Im so happy you recgonise how good cooking is, such an underused skill! The energy drinks are insane and you can craft quite a lot for quite cheap with the right skills
If you're rolling for hero bonuses, using the legacy pool is very helpful. When you're community first enters the map, they begin as citizens. This gives you the opportunity to see what kind of hero bonus they will give you right away. But in order to guarantee you'll get all the hero bonuses you want, you can delete those newly rolled communities and put the survivors you want to keep into the legacy pool. Then once you have all three of the hero bonuses you're looking for, you can simply start a new community and just recruit those three survivors at the start from the pool. This is nice because bonuses like Hygiene Standards are huge and nice to get. You can even do this for more than three survivors if you want to spend the influence to get survivors with additional hero bonuses you're looking for (or to just add survivors for certain traits or 5th skills). The legacy pool is a huge help in creating the most ideal community.
Wow. Yeah... That's a further step along the road for sure. It really comes down to how much time you want to spend doing this vs playing (cost: benefit). We should be clear that the premise of targeting HB is simple-ish, but in practice it's potentially a LOT of time isolating HB. If I were undertaking such a thing I'd try to shave time hoping for a 5th skill/quirk that either wasn't junk or preferably empty and just focus on getting one HB (like Hyg Standards). Then I could bank (legacy) them and roll 2 other survivors with decent 5ths and get going. Personally not something I'm into, but if I were going to try to punch a difficulty above my weight I'd.. well... honestly I'd probably ignore HB and just start with halfway decent survivors to make sure I could handle it and not spend a ton of time rolling future ideal zeds. ;) Then maybe once I had a foothold I'd decide whether I wanted to put the time into "crafting" a HB survivor and bring them in vs continuing to progress without it (again cost: benefit). Good input! Good luck!
@@GameMnke In my experience, the only trait that's super advantageous for a fresh community is the trait "Eats like a bird". It makes the survivor use 50% less food themselves, and gives the hero bonus "Meal Plan", which reduces food consumption by the whole community by 25%. You can stack this three times. So if you get three initial survivors with this trait you're going to have very few initial food worries early game, and your base and outpost slots won't be taken up by so many food sources mid to late game either. The thing with health and stamina is that a well-designed base can make your survivors almost unkillable. Making these initial traits almost redundant later on. They're nice to have but long term almost insignificant. For example, a base with a Field Hospital, a level 3 Infirmary, and a level 2 Fighting Gym gives your whole community a bonus of +120 HP if you run primary care on both the hospital and infirmary with a Surgeon. As well as a total immunity to injury (technically 110% but effectively 100%). I've tested this and it is equivalent to all your characters being Unbreakable. They will not get injured. They also get 90% chance to avoid taking any plague build up from anything if you have a Pathologist. Making Blood Plague Survivors far less "must have". A level 2 Kitchen and Shooting Range will give your characters an extra 50 stamina with feasts if you have someone with Nutrition (which you can make in abundance because all your community only eat lettuce). So the bonuses to health and stamina can be massively offset by your base and the fifth skills your characters have. I would also recommend the hero bonuses Dosage Control for increased healing from items (this includes stamina items also) which you're probably gonna need for the giant health bars they get once their primary skills are maxed out, Hygiene Standards for increased infection resistance if you take infection damage 10% of the time, or use biochem items, and someone with "Nose To tail" (+1 food) combined with Fishing (+2 Food). This makes your community extremely sustainable, and tanky. Leaving you free to focus on meds instead of food to keep the hospitals running and to pump out meds that work better than normal, to either use or sell. I also use someone with the Hero Bonus "Outdoor Living" gained from the trait "Nomadic Sleeper". This makes her not use a bed, provide 2 beds from the Hero Bonus, and I gave her Sleep Psychology, which provides another 2 beds. So she's basically a walking Barracks. As an aside, if you have someone with Lichenology, not only do they offset the cost of one of your medical facilities, they also have knowledge of gardening and herbalism. Meaning you can grow max level meds from either Hydroponics or a Farm. My base got to the point I was getting 25 meds a day, lol, because I didn't need to even bother with food outposts. It was a little bit insane. Providing strong painkillers in the zombie apocalypse! Buy 2 get 1 more at full price!
@@Kaethena Lots of good stuff there. I really enjoy how many diverse build-outs we can produce. Personally I think food outposts are pretty strong for one simple reason- they scale with difficulty. So in NM for example, a level 3 food outpost will provide 5 food (4.5, but last I checked it always rounds up PER outpost before other math). Other outposts don't scale. That may seem reasonable at first because your survivors aren't eating meds, per se- but since you tend to take more damage and therefore need more meds at higher difficulties... in a way they are. You spend more bullets, durability, etc. But food scales and therefore makes it a good outpost resource to bank/convert into other items as needed. Appreciate the thoughts. I love meal plan and may try that high end build out for all the HP. Have fun!
