State of Decay 2 - Time is your worst enemy

Started playing around with the Independence Pack a bit. First thing I did was take a Starshank Launcher and try it on a Juggernaut. Does not do what it says on the tin! Instead of impaling my target, the spiked firework merely bounced off the Juggernaut and came right back to me like a boomarang. The jug got mad, charged, and then fireworks started going off all around me and attracting zombies. Undead Labs trolling, folks.

Some dude named Alan keeps asking for help on the radio. I’d love to help, but I have no idea how to find him. I thought I saw an icon on a building, and found a little tent on top, but he wasn’t there. How do you chase down distress calls?

Maybe just stand up really tall and shout his name over and over? Sorry, I will see myself out.

The generally do have pretty precise icons on the map if they’re active. On another floor? Next door?

Is it on your map’s missions list? Select it and their location will be an orange waypoint on your radar.

You could be looking for a corpse instead. Callers can die before you get there. I don’t think the bodies show up as icons. I’ve had a few sprint away at low health, but they returned after waiting in the area for a few minutes.

If you heard that call recently, and haven’t reloaded a save, there should be a little black house icon on your map somewhere. Those icons are easy to miss. There should also be a mission to the left, I think the category is “ambient”. Clicking on it in the map screen should highlight the map icon and also reveal a short description in the upper right that includes that guy’s name.

Edit: Oh, he called for help. That might be a ? icon instead of a house icon, and the icon might be moving around. Usually that’ll be in a location that’s fairly close to where you happened to be on the map at the time.

Works for goats too!

This helped! I didn’t realize I could select things on the mission list. It turns out that the survivor was on the opposite side of the map, so I didn’t see them scrolling around.

Finished off my final legacy last night, what a great game. 76 hours including idle time.

Sheriff was definitely the hardest of the bunch. I expected it to be easy with the great lounge skill bonuses and field hospital’s +50 health. Yu-Wen, the Incompetent musician, was up against a group who took over a large factory, and set themselves up with snipers. I left my followers at home this time around. Most of them died whenever I took them out against hostile enclaves.

I wasn’t expecting the factory to be surrounded by giant fences, hordes and freaks.

Rushing into the building ramboing wasn’t an option. I sneaked up and called in an artillery strike to kill off a sniper. Fired back at the other, and… did not go well. Immediately attacked by hordes of zombies. Two screamers, a bloater, and a feral as well. Thank god I still had firecrackers from the last plague heart assault, and napalm from a survivor group I assisted. It still wasn’t easy though. The feral had Yu-Wen down to a sliver of health, and I was barely able to crawl away to cover while still being shot at by the remaining sniper.

That radio call for medical assistance was a lifesaver. Got the sniper down. Yu-Wen patiently took out the rest of them stealthily, one at a time whenever they went on patrol alone. Almost got gunned down by Shame, their leader, surprising me as I killed another, but a quick Gunslinger perk saved the day.

Totally felt like I earned all the “Your sheriff friend saved us, here’s some goodies as thanks” in the next game I played as a warlord. Surprisingly the final enemies in that quest line were survivors from my game as sheriff.

I have a builder leader, but I’m not getting the builder legacy missions, as near as I can tell. Do I need to kill all the hearts off first or something?

Speaking of hearts, I found an auto shotgun with a 30 round drum magazine. Put a choke on that and it’s like a magic wand of disintegration.

Yeah, the hearts are basically your progress indicator. I think the legacy stuff is considered endgame missions. Also, be warned that each heart increases the spawn rate and the number of special zombies.

-Tom

The spawn hearts are, like everything else in this unfortunate sequel, mere busywork regardless of the increasing spam they toss around you when attacked. Toss in a couple of WP or thermite charges along with (optional) a few non-.22 shots from whatever weapon you have handy, and voila. Fuel-air bombs (easily creatable) will also do in a pinch. (Never mind the whole .50cal meta). If you’re unlucky, the game RNG might tuck the heart in some place where you can’t throw crap throw a window; in which case you might actually suffer some damage during your assault.

I’ve killed late game plague hearts almost before they spawn their protectors. It’s amusing to have like two dozen spawn zombies simultaneously explode around you.

I think that’s a bug. Plague hearts are supposed to get more health (according to NPCs) after you take down each one but it doesn’t seem to happen. I only had a handful that took a real beatdown. Late game radio missions were harder than the hearts.

The game sure has a lot of bugs. I was even playing as a disembodied head for awhile.

Ah-ha, I knew I thought that for a reason! It seems like they should definitely scale as you get more powerful fire-based attacks, but my experience was very much like scharmers described; make sure you’ve secured the area, chuck in a few of whatever upgraded molotov attacks I’ve gathered, and then when the smoke clears wonder, “Is that it?”

I do hope whatever DLC they’re working on will give us ways and incentives to make the game more punishing.

-Tom

New big patch: https://www.trueachievements.com/n33918/state-of-decay-2-drops-content-update-30-with-patch-notes-and-stream

Just in case we’re keeping track:

Screenshot%20from%202018-08-22%2010-03-44

Okay, I obviously need to do something about that. This will not stand, Mr. Dog.

Oh, hey, the first actual DLC was announced. It’s a horde mode in which you play a Red Talon agent. Not sure it’s the sort of thing I was looking for… :(

-Tom

This is after about 1.5 play-throughs.

I’m gonna need some screen shots of the last 121 of these. For verification purposes.

New update out:

https://www.stateofdecay.com/2018/09/05/content-update-4-0-is-now-live/