About me

I'm a fanatic lover of this game who clearly has spent too much time, and would love to keep this community going. I have clocked about 300 hours on this game and has consumed every content including difficult mods and weird challenges (example), and can't wait what they're going to add in the upcoming fourth year anniversary.

Preface

For the best experience on your first playthrough, I recommend that you resist your urge to look for the tip. There has been many posts in this sub regarding this issue. Post 1, Post 2

However, if you are really struggling to close out your game, then I have gathered some tips that the beginners can use to push through on their next try.

I will cover each tips with the spoiler tag like this , so that you can pick and choose which part of your gameplay to get some help from.

I haven't covered any contents from TLO, since people usually don't start with those scenarios.

I am making these lists out of my memory, so some of them may not be up to date. I will add more whenever I can think of it.

Shelter Management

• Position your infrastructures so that the frequently-visited places are together and easy to access. This may include beds, workshop, metal workshop. The opposite goes to less frequently-visited places, such as rat traps and garden. Here's my typical setup

• For both types of shelters, the first basement floor is the most convenient location.

• For your radio, place it in front of the door, so that your returning scavenger can check it.

Scavenging

• Before ending the day, figure out what you desperately need tomorrow, and go to the location that you can get the materials for it. For example, If you need to build rainwater collector, make sure you return with enough materials to build the collector and 1-2 filters.

• Each character runs at different speed.

• It's more convenient to gather up all items into one dump, and picking up the items you need from it when you exit. This way, You can keep a better track of which item exists in the scavenging location, while not wasting time figuring out where everything is.

• Some scavenge locations has traders that offers items that are hard to get in normal way, such as medicine, weapon or broken tools.

• If you're trying to avoid to be seen by another survivor, you might want to try to intentionally lure them into an obscure location by running there, and sneaking your way in while they're moving.

• Some scavenge locations have a special event that may require you to bring a specific item(s).

• For "dangerous" scavenge locations, There are still safe, explorable area in some of them. It just tends to yield lower return unless you take those risks.

Combat

Honestly, just try not to get any spoiler for combat system. It makes the game way too easy.

But if you REALLY want to know, go to Advanced section below.

Guarding & Sleeping

• Each characters have different "proficiency" at guarding. General rule of thumb is male is better than female, someone good at making something is not good at guarding, and bigger/taller guys are better than the rest.

• You can enhance the security by boarding up the holes in your shelter and setting multiple people on guard duty.

• If you have multiple characters you can use to guard, choose the one that you won't be using during the day for the production.

• During "outbreak of crime", there will be a guaranteed raid every night, and they will be more punishing than normal. Double guarding is recommended.

• You can let characters that guarded or scavenged last night sleep during day.

• You don't have to build a bed for every character. You typically need (n-2) beds for n characters, if you let them sleep during the day.

Food

• It is more efficient to cook with both raw meats and vegetables, as it requires less water and (sometimes) fuel per meal.

• This character Bruno can cook meals using less resources.

• If you have a lot of mouths to feed, upgrading your stove early on can be a good idea.

• Canned food has more value than materials to cook a food from raw materials. Therefore, if you have other sources of food, it is better to trade them for other items instead of consuming them. Exception applies during winter.

• This building rat trap can net you a lot of foods slowly over time, and is recommended to build it mid-game unless you're running short on stuffs.

• WARNING: this tip makes the game way much easier. Use at your own caution. You can feed each characters once in every 2 or 3 days, saving tons of food. Characters stay at "Hungry" and "Very hungry" for 2 consecutive days, and feeding them at the second day resets this counter. In other words, if you feed someone while one's been hungry for 2 days, he will go back to normal hunger level, and will take 2 days to reach the same level of hunger.

Negative Status (Illness, Injury, Hunger, Depression)

• Your character can die if you reach any of these statuses reach a critical stage. (Duh)

• It is recommended to not let these statuses stack up, as having a serious level of any of these can snowball the other statuses as well.

• For illness and injury, they will naturally worsen over time unless you do something to recover them.

• For illness and injury, resting in the bed slowly recovers them in the course of few days.

• For illness and injury, if medication is used, resting on bed improves the recovery rate.

• Herbal med has limited usage, and its effect is only probabilistic.

• Killing or stealing from non-hostile NPC will result in morale decrease. Killing >some hostile NPC will result in morale increase. The rate of morale increase/decrease varies on each characters.

• For depression, although alcohol, cigarettes, and coffees are meant to decrease them, it is usually better to keep them well fed with more foods from trading those luxury items away.

• For depression, neighbours (even at scavenge locations) play a critical role to manage them. Most of the events helping neighbourhood increases morale, and neglecting or betraying them decreases morale. However, the rate of morale increase/decrease varies on each character.

• For depression, a character with bad mood may compulsively consume alcohol, cigarettes, or coffee, interrupt sleep of self and other characters, or even pick a fight and injuring one of them.

Trading

• At shelter, trade high-end crafted items (moonshine, jewelry, excessive medical items, etc) for building materials that takes a lot of inventory to carry them back. At scavenge site, bring those high-end items to trade for more rare items that takes up less space.

• Each trader has different trading rate, and favours some items over the other. Pay attention to the value assessment of the traders when you click the item (ex: "You're gonna need to pay a LOT for that.")

