State of Decay 2 is a game about zombie survival in which you will often find yourself scouring the wasteland in search of valuable resources. The game features a fairly large world populated by survivors and groups known as enclaves. Along the way, there will be a lot of random travelling to and fro between different locations to complete fetch quests and find resources so as to build your base. Although some of the tasks in the game can be very tedious, this guide is here to help you out so that you can make your way through this game in the most efficient way possible.
Furthermore, we have also covered cheats that will give you unlimited health, infinite care fuel and more, along with duplication glitch and influence farming.
If you’re ready, then let’s get started!
GENERAL TIPS AND TRICKS
Always Be On The Lookout For Resources
Being a survival game, collecting resources is one of the primary aspects of the game. Try and make trips for resource collection efficient by carrying a much as you can in the trunk of your car before you make the return journey to your base.
Use Your Car To Mow Down Zombies
When going in to clear an infestation, sometimes the best way to deal with the situation would be to use your car’s horn to attract their attention. Once they are out of closed spaces, just run over them with your car to be rid of them easily.
Break Down Resources For Bonus Rewards
If you’re running short on storage, you can break down resources. This can be beneficial especially because doing so can net you bonus rewards!
Always Carry Fire-Crackers
Fire-crackers are very useful items that can be used as decoys when trying to escape from zombies. Make sure you carry these whenever possible as it will end up saving your life more than once, or will help you get out of unnecessary encounters.
Roll A Random Set Of Survivors To Get Rare Skills
When you start the game, you can re-roll for three random survivors so as to get ones with rare skills such as Chemistry or Gardening. These will be of great use to you, so keep re-rolling characters until you get the ones with the best skills.
Become Friends With Local Enclaves
Allying with local enclaves is a great way to get some benefits like extra storage and unique status effects. You can trade at the enclaves to earn influence and also hire survivors from these places. Additionally, you can recruit a member from the enclave, although this will cause the enclave to disappear. Try and help these enclaves when they ask you for supplies, as you will be paid back with some rewards later on.
Pick Up Textbooks To Learn And To Sell
Textbooks can be used to learn skills, but they are also a great way to earn influence, and you can do so by selling them to traders. Make sure you pick up any textbooks you can find along your adventures!
DEALING WITH PLAGUE HEARTS AND INFESTATIONS
You will notice in the game that some of the tougher challenges are destroying plague hearts and clearing infestations. In fact, eliminating plague hearts ties into the game’s main objective, so you’ll have to destroy them in order to finish the game.
You can find plague hearts scattered throughout the different areas. They are marked by red icons on the map, and can be found by scouting through towers or even by spending influence on a radio and getting the location. Once you get near a plague heart, some plague zombies will come out to attack you and their bites are infectious, so you’ll have to be very careful when dealing with them and to keep them at a range. The best approach would be to use fire-crackers to distract the zombies and the quickly hurl explosives such as the C4 or molotov cocktails at the plague heart. Trying to attach the plague heart at melee range is not a good idea as it can damage you. Once you destroy the plague heart, all the surrounding plague zombies will die.
Infestations take over a building and you can find these on your map. You’ll have to be careful when fighting them as you can attract more attention while fighting them. The best method would be to honk from your car so that the zombies come out of the building, and to then mow them down. Screamer zombies can be very annoying so make sure you keep you distance as their screams can stun you and also bring more zombies into the fight.
BUILDING A BASE
Building a strong base is of utmost importance in the game. From the very start, you will have to work to ensure that your base is equipped with proper facilities and that there are enough survivors to manage it. Your base also provides you with Influence points which is the in-game currency.
When you’re building your base, you will have a number of different options regarding what facilities to construct. Prioritize these in terms of need and build necessary facilities like the infirmary first which will be of great use to you. Make sure you build the Infirmary facility first and foremost as it will have great benefits for you in the longer run, and it will help you avoid some unnecessary deaths. Infirmaries also provide a way to treat those who are infected, to heal the wounded, and to craft medicinal supplies which you can carry with you to heal yourself.
You will also have to have beds at your base so that your characters can recover their stamina. Additionally, you will also need water and food sources at the base, so make sure these are taken care of. The Rain Collector helps you get food while Farms help in getting food. Having enough resources will ensure that your survivors’ morale remains fairly high.
Morale will also drop low if resources drop low. Some of things you can do to improve morale is ensure that the sick are getting proper treatment and avoiding character deaths as much as possible. If morale drops too low, then characters’ moods will be affected which may lead to them fighting among each other
If the threat level rises high enough, then your base will be attacked which can have disastrous consequences. So always keep an eye on what the threat level currently is if you don’t want t be caught off guard. You can view the Threat Level in the Base tab and it is best to act before it reaches too high a level.
There are different kinds of bases you can find throughout each map area, with them ranging from small sizes to massive ones. Having larger bases will offer more facilities and space to house more survivors. The very first base is free, but the other four types require Influence points to unlock. These four types of bases are listed below:
- Small Base: Requires 3 Survivors and 500 Influence Points.
- Medium Base: Requires 5 Survivors and 1000 Influence Points.
- Large Base: Requires 6 Survivors and 1500 Influence Points.
- Massive Base: Requires 8 Survivors and 3500 Influence Points.
HOW TO SLEEP AND REMOVE TRAUMA
Characters may sometimes suffer from trauma in the game which will prevent them from fully recovering health, and it will also affect their mood. You can find what kind of trauma a character suffers from through the Community tab. To fix this, you will need an infirmary.As your infirmary facility gets better, you can improve trauma in more efficient ways. For example, if your infirmary level is at least 2, then characters will automatically recover from trauma as they spend time at the infirmary. At any time, you can heal your active character if you have at least 3 medicine in storage, so make sure you always have enough medical supplies around.
