Overview
The beginner’s guide to making your way from Washington D.C. to Safe Haven without dying (maybe).
Starting Out
Really important stuff:
- Ammo – 200-400
- Car parts – 2-4
- Medkits – 5-10
- Fuel – 20-30
Less important stuff:
- Food – You’ll end up with far more than you need when you scavenge
- Scrap – Same as food, fairly easy to scavenge for
- Money – Slightly harder to scavenge for, but you probably won’t use it often enough that it becomes a problem
Generally, you need to be most concerned about fuel and car parts as they’re necessary for your progress. Ammo, while useful, won’t be use for a lot of situations. The medkits will mostly be used on your main character as everybody else can be healed by resting (unless they’re incappacitated, and that’s why you have extras).
On the Road
Some facts:
- You will stop every hour
- Depending upon your pace you will travel either 30 (slow), 45 (normal), or 60 (fast) mph
- Something will usually happen at each stop (i.e. your party being stupid and sitting on stuff, people getting dysentery)
- You will use 0.25 fuel between each stop
- A full party will use 10 food per stop (if part of your party dies, the amount of food used is reduced)
Car Repairs
You’re on the run from zombies, of course your car is going to break down.
The way your chance of success normally works is that the farther you get into the game, the lower your chances will be. When you start out the game, you can usually get away with a successful repair for 7 or 8 scrap. Once you get closer to Safe Haven, it’s a better idea to use 9 or 10 scrap for repairs if you don’t want to do it more than once.
Zombie Hordes
When you run into a horde, usually when you’re leaving a settlement, you’ll end up with three options (four if you have enough money).
- Option 1: Wait for horde to disperse
- Option 2: Attempt to sneak through horde
- Option 3: Shoot your way through the horde
- Option 4: Hire mercenaries to get you through
I would personally recommend that you wait for the horde to disperse until the horde becomes either docile or alert (preferably docile), and then sneak through. I would not recommend shooting your way through unless you’re either trying for the achievment or you have the car upgrade which allows you to get through without a scratch.
Points of Interest + Gravestones
Points of Interest: Most of the time, it is wise to go for the points of interest. The ill effects are usually either minor or rare, and most of the time the people involved will give you stuff so there’s really little point to not going for them (aside from some of them being rather creepy).
Gravestones: I would always go for the gravestones. First of all, most of them are downright hilarious and you’re missing out on reading some great epitaphs. Second, the worse that can happen is that you’ll end up shooting a zombie, and if you don’t end up shooting a zombie, you’ll get some stuff.
Stopping Points
Buying and Selling:
At almost every landmark or city you stop at, you’ll be able to buy or sell various items.Once you get farther into the game, you might run across a few places where there is nothing available to buy.
Generally, unless you’re really desparate, it is wise to only buy car parts, fuel, and (if necessary) medkits.
Upgrades and Combat Training:
At each stopping point, you’ll also eiher get an option to upgrade your car or get some combat training. While doing either is completely optional and you can definitely complete the came without, it can be useful.
Combat training: You can have three skills at once. Such skills include faster reloading times, scavenging opporunities, faster movement, body armor, etc. My personal favorite is the increased bullet speed simply because, for me, it improves my aim a lot.
Car upgrades: Like you can upgrade your person, you can also upgrade your car. You can have five at a time (one for each part of the car). These upgrades include things such as making your car less likely to break down, allowing you to produce food as you drive, the ability to drive straight through extreme weather, the ability to easily get through hordes, etc. My personal favorite is the chainsaw windows as they allow you to shoot your way straight through hordes without any worries.
Jobs:
- Always look at the payout and ask yourself whether it’s really worth it. A lot of the jobs that reward you with food or scrap really aren’t worth it. Ones that give you medkits or car parts are nice though.
- Don’t take dangerous or suicide missions. You will die.
- The easiest missions are the retrieval ones. You don’t even have to shoot any zombies.
Taking Care of the Party:
When you stop somewhere, you can rest your party. For each hour rested, some of their health will regenerate. None of your own health will regenerate though, so that is why you save the medkits for yourself and leave the healing of the rest of the party to sleeping. However, if one of your party is incappacitated, they will need a medkit in order to become unincappacitated.
Bites: If one of your party is bitten, don’t worry! Nothing will happen unless they become incappacitated. Just keep their health up and they can survive the entire game.
Scavenging
Scavenging is the reason that you will never have to worry about food, scrap, and probably money as you can easily get hundreds of units of food and scrap.
Tips:
- Always scavenge when the zombie activity is low
- You don’t always have to shoot zombies! Just avoid them and make them get stuck running into trees
- Scrap and food are the most plentiful
- Each item comes in three quantities. For example, money will come in $5 (a dollar bill), $20 (a wallet), and $50 (a bag of cash)
Killing Zombies
That is the whole point of the game, right?
Surprisingly enough, you can get through most of the game without needing to kill very many zombies at all. The only times that you’re actually required to kill zombies is when your car is surrounded or when you stumble upon a tombstone with a zombie.
Zombie Killing Tips:
- Don’t use a touchpad. It is much, much easier to kill zombies if you’re using a mouse (take it from experience)
- Clicking and dragging isn’t strictly necessary once you get the hang of it as you can aim pretty well with just the little dots. Plus, this takes less time
- Logically the crawling zombies should be slower, right? They’re actually faster and are harder to kill
- The fat zombies take two hits to kill, but they will pause after the first hit, give you time to reload for a second
- Remember that you don’t always have to kill zombies. Retrieval missions and scavenging can usually be done without firing a single shot. if you’re low on ammo, this is a good thing to remember
Bosses and Bikers
Bosses:
You will encounter three different types of bosses during the game.
- The dogs: These will pop up while you’re scavenging no matter what the activity level is. They are fairly easy to avoid and are much like zombies, except faster and with different directional movements. They will take three shots to kill.
- The bear: The bear will also pop up while scavenging and is similar to the dogs. While it won’t die, there is only one of them.
- The deer: Arguably the easiest to deal with. They will pop up while you’re on the road and you’ll need to avoid them in your car. Luckily this is fairly easy to do as you can just watch where the deer are coming out of the pack and move the car accordingly.
Bikers:
The bikers will pop up a couple of times throughout the game. They are similar to the deer in that they are chasing after your car. Unlike the deer, instead of avoiding them, you need to run into them. Fail to run into them and they will shoot you, break your car, and take your stuff.
Safe Haven
Congratulations! You’ve made it to Safe Haven and all is well.
No it isn’t.
Before you can actually get into Safe Haven, you have to go and collect cans of gas to power the generator.
While this elicites cries of “Seriously?” from the player just about to beat it for the first time, it’s surpisingly not very difficult to do. If you have other party members remaining, they will shoot all of the zombies that come near the vehicle. In addition, it is similar to the retrieval jobs where you don’t actually have to shoot zombies and can just avoid them by weaving in between walls while you’re picking up your gas tanks.
After you’ve successfully picked up your gas tanks, you’re home free.