This is the ultimate guide to state of decay. This is intended to new and old players alike. Now I bet you ready to go in and crush a few skulls. Don’t. Firstly avoid zombies. You don’t want to end up dead. Second don’t sneak everywhere; this is a waste of time effort. Just run and kill the occasional zombie on the way. This is good as it upgrades your cardio and fighting skills and you can spot a camp site which sometimes has a rifle.

Now cars are great, you can drive through hordes of zombies if you use a car. Don’t worry about noise as zombies are not fast enough or will not destroy your car. But cars will break after you hit enough walls and zeds .Cars will last longer if you don’t hit walls, bloated zombies which when hit release poisonous gases or big basted (strong tough zombie). Now if you’re scared that when you come to the location that your car will make too much noise attracting zeds. You can drive in at a slower speed which produces less noise. Any zombies on the road, you can run over them even at slow speeds.

Now scavenge houses is a main aspect in state of decay, just walk to house or garage and go inside. The door may be lock but don’t worry as if you click he will break through the door. Be careful because the noise made from that will alert zombies and nearby and zombies in the house. So be ready for a fight. If you find zeds on the ground that look dead, shoot them with a silenced weapon or if you run over quick enough and press shift E and this will kill them instantly but if you don’t do it quick enough he will jump up and bite you .Now you’re probably going how do I know their dead. Well your mini map shows small dots for normal zeds and large ones for special zeds. Even the ones playing dead will be show on the mini map, but it should be easy enough to tell.

Now searching the houses even requires knowing what to do. You want to search everything. That way you can take the most valuable things and then come back for the cheap stuff. This will stop from destroying things like firecrackers and food to make room for weapons and meds. When you leave the house be ready for a fight because zeds will approach a car that was never there. They like investigate it, but there’s never too many of them. This picture is some zombies that were investigating my car after I had searched a garage. Note how I’m using a silencer.

Now we will move on to managing your home. You lead a group of survivors so you would want to know how to manage home life and build the right things. Firstly to look after your home you need three main things, Food, medication and resources. There is a fourth which is petrol but this is only used for building weapons and outposts, but we will talk about this later. This is the onscreen menu you get when you press Tab. Here you check your guys states, upgrades, diary, people, achievements (Sate of Decay Breakdown) which unlock heroes, resource usage and most important your home’s facilities. Now when building your three main facilities its important you get the right ones. A watch tower is the first thing I build. It extends the level of safety around your home with the added bonus of have a place to snipe zeds. It is also a place where no zed can attack you. Next in line is a medical facility; these will heal injured players to full health and will also cure sick. Sick people lose stamina more quickly and have a chance of dying. Next in line is a workshop. They repair damaged weapons and with the right upgrade cars. They can also produce cocktails from petrol and firecrackers. Finally you will want a kitchen as this reduces people getting sick and can give your people a stamina and health boost. Now the upgrades after this are up to you. The dining area reduces disease, library allows research and trade opportunities, beds allow a place for people to sleep when tired and if everyone has a bed a boost to stamina. There are more but you figure them out. But one I suggest you use latter in the game is a garden. You might have been told that these are useless as food is the most common item. It is true that foods is very common but the problem is when your population gets big enough you will lose 30 food a day. This means you will always be looking for food. If you have enough gardens it can take away this problem allowing you to have time to look for med, ammo etc. also note that if you don’t play state of decay for a while you will lose items when you load up, this makes it seem like the world keeps going.

Outposts are very important as they allow for a place to restock and dump stuff, but you still have to take resources like food back to your home base. They will also give you free supplies but this will slowly deplete. They create an area where zombies won’t spawn. The outpost will also destroy hordes that pass through the zombie free zone. But only hordes get destroyed. This setup of outpost here makes it virtual impossible to be attacked by zombies or hordes. Make sure to put outpost in areas so hordes can’t reach your home base.
Character Leveling is a small aspect of the game but can make a huge difference. There are many different things to level up like cardio, heavy weapons, sharp weapons, wits and more. Now you don’t need to worry about anything except for perks. It is quite simple which perks to choose. The perks you want to pick are the ones that you want. But make sure not to use only one character. When one gets tired use another that way every one levels up.

Fighting is something that will no doubt pop up all the time. You will want to be ready and know how to fight off the zeds with ease. The main thing is you can choose your melee weapon, there is no better weapon. Guns on the other hand are another thing; you want to choose a weapon that will suit your guy. Some guns a better than others, for example some shot guns have 6 rounds will other only have two. But a gun is better than no gun. Now when using melee weapons you have to use Shift E when a zombies is on the ground or kneeling. This will allow you to save large amounts of stamina. You can also use your combos but I won’t go into any details. Now while fighting using melee weapons make sure you have meds with you because you will get injured as you can see here in this picture. When using a gun you have to aim. You save so many bullets when you shot them in the head. It’s one bullet to the head no matter what gun. When you don’t shot them in the head you may actual believe that the only way to kill them is in the head. This is wrong because it just takes a lot of bullets.

Freaks are special zeds with different abilities. The one to the left is a screamer. They are easy to identify with no arms and his chest rip to pieces. Screamers don’t actual do damage, they scream which attracts zombies and make you cover your ears stopping you from fighting. Bloated Zeds are zombies which have skinny arms and legs with a huge stomach. When shot or hit with a melee weapon they release poisons a gas which causes damage. These gasses will stick to cars if they get hit. Big Basted are zeds that have huge body parts and double your size that roar when you come close. They have a small head however which makes it harder for you to shot them. Cars don’t really hurt them so they are out of the picture. Melee weapons and guns are what you need to use. You can kill them with melee weapons but they can grab you and bite your neck causing a lot of damage. It takes about 15 bullets to kill one. This was done with 5.52 mm bullets. Different bullets might have different results. It takes two grenades to kill one. These are probably one of the most intimidating zeds to fight; there big weakness is speed so you can dodge there attacks. Feral Zeds that have messy hair and are on all fours, they have skinny body parts so there easy to spot, they will however crouch in grass which might make them hard to spot. They quick zeds that if they get two you can cause major damage or even kill you. They can die from melee weapons but your best option is to try in shot them in the head as it only takes one bullet. Cars are great but they will dodge them but if you drive around enough you will eventual hit them. Amy zeds and Swat Zeds are armored zombies that run real quick and have body amour and helmets. These guys have to be killed by melee weapons or explosive as their helmets stop bullets. There pretty easy but more common than the other types.

Surveying is simple and useful. It allows you spot places and marks them on the map giving you an idea of what the town has to offer. For example a gun shop will have guns while donut shop will have food. To find a survey spot, there are three main spot, tall buildings, water tanks and cellphone towers and you may get mission to survey. That’s all you need to know.

Survivor groups are other people who have survived the outbreak of zeds. They are useful because if you help them enough they will want to join you because you know what you’re doing. This is how you get a larger population. The mission ranges from protecting their house to helping them find some supplies. You can’t steal from them and they can’t attack you. But you can hurt them which make them lose trust.

You are now ready to take on hordes of zeds with great ease.

Read the comments I’m sure there is lots of useful info. Second don’t say anything about my English as it's easily not my best subject. It should not be to bad.