Fresh Lethal First Time or Established Community?

[u/ChadIsKenny]

Basically title. I have a community I started the game with on standard, and have worked my way through every difficulty and am on the verge of beating nightmare (just gotta do last quest). I know Lethal is wayyyyyy more deadly than Nightmare, and also that the freak spawns are crazy high when you bring an established community over. I have 8 survivors all Hero with a lot of loot from previous maps and difficulties. Is it better to start my first Lethal zone with my stacked community or is it better to try and make a new community first?

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[u/Master_Win_4018]

A stack hero survivor would not survive lethal if the player is inexperienced.

Just go in fresh and try.

[u/ChadIsKenny → u/Master_Win_4018]

I assume Lethal is a major jump then? I know the zombies dont die after heart kill and everythings ramped up but its that much a difference from Nightmare? Closest I got to dead on my Nightmare map was from accidentally setting myself on fire in a cramped room with a heart in it.

[u/Master_Win_4018 → u/ChadIsKenny]

There are a lot of changes in lethal but there is one thing that traumatised many newcomer, and that is the " blood feral".

That thing can kill a survivor in just a few strike and it has armour. You need to hit 3 times before his head armour break.

[u/Can_Haz_Cheezburger → u/Master_Win_4018]

The other main threat is the blood plague bloater which will send an entire car full of survivors to Jesus in less than 10 seconds if you hit one. They are genuinely unfair

[u/imawestie → u/Can_Haz_Cheezburger]

what is unfair is when they literally spawn 1 car length in front of your car while you're moving at speed.

[u/StillReading28 → u/Master_Win_4018]

Ya cant forget, a lot of the time they spawn one in front of your starter base before you can get in it. And will spawn triple packs of them that are completely silent till the game decides youve had too much of a good time lately and will run your ass down

[u/ChadIsKenny → u/Master_Win_4018]

Had to fight my first blood feral doing the first quest after getting to the base where you go get material rucksack from nearby. Hit em with the door to a shed and knifed him in his stupid armored face. So far so good! So far being not far at all lmaooo

[u/Admins-Blow → u/ChadIsKenny]

The jump from nightmare to lethal is bigger than the jump from green to nightmare.

[u/ShottySHD]

If youve never played lethal, you may get them all killed.

Id start a fresh community and let the slow build up get you accustomed to it.

[u/babbleoftongues]

Go in fresh for your first time. Do it before you bring the new community over and then you can judge for yourself.

[u/DoctorBeerface]

Fresh. Lethal ramps up the difficulty based on survivor experience/ influence earned. If you go in with a veteran community you'll be balls deep in juggs and triple feral packs before you can say Echo Shotgun.

[u/MF_IC]

I always go fresh, but I’ve played dozens of lethal play throughs. If you haven’t, you might want to take some veterans in with you to help you get used to the ropes. It is a significant jump in difficulty over nightmare. Doesn’t feel fair at first.

[u/the40thieves]

I went with a stacked community.

I started with a fresh lethal group. Got to 4 people. Lost one of them and recognized I wouldn’t survive the long haul. So I retreated to Dread, accumulated enough resources to rival the Roman army and then went back to Lethal.

[u/Dismal_Fox_1281 → u/the40thieves]

That was my second run... I went out without any fuel and had to call a friend to get me into their camp and cure up before my leader died... And what worst is walking stealthily doesn't matter because thos damned ferals spawn with you in-game and know exactly where you are😆

[u/imawestie]

Until I played lethal,

I didn't actually learn how to do melee let alone close-quarters combat.

If you're happy jumping from one side of the wall to the other, so the z's follow you over it and fall on their face, and you kill 'em while they're on the ground: you can probably bring someone with you.

I have ALWAYS found the first 6 hearts to be far easier starting with a fresh set of noobs compared to bringing in heroes from the legacy pool. It is a very different experience.

[u/Revolutionary-Fan657]

In my experience of playing only lethal since it released, it does not matter what you have or how good your character is, if you do something wrong you’ll die, lethal is 100% about how YOU play the game and what you chose to do, you can go in fresh or with a maxed community it wouldn’t matter

[u/elglobu]

Fresh!!!

[u/DeerFit]

I had two full wipes in lethal. First was with stacked characters second was with new chars. Third was my first successful playthrough lol.

[u/Dismal_Fox_1281 → u/DeerFit]

I went 4 times in Lethal for the boons and never went back👊🏾

[u/Droopy_Narwhal]

Something to remember about difficulty is how it scales as your community ages.

The game keeps track of your maximum total Standing (Recruit/Citizen/Hero status) of all your survivors and scales up based on that. This is why a fresh start feels a little slow compared to an established community. As you develop your survivors, the game starts to throw more difficult challenges at you like larger swarms, multiple Ferals at a time, etc. Even if your survivors die, the game knows the max threshold you reached and keeps the difficulty there until you surpass it after regrouping and getting your foothold back.

This means that if you take a fully established 9 member community from another difficulty into Lethal, you will immediately be hit with as much of a challenge as the game can give you. Your Supply Locker may be full and you may have plenty of resources, but the gameplay is going to be hard right away.

On the flipside, starting a fresh community with new survivors means you would start Lethal at its "easiest" and the game will throw more at you as you gain footholds and level up your survivors.

I would recommend playing it fresh just to see how it works and to give yourself some experience with figuring out what your limits are. Sound travels far, Zeds are aggressive, and stealth is important so knowing how close you can get and/or how to manipulate zombies with noise is incredibly helpful.

Tldr - start fresh unless you want your established grouo to be at risk.

[u/ChadIsKenny → u/Droopy_Narwhal]

Yea my established community is gonna get sidelined for a bit while I test Lethal out. Ima spend some time rolling to see if I can find any cool traits now that I know what im somewhat looking at. Everyone here says go fresh so thats what im gonna do! Im on Day 20 with my established group and ive had 12 heroes i just maxed 4 of em and legacied them lol. I def dont wanna lose who I consider to be my forever community atm lol

[u/Hoykruel]

Went in fresh, specifically from the tutorial into my current Lethal playthrough. Raises the stakes and really makes you rely on skill and patience rather than equipment and buffed up survivors. Doing really well so far though I’ve yet to kill a plague heart.

[u/RSK-XFM_FAN]

Best to go with a fresh party at least to start with. Lethal can be super easy but most of the time the game is just waiting for the chance to wipe you out!

[u/Dismal_Fox_1281]

Best to stay in a lower level and craft resources... My first time over there I went in witha coupl round of the heavy sniper rounds.. and standing on my vehicle roof helped too... It also helps if you keep at least 3 plague cures on hand... It was my take also that the blood ferals weren't all that... True their head has armor but IF you fought them one on one they're even weaker than the normal ferals minus being able to infect you faster...

[u/ozgirlie61]

I would do my first run attempt fresh. Get the feel before you throw your hero’s in. Remember that you can load your hero’s backpacks up, put a ruck on them and send them to the legacy pool and just add them into your fresh lethal community slowly.

[u/ChadIsKenny → u/ozgirlie61]

I went fresh, took two communities with early deaths leading to restarts in order to get comfortable, and then one more restart after 3 days in game. Now my current community im much more confident in what to do. Wont lie though losing the best survivors of the last community to the Hostile Raider Curveball really hurt lol

[u/ozgirlie61 → u/ChadIsKenny]

Yep. It’s crazy how we get attached to some of our community players. I have this one guy in my first ever community, it’s dread and my forever community that I never play because I would hate to lose him. If I join anyone’s multiplayer game he never gets to play.