@@GameMnke That's very true. I often wondered why the food outposts scale with difficulty when surely the whole point was to make food harder to get, not kind of the same regardless of difficulty. 3 people with no food reduction traits can live off one maxed out food outpost, regardless of difficulty. Which is like... why even have the food increases at all then? I guess to make farms/hydroponics less productive the higher the difficulty you play on, since they don't scale. That being said... this makes traits like "Eats like a bird" and "Ascetic" even more valuable on higher difficulties. Maybe 2/3 of my Forever Community have a food reduction trait of either -50% or -25%, as well as three Meal Planners. Playing on Lethal, with my 11 community members, they only eat just under 4.5 food per day, rather than the 22 they would normally eat. And 3 of those are provided by one of my survivors. So even just one level 3 food outpost would give, if it's rounded up, +5 food per day. Which is crazy. Also, with regard to my previous comment about the Field Hospital, Infirmary 3 and Fighting Gym 2 combination, the health bonus is actually a lot more than I first thought. Having a Surgeon gives you +20 health, the fighting gym gives you another +20 health, and the field hospital gives you +10 health for all your community members. Which totals out at an extra 170 HP for all your people. And when their primary skills get maxed out, you find in some cases that they have more health than the bar can even show on screen. They get hit and appear to lose no health. Because it's more than the game thought people would have. It's very OP, honestly. Survivors with the Endurance skill have somewhere in the region of 370 HP. And won't get injured. You can literally stand toe to toe with a Plague Juggernaut and take it down with a pipe wrench, lol. I spoke before about the "Dosage Control" Hero Bonus. This comes from the trait "Total Lightweight" Which gives the survivor +100% healing item efficacy, on top of the +25% increase from the hero bonus itself. Give one of these people Endurance, Powerhouse, Discipline and Gunslinging, combined with all the buffs from your base... and you make them into The Terminator. The best Plague Heart destroyer you can probably have. They have so much health it's unreal, and just one Strong Painkiller will heal them back up to full from almost nothing. They won't get injured and will barely take any plague damage because of your base effects. I know that's min/maxing to the extreme but for people who want to make even Lethal Zone into more of a minor annoyance than a threat... it's a very good way to go.
Over time I have evolved into doin mechanics(for arrows), fishing(+food), chemistry(for hopes of munitions and hire for electronics to make C4) c4 is easy game over. Play on medium, low maintenance bases, like mikes concrete or brewco.
It's truly disappointing to see how little your channel is because if this video is your average then its really amazing. It's easy to understand, helpful and the quality is just top notch! Amazing video it helped me a lot so thanks and keep going, your doing amazing!!
I really appreciate the comment. I only started the channel in January, so I'm hopeful it'll grow as I get more quality content out. I've actually been spending a lot of time trying to sort out some stuttering I get- particularly in my SoD2 playthroughs when the action is thick. My beta playthrough has some examples of it. I thought it was mainly an FoV issue, but even going back to default FoV doesn't address it. Anyway... I'll sort it out eventually. Thanks again for the support!
As someone who did countless lethal zones I can assure you don't need cooking, you will find energy drinks just doing looting and you will have more then you need. Computers skill is important cause of limits of outposts, mechanic if you like to damage your car a lot. Hygiene and chemistry is also good for arming outposts and hygiene for plague resistance.
Thanks for bringing that up. I totally agree that computers is important for CC level 3(and drones with prog), although it's not needed for CC level 2. This video was aimed at "starting" and early game. Definitely mid-game you're going to angle to pick up some skills/mods/etc that cap outposts and whatnot. I also agree that if you loot long enough you'll have more of, well, everything. Maybe that includes "more drinks than you need", but said number is subjective. I'd rather have more drinks than I "need" (whatever number that is) than wait for rngezus to catch up to me. If I roll up in an Impaler, stand on the hood and lob willy petes through the window, I probably don't need any drinks. Right? But I'm more of a sledge guy- at least early game when I aim to have plenty of chems/food and not enough energy drinks. In other words... You can pry my red bull from my cold. dead. haaaaaands.... ;) (also- irl I don't drink energy drinks- they suck) :P
I agree and would say that computer is probably the most important skill to start with simply for the plague heart suppression alone. Saves on a ton of precious parts, which is felt the most in early game.
well idk how you're doing it but I've ran out plenty of times. Idgas if this is skill issue on my part. Its handy to have cause not everyone plays the same and conservatively. Being able to craft drinks and other useful stuff is a load off. I tend to use up a lot of resources.
Great coverage! Food consumption is figured by adding the effects to the base usage amount. So, your hungry survivors get a pass on lethal because everyone consumes 2 food!
Interesting point. Thanks for bringing that up. I had another video that covered food outposts and how there is some inobvious rounding on Nightmare. Does that mean -50% food consumed on lethal equals 1.5 for a survivor since it's acting on the base of 1?
Great video! Will be watching more of your stuff. Love how much has been added to the game, it's better than it's ever been and people like you make the community better
Good guide. Though I already knew the things its good to get my thoughts confirmed. Lately I got a character with the fishing trait (+2 food per day) which sounded not that good at the beginning. But I played on nightmare and his hero bonus was +1 Food per day on top. So just this character produced 3 food total plus the leader has meal plan too... Lets just say my community swims in food. All in all he's a perfect candidate for the Legacy Pool. 😄
Sweet! Fishing and Nose to Tail is a solid combo. I tend to find that having lots of food is great because you can convert it into a number of different things. (plus enclaves seem to always be hungry)
@@GameMnke how do you take plaque hearts down? I'm in lethal zone, and im just shitting myself think about it. Like i only have gone into plauge territory with the plaque disurptor on
I mostly play NNL at this point. I take down hearts with a 2-hander early game (energy drinks help, a molatov and side-arm help for adds). It's efficient. Mid to late game I still use a 2-hander, but if I have more explosives or can call in drones, I may use them. It depends on how tight a heart is with other hearts, how busy the area is, etc. If you want to see a pro at taking down hearts in full lethal- I'd suggest checking out @BrianMenard (www.youtube.com/@BrianMenard ). He hands out tons of advice during his videos and gives free beatdowns to plague hearts. Brian is the guy that has helped me learn to enjoy this game the most. By the way... On lethal I also shit myself. Let me tell you a little story... When I first got this game I played on Standard. I didn't know anything, but it was great. Got through the end (some hardships- but that's a different story) and was like "f it" gonna jump to lethal (inspired by Brian- haha). Launching the game became sweat-inducing. Do I want to play? Where am I gonna go that I don't die? Those ferals are gonna get me! I lost that first community rather quick. Lethal again... lost my second community sort of on accidental purpose (also a different story). So I'm like okay... I've learned some things, but I have to want to play the game. So I turned the action (and community) down to Nightmare but kept the map on Lethal (scarcity and 30ish hearts). Suddenly it felt like that was the right level for the type of enjoyment I wanted matched to my skill (I used to play FPS a ton but lots of rust). I like the game a whole lot more now. Enough to try to help other people. Find the difficulty you enjoy launching and playing the game at using the custom sliders. Lethal will always be there. That's my advice. Get to where you're not shitting yourself- get to where you're like "I'm Rick Grimes bitch!" and you bust through that window and start handing those hearts their asses.
