State of Decay 2 - Time is your worst enemy

The plague hearts increase in strength and ferocity as you destroy them. Destroying the first one is pretty easy, by the time you get to the 8th or 9th then they are a much sterner test…

Yes, everything in State of Decay 2 is a slow build-up, a careful logistical stew of having the right survivors with useful skills, the right size base with proper construction, outposts and mods, the right weapons, vehicles and equipment, and making friends with the right enclaves (to get their bonuses). As these things fall into place you can tackle tougher and tougher challenges. That first plague heart may be doable with you, your follower and a member of the neighboring enclave hacking at it with mower blade swords, but they’re going to require more preparation and better equipment as you progress. (I prefer pipe bombs myself…through a nearby window is best.)

For infestations your vehicle is often your best weapon. Pull up in front of the house/building and honk the horn a couple of times. Zoms will start spilling out the windows and busting through the doors, and you can mow them down with your car doors open. When the screamers finally come out you know you’ve reached the end of the infestation. Take 'em out with a headshot and infestation cleared.

I ran over something that flooded the vehicle with poison gas and we had to bail. After it dissipated and we took out the local zoms, riding back to base the right passenger door decided to fall off.

Is there a way to check a vehicles health/damage? I’ve been using toolkits blind to repair the car, mostly because I don’t want to be out and about around town when my car becomes a dead stick.

Listen for rattles and clunks. Black smoke is always a dead giveaway.

There’s no percentage meter or anything like that.

And don’t run over bloaters

I was going off the shattered windows and beat up zom-blood stained body, but I guess it has more mileage then that.

I usually don’t burn a repair kit until the engine starts throwing off steam. Even then you can keep running for awhile, but if the engine actually starts catching fire you need to bail out and use a repair kit ASAP. I always try to keep one, along with a spare gas can, in the trunk of every vehicle at my base. Nothing sucks worse than realizing you’re in the middle of nowhere with a busted or out-of-gas vehicle.

If you get lucky and find an enclave or a trader with vehicle upgrade kits, grab one if you can (you can also create them yourself if you have an auto shop at your base and someone with the skills to use it properly). Upgrading vehicles gives them more durability and a greater range (fuel efficiency). Upgrades come in Light, Medium and Heavy, and each works on a corresponding vehicle type. My personal favorite is using the Heavy kit to upgrade an SUV into a Smashwagon, which gives you the best combination of zom crushing ability with decent fuel range in my opinion, although the snow plow on the front of upgraded pickup trucks is lots of fun as well.

So I haven’t had any real issues progressing at all. No deaths. The game is a busy work sim though, with some set events? At least I guess. I cleared out the two blood hearts in the southeast of the map so I could claim the landmark outpost. I am still combing that city sector for all of it’s loot. These were the first two I took down. Now I got rooftop sniper support power with a cooldown via the radio. I also can hack a drone and get drone coverage to reveal special zombies or missile strike? (although the power turns off if you don’t use it and you have to activate it again in the command center). I also have supply drop but have no idea how I unlocked that power.

Currently, I am allied with a military remnant enclave, and on friendly terms with a “Dinner club” group after I bailed them out of a siege. They have a pet zombie on like a tetherball pole. There was this “Newcomer” faction that got wiped out suddenly by some drifter guy. I tried to recruit him but he took off. Not sure if I should be worried about him.

My fortified truck stop base is basically fully built with all resources topped up. I guess I should just kill the remaining plague hearts then.

Well the game sure seems to have changed a lot since the first one :0

What difficulty? Sounds like you might consider raising it one level. For example, I like Dread.

Yeah, if things are running like a well-oiled machine, that means a difficulty bump is needed.

Not just a well-oiled machine…but an industrious monster that eats zombies for breakfast.

I use my fresh survivor recruits to take out a plague hearts solo as a rite of passage. If they fail, well they’ll die. Except for the fact they never do. So I had to up the ante quite a bit.

Solo combat against a Juggernaut equipped only with a melee weapon. This produced the intended results. The fresh survivor was ripped in half. My shooters gunned down the jug effortlessly afterwards of course.

P.S. All difficult settings are set to normal.

I agree with the dread idea. It is my favorite difficulty level to play. There is danger, and suspense, but not manufactured difficulty like the next few difficulty levels, where every special zombie comes in pairs… or more.

You will need to play a bit more cautiously and stealthy like, but I found it a lot more engaging and fun.

Piece of advice if you decide to go to Dread: Remember you can bail from a moving car, so if for instance you accidentally run over a bloater, you can immediately jump out without stopping the car and probably save your survivor’s life =)

Not sure, once I clear the map of plague hearts is the game over or do I transition to a new map? I want to maintain my society.

Also don’t answers that.

So what will happen after you clear plague hearts is actually important for later runs:

You will be assigned an end game quest based on your leader. You will then follow along with a chain of quests to the final challenge. Once you complete this questline your run will be over. So before you go to the final mission, be sure to load ALL of your survivors with gear, plague cure, bullets, etc. Load them up because the game completes as soon as you finish the final mission. The game will warn you when you reach the point of no return, so don’t panic that you missed your opportunity. Once finished, all of your survivors become legacy. You can then select 1 - 3 of them to participate in your next run. Also on your next run, you will be able to play the game with a Boon (up to 3 depending on difficulty). The boons you have available are based on what leaders you have finished the game with, Sheriff, Warrior, Trader, Builder.

Arguably the best initial boon is the builder boon, as it gives you both water and power on your next run, but all of the boons are valuable and useful, so don’t feel like you HAVE to finish a builder run first!

Legacy Boons from the wiki

My leader is a builder.

Anyways, I found another new survivor stooge to use to kill plague hearts solo for me after that last one died by bodily separation against a jug for entertainment. He doesn’t have any skills I need so he is totally expendable. Might as well “rite of passage” him towards another plague heart. No one has failed yet…will he be the first?

So there are only two plague hearts left and I finally have noticed an up tick in special zombie spawns. Although one plague heart is also in a location with a infestation, and two adjacent buildings also have infestations. That one might be tricky.

I did lose a survivor who…was out on his own being AI controlled. He wasn’t even an enlisted follower. The AI decided to just send him into a horde of undead somewhere while I was busy taking out a plague heart with C4. (boom!)

Most anti-climatic ending ever. The builder quest chain involved…building stuff. I might have known. But my base was fully built already so I just deconstructed a building and reconstructed the same building again in order to progress.

So what is the deal with the game deleting your community save after completing the game? Is this some kind of joke?

Edit: Never mind. You’re suppose to start the whole process again with your existing survivors on new maps/difficulties (but only by threes but with an added boon)

Visually Stunning update:

I was about to write about how great all the cumulative updates have been but Update 30 (Forever Communities) just dropped and the changes are pretty awesome. As of this update, the legacy pool is no longer a graveyard for forgotten community members. It is now the vital conduit that connects all of your communities. Find a survivor with interesting skills and stats but have no need for them in your current community? No problem. Just send them to your legacy pool. Want to populate a community with survivors in you legacy pool? Just call them up on your radio and they join in. Have a community with an abundance of stuff and one that is struggling on another save? No problem. Load up a member with items and send them to the legacy pool. You can then invite them into your other community with all the stuff they are carrying.

Reviewing the legacy pool survivors is easier now too.

The update has other features to promote longer term play. But the legacy pool stuff is really cool.

I should get back into this game. I really enjoyed it, but the removal of the offline time progression ruined an aspect I thought was annoying but really was one of my favourite thing in retrospect. Getting back to exactly where I left off is weird and unsatisfying for me. Wishful thinking that this will make it back into the game, someday.