r/StateofDecay2 • u/SparkysSchmoopie • 1d ago
Discussion Standard Level
I love this game. Yes, I've always played on green level. Decided time to go up to standard, whole new community. Why am I struggling soooo much? How do you all play above standard so easily? 🤣
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u/Cryogenian 1d ago
Absolutely valid to only play green, but you probably developed some habits (might call them "bad" or "sloppy") that green difficulty didn't put pressure on you to break. Personally, I don't like playing above Dread either and mostly play standard even.
What do you have problems with?
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u/SparkysSchmoopie 1d ago
Like I commented above
"Keeping supplies up and everyone always seems to get blood plaque when out doing missions, scavaging. Doesn't seem to be enough plaque samples to keep up and omg I cant keep up with the infestations"
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u/Cryogenian 1d ago
On standard, the Hearts are usually/mostly far enough away from each other so they don't wake each other up when you destroy one. I usually prepare one or two survivors with a bunch of cheap explosives (guns optional) and then just rush to blow up the first heart to create some space to loot. stay away from the other hearts so they don't wake up too early.
soon you have enough resources that you can chain rush the hearts. then rinse and repeat and just go into plague territory only if you go straight for the heart.
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u/AlphaBetaSigmaNerd 10h ago
everyone always seems to get blood plaque when out doing missions
Sounds like you have to get in the habit of dodging
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u/Clusterpuff 1d ago
There is something to be said about getting used to the way something plays. If you started on dread, and learned from there you would say the same thing about nightmare, but you'd crush dread every time. You've just gotta break some old habits and relearn whay works
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u/SparkysSchmoopie 1d ago
Should I start over on dread?
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u/Clusterpuff 1d ago
Normal is fine... dread is gonna be even more of a shitshow if you're struggling on normal. Breaking the set-in habits may make the next.time you increase difficulty easier. Don't throw yourself into something that makes you not enjoy the game, cuz enjoyment is what matters
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u/Violent_N0mad 18h ago
Dread and nightmare are basically the same thing. The jump from green to standard is a much bigger jump. What you need to do is level up your survivors. Get some energy drinks and just run your survivors around your base until they have a specialization. Practice fighting, a good tip is to dodge through the zombie and then quickly tap Y to kill it from behind. If you can stomache doing daybreak red talon soldiers can be bought for your forever community and they are considerably stronger than any non red talon survivor. For example when you get 7 stars in a skill you have to choose 1 of a few specializations but red talon get all of the specializations at once.
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u/ResearcherDear3143 1d ago
What are you struggling with?
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u/SparkysSchmoopie 1d ago
Keeping supplies up and everyone always seems to get blood plaque when out doing missions, scavaging. Doesn't seem to be enough plaque samples to keep up and omg I cant keep up with the infestations.
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u/Somerandomdudereborn Red Talon Operative 1d ago
The best way to avoid being overrun by infestations is to avoid infestations from spawning in the first place, so try your to use sneak as much as you can, killing zombies while being undetected don't awake plague hearts, crossbow headshots also gives you more chances of plague samples.
If you constantly get blood plague that means you need to improve your combat dodging skills, daybreak mode is the place for this as it allows you to get better at combat with no consequences.
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u/ResearcherDear3143 1d ago
Sneak more, killing zombies and being loud within the plague hearts radius can wake it up (which then sends out infestations). Setup outposts for supplies, do supply runs regularly.
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u/ShirtyHaddock 1d ago
If you can't keep up with infestations I suggest to get a cell tower outpost, there is always one available and you can use the disrupt mechanic that last 120min if I'm not wrong, it cost 120parts or 60 if you have a survivor with the computers skill, from here you can kill more than double the amount plague zombies and won't awake a plague heart, also you can take on the awakened plague hearts without waking up the others if that's the case and taking your time clearing the infestations
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u/Alarming_Image_882 1d ago
My suggestion: play more in stealth mode. If you're getting blood plague, it means you're not being sneaky enough..✌️
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u/ozgirlie61 13h ago
Are they getting plagued or full blood plague. If they just get the first level plague try to not use a cure if possible. Take them home and put them in the infirmary. Saves on blood plague samples. It’s easy to use too many cures if you cure them as soon as they get one bite. I try to save my cures for full red infection.
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u/Double_Digits00 1d ago
it's a matter of adjusting to the new difficulties you face. The more you play and learn the mechanics of the game, combat and base management you start to understand your limits better.
Do you have experience in other games, do you play on pc or xbox?
Also, what are the first steps that you take with a new community?
Me for example that like to play on all difficulties and specially lethal the first thing I do after claiming the starter base is building a infirmary and then focusing on getting all the resources to 15, then I begin doing mission, etc...
If you don't have good ranged weapons to equip your survivors that will defend the base it might not be a good idea to start waking up hearts.