Good video! Liked and subbed! Just what I was looking for! My son mentioned a new map in SoD2 and I hadn't played in quite a while. Doesn't take long to get absorbed into the game again. I love the new mechanics with the Plague Hearts and now some of these traits will even be more useful. I won't admit, the sick amount of time I spend on creating characters. I did 3 communities last night and still not happy with what I have. I think I'll off and on roll characters all day and send a few to legacy for my start up. I'm curious - you mentioned 'time passing' while rolling characters - but that doesn't have any impact otherwise, correct?
I haven't really tested it out to see the impact of waiting/rolling all the way through the night. It could be that consumption of resources isn't a thing without a base. Mainly it impacts the ability to get your base set up and get a few things done/buildings looted before night sets in. On a slightly different note, I did learn (while making the series that follows this video) if you lock in your survivors and then exit the game without claiming the first base, when you log back in it sets you up at a temporary "base tent" near the starting base. For Drucker this meant that since enclaves can spawn starting X distance from your base that one spawned in the gun shop- depriving me of an ammo outpost and loot. It was terrible! Haha. I'm laughing about it now, but I ended up having to restart/reroll for my series.
Survivors can't have more than 5 skills, but you can roll a survivor with 4 and pick up their 5th skill in-game. For example, you can teach them computers from a cell tower or chemistry from an ammo outpost. This is particularly nice if you roll a great survivor without a 5th skill. There are also mysterious traders that can sell retraining textbooks to retrain one of your four core skills (say if you really wanted powerhouse), or a rare skill trader that offers 5th skill special books- e.g. hygiene or lichenology. The mysterious traders are only Friday thru Monday (real world time)! Note: you can't ever replace a 5th skill with a different 5th skill. Once you picked one- it's locked in. Wiki for outposts: state-of-decay-2.fandom.com/wiki/Outposts Wiki for traders: state-of-decay-2.fandom.com/wiki/Wandering_Traders?so=search#Mysterious_Wandering_Traders Have fun!
@@GameMnke I have already generated two Unbreakable + Blood Blague Survivor survivovors using my tool, but it took several nights of scrolling with the speed of 3 survivors per second.
Absolutely can be. The difference between soldier and ops is only cosmetic. Hacking is, for example, one of the desired quirks- it's provides +1 outpost and is the only way to cap out at 7 outposts in the normal game (ie not Heartland, where you can max at 8). The wiki has a write up on RT and how to predict their traits based on their skills to avoid some of the bad rolls. This info allows you to "fish" for the RT quirk you want (or better rolls) by reloading the game after you've summoned them. There's practically a whole mini-game around blocking possible spawns to get them to respawn in the same spot. ;) Just remember they do tend to occasionally waste a resource, take up extra beds, etc. So you'd have to be able to take on their bs. Good luck! state-of-decay-2.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Talon_Contractors
@GameMnke yea, I noticed!:) got my new community yesterday with a Hacking RT as 1 of 3 starting... but lost 1 chatecter on the 2nd day and had to summon another RT But I am too lazy to min max or go with this mini game, I just want to play:)) I also like to start with Agricultural survivor to ease my first days and look for other 5th skills later Once had a game when I built everything and a huge pile of mats with nothing to do to them... so now I tend not to go heavy on mats Thanks for the info and GL with your new community
What’s the most op character you have rolled so far? I really like characters with +40 stamina or more and a small health boost as well. Not necessarily the top tear stamina boost but stacked together like determined plus left for dead
Well I'd like to say a rolled a really good survivor for one of my first couple lethal attempts (BPS plus some stam I think), but since I lost badly I don't know that I can call it OP. Haha! I jumped to lethal after beating the game once on standard- it was quite humbling. Although I don't recall if that survivor died to a plague feral or the enclave I accidentally threatened when the "trade with enclave" button moved up from the bottom after meeting them and the bottom button became "threaten enclave". I totally blame UI for that. Totally. ;)
Thanks for your candor. I agree with you. I think we can both also agree that different people have different skill levels and different needs in terms of how strong their survivors need to be to feel like they can enjoy the game. If you look at the survivors I settled on, they are by no means crazy good- but I'm fine with that because they are good enough for me.
@@GameMnke no arguments from me. Thank you for taking g the time to reply. I really enjoy this game. Having a situation where I don't have a particular skill that I would like to have turns into emergent gameplay where I either look for that skill in the wild, or I adapt around it. Good stuff all around.
I really disagree about your recommended starting skills. In nightmare and letal. The best traits are medicine, which can give health bonus on a med facility. Mechanic which allows crafting car kits, and allow access to vehicles early in the game, and agriculture which reduces a lot the food/medicine consumed, and give more time to focus on other resources, like fuel and ammo.
