Here is a list of 15 State of Decay essential tips, hints and strategies submitted by Winna:
- Scouting/planning - always use the vantage points to scout out zombies/vehicles/buildings ect, never run in like you're rambo, always think - is it worth the risk? Do I have the proper items before I go?
- Easy way to find resources - Open the build menu (up on d- pad) and go to radio, there you can get Lily Ritter to search for a resource and in 10 mins (real time) she'll mark it on your map.
- Repair weapons/vehicles - If you build a workbench you can repair stored weapons, it takes 1 day (in-game time) for the weapons to repair. For vehicles you can build a parking lot and in 1 day any vehicles parked in the lot will repair the vehicles.
- Back up your saves! - this has saved me a lot of time in case if too many survivors go missing or worse they die. (The way to back up saves is to save them onto a memory card)
- If you quit, the world in the game still continues, I quit yesterday to find 3 playable characters dead today! You can also lose influence, the devs have said they made it so people with jobs that can't play constantly won't be punished much, but that's not the case as I've found other people have the same problem, be warned!
- You don't have to fully loot a area to make it outpost, you only have to search all the containers in the house/store ect.
- Don't spend a lot of resources on the first 2 starting home base's, resources don't respawn and not too long into the game you can get a better home-base which you'll want to upgrade fully.
- Use crafted items for distractions - you can craft fireworks at your home base which takes 10 mins (real time) and crafts 3 at a time, these can really save your butt in those close-call situations, you can also find kitchen timers and alarm clocks from night stands in most of the houses.
- When starting out don't make it your primary goal to clear out infestations, take a car,wait untill you find and can craft molotovs/firecrackers and have a gun, use fircrackers to lure the zombies to a spot and then toss molotovs when they all get in a cluster to maximize damage, if that doesn't clear them out then get into the car and run over any that are still on fire.
- Scavenging - Before sending a survior to scavenge stuff make sure you board up the windows and there are no infestations around and it doesn't hurt gaurd the area till they get there and leave if your not sure it's safe, if your not careful you'll be sending a survivor to their death.
- Gaining survivors - An easy way to get surivors to be friendly so they'll join you is either A: killing all but one survivor ( if you're desperate), or b: trade with them, hang around the area and help kill zombies, and talk to them to see if they have any missions.
- Killing survivors for their loot instead of saving them isn't always a good idea, I won't spoil it but basically helping someone can sometimes be a lot more rewarding (more than you'd believe).
- Always having a car parked facing the street before going into a area can be life-saving, if your being over run you can high-tale it out of there, saving time by not having to reverse to drive off, sometimes a second is all it takes for you to be overrun.
- Getting a survivor to tag along - if a survivor has low mood you can get a side-mission to take them out and kill zombies, take advatage of this by getting them to follow and clear out a house or building with resources ( not the house it tells you to clear out) it always helps to have someone watching your back.
- Be careful when going off roading! It's easy for a vehicle to get glitched, flipped and/or stuck in a spot that it can't get out of, if you have a horde of zombies around this can really screw you over.