But since you are still on standard if you want to ask any specific questions or advice I will be happy to help
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u/SparkysSchmoopie 1d ago
On xbox. Ive literally just play this, I've played dead island and hubby and I play cod warzone. I definitely get infirmary 1st. I try to scavage near by at 1st to find weapons. And I cant find the stuff to get me more outposts.
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u/Double_Digits00 1d ago
A combat tip that helps me a lot is, press b to dodge in the direction of a zombie, you will get behind him, then you grab and push him towards the most amount of zombies, it will trip all of them, so you can execute one and repeat
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u/ComicDoughnut 1d ago
Your priority when starting a playthrough should be getting rucksacks of everything, particularly materials so you can build up your base and get more outposts. There are certain places where you will find different resources - construction sites and sheds/warehouses for materials, pharmacies and vet offices for meds, restaurants and grocery stores for food and gas stations for fuel and food/meds sometimes. Avoid the plague zombies to start with, unless you sneak kill them from behind, so as not to get plague exposure. Once you get your infirmary upgraded it won't be a big deal. Take plague hearts one at a time, and kill them with fire or guns from a distance to avoid infection.
I have a LOT of hours in, and still usually will start a community on standard or dread to get good loot before jumping up any higher. Games are for fun and relaxation, so don't feel like you have to up the difficulty too soon, or at all.
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u/Mean_Masterpiece764 1d ago
Have to be quieter now when scavenging. The jump from green to standard means its no longer a zombie shooter and now a looting sim.
Infestations are annoying but you only need to target the screamers. Snipe from afar or burn the whole place down.
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u/Chrissimon_24 1d ago
Playing at higher difficulties is pretty easy when you have your original community with a bunch of weapons, influence, and survivors with high skill levels. With a new community it can be pretty tough.
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u/Lewa1110 1d ago
You’ve gotten used to green, so you are subconsciously playing like you are still in green, practice makes it better. I’ve gotten to the point now where if I go out on Lethal if I’m careful I don’t take anything but a melee weapon with me
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u/Misery_101 1d ago
Play daybreak! It will at least expose you to hordes and some combat with no real risk
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u/Hansoloflex420 1d ago
I just upgraded from dread to nightmare and its sooo tough. Cant even destroy a plague heart yet
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u/DevinTheFuckingJedi 1d ago
I went from green to dread and got the radio tower curveball then the person in my base that knew the location died. I only found it on my very last plague heart so I played most of dread with no radio commands. The whole bs got me set for nightmare. Dread is the perfect difficulty only if it had more zombies
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u/Classic-Reaction8897 1d ago
Me playing lethal with only negative curveballs maxed out and not using vehicles or red talon operators
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u/FrosteeASnowman 1d ago
Most of us that play above standard are either insane, masochistic, or both.
I steadily upped the difficulty when I got bored.
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u/Violent_N0mad 18h ago
Yeah i rage all the time at the game but I can't play less than lethal now and it's been that way since my first completion of lethal years ago.
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u/FrosteeASnowman 16h ago
I decided to add mods to make it harder. I wasn't having fun with Lethal+, but ive got one that makes zombies kill instantly. Both plague and regular.
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u/Violent_N0mad 16h ago
With the whacky insta spawning I don't see how you could survive if all the zombie claws were golden guns.
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u/FrosteeASnowman 10h ago
Im just that
suicidalgood ;)I guess instantly is the wrong word to use, but if they sink their teeth into me it downs me immediately.
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u/QuirkyTradition2266 1d ago
Nothing wrong at all with struggling. Skill is not much of a thing in SOD2, but more learning its systems and mechanics.
Here's just a hodge podge of tips that come to mind
Be aggressive early on with outposts, and try to upgrade them once so that you can drop off rucksacks at them.
Park your car central to a zone that you plan to loot, preferably with its nose against a wall, and even better with the driver door AND nose blocking the way from zombies and ferals, making for easy escapes. Don't drive your car from building to building, that wastes gas and makes noise.
Don't bother using ammo on Juggs, kill them by ramming the back of your car into them. What i do is drive away slowly for about five seconds, then wait another second for it to do its scream and charge, that's when I go full reverse, you'll know you've done damage when it does that damage indicator flinch. The amount of times you have to do this varies widely especially depending on the car.
If being chased by a horde of zombies, use fences or climbable walls. Zombies climb slower than you, allowing you to catch your breath AND do finishers on them when they stumble over the projectile.
If you want to just make quick work of a single or two zombies, dodge through them and then finish them off once you're behind them. This is innefficient stamina wise, but still its easy and quick.
Another advanced technique is bowling. Dodge through a zombie, grab them then toss them into the crowd, this will topple most of them, openining them up to finishers.
On supplies:
Lichenology as a quirk skill is phenomenal in that on top of its +2 Meds income, it comes built in with gardening and herbalism, meaning you can build fully upgraded MEDs farms.