Thanks for the feedback/pushback. It forces me to double-check to make sure that I either still feel confident in the position I took or to change my position. I'm not the kind of person to just blow someone off when I don't agree, so please bear with my detailed response. Regarding medicine/mechanic... In the video I point down to the description for a more comprehensive list of recommended fifth skills which includes both pathology (the medicine spec) and automechanic (the mechanic spec). HOWEVER... for "starting" skills neither medicine nor mechanic (ie the base skills) are very useful early on. For medicine you can activate "primary care" to boost health, but it costs 3 meds (on top of the med cost of the infirmary). Hygiene, by comparison, is free and basically gives you the passive bonus of level 7 pathology (+50 community plague resist) and +10 comm max health for zero meds. It would be better to start with something like Hygiene and then pick up medicine later on to develop someone with pathology- once you have the meds to keep primary care going. I'd also submit that it's easier to roll someone with Hygiene and later train someone with medicine than the other way around- agreed? For mechanic- I'm not sure if you are talking about toolkits or car/vehicle upgrade kits when you mention "car kits". I'm going to have to assume the former because car upgrade kits require automechanic and an autoshop/etc, which is clearly not "starting". For toolkits... yes, being able to craft them at a level 2 workshop is great, but early on when mats are at a premium, I'd prioritise getting another outpost (by upgrading the CC) over a level 2 workshop. I know I want to upgrade the Command Center on every single playthrough- I don't know whether I'll need someone to craft toolkits or whether I'll find a couple early on or find a merchant selling them (they are cheap at the price). Having an extra outpost earlier gives you something- fuel, food, etc. Whatever resource you're trying to shore up, plus a drop point, safe zone, and potential mining point for offense/defense/looting. For agriculture... I mean... it's a gardening spec. You can't start with agriculture- you have to train it and you don't get the passive +1 food until it is maxed. But MORE than that... On nightmare and lethal (specifically) food outposts are better than on lower difficulties relative to gardening. Why? Because they scale with difficulty. Food from gardening doesn't scale with difficulty. Resources from all other outposts don't scale with difficulty. Using food outposts on NM or L basically negates the food consumption difficulty penalty. I plan on making a video about it, but that's my rough cut. ;) Clearly play whatever way suits you. I prefer being able to negate threats cheaply through the use of Chemistry and outpost mines. It's particularly good early game when you lack weapons to deal with ferals/etc. You can get an ammo outpost and the net cost for two days of mines is just parts. I cover this in a separate video specifically about Chemistry. I think we would agree that later in the game skills like automechanic and pathology are great. I just don't think with all the other problems a community has starting out that fifth skills that cost meds and/or mats to benefit from is superior to rolling a quirk that GIVES +2 meds or +2 mats, etc. Chemistry being the only exception to that I suppose because it allows novel gameplay in creating bubbles of death. Again thanks for the feedback. Hopefully I've done a good job of explaining my position on starting skills. I welcome further criticism. Have fun!
@@GameMnkeloved your response. I got all the points you mention in your reply. Especially regarding food outposts being better than gardening. I also use a lot of mines in my outposts next to the next plague heart I want to destroy. But I guess the other options doesn't suit my game skills, or play style. I loot a lot early in the game, so I really need ability to craft car kits early. Depending on buying it or finding in gas stations are more risky, and lucky is a factor that doesn't help me much in this game. Med skills may not be necessary if you are a expert in fighting zombies, but it's not my case. I miss a lot of headshots in ferrals, and need to learn more how to use some itens with more efficiency (like stun/ smoke granades / mines/ etc). Despite it, I learned a lot from you, and hope to learn more with your videos. (also sorry for mixing gardening with agriculture. English is not my first language). 😊
@@caiosan89 It's all good. I like to loot a lot early in games too. (probably why I like mines for outposts a whooole bunch- haha) It's definitely best to angle toward the skills that suit your play style or enjoyment. With the changes they make to the game over time I find myself circling back through certain strategies to see if they hold up or can be improved. That's one of the great things about SoD2 in that two players can find two different ways to approach a problem and both succeed. Thanks again for the feedback and good luck in the apocalypse!
I doubt this is anything more than anecdotal happenstance. Traits on survivors you cross tend to be "?????" so I'm not sure how you'd confirm this simply by playing the game anyway. Maybe take one of your complete games and use community editor go through and look at all the survivor traits. It could simply be that most survivors suck compared to being able to roll 3 decent ones at the start. ;)
I hate the nerf to rolling back to characters. I dont know what made them think that was a good idea but before update 33 you were able to go back all the way to the first character you rolled.
Hmm... Update 30 (forever communities) added going back twice. That was August of 2022. Before that you couldn't go back at all. I don't remember anything in U31-32 (seasonal content) changing that to unlimited. From update 30: "Accidentally skip the perfect survivor when making a new community? Not anymore. We now remember the two previously rolled characters in the character selection screen." store.steampowered.com/news/app/495420/view/3419938619415506892 Different game maybe? Have fun!
Im such a lucky person i rolled blood pleag survivor... (only once in my life) and his name is Chad.. but.. hes lazy and a food critic.. ya aint i lucky.
So Chad is just hanging around? ;) I mean if it's the zompocalypse and you can't be killed, what else is there to do but lament all the good food that will never be made again...
@@JesusChrist-ck2sf For sure. I mean I use food outposts, so generally not many food issues. Wait... doesn't food critic give you Meal Plan for the hero bonus which means everyone eats 25% less food?
![Stromae, Pomme - “Ma Meilleure Ennemie” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Visualizer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1F3OGIFnW1k/mqdefault.jpg)
Im so happy you recgonise how good cooking is, such an underused skill! The energy drinks are insane and you can craft quite a lot for quite cheap with the right skills
If you're rolling for hero bonuses, using the legacy pool is very helpful. When you're community first enters the map, they begin as citizens. This gives you the opportunity to see what kind of hero bonus they will give you right away. But in order to guarantee you'll get all the hero bonuses you want, you can delete those newly rolled communities and put the survivors you want to keep into the legacy pool. Then once you have all three of the hero bonuses you're looking for, you can simply start a new community and just recruit those three survivors at the start from the pool. This is nice because bonuses like Hygiene Standards are huge and nice to get. You can even do this for more than three survivors if you want to spend the influence to get survivors with additional hero bonuses you're looking for (or to just add survivors for certain traits or 5th skills). The legacy pool is a huge help in creating the most ideal community.
Wow. Yeah... That's a further step along the road for sure. It really comes down to how much time you want to spend doing this vs playing (cost: benefit). We should be clear that the premise of targeting HB is simple-ish, but in practice it's potentially a LOT of time isolating HB. If I were undertaking such a thing I'd try to shave time hoping for a 5th skill/quirk that either wasn't junk or preferably empty and just focus on getting one HB (like Hyg Standards). Then I could bank (legacy) them and roll 2 other survivors with decent 5ths and get going.
