State of Decay 2 - Time is your worst enemy

This is now out on Steam.

Just Grabbed it. I have only played through 2 days on base difficulty. So far its been easy. Should I go up the the 2nd difficulty level?

Yes, I prefer the second “Dread” difficulty level. I jumped to that after maybe 5-6 hours playing on the first difficulty level. I really like Dread, I think that is how the game should be played (after you understand the basics).

Ah yes, the “post apocalyptic after a virus tears through the world”, game :-D

Great timing!

Surprised they didn’t reskin it a bit :)

Hah! That would have been ballsy!

Keith, keep in mind the difficulty is supposed to scale up as you clear out plague hearts. The idea is that you get plenty of breathing room early on, but as you clear out the map and make progress, the difficulty ramps up. Of course, you’re also improving your survivors skills and gear, so it’s relatively easy to get ahead of the power curve on the basic difficulty level.

That said, it’s definitely a good idea to get familiar with the various gameplay systems, especially base management, infestations, and plague hearts, before getting too ambitious.

-Tom

Windows Store players with the previous edition. It’s tricky to update! This worked for me. In summary, delete game, reset Windows Store, download full game.

Ugh

Awesome. Thanks Tom. Im really liking it so far.

I had some strangeness happen, but in the end, it just worked for me. I went into the Store and it showed Juggernaut edition as “Modified yesterday”, but when I started the game, it says, “Failed to update.” I pushed the big “Get Updates” button on the Store and it started downloading. I came back a few hours later and it was stuck at 12% or something. I pushed the button again and the download went away and it showed as Installed, so I tried playing and it worked. These instructions they’ve posted are bad… it looks like a DOS era README.TXT.

And that’s my review of Juggernaut edition.

The pacing in this new version feels spot on and it is giving me a deeper appreciation of the game’s systems. In the previous versions of the game, I always felt a bit resentful about having everything dumped on me all at once. I would barely be situated in my base and some whiny neighbour would be asking me to drop everything and get a bag from the shed in their backyard or demanding a generator when I barely had enough food to eat.

In this version, you are given plenty of time to get your base up and running and to make your neighbourhood a bit safer to explore in. My crew is a few days in and they are actually ready to meet new people. They have a nice stockpile of luxury items to trade and even a spare generator.

So far so good.

There’s an option to summon a trader in the Radio menu. I felt a bit dirty using it, but…

Anyone know how to change FOV on the Windows Store version?

Jeeze, that Windows Store nonsense is so typical of Microsoft. I couldn’t migrate over to Steam fast enough. Unfortunately, I left behind my legacies and survivors, which don’t transfer for some dumb reason. Sure, my Windows/XboxGamerDudez login and achievements all transfer to Steam, but any ingame progress? Nope. Thanks, Microsoft, for getting in one last jab as I abscond with the last game I cared about from that tortured tangle known as the Microsoft Store.

I can certainly understand this complaint, but I think that was partly intentional to force you into the difficult situation of being unable to help some people, so you had to make hard choices. Classic apocalypse survival stuff. Who to help, who to let go by the wayside. But for gamers who think of quests as a checklist instead of a triage situation, it surely felt overbearing.

I just traded some conditioner, tampons, liquor, and a water cooler for a rocket launcher. Which I had to immediately test against a pair of wandering hordes I managed to herd together with firecrackers. Whee! Best use of hair product evar!

Now I’ve only got three rounds left, but I bet it’ll make short work of a plague heart.

-Tom

Yeah, I’ve got some independence day nonsense available in the radio menu that I really wish wasn’t in there. Silly stuff that feels like it’s right out of Dead Rising. I’m also a bit leery about some of the Red Talon hardware. I guess on the harder difficulty levels, where influence is hard won and carefully spent, it might feel better tuned. Plus, the ammo situation for those fancy guns seems like it’s always going to be impractical. Still, I remember when using influence for firepower was a rarefied situation, with occasional drone strikes or artillery in the first game’s military DLC.

-Tom

Yeah I am going to sullenly soldier on with the Microsoft Store version a bit longer. But if there are any cross-play issues with friends who buy it on Steam then I am buying it a second time on Steam instantly!

Yeah, my justification to myself was, “Im just going to zoom through this early phase anyway, so I’ll cash in these luxury items to jumpstart things a little,” having played several games in 2019, but the whole radio menu looks pretty awful now. I think I’ll ban myself from it apart from using the sniper callout later on.

Unrelatedly, I don’t think I got any choice of maps at the start, which I thought was strange, maybe because I hadn’t finished my previous game on Dread difficulty. But I wanted to play the new map in any case so it’s all good.

All new starts use the new map because it’s the target of the new tutorial system.

Just picked this up. Not really a zombie fan, but felt it might be good practice for this whole pandemic thing.

I lost my Doctor due to an unfortunate series of events and I’m tempted to restart.

On the other hand, I picked up an anti-materiel rifle from a vendor and it would be a shame to lose that.

On the other other hand, my starting characters (the lovers?) were kind of dicks.

Hmm.