Among the many things like hunger and thirst which you will have to manage, you will notice that your character also gets sleepy. When this happens, you will have to ensure that the character gets enough sleep so as to get rid of fatigue. If you have beds, then characters will recover faster from fatigue. Additionally, you can also temporarily fix fatigue by drinking coffee and energy drinks.
SPECIALIZED SKILLS GUIDE
There are five major skills a character can have although whether characters get the fifth skill is completely random. The fifth skill can be extremely useful skills like Mechanics, Chemistry, or some others. The four other skills are listed below. Each of the skills will level up as you perform actions associated with the skill.
- Wits: Affects how well a character can loot items.
- Cardio: Affects the character’s stamina.
- Shooting: Affects how much your gun moves when firing.
- Fighting: This affects the damage dealt by the character when melee fighting.
Apart from these major skills, there are specialized skills you can gain once one of the major skills reaches level seven, You can find below all of the specialized skills you can unlock in the game.
- Sharpshooting: All of your shots will pierce through enemies.
- Stealth: Allows you to perform stealth kills faster.
- Endurance: Lessens injury severity by 50% and also provides a health boost.
- Herbalism: 1 Medical item will be added per day to your base camp.
- Agriculture: 1 Food item will be added each day to base camp.
- Marathon: Allows you to sprint without any stamina cost when carrying only a light load.
- Munitions: Adds 3 ammunition to base camp per day.
- Discipline: 5 Stamina is generated each time you get a kill.
- Sword play: You will get an instant kill when you grab a zombie and then attack.
- Backpacking: This will add an extra inventory slot to your pockets.
- Gunslinger: Snap aiming will take up less stamina.
- Weapon Handling: You will be able to fix weapon jamming faster.
HOW TO MANAGE BASE HAPPINESS
Base happiness is very important to maintain or you will find that things quickly start falling apart. Some of the things you will have to keep in mind include always having enough resources for your survivors to survive. If any of them die, then the others’ morale will drop low. Morale is the next thing you’ll have to keep in mind when trying to keep your community happy, and you can keep morale low by ensuring that you have enough resources at all times and that characters aren’t falling sick too often. Having characters with high morale has some great benefits while those with low morale will make mistakes and cause fights.
Also, make sure you keep an eye on the threat level so that it doesn’t get too high. If the threat level gets too high, then zombies will attack your base. The threat leve; rises when you’re building a facility because of the noise generated, and it will go back down once the construction is completed.
Always ensure that you have enough beds for your survivors and also enough food and water sources. Try and keep at least 10 Food in your stockpile at all times as it is the most important resource. The next most important resource is Medicine, so make sure you construct an Infirmary facility early on as it has a number of important uses. Things like Power and Water Supply aren’t absolutely necessary for survival, but they go a long way if you want your community to have maximum happiness.
To keep your community happy, form alliances with enclaves and carry out some beneficial trade deals. This will earn you some much needed Influence which will be necessary to ensure that your community stays happy. You should also always be collecting resources and bringing them back to base so as to make it grow. Additionally, clearing plague hearts and infestations is also a surefire way to ensure that your community remains happy.
Finally, you will have to upgrade your base so that your community can grow into a larger one. You will have to have enough resources to support a large community, so make sure you build necessary facilities such as hydroponics or Farms.
HOW TO UNLOCK THE ARTILLERY STRIKE COMMAND
The Artillery Strike Radio Command is amazing and can be really helpful in clearing out large groups of zombies. To get the command, you have to first find a Military Comms Station in a given area. These are located at the outskirts of every map area. Once you find it, clear the area and then make it an outpost. Now, you will be able to use the Artillery Strike Command from the radio menu for just 150 Influence points. Once you use the command, you’ll have to wait another 30 minutes before you can use it again.
You will get a smoke grenade once you get this command. You just have to throw this smoke grenade at your desired location and the Artillery will fire at this location.
CHEATS, ITEM DUPLICATION AND INFLUENCE FARMING METHODS
Note: Please use the following cheats at your own discretion. Using cheats online may lead to an immediate ban. GamingBolt or its staff members are not responsible for any problems arising due to their use.
Sometimes, you may find that you do not have enough resources to do what you want in the game. A shortage of resources can also have disastrous consequences if you don’t act quickly. This section will describe the best farming methods and cheats that you can make use of to make the game a little easier.
You can gain Influence by doing any number of things in the game such as clearing infestations, destroying plague hearts, completing quests, and more. The best option however is to trade items that you don’t need. Make sure you ally with enclaves as you will be able to get more Influence by trading with these allies. Since each enclave only has a limited amount of Influence to buy what you’re selling, it would be a good idea to ally with as many enclaves as possible. For more information on farming and gaining resources efficiently, you can check out the video below.
Alternatively, there’s an exploit you can use to earn potentially infinite influence. However, be forewarned that this is a slow process and not a quick way to get Influence. What you have to do is go to an Allied Enclave to trade. Take a stack of bullets and sell these individually to the trader. Once you sell all of the bullets, buy them back as a stack for a lower price, and then sell them again individually. Keep repeating this process to gain how much ever influence you want.
Additionally, you can refer to this cheat table which will help you alter a number of things such as unlimited Stamina, infinite Car Fuel, Fatigue, Health, and more. These should make the game significantly easier for you. You can check out the video below for more information regarding the cheats.