Personally not something I'm into, but if I were going to try to punch a difficulty above my weight I'd.. well... honestly I'd probably ignore HB and just start with halfway decent survivors to make sure I could handle it and not spend a ton of time rolling future ideal zeds. ;) Then maybe once I had a foothold I'd decide whether I wanted to put the time into "crafting" a HB survivor and bring them in vs continuing to progress without it (again cost: benefit).
Good input! Good luck!
@@GameMnke In my experience, the only trait that's super advantageous for a fresh community is the trait "Eats like a bird". It makes the survivor use 50% less food themselves, and gives the hero bonus "Meal Plan", which reduces food consumption by the whole community by 25%. You can stack this three times. So if you get three initial survivors with this trait you're going to have very few initial food worries early game, and your base and outpost slots won't be taken up by so many food sources mid to late game either.
The thing with health and stamina is that a well-designed base can make your survivors almost unkillable. Making these initial traits almost redundant later on. They're nice to have but long term almost insignificant. For example, a base with a Field Hospital, a level 3 Infirmary, and a level 2 Fighting Gym gives your whole community a bonus of +120 HP if you run primary care on both the hospital and infirmary with a Surgeon. As well as a total immunity to injury (technically 110% but effectively 100%). I've tested this and it is equivalent to all your characters being Unbreakable. They will not get injured. They also get 90% chance to avoid taking any plague build up from anything if you have a Pathologist. Making Blood Plague Survivors far less "must have". A level 2 Kitchen and Shooting Range will give your characters an extra 50 stamina with feasts if you have someone with Nutrition (which you can make in abundance because all your community only eat lettuce). So the bonuses to health and stamina can be massively offset by your base and the fifth skills your characters have.
I would also recommend the hero bonuses Dosage Control for increased healing from items (this includes stamina items also) which you're probably gonna need for the giant health bars they get once their primary skills are maxed out, Hygiene Standards for increased infection resistance if you take infection damage 10% of the time, or use biochem items, and someone with "Nose To tail" (+1 food) combined with Fishing (+2 Food). This makes your community extremely sustainable, and tanky. Leaving you free to focus on meds instead of food to keep the hospitals running and to pump out meds that work better than normal, to either use or sell. I also use someone with the Hero Bonus "Outdoor Living" gained from the trait "Nomadic Sleeper". This makes her not use a bed, provide 2 beds from the Hero Bonus, and I gave her Sleep Psychology, which provides another 2 beds. So she's basically a walking Barracks.
As an aside, if you have someone with Lichenology, not only do they offset the cost of one of your medical facilities, they also have knowledge of gardening and herbalism. Meaning you can grow max level meds from either Hydroponics or a Farm. My base got to the point I was getting 25 meds a day, lol, because I didn't need to even bother with food outposts. It was a little bit insane. Providing strong painkillers in the zombie apocalypse! Buy 2 get 1 more at full price!
@@Kaethena Lots of good stuff there. I really enjoy how many diverse build-outs we can produce. Personally I think food outposts are pretty strong for one simple reason- they scale with difficulty. So in NM for example, a level 3 food outpost will provide 5 food (4.5, but last I checked it always rounds up PER outpost before other math).
Other outposts don't scale. That may seem reasonable at first because your survivors aren't eating meds, per se- but since you tend to take more damage and therefore need more meds at higher difficulties... in a way they are. You spend more bullets, durability, etc. But food scales and therefore makes it a good outpost resource to bank/convert into other items as needed.
Appreciate the thoughts. I love meal plan and may try that high end build out for all the HP. Have fun!
@@GameMnke That's very true. I often wondered why the food outposts scale with difficulty when surely the whole point was to make food harder to get, not kind of the same regardless of difficulty. 3 people with no food reduction traits can live off one maxed out food outpost, regardless of difficulty. Which is like... why even have the food increases at all then? I guess to make farms/hydroponics less productive the higher the difficulty you play on, since they don't scale.
That being said... this makes traits like "Eats like a bird" and "Ascetic" even more valuable on higher difficulties. Maybe 2/3 of my Forever Community have a food reduction trait of either -50% or -25%, as well as three Meal Planners. Playing on Lethal, with my 11 community members, they only eat just under 4.5 food per day, rather than the 22 they would normally eat. And 3 of those are provided by one of my survivors. So even just one level 3 food outpost would give, if it's rounded up, +5 food per day. Which is crazy.
Also, with regard to my previous comment about the Field Hospital, Infirmary 3 and Fighting Gym 2 combination, the health bonus is actually a lot more than I first thought. Having a Surgeon gives you +20 health, the fighting gym gives you another +20 health, and the field hospital gives you +10 health for all your community members. Which totals out at an extra 170 HP for all your people. And when their primary skills get maxed out, you find in some cases that they have more health than the bar can even show on screen. They get hit and appear to lose no health. Because it's more than the game thought people would have. It's very OP, honestly. Survivors with the Endurance skill have somewhere in the region of 370 HP. And won't get injured. You can literally stand toe to toe with a Plague Juggernaut and take it down with a pipe wrench, lol.
I spoke before about the "Dosage Control" Hero Bonus. This comes from the trait "Total Lightweight" Which gives the survivor +100% healing item efficacy, on top of the +25% increase from the hero bonus itself. Give one of these people Endurance, Powerhouse, Discipline and Gunslinging, combined with all the buffs from your base... and you make them into The Terminator. The best Plague Heart destroyer you can probably have. They have so much health it's unreal, and just one Strong Painkiller will heal them back up to full from almost nothing. They won't get injured and will barely take any plague damage because of your base effects. I know that's min/maxing to the extreme but for people who want to make even Lethal Zone into more of a minor annoyance than a threat... it's a very good way to go.
Over time I have evolved into doin mechanics(for arrows), fishing(+food), chemistry(for hopes of munitions and hire for electronics to make C4) c4 is easy game over.
