I was awful at the first game and never made it very far. I could use some community tips to make sure I don't have a miserable time, it's all a little overwhelming. Surprised by how quiet this forum is.

Oh, and to add my own I think I found an exploit. During the tutorial (before heading off in the car) there are no drains on resources, so you can max out cardio by running in circles. When you max out the first 7 stars you pick a perk, then you can level another 7 for max cardio. Only with your primary character though because you can't control anyone else in the tutorial.

@alistercat: games not out for most until tomorrow i think.

Edit - also, thanks for the 'sploit, look forward to using that.

sell stuff you don't need for more rep

Is anyone else having graphical problems? I'm playing on a relatively beefy PC and the game is very stuttery and is running like crap (especially the character movement, very hitchy) :/, turning off post processing helps a bit but it makes the game looks worse. The game just doesn't look as smooth as it was for Brad in the playdate and quicklook :(. Anyone have any tips?

One thing i learned the hard way, if you have a faction that is giving you daily bonuses and you want to keep them, make sure to do EVERY request that comes in from them. After having a faction helping me out for a few days I happened to miss one quest and they just up and permanently vanished from game (I would've expected a loss of faction rep, but nope, they just up and left)

yea, same thing happened to me after i did a bunch of quests for this one faction. happened to miss their one call because i was in the middle of a mission pretty beat up and they just bounced from my game

No idea why that'd be an issue. I'm running on a mid-range PC (R9 390x, FX-8300) and getting 60fps on ultra. Maybe make sure drivers are up to date, etc?

@samoopy: I switched from fullscreen to windowed and now it's running perfectly on ultra with post processing on. I have no idea why that would fix it to be honest, im not that tech savvy. Maybe something is up with my PC :/

@gamerchicck: I'm having the same issues, so it's not just you. All the Windows 10 games I've tried (ReCore, Gears of War 4, and this) have run very inconsistently with lots of frame drops and hitching, despite most other PC games running perfectly fine. The only way I had been able to get (mostly) regular smoothness is by making sure NOTHING ELSE is running when I play the game, but SoD 2 has still been pretty iffy so far even doing that. I'll try switching my game to windowed and see if it helps; maybe it has something to do with the fake-fullscreen that W10 games use?

Probably an obvious one, but easy to miss ( took me like 10 hours, missed the prompt and found out on a stream later...): You can transfer items and rucksacks from your parked car to your stockpile directly.

@gamerchicck: more than likely it has something to do with vsync, i have had stuff like that happen in other games.

Not THAT obvious haha. I didn't even happen to notice it until I just luckily saw there was an achievement for doing it (similar to you like, double digit hours in). Boy did I waste a LOT of time running back and forth between my vehicle and the stockpile.

I think you drive faster in reverse. At least with the slower vehicles. Might be the same speed in the faster ones. I've been driving backwards a LOT.

@matiaz_tapia: how do this?

When your vehicle is parked in a parking spot at your base (also not clearly outlined in the game, look for one of the concrete barriers and by the fuel gauge it should say park when you're officially "parked") you should be able to just open your trunk as if you were going to transfer things to and from it, only when you highlight the items in the trunk, you can hit I believe LT to shoot them straight to the stockpile (it says it at the bottom of the screen, just in case I have the wrong button or you're not playing with a controller).

On an unrelated note, anyone else have the, I guess game breaking bug eventually, where the infestations disappear from the map? I had the prompt of "clear infestations to boost morale" checked the map, no yellow/green houses to be found. Okay, fine, it's a weird buggy game, I'll wait. Hours and several plague hearts later, no more infestations appear, the prompt never goes away, and just now I got a RED message saying "there are too many infestations get rid of them now!"

So, yeah, that sucks. Not really sure what to do and I guess the game is a too new to find any fixes for it.

@sethmode: Thanks for the tip. That will come in pretty handy.

I have a multiplayer question! Do your group's resources continue to deplete when you are in a random online game? I joined someone else's game for quite a while, and I don't think my home resources were dropping, but I'm really not sure. If they don't, that kind of seems like it might break the game a bit. I was out and about with some guy for over an hour, collecting loot that I can bring into my game, and upgrading character skills. He eventually kicked me when I accidentally kited a bloater over to his base.

@merxworx01: It's actually RT, and thank@matiaz_tapia, they said it first! But it is SUPER helpful. I spent so much time running back and forth and the game has ZERO interest in letting you know about the feature.

Yep, I've had that. Had the "Clear infestations to improve moral" message, so cleared the five visible infections -- none left on the map, but still got the message (the message did from yellow to white though). Between that and the other borderline game-breaking bugs (losing control of a character after leaving a vehicle, not getting control back until zombies attack the car and it explodes, and only surviving because I was RIGHT next to my base; UI randomly disappearing, including once during a fight with a juggernaut, which would have cost me a character [as I couldn't see ammo/health/stamina] had I not killed the game before it saved), I think I might be done with the game for now.

