our lowly one star fighters. Therefore, it's wise to pack a few firecrackers to get away. Firecrackers are vastly superior to every other noise maker, so create them frequently from any workshop.

Slot #6: Steel Pipe Bombs (Optional)

You can substitute any explosive for these if you haven't started making them yet. Since they take so long to craft, I highly recommend playing a level at snyders and building four munition shops to crank them out super fast. Why do you need them? For infestations and big uns. Even your super crappy level 1 characters can destroy infestations with one steel pipe bomb and big uns with two blasts. These bombs are surprisingly quiet as well.

Ultimate Guide to Level 30 Breakdown

Do you want to get a high score on Breakdown and shock your friends? Then read on, it's way easier than you think!

It's been a long, strange trip to level 34 on Breakdown in State of Decay. I've greatly slowed down my progress on breakdown levels though in order to experiment with the perfect base setup. Basically, I want to never run out of resources and stay on the same Breakdown level forever. The more I experiment, the closer I get.

I'm going to impart the information I've learned and continue to learn over to you through this blog, starting with a post on how to never run out of resources in State of Decay. That's right, how to keep your resources maxed out while remaining on the same level of Breakdown. This is how I got a high score of 280,000 points over the course of two weeks without even coming close to running out of resources. I quit because of a few mission bugs that prevented more from spawning, which created a play experience so boring that I couldn't continue on the same level. That's neither here nor there, so let's dive into my strategy.

NOTE: I tried very hard to restrict myself from giving EVERY piece of advice possible here. I'll focus on the general strategy and not how to physically play every aspect of the game better. A lot is learned from experience that would take forever to explain.

Set Your Home Base: Trucking Warehouse

Remember that it will take 50 materials to use this base. Since you will slowly lose materials beyond 30 in your RV, make sure that you get 60 before starting. By calling in a runner before taking up  materials you will be able to achieve this. Be sure to help the runner go back to the base before you dump off your materials. Then you'll have 60 (which will become 58 within a minute) as you find a car and head off to your home base. This location is ideal for my strategy because it has two vital components already in play:

1. Food storage. This will enable you to create all the fuel you need to play. Since it only takes one fuel every few hours for your outposts, the 3 you can create every 1.5 hours is in excess of what's required. So that's one resource down, four to go! Sometimes you will get lucky and the Alamo Storage will spawn instead of the trucking one. This has the added bonus of being a maxed out refrigerated storage which helps against spoilage automatically!

2. Machine Shop and Munition Shop in One. Somehow the warehouse has a workshop that has all the powers of two separately upgraded ones! So you get your cars repaired every night and you can create explosives. You could get unlucky and get a basic workshop, if so you'll want to upgrade it to a machine shop. I don't actually create any items from my workshop when I'm going for a high score. Instead, I simply create all my items in a previous play through. Especially firecrackers... which we'll discuss later on in the strategy.

In addition to the built in stuff, you will want to build the following:

Infirmary - This is the level 2 medical facility, don't build the level 3.
Greenhouse - 9 Food Every Day
Watch Tower - 3 Ammo 1.5 Hours. DO NOT SPEND 1 Ammo to snipe. Ever.
Dojo - 3 Ammo 1.5 Hours
Bunkhouse - Sleep deprivation prevention

The last spot is up to you and I'm heavily experimenting with this. I prefer a Library (3 Ammo 1.5 Hours) or second Greenhouse (9 Food Every Day). Think of it in terms of outposts... The library is 1-2 ammo outpost depending on how often you create ammo and the greenhouse is three food outposts. Also, more food means bigger population of gatherers!

I have also tried an additional storage facility which was actually pretty good when it let me create 5 food (rarely). Plus the extra storage space helps when you would have gone over from gathers during the simulation. Lastly, an extra storage facility gave me more of a buffer when the simulation ran and my gatherers sucked at their jobs.

The kitchen only helps your survival, which eventually is a non issue once you're a skilled player. The food spoilage prevention is accomplished by your storage facility.

You don't need the dining room, it just means doing more missions to keep people happy.

In the end, I tend to go with a second greenhouse. It took a lot of research to decide that, but experiment as you wish!

Choosing Your Outposts

How you set up your outposts is up to you, except when it comes to what resources work within them. You will want to get enough food outposts combined with your greenhouse(s) that you gain or come close to 0 food every day. The rest of your outposts should be materials if possible. Try to get your materials as far below 20 as you can. The less you lose every day the less you need your little foragers to find for you. If you need ammo, empty the location of resources and build on it.