Play on medium, low maintenance bases, like mikes concrete or brewco.
It's truly disappointing to see how little your channel is because if this video is your average then its really amazing. It's easy to understand, helpful and the quality is just top notch! Amazing video it helped me a lot so thanks and keep going, your doing amazing!!
I really appreciate the comment. I only started the channel in January, so I'm hopeful it'll grow as I get more quality content out. I've actually been spending a lot of time trying to sort out some stuttering I get- particularly in my SoD2 playthroughs when the action is thick. My beta playthrough has some examples of it. I thought it was mainly an FoV issue, but even going back to default FoV doesn't address it.
Anyway... I'll sort it out eventually. Thanks again for the support!
As someone who did countless lethal zones I can assure you don't need cooking, you will find energy drinks just doing looting and you will have more then you need. Computers skill is important cause of limits of outposts, mechanic if you like to damage your car a lot. Hygiene and chemistry is also good for arming outposts and hygiene for plague resistance.
Thanks for bringing that up. I totally agree that computers is important for CC level 3(and drones with prog), although it's not needed for CC level 2. This video was aimed at "starting" and early game. Definitely mid-game you're going to angle to pick up some skills/mods/etc that cap outposts and whatnot.
I also agree that if you loot long enough you'll have more of, well, everything. Maybe that includes "more drinks than you need", but said number is subjective. I'd rather have more drinks than I "need" (whatever number that is) than wait for rngezus to catch up to me.
If I roll up in an Impaler, stand on the hood and lob willy petes through the window, I probably don't need any drinks. Right? But I'm more of a sledge guy- at least early game when I aim to have plenty of chems/food and not enough energy drinks. In other words... You can pry my red bull from my cold. dead. haaaaaands.... ;)
(also- irl I don't drink energy drinks- they suck) :P
I agree and would say that computer is probably the most important skill to start with simply for the plague heart suppression alone. Saves on a ton of precious parts, which is felt the most in early game.
well idk how you're doing it but I've ran out plenty of times. Idgas if this is skill issue on my part. Its handy to have cause not everyone plays the same and conservatively. Being able to craft drinks and other useful stuff is a load off. I tend to use up a lot of resources.
Great guide. I can't think of anything u missed. And ur recognition of materials as THE bottleneck resource is spot on.
Handy for someone coming back from a long hiatus. Nice work as well, thats a sub.
Much appreciated!
Great coverage! Food consumption is figured by adding the effects to the base usage amount. So, your hungry survivors get a pass on lethal because everyone consumes 2 food!
Interesting point. Thanks for bringing that up. I had another video that covered food outposts and how there is some inobvious rounding on Nightmare. Does that mean -50% food consumed on lethal equals 1.5 for a survivor since it's acting on the base of 1?
Great video! Will be watching more of your stuff. Love how much has been added to the game, it's better than it's ever been and people like you make the community better
Good guide. Though I already knew the things its good to get my thoughts confirmed. Lately I got a character with the fishing trait (+2 food per day) which sounded not that good at the beginning. But I played on nightmare and his hero bonus was +1 Food per day on top. So just this character produced 3 food total plus the leader has meal plan too... Lets just say my community swims in food. All in all he's a perfect candidate for the Legacy Pool. 😄
Sweet! Fishing and Nose to Tail is a solid combo. I tend to find that having lots of food is great because you can convert it into a number of different things. (plus enclaves seem to always be hungry)
This really helped me. You are really helpful and knowledgeable at SOD2. Thanks alot.
I never though about looking for their hero bonuses when rolling characters before, very neat idea I’ll use that next time I play
wow this is a great guide keep it up man great job😁👍
Thanks- and will do!
thank you i hope you have a good day
You too!
Great guide. Thanks for putting together
Glad you liked it!
3 survivors with Unbreakable and blood plague survivor. already winning 😂
Punch those plague hearts to death!
@@GameMnke how do you take plaque hearts down? I'm in lethal zone, and im just shitting myself think about it. Like i only have gone into plauge territory with the plaque disurptor on
I mostly play NNL at this point. I take down hearts with a 2-hander early game (energy drinks help, a molatov and side-arm help for adds). It's efficient. Mid to late game I still use a 2-hander, but if I have more explosives or can call in drones, I may use them. It depends on how tight a heart is with other hearts, how busy the area is, etc. If you want to see a pro at taking down hearts in full lethal- I'd suggest checking out @BrianMenard (www.youtube.com/@BrianMenard ). He hands out tons of advice during his videos and gives free beatdowns to plague hearts. Brian is the guy that has helped me learn to enjoy this game the most.
By the way... On lethal I also shit myself. Let me tell you a little story...
When I first got this game I played on Standard. I didn't know anything, but it was great. Got through the end (some hardships- but that's a different story) and was like "f it" gonna jump to lethal (inspired by Brian- haha). Launching the game became sweat-inducing. Do I want to play? Where am I gonna go that I don't die? Those ferals are gonna get me! I lost that first community rather quick. Lethal again... lost my second community sort of on accidental purpose (also a different story).
So I'm like okay... I've learned some things, but I have to want to play the game. So I turned the action (and community) down to Nightmare but kept the map on Lethal (scarcity and 30ish hearts). Suddenly it felt like that was the right level for the type of enjoyment I wanted matched to my skill (I used to play FPS a ton but lots of rust). I like the game a whole lot more now. Enough to try to help other people.
Find the difficulty you enjoy launching and playing the game at using the custom sliders. Lethal will always be there. That's my advice. Get to where you're not shitting yourself- get to where you're like "I'm Rick Grimes bitch!" and you bust through that window and start handing those hearts their asses.
@@GameMnke thanks man. Def one of the best state of decay creators!
Leo, I'm sure you used either mod or community editor to get 3 Unbreakable Blood Plague Survivors.