Word of warning: If the UI does disappear, don't use the supply locker - the game stops taking all input--your character is stuck in the using a menu animation and you can't back out--and I'm not sure what happens if it saves in that state.

I think there's a tutorial prompt for it, but it didn't show up after I'd already done it. Same with the "You can carry multiple rucksacks in vehicles" tip - that didn't show up until I'd already done it, and then showed up twice more despite me doing it multiple times.

Edit: There's a post on Reddit about possibly finding missing infections - seemed to work for me (it found one infection that wasn't showing up properly, though it was ALSO hidden by a horde icon so difficult to find).

Thanks for the heads up, duder! I actually found the same post, and it was extremely helpful, as inelegant a solution as it may be.

I feel like this game is fine until you hit about Day 5 or 6 or so and then it reveals it's true self. That's been my experience with this first settlement at least. No bugs, no bugs, no bugs, and then just, bam, a big mess of stuff.

here's a reddit thread on tips and tricks : reddit link

if you are on PC there's some tweaks you can make in .ini for performance : reddit link

Moving to a new map will increase difficulty (more zombies, more special zombies, more hostile humans).

Be very careful around human NPCs, even when you think you solved problems with just words, they might start shooting.

My recommendations thus far. I've been playing since Saturday-

• Always Carry a gun. Its the only reliable way to take down other humans who go rogue on you. Without a gun you'll spend 5 minutes dodging around them while they bash your head in. You also need them for bloaters.

• As temping as it is to run zombies down with your care it actually damages the vehicles quite bit. Your better off only ramming huge hordes when you need to and ether driving past small groups or taking them down on foot.
• Investigate everything- When you get a radio call, go check it out. They can have unexpected outcomes and keep things interesting.
• Find a big truck ASAP- They are great for looting. You can carry multiple rucksacks in the trunk and fit a bunch of people if you need to take them somewhere.

@lkpower: Do you know if hitting them with the car door does damage to the car? It doesn't seem to, as far as I can tell.

Suppressors wont break so fire away and don't shoot guns unless there suppressed and the get a food outpost first and always build a infermery and a workshop.

@sethmode: I have on more than one occasion lost a door when hitting zeds w\ the door open

@lkpower: I call bullshit on that IRL. Sure, the outer paneling on the door would get messed up fast, but I feel like you would have to hit hundreds of humans to really damage the structurally important parts like the frame and hinges and whatever. Then again, I guess modern car safety design would assume the door is closed during collisions, and probably assumes the door is nestled into the car body and that the car body is the part that needs to be structurally strong.

@bisonhero: I hit a door hard enough to make it not close while I was on my bike. I bet you hit enough zombies at speed the thing is going to fall apart fast. The car I hit was a Geo Metro though, so maybe not the most well constructed thing.

I had a situation earlier today where I was going to get some meds and got my car stuck in a railing, so me and my follower had to hoof it the rest of the way. On the way a juggernaut started following us, I outran it but my follower got ripped in half by it. Right as he died my hud disapperared completely so I was trying to run away from the jugg and had no idea how much energy I had or anything. I eventually got killed by some zeds that surrounded me when I was out of stamina, which I didn't know, then since the hud was gone, I couldn't see the prompts to mash x and ended up losing 2 characters.

So, yes a very buggy game.

Here's a tip for something I just started doing recently. I'm at the point where I have a lot of vehicles around my base and I'm stocked up on all my supplies. When I go out on runs and come back with items in rucksacks, instead of depositing them in my base, where they may disappear due to being too full, I've started placing them in the trunks of vehicles around my base that I won't use during my supply runs. This way, if I'm ever low on certain supplies, I should have a supply near my base and wouldn't have to go venturing out into places that are further and further away from my base.

@matiaz_tapia:Yep, I was in about the same place as you. Didn't know about it until I read an achievement description and finally paid attention to the vehicle/trunk when running supplies into my base.

@gamerchicck: From what I read, apparently "Ultra" in fullscreen switches the vsync to a variable one, so for me it usually just stayed at a locked 30fps (doesn't do this in "High") but then yes when you switch to windowed the issue seems to go away and the game runs at a smooth 60fps. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an option for windowed borderless yet, so I've just been playing on "High". The differences really aren't that great between the two settings, so the game still looks alright.

Also holy crap that rucksack/trunk trick. Thank you guys for pointing that out, otherwise I would have been unloading them one at a time, and that was not very fun.

So not sure if I just picked the "hard" location(the plateau), but I'm maybe 5 hours in and am starting to get quests literally on the other side of the map(separated by a river valley) and it seems like a pain in the *** to get from my base to the quest.