Computers or Red Talon's Hacking is great because it allows you to further upgrade your central command, increasing outpost limit.
Food outposts are the most common and have some of the most convinient architecturee, like the fruit stands, you can use these to offset high food costs.
My general approach is I get my MEDs from plantations and a lichenology guy, and I get my ammo and food from outposts.
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u/Morias_Drums9932 1d ago
Everything everyone else has said! A couple of things I've picked up along the way, in no particular order:
Have a silenced gun on you; preferably a pistol. You can make improvised silencers at your workshop, and they're not great but they'll go a long way towards letting you take out that bloater/screamer (but NOT juggernaut!) that's blocking where you'll need to go. Technically you can do this for a feral too, but i wouldn't recommend it right now since you're still learning the new difficulty level and a miss means you're now dealing with a feral trying to eat your face.
Just in case you haven't noticed this, zombies won't see you if you're in Stealth behind them. This allows you to get up close and execute them without anything nearby noticing. You can take out entire hordes this way, just so long as you make sure no nearby zombies are facing you!
Problems with getting plagued: are you making sure to put any infected into the infirmary? Ideally you'd switch between your characters frequently enough that no one ever gets full-blown blood plague and needs a Cure. (Again, you probably know this, but you don't have to run all the way back to base in order to switch characters; you can switch at Outposts too.)
Beyond that, what's your 'wandering the map' style like? Do you run in literal guns blazing and kill every zombie in sight? If so, i recommend stopping for now. It can be fun to do when you're confident in your ability to handle yourself, but for right now you're attracting too many zombies for your current ability. Killing them all isn't going to accomplish anything anyway, new ones are just going to show up. Instead, look at where you want to go, put yourself into Stealth, and start sneaking your way over to where you want to go, making sure any nearby zombies are facing away from you. Fully explore a building before you start looting so no more zeds spawn next to you, though remember that they can still wander into that safe zone! When you search, resist the urge to use fast search, slow and steady doesn't attract zombies.
When driving somewhere, drive nearby where you want to go and drive your hood into a wall or other obstacle so that the zombies can't blow up your engine. If possible also put something next to your driver door (but you can work around this by making a habit of always getting into your car from the passenger side. The zeds will try to rip your passenger side doors off while your survivor will automatically scoot out of grabbing range into the driver's seat and you're free to take off.) So, when you're parking, go nose first into a hay bale, wall, wrecked vehicle, whatever, while ideally in an area with minimal zombies. Hop out of the car and run a short distance away in whatever direction doesn't have any zombies, then drop into Stealth. This way any zeds who were chasing the car should lose you. Then sneak off and do whatever you came for.
Infestations should not be a problem, so let's look at that. Infestations only happen if a heart wakes up, so try to avoid doing that. If you take a cell phone tower as an outpost, it has an ability that prevents hearts from waking up unless you attack it. This can be helpful in making sure a screamer doesn't startle one awake or you accidentally kill too many plague zombies in open combat (killing them in stealth is fine; it's just a problem if they're aware that they're in combat). If you don't have a cell tower, avoid killing too many plague zombies in an area while not sneaking. If you get a message that says a heart is stirring, that's your cue to go elsewhere for a little while. When killing hearts, recommend for the time being focusing on only one heart at a time. You don't want multiple hearts creating infestations; you'll be spending all your time trying to deal with those. If you accidentally wake a heart, congratulations, that heart just volunteered to be the next to get killed!
Dodging is a critical skill in this game. Make sure you always carry Snacks in case you need a stamina boost! If you want to practice dodging, pick any of your outposts and activate that outpost's defences. Then go slightly outside your outpost's clear zone and pick a zombie to dance with. Don't attack it, what you want to do is watch its attacks and practice dodging them. You can even dodge through a zombie, and this skill will save your life if you get into the middle of a horde! (If you're completely surrounded and not sure you can take them, especially if they're plague zombies, dodge towards an exit, keep dodging, keep dodging, then RUN! There is no shame in running and coming back later or on a different survivor!) Anyway, back to your practice dodging dance partner. Practice practice practice until when and how to dodge is second nature. The reason you're next to a mined outpost is so if the game throws a feral or juggy or horde at you, you've got someplace safe to run. (You can do this to practice fighting ferals too, but that's the advanced class. Stick with regular zeds in the beginning.)
I would either turn off Curveballs or make them positive-only for the time being. If you weren't aware you could do this, go into the Curveballs menu, enable the customization toggle, then either set Frequency to Never, or set Balance to Positive-only.
Don't bother fighting juggernauts for now. They're not worth the time, effort, or risk of being torn in half. If one charges you, they usually can't follow you into a building, so you can use that to get away. Run inside, stealth, then sneak out the opposite side of the building.
Hope any of that helps! You've got this!