Great video and analysis.
you earned yourself a sub my guy
Awesome guide. Thanks
Awesome stuff thanks
Good video! Liked and subbed! Just what I was looking for! My son mentioned a new map in SoD2 and I hadn't played in quite a while. Doesn't take long to get absorbed into the game again. I love the new mechanics with the Plague Hearts and now some of these traits will even be more useful. I won't admit, the sick amount of time I spend on creating characters. I did 3 communities last night and still not happy with what I have. I think I'll off and on roll characters all day and send a few to legacy for my start up.
I'm curious - you mentioned 'time passing' while rolling characters - but that doesn't have any impact otherwise, correct?
I haven't really tested it out to see the impact of waiting/rolling all the way through the night. It could be that consumption of resources isn't a thing without a base. Mainly it impacts the ability to get your base set up and get a few things done/buildings looted before night sets in.
On a slightly different note, I did learn (while making the series that follows this video) if you lock in your survivors and then exit the game without claiming the first base, when you log back in it sets you up at a temporary "base tent" near the starting base. For Drucker this meant that since enclaves can spawn starting X distance from your base that one spawned in the gun shop- depriving me of an ammo outpost and loot. It was terrible! Haha. I'm laughing about it now, but I ended up having to restart/reroll for my series.
I just look up SoD2 traits and look them up :3
Great minds think alike. :)
Great video. I subscribed!
Is possible to learn more skills in-game? More than the five they started? Thanks for the tips \o
Survivors can't have more than 5 skills, but you can roll a survivor with 4 and pick up their 5th skill in-game. For example, you can teach them computers from a cell tower or chemistry from an ammo outpost. This is particularly nice if you roll a great survivor without a 5th skill. There are also mysterious traders that can sell retraining textbooks to retrain one of your four core skills (say if you really wanted powerhouse), or a rare skill trader that offers 5th skill special books- e.g. hygiene or lichenology. The mysterious traders are only Friday thru Monday (real world time)!
Note: you can't ever replace a 5th skill with a different 5th skill. Once you picked one- it's locked in.
Wiki for outposts: state-of-decay-2.fandom.com/wiki/Outposts
Wiki for traders: state-of-decay-2.fandom.com/wiki/Wandering_Traders?so=search#Mysterious_Wandering_Traders
Have fun!
I just rolled a character with +30 health +30 stamina and +5 stamina hero bonus (community)
That sounds great!
Great content!!
Hi. I am working on a program that will scroll through survivors for you and search for a specific trait you want or even combination of traits.
That would be a cool feature if UL added that- particularly for the legacy pool. Filter on a trait (or bonus) would be nice.
@@GameMnke I have already generated two Unbreakable + Blood Blague Survivor survivovors using my tool, but it took several nights of scrolling with the speed of 3 survivors per second.
@@DarkN3r0 Do you have this tool available to download anywhere? It sounds extremely useful to me.
Is it worth getting Red Talon soldiers and operatives (what is the difference?) As your 4th and 5th survivors?
Absolutely can be. The difference between soldier and ops is only cosmetic. Hacking is, for example, one of the desired quirks- it's provides +1 outpost and is the only way to cap out at 7 outposts in the normal game (ie not Heartland, where you can max at 8). The wiki has a write up on RT and how to predict their traits based on their skills to avoid some of the bad rolls. This info allows you to "fish" for the RT quirk you want (or better rolls) by reloading the game after you've summoned them. There's practically a whole mini-game around blocking possible spawns to get them to respawn in the same spot. ;)
Just remember they do tend to occasionally waste a resource, take up extra beds, etc. So you'd have to be able to take on their bs. Good luck!
state-of-decay-2.fandom.com/wiki/Red_Talon_Contractors
@GameMnke yea, I noticed!:) got my new community yesterday with a Hacking RT as 1 of 3 starting... but lost 1 chatecter on the 2nd day and had to summon another RT
But I am too lazy to min max or go with this mini game, I just want to play:))
I also like to start with Agricultural survivor to ease my first days and look for other 5th skills later
Once had a game when I built everything and a huge pile of mats with nothing to do to them... so now I tend not to go heavy on mats
Thanks for the info and GL with your new community
What’s the most op character you have rolled so far? I really like characters with +40 stamina or more and a small health boost as well. Not necessarily the top tear stamina boost but stacked together like determined plus left for dead
Well I'd like to say a rolled a really good survivor for one of my first couple lethal attempts (BPS plus some stam I think), but since I lost badly I don't know that I can call it OP. Haha! I jumped to lethal after beating the game once on standard- it was quite humbling. Although I don't recall if that survivor died to a plague feral or the enclave I accidentally threatened when the "trade with enclave" button moved up from the bottom after meeting them and the bottom button became "threaten enclave". I totally blame UI for that. Totally. ;)
@@GameMnke oh dang I remember blood plague survivors being easier too find when the game came out I feel like I never see it anymore.
How do I get Guthrie in state of decay two.
I'm not sure what you're referring to.
Good video. However, I'm not all into the min/maxing. The game is about a zombie apocalypse. Not a game to 'win'. But good video non-the-less.
Thanks for your candor. I agree with you. I think we can both also agree that different people have different skill levels and different needs in terms of how strong their survivors need to be to feel like they can enjoy the game. If you look at the survivors I settled on, they are by no means crazy good- but I'm fine with that because they are good enough for me.
@@GameMnke no arguments from me. Thank you for taking g the time to reply. I really enjoy this game. Having a situation where I don't have a particular skill that I would like to have turns into emergent gameplay where I either look for that skill in the wild, or I adapt around it. Good stuff all around.
I really disagree about your recommended starting skills. In nightmare and letal. The best traits are medicine, which can give health bonus on a med facility. Mechanic which allows crafting car kits, and allow access to vehicles early in the game, and agriculture which reduces a lot the food/medicine consumed, and give more time to focus on other resources, like fuel and ammo.
Thanks for the feedback/pushback. It forces me to double-check to make sure that I either still feel confident in the position I took or to change my position. I'm not the kind of person to just blow someone off when I don't agree, so please bear with my detailed response.