Am I missing some way to get across the map other than a car, or will it not be as big of a deal once you get more settlements(still not sure how that will work as I've already ran out of plots).

When the quest for the wandering trader pops up (the one with a countdown timer), take all the "high level/extraordinarily high trade items with you. The wandering trader has the highest influence of any other enclaves I've found.

@reap3r160: I read somewhere that you can just drive across bodies of water in this game as they're all shallow. Not sure if that applies in this situation.

@alistercat: Best off waiting for the floaties and Speedo dlc just to be safe. You can never be too prepared.

@namoo: I think I'd prefer without the speedos.

@alistercat: Hmm, I'll have to try that. Then again, like I said, it's a river in a ravine so a point of ingress is tricky(I've already flipped a truck once or twice xD).

@reap3r160: I'll try it and let you know. Don't want you to lose anything.

@wolf_blitzer85: Thank you!!! putting it on high did fix the problem and I can go back to fullscreen now :D not having windowed borderless does suck I hope they fix that and the other bugs down the line.

: So I keep reading that taking out plague hearts is end game stuff, however a few hours in I have a quest to destroy one. Is it safe to go for it that early on, or should I hold off until I'm better equipped? I tried going over there, just got completely overrun and didn't really seem like I was doing anything so I'm leaving it alone for now. Problem then is that quest tracker is driving the RPG completionist in me nuts. I can only make the first two types of bombs, the bullet can ones and pipe bombs and I am not exactly strapped when it comes to guns.

@gamerchicckYou are very welcome, 30 fps lock isn't terrible for me, but that motion blur is something else.

@wolf_blitzer85: They get harder for each one you take out. Destroying the first one is easy. Do that, but then think twice about doing any more. You should save up all your explosives.

@reap3r160: Turns out you can't just create a new community on a new map. So I can't test it for you, sorry.

@wolf_blitzer85: They do get harder as you take more out so you have to be very prepared. I almost lost my best character on the second heart because once you start throwing bombs at the heart a ton of plague zombies swarm you like crazy and beat the heck out of you, best thing to do is use firecrackers and distractions so you can finish the job in peace. I suggest for the first one stack up on 3 bombs and maybe some Molotovs because for me the 3 bombs they gave me were not enough to destroy the heart and if that still doesn't destroy it go with range, melee should be a last last resort. If you're low on explosives there are factions that have a special radio perk that helps you with plague hearts by giving you a supply drop (for a cost and has a bit of time charge on it) of explosives once you reach a high standing with them so I suggest focusing on them a bit I found them to be very helpful.

@gamerchicck: did you try updating your video drivers? Nvidia just released a new one for State of Decay.

@gamerchicck: @alistercat:Thanks guys! You have instilled me with a new sense of confidence.

Huge tip for me, with inventory space being so shitty. Your pockets (where bandages and snacks usually go) count as inventory slots.

For killing the plague hearts, a .50 Cal rifle does it the quickest, but after that a cheeky way is to try C4 and a box mine. After stealthily setting up the C4 close to the heart along with the mine, get some safe distance away and blow the C4, and when zombies come running, they'll activate the mine killing the heart. Fire and explosives will work well too if you can find/make enough. Repair and build up your base. Workshop, infirmary, and a garden or farm, water and power are all super important for survival and keeping morale up. Get as many outposts as you can, the ones that give food are very useful, by upgrading the command center. Get the trucks and vans for 6-8 inventory slots. Sell high value items to the roving merchant; it gets you lots of influence per item. Juggernauts aren't really worth fighting, except maybe just one to get the melee execution achieve. They'll wreck your vehicles, and kill your survivors quite easily. Take followers when you go out to scavenge; you can alternate control to fill each characters backpack. Best backpack space is 8 as far as I've seen so far, so upgrade from 6 or 7 asap. Be sure to save and use the books that teach skills. If a character already has a specialty they can only use that kind of text, but a character with no specialty can learn something new, so get 'em trained on some skill you need.

How does the leveling of skills such as mechanics work? I noticed that crafting a surpressor levels it up, but do I need to have the character with mechanics active when making the surpressor for it to count? Or is it assumed they do the job just because they have the skill?

-if you got the distance right you can dodge into the back of a zombie for a "stealth" execution
-level your swordplay to max will unlock a execution you can do regardless of where the zombie is facing as long as you have stamina, not sure if there's similar moves for the blunt weapon skill
-max backpacking will give you a 3rd pocket slot
-suppressor lowers gun durability except bolt rifles and some revolver
-a plague heart takes about 2~3 full magazines to kill for M4/AR15/M14, in case you ran out of explosives or have too much ammo to spare
-if you're out there with a full inventory and really want to free it up you can just claim a random structure as outpost then stuff all your loot(except rucksacks) in then abandon it. it helps me alot since I'm abit of a OCD hoarder :v