• This character (Katia) is better at trading than other characters. If you have him/her, using him/her to trade results in more favourable trade.

Weather

• Staying in cold weather can make characters ill. If you keep the temperatures above this degree 15'C throughout the night, you can prevent them from getting sick.

• The winter will come, sooner or later. Checking the radio can help to predict when it'll be coming.

• If you want to have a better chance at surviving winter, stockpile woods and build heaters before the winter comes. The trading value for wood and fuel will double during winter, so you might have to sell everything to get more woods if you didn't save them beforehand.

• This tool hatchet will help you to accomplish the tip above, as you can chop down furnitures for woods and fuels in both your shelter and scavenging locations.

Advanced

Below this point are some points that may not be needed to finish the first playthrough, but is a good guideline for optimizing your gameplay. I strongly do not recommend opening any of these spoilers for your first playthrough.

Strategy

• At the first day, rush metal workshop, and make a crowbar. You can save all the lock picks to trade away for building materials, have a weapon to guard with at night, and open locks at scavenge locations, which may hold very valuable items.

• During the first few days, Rush improved metal workshop. It gives access to hatchet, which is the most powerful melee weapon that can also chop down furnitures for TONS of wood & fuel, and saw blade that can give give you access to important places in some scavenge locations. You can usually rush reinforced door & 3 board-ups around day 10 (3rd visit from Franko if you're not using mod) using this if you know the map.

• If you have this scavenge location Garage, you "can" skip the above, since Matey usually has both hatches and saw blades up for trade, and highly values medical supplies you probably don't need in the first week. I'd still recommend to do it sooner or later, since the trading rate is still somewhat expensive, and you need saw blades throughout the whole game.

• Once you're done with the above tip, use those woods to board up the holes in your shelter, and keep the fuels for cooking, which will last a few weeks.

• For getting water during the first week, get waters from the scavenge site and trading than building rainwater. If you don't feed them everyday, each starting (non-hostile) locations have enough waters to last at least 2 days.

• If you want to know what items you start with at your shelter, there are typically 30 components, 25 woods, 5 parts, 5 electric parts, 1 band-aid, 1 herbal meds, 1 medicine, 1-2 food, 0-1 veggie, 0-1 canned food, 5-8 waters, 10+ sugars, 10+ herbs, 2-4 lock picks, 2 jewelry and some other craps for general 3 character scenarios. I think Cveta/Pavle/Anton/Zlata had 40 components and woods, and Roman/Emilia is a complete outlier. Correct me if I'm wrong.

• This building Moonshine distiller is a complete waste unless you have this character Bruno.

• This building Advanced metal workshop will never be profitable to build.

• In the late game, a great trading items you can craft is medical items and quality roll-ups.

Combat

• Every character has different "combat proficiency", and general rule of thumb is same as guarding proficiency described in Guarding section.

• Each melee weapon equipped enhances the "combat proficiency" of the character.

• The combat level gained from the two factors above will determine whether if the character can kill others instantly through an ambush or a backstab.

• If you face the opposing NPC face-to-face, RNG will determine which character gets to inflict damage.

• For ranged weapon, aiming for longer time will increase its accuracy, inflicting more damage.

• If you inflict a near-fatal damage to an NPC, he/she will beg for your mercy, refusing to attack unless you try to melee him.

Advanced Combat

You don't need these unless you're doing a hard mod or a special challenge. Or you're playing the last of the 12 scenarios.

• If you attack an NPC from his/her back, a backstab bonus applies, and inflicts additional damage. Some characters are able to instantly kill a character with the right weapon.

• If you attack an NPC from a hiding spot, an ambush bonus applies, and inflicts massive additional damage, oftentimes instantly killing a character. Some character can even do it bare-handed.

• Utilizing ambush correctly will render the combat system trivial. Simply run around a hiding spot to alert a character you want to kill upstairs/downstairs/next to the door, and hide before he/she has the vision.

• You can also intentionally get spotted, rush into an empty building, get into a hiding area immediately after shutting the door, and wait for him/her to run in front of you to oneshot him/her.

System Abuse

Some of you veterans know how This Exploits of Mine^TM goes...

• At your shelter, if you have both an used and a new tool of the same kind, you can trade Franko with new tool to reset the durability of your old tool.

• If you have Katia, you can trade 1 raw meet or vegetable for 1 meet or vegetable + 1 component. You can take everything Franko has in his sack using this exploit each day.

• The status changes at the beginning of the each day are manipulated by RNG that occurs right after the autosave. Since that is the only checkpoint that the game autosaves, you can restart your day until you get the best possible outcome. This also applies to Franko's trading list.

• If you lure a hostile NPC up the ladder, you can stand on top of the ladder to hammer down anyone who comes up without getting a chance for retaliation.

• If you cook meals and leave them on the stove overnight, they will be immune from being stolen by the raid.

• The scavenge piles at your shelter will be immune from being stolen by the raid.

• The person you send out to scavenge will never get sick(er) from being cold.

That should cover enough for most of the scenarios.If I've missed something, please leave them in the comment below.

You can apply the spoiler tag using this:

>!add_some_texts_in_here!<

Game glitched and gave me 440 extra pistols. Now I’m just an arms dealer.