Overview
So far, we have 40+ Tips n’ Tricks. Please contribute your findings and point out mistakes.This will always remain a WIP, as we can never have enough tips. However, I am working on a video version of this guide and planning on adding screenshots or gifs sooner or later.Last changed 11/26/2017.
Introduction
This guide will explain little life hacks and tricks the community, my friends and me found out while playing Dying Light. These are intended to make your Dying Light experience easier and all around more enjoyable, independent of your game progress. From newbie to pro, I hope everyone will find something they hadn’t known. Without further ado, let’s get started!
Please look at the outro for the special thanks and some further information about this guide.
Firearm bullets ricochet
Most firearm bullets will ricochet off hard surfaces such as roads, letting you kill enemies with am indirect shot.
Build up Kuai Dagger Speed boost fast
The Kuai Dagger’s speed boost rises when you chain parkour moves together, up to a maximum of 10 boosts. In order to get there quickly on flat ground, sprint and mash the crouch / slide button. This will initiate and instantly cancel slide, giving you the boost.
Fun Fact: did you know “Kuai” is an asian term describing finely sliced meat or fish? The more you know…
Sliding & Dropkicking in all directions
It is possible to slide backwards, left, right, diagonally.
It is also possible to dropkick while doing these things.
All it takes is a bit of button-mashery magic. Here’s Blademaster’s extremely detailed guide on it:
[link]
Using the Grappling Hook to stagger enemies
Your Grappling Hook will stagger normal
zombies and virals. It will also hurt the
Night Hunter.
Using the Grappling Hook to detonate bombers
Hitting a bomber with your grappling hook will cause him to instantly detonate. This is a safe way or disposing of bombers without wasting throwables, arrows or ammo.
Insta-killing enemies
You can instantly kill enemies by vaulting
over them and performing a drop attack.
Insta-killing enemies II
If an enemy is in ragdoll mode, and in a position that leaves them inable to get up, they will die instantly.
Shields can block spits
Shields will protect you from a Hunters spits,
if they are in front of you or stuck to your front.
Shields can block bomber explosions.
You will survive a bomber explosion from up close if you bring up a shield fast enough. They also negate the explosion’s knockdown effect.
Camouflage against horde spit
Applying camoflage after being targeted by the bomber horde will cause them to lose your scent.
Camouflage against the night hunter
Using a camouflage ability or item will disable the hunter’s ability to exactly pinpoint your location, instead only giving him a approximate area to look for you.
Drop attacks and rolling
If you perform a drop attack from rolling height, you will usually take fall damage. However, if you press the “roll” button on impact (Default: “C”), you won’t suffer the fall damage.
Dropkicking a zombie to avoid fall damage
Dropkicking a zombie before impact will massively reduce damage taken from the fall.
Your Buggy and fall damage
Your buggy does not count as car, meaning you will die a horrible painful death if you attempt to avoid fall damage by jumping on its roof.
Parasols cushion fall damage
Jumping on these Parasols will cushion your fall damage.
Using wires to avoid fall damage
These wires with yellow flags on them will cushion your fall!
Trajectory in freefall onto cushioning objects
If you just hold your “Forward” key (default “W”) while freefalling towards a cushioning object, the game will automatically correct your trajectory towards that object.
Crossbows count as bows
Crossbows count as bows, which means their damage will scale with the “Bow” legendary skill tree.
Gas Vents
Gas Vents can be destroyed to release a
stream of fire that injures enemies.
If Mama ain’t happy…
nobody happy.
Jumping & Kicking
Hopping up, then kicking an infected in the face is likely to throw him to the ground.
Jumping & Attacking
Jumping and attacking will play a different animation. For knifes, this is a stab, for unarmed a straight punch and for onehanded weapons a straight vertical slice.
Sliding into enemies as a combat strategy
Sliding into an enemies legs will most likely cause them to fall down. This is useful in early game combat, allowing you to down enemies and hit them on the ground. This also works on human targets.
The “Tackle” move affects everything in front of you.
This means that you can even tackle enemies that are in ragdoll mode on the ground.
Weapon repair state and throwing
Your weapon will always deal the same damage if thrown, independent of its repair state.
Restoring broken weapons
If your weapons are out of repairs, they can be fully restored by doing a blue shield quest.
ATTENTION: Do not take items from the quest giver until you have performed all repairs you need to, as this will cause him to go away.
More XP from disaster relief packages
Changing to “Nightmare” difficulty before turning in DRPs will increase your XP gain from them.
Some consider this as cheating, but that discussion isn’t the point of this guide.
Using firecrackers to make zombies suicidal
Throwing firecrackers at spikes or flames will sometimes cause them to impale themselves or catch on fire. The more zombies, the more likely this is: as they bump into each other they might push their fellow undead around and into their… death?
Landing on enemies to lessen fall damage
Landing on enemies will never kill you, although you will still take reduced fall damage.
(ATTENTION: This does not count for drop attacks.)
Vaulting over people
You can actually vault over other players.
Checking the time
You can check the in-game time by initiating the onehanded throw animation or simply using the clock in your inventory.
Finding a gun in early game
You can find a handgun with ammo in the fishing hut seen below.
Intimidating human enemies
If you point a firearm at human enemies that are not armed with ranged weapons, they will put their hands up. Attacking or killing one of them causes them to fight back.
Furthermore, this also works without ammunition.
(Thank you to Engineer’s Bacon for contributing this fact!)
Blue awnings
You can hit and shoot trough blue awnings. The same counts for enemies too. Also, they prevent fall damage!
Swimming during invasions
A hunter can no longer pounce a swimming survivor during night invasions as of summer 2017, however, survivors can drop-kill swimming hunters.
Weapon damage against the hunter
When used against the night hunter, damage is determined by weapon type / class, not its actual damage. Debuffs from upgrades still apply.
Killing the night hunter with a drop attack
Will never give you fall damage.
Ground pounding UV flares as the Night Hunter
Ground pounding a UV flare will extinguish them.
Police zombies
Police Zombies have more health, and they are also more resistant against dropkicks.
Friends’ Friends are your Friends.
Your Friends’ Friends can join if your multiplayer setting are on “Friends only”.
Carrying gas cans
You can kick while carrying gas cans! Throwing them will cause any normal sized enemy to enter ragdoll mode.
20:30
At 20:30 ingame time, all zombies will stop attacking and look at the setting sun for a short time.
Grappling hook into safe zones
You can use your grappling hook to pull yourself into save zones.
(Thanks to CombatMist for this trick!)
Outro
Special thanks to:
-BladeMaster, for helping me out a lot in my early days, contributing his movement guide, and showing me a lot of tricks
-Engineer’s Bacon for pointing out that you can also intimidate enemies without ammo.
-CombatMist for the “Grappling into safe zones” trick
This Guide is work in progress. I will keep adding more tips as I find them. Please share your lifehacks as well!