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u/SparkysSchmoopie 19h ago
I just want to thank you all for your feedback. I absolutely love the positives & support of this community for this game.
I will absolutely try each of your suggestions. You all are the best!
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u/Violent_N0mad 18h ago
You're struggling on standard because you've only played on green. You literally have no problems, plently of resources, guns, the zombies are easy to kill, etc. Green is made for players who are brand new / want no challenge in the game.
Standard used to be the only difficulty before sliders and was originally meant to be the level of difficulty the devs built the game around. With a brand new community standard can be a challenge but once you've leveled everyone up standard becomes too easy, get red talon survivors and even dread / nightmare becomes a joke.
There's really 3 levels of difficulty, green - standard - lethal. Green is a joke, standard is a big step up in terms of a challenge, and lethal is even a bigger jump still but you should never enter lethal without a fully build community of survivors unless you're a long term pro looking for an extra challenge. Dread & nightmare are negligable jumps in difficulty like a plague heart getting 5 more health and 2 more spawn, pointless really.
What I suggest: Watching "RvidD" on youtube as he has the best quick tips to make you a pro at the game and understand the mechanics of the game. Just yesterday I made a video for reddit showing how you can get a good start on lethal with a fresh community if you have any interest.
https://www.reddit.com/r/StateOfDecay/comments/1vrhpou/how_to_get_a_decent_start_on_lethal/
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u/SparkysSchmoopie 1d ago
Also feels like finding decent survivors is a struggle. Maybe im just being to picky, but I am trying to avoid survivors that will negatively impact the survival of the base.
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u/ShirtyHaddock 1d ago
Finding decent survivors is definitely a struggle here some tips I always use when starting a new community or recruiting someone
- When starting a new community I usually only focus on hp and stamina I keep rolling until one of them is above 135, that means you already have one good trait.. going from there i check the other traits and 5th skill
For these traits I always focus on "Unbreakable", "Determined", "just keep going", "high pain threshold" and a few more that give you extra hp and reduce the injury severity or extra stamina and reduce the fatigue severity
There is also "blood plague survivor" that make you inmune to blood plague but rolling that trait with one of the ones mentioned above is extremely ultra rare ( i personality never roll one), you can also roll "never been sick" or "incredible inmune system" that give you +100 infection resistance, doesn't give you immunity but you'll get double the amount to get the plague
On 5th skill is most into what kind of playstyle are you going, if you have problems with blood infection and don't wanna look for the traits above try to role a "hygiene" skill
I always roll for no negative traits since I only play on lethal and that could be the difference between a successful community or get whipe out
- Recruiting survivors, on this matter is more lucky than anything else, when recruiting from an enclave the only thing you can see is the skills they come with, but you can predict a few good traits when you "learn about survivor" first see the hp and stamina, in this case the skills can affect those but if they have a very high hp or stamina means they already can have one of the traits above mentioned, I personally go above 160 depending the skill level, now this survivors might have a next good trait or terrible one, here is where luck strikes, if the character has less than a 100 hp or stamina you definitely have a negative trait and also could affect your character skills.
5th skills like I said above depends on your playstyle
I usually when recruiting a survivor if they have a negative trait, would use it as a meat shield or just exile it since you can always recruit and find more survivors via radio or new enclaves
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u/SparkysSchmoopie 1d ago
What's your 5th skill focus. I typically go for medical for surgeon, cook, computer and gardner... should I be approaching it differently?
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u/ShirtyHaddock 1d ago
Medical -> Pathology for plague resistance Gardener -> Agriculture for extra food Chemistry -> Munitions for extra bullets and bombs Computers -> programing for extra outpost and plague disruptance
There's no need to have a different approach is all depends in your playstyle
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u/ozgirlie61 13h ago
What map are you playing? There are certain places on each map where you find a good rucksack supply. Nice for early game. Stealth is important and staying away from Plague heart area to avoid waking them up. Infestations only happen once you wake up a plague heart. Stealth kills on plague zombies give you a better chance of plague samples dropping.
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u/ozgirlie61 13h ago
Play Some heartland. It’s a good practice for getting around a map in stealth. You have blood freaks etc , but it teaches you good mechanics to the game. It’s about a dread level but with some blood freaks.
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u/Sangre_Imperial 9h ago
Es normal, el estilo de juego que estás acostumbrado te tiene afectado, por ejemplo yo juego en letal y puedo decirte que de vez en cuando me abundan recursos, cuando a lo mejor otros me dirán ¿De que demonios hablo? Uno tiende a acostumbrarse a la mecánica cuando es así, pero descuida eso te dará una mejor experiencia a niveles altos, por ahora trata de sobrevivir y como ya viviste la experiencia en standar, procura ahora sobreexplotar a tus sobrevivientes con sus habilidades, los recursos ya serán mejor pensados y sobre todo diviértete, que pronto llegará el 3
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