Regarding medicine/mechanic... In the video I point down to the description for a more comprehensive list of recommended fifth skills which includes both pathology (the medicine spec) and automechanic (the mechanic spec). HOWEVER... for "starting" skills neither medicine nor mechanic (ie the base skills) are very useful early on. For medicine you can activate "primary care" to boost health, but it costs 3 meds (on top of the med cost of the infirmary). Hygiene, by comparison, is free and basically gives you the passive bonus of level 7 pathology (+50 community plague resist) and +10 comm max health for zero meds. It would be better to start with something like Hygiene and then pick up medicine later on to develop someone with pathology- once you have the meds to keep primary care going. I'd also submit that it's easier to roll someone with Hygiene and later train someone with medicine than the other way around- agreed?
For mechanic- I'm not sure if you are talking about toolkits or car/vehicle upgrade kits when you mention "car kits". I'm going to have to assume the former because car upgrade kits require automechanic and an autoshop/etc, which is clearly not "starting". For toolkits... yes, being able to craft them at a level 2 workshop is great, but early on when mats are at a premium, I'd prioritise getting another outpost (by upgrading the CC) over a level 2 workshop. I know I want to upgrade the Command Center on every single playthrough- I don't know whether I'll need someone to craft toolkits or whether I'll find a couple early on or find a merchant selling them (they are cheap at the price). Having an extra outpost earlier gives you something- fuel, food, etc. Whatever resource you're trying to shore up, plus a drop point, safe zone, and potential mining point for offense/defense/looting.
For agriculture... I mean... it's a gardening spec. You can't start with agriculture- you have to train it and you don't get the passive +1 food until it is maxed. But MORE than that... On nightmare and lethal (specifically) food outposts are better than on lower difficulties relative to gardening. Why? Because they scale with difficulty. Food from gardening doesn't scale with difficulty. Resources from all other outposts don't scale with difficulty. Using food outposts on NM or L basically negates the food consumption difficulty penalty. I plan on making a video about it, but that's my rough cut. ;)
Clearly play whatever way suits you. I prefer being able to negate threats cheaply through the use of Chemistry and outpost mines. It's particularly good early game when you lack weapons to deal with ferals/etc. You can get an ammo outpost and the net cost for two days of mines is just parts. I cover this in a separate video specifically about Chemistry.
I think we would agree that later in the game skills like automechanic and pathology are great. I just don't think with all the other problems a community has starting out that fifth skills that cost meds and/or mats to benefit from is superior to rolling a quirk that GIVES +2 meds or +2 mats, etc. Chemistry being the only exception to that I suppose because it allows novel gameplay in creating bubbles of death.
Again thanks for the feedback. Hopefully I've done a good job of explaining my position on starting skills. I welcome further criticism. Have fun!
@@GameMnkeloved your response. I got all the points you mention in your reply. Especially regarding food outposts being better than gardening. I also use a lot of mines in my outposts next to the next plague heart I want to destroy. But I guess the other options doesn't suit my game skills, or play style. I loot a lot early in the game, so I really need ability to craft car kits early. Depending on buying it or finding in gas stations are more risky, and lucky is a factor that doesn't help me much in this game. Med skills may not be necessary if you are a expert in fighting zombies, but it's not my case. I miss a lot of headshots in ferrals, and need to learn more how to use some itens with more efficiency (like stun/ smoke granades / mines/ etc). Despite it, I learned a lot from you, and hope to learn more with your videos. (also sorry for mixing gardening with agriculture. English is not my first language). 😊
@@caiosan89 It's all good. I like to loot a lot early in games too. (probably why I like mines for outposts a whooole bunch- haha) It's definitely best to angle toward the skills that suit your play style or enjoyment. With the changes they make to the game over time I find myself circling back through certain strategies to see if they hold up or can be improved. That's one of the great things about SoD2 in that two players can find two different ways to approach a problem and both succeed. Thanks again for the feedback and good luck in the apocalypse!
huh huh huh, you said touch that monkey
Heh heh. Yeah. Hehe ;) (in my best Beavis voice)
I've noticed if you pick all male characters you start to not find male characters with good traits
I doubt this is anything more than anecdotal happenstance. Traits on survivors you cross tend to be "?????" so I'm not sure how you'd confirm this simply by playing the game anyway. Maybe take one of your complete games and use community editor go through and look at all the survivor traits. It could simply be that most survivors suck compared to being able to roll 3 decent ones at the start. ;)
I hate the nerf to rolling back to characters. I dont know what made them think that was a good idea but before update 33 you were able to go back all the way to the first character you rolled.
Hmm... Update 30 (forever communities) added going back twice. That was August of 2022. Before that you couldn't go back at all. I don't remember anything in U31-32 (seasonal content) changing that to unlimited.
From update 30: "Accidentally skip the perfect survivor when making a new community? Not anymore. We now remember the two previously rolled characters in the character selection screen."
store.steampowered.com/news/app/495420/view/3419938619415506892
Different game maybe? Have fun!
I just roll 3 Unbreakable like everyone else 🤣😂 has ANYONE ever gotten Unbreakable and +100 Infection Resistance or Hygiene yet? Not me...
I did, but I sent them out on a TP run and they never came back. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Im such a lucky person i rolled blood pleag survivor... (only once in my life) and his name is Chad.. but.. hes lazy and a food critic.. ya aint i lucky.
So Chad is just hanging around? ;)
I mean if it's the zompocalypse and you can't be killed, what else is there to do but lament all the good food that will never be made again...
@@GameMnke I lose labor and food.. I dnt use him. It'd easy (ish) 2 avoid blood pleag..not easy 2 find food n build up my base. I move a lot.
@@JesusChrist-ck2sf For sure. I mean I use food outposts, so generally not many food issues. Wait... doesn't food critic give you Meal Plan for the hero bonus which means everyone eats 25% less food?
@@GameMnke idk.. I never level him up. He in my pool. I guess I'll giv him a shot