DO NOT create fuel or medicine outposts. They do nothing.

As you get better at the game, you'll learn that outpost locations really don't matter much (except for calling runners). I sometimes leave no outposts by my base so that all the "Too Many Hordes" missions are easier to do (and thus raise the happiness of my members). That being said, when you continue the game, hold off on extending your outposts for 1 fuel until after you complete too many hordes with your unhappy members. This saves a lot of time making everyone happy.

One more point on outposts: leave one material or food within them when possible. This will enable you to switch between outposts later on as needed. Like if you want to switch 2 food outposts today but change your mind tomorrow. This gives you great flexibility.

Game Play Goals: Happiness and Points

Once your base and outposts are established, there are only two things left to do: get your people happy and earn lots of points!

To get my peeps happy, I follow this list of methods:

1. Call in for support and pick up a resource. Do something else while you wait for the runner, like find more resources, and then start the runner assistance mission. This will improve your happiness and the runner's happiness. Be careful with runners and try to create lines of outposts to prevent runners in trouble missions.
2. Kill hordes during Too Many Hordes.
3. Kill infestations at any time.
4. Help enclaves (do all missions) and recruit new members.
5. As soon as someone has a smiley face next to their mood (regardless of what it is) then stop playing as them and pick up someone else who is unhappy.
6. Only play as the characters who are not sick, not tired, and not injured.

Remember that some people have stupid mood issues even when happy. Like overbearing. So pay attention to the little person icon next to their mood. A smile is all you need to see.

Keeping everyone happy can be like a full time job, but eventually you'll be done and looking for ways to get more points...

So how do you get lots of points? Before the breakdown level when you are going for a high score (any level beyond one that gives x11 on scorecard), go to the warehouse and create one infirmary, watchtower, and all workshops. From those workshops mass produce firecrackers. That's 20 per 5 minutes from 4 workshops. You'll need to work hard to keep the ammo coming in fast enough ;)

Fast forward to your high score level where you have your base all set up and missions have slowed to a crawl. What do you do with the fireworks? You drive around propane tanks where you have no outposts for starters. I like to use the one at the southwest section of Marshall a few houses left of the Alamo as well as the one on the right side of the football field. Throw a firecracker near the propane tank (but not on top or you'll have trouble shooting through the zombies). Wait a bit, then shoot for 200-600 points depending on specials and zombie spawn rates. Get in the car and drive between those two. You can also pick out further away propane tanks to ensure larger spawns. Your boredom is the only real restriction haha, but this is the best points per hour you're going to get.

Population Size

Keep growing your population until you're no longer gaining food each day. Sometimes I go just a bit over knowing that there's enough food on the map to last me a very long time even at -3 food per day. Be careful though, you will lose food for hunger when the simulation runs. It can take a big chunk of food away if you have a large population.

You need to get as big as possible in order to guarantee lots of resources during the simulation. You'll be shocked how much you gather once your whole population is happy.

Resource Breakdown for Infinite Resources

AMMO

Ammo is taken care of by your library, dojo, and watch tower.  If you chose a second greenhouse over the library, then you'll want to create 1-3 ammo outposts to make up for it. Try to create ammo twice with all your buildings. That's 12-18 ammo per day. Also, kill infestations to reduce the amount of ammo needed. If you get low on ammo do not panic. Your population will ease off using it while you build your resources back up. Just create more ammo outposts and take a hit to food or materials when needed.

So seeing a big fat -18 for ammo every day is the same as a 0 if you have 3 buildings creating it. If you're playing a crazy amount, like an 8 hour weekend, you're going to produce quite a bit of ammo.

FOOD

Each greenhouse is 9 food and each outpost is 3 more.

MATERIALS

Your outposts will reduce how much you lose per simulation, but the key to getting more is your gatherers. A happy population will find a lot of materials.

MEDICINE

All of your medicine will need to be collected by gatherers once the map is clear. The better you play the less injuries and sicknesses you'll need to waste medicine on.

OIL

Your food storage can build 3 oil every 1.5 hours. That's like 6 hours of play time worth of oil. Good to go!


Just from writing this basic guide I have come up with numerous follow up articles you probably are interested in reading.... like transitioning between breakdown levels, getting around ammo/snack/pain killer stack size bugs, keeping influence crazy high, improving fame, etc.

All in good time! Please leave a comment and let me know if you like the blog so far!