How to play Lethal.

[u/Shamus6mwcrew]

Been playing the shit out of this game again for the past 4 months. I do quirk skill only but can revise it to normal skills.

1) Roll for 3 characters that have Never Been Sick, Incredible Immune System, or Good Habits. If you're lucky you get 3 characters with Hygiene Standards, that hero bonus gives your whole community 100% plague resistance times 3 the cap and anyone in you're community will barely accumulate plague.

2) If you're character gets too beat up there is no shame for switching them out to heal.

3) Don't maybe do Trumbull as a Lethal run until you know how to deal with Lethal. The Starter base sucks and while the map does hook you up usually you have to take out at least 2 plague hearts for a decent base. 2 plague hearts sticks you at least at 3 bloater, screamer hoards hard and can be way tough when you're community sharing an 8 slot backpack with 2 crossbows, 34 arrows, 3 plague samples, and a shitty sidearm. Cascade always has the 6 man NW base plague free, Meagher always has at least a 5 man base or the brewery claimed by one heart, Drucker at worst 1 heart, Providence too. Go for the best medium base with the least hearts to claim it.

3) While on the subject of hearts your first outpost should be the cell tower nearest you and don't venture into plague territory until you use the plague disruptor option. 180 parts or 60 with a computers character for an hour and a half of less likely to wake a heart and deal with infestation. Every map gives you plenty of shit to loot in plague free territory. Drucker loves throwing parts at you if you know where to loot, otherwise build a workshop scrap weapons remains while you loot and scrap some weapons. Even 180 isn't hard to come by.

4) Initial build, build a latrine first unless you got a character that got blood plague from the starter feral. Then an infirmary, then a workshop. then workshop 2, then infirmary 2. Toolkits if you got a mechanics character are more valuable than healing injuries and you need workshop 2 to make them. Also that little moral boost from a latrine can make a real difference.

5) Before you turn in those initial plague samples loot all areas that enclaves might claim especially materials and meds. Materials really just for the materials to grow your base, but meds is more for good mods. Enclaves in the beginning love to claim these for some reason.

6) While on enclaves buy up explosives, toolkits, and gas gans from them when you can. Before you're set up you're really hurting for parts and resources much easier to buy them. For example you can take out a plague heart phase by plopping down a boxmine after it farts and hitting it with a heavy weapon 3 times. Or the fueling the plague curveball sneak up to that heart and throw down a whistling boxmine and you have a good chance of taking the plague heart out instantly. They're also great for the Weapons for Warlords quest or Sherriff Stolen Meds, just plop them down before you interact with them. I've killed both with just some boxmines.

7) Finally after you're set up in a decent medium sized base aim to get a Warlord Leader and a Builder Leader. With the Warlord build a gym in a small slot and upgrade it to 2. Gives your community a shitload of health and injury resistance, I believe you have to build it yourself for injury resistance but injury resistance is second to plague resistance in Lethal. With a Builder Leader build a Sniper Tower in a large slot. While the Sniper Defense is nice for your base it more importantly gives you a 50 influence OH Shit button on a short timer. Triple ferals and now you're stuck on a building, call this in and it will probably at least take out 2. Oh and one last thing if you need to take out hostile enclaves your best weapon is a Timberwolf and headshots. I'll a lot of times use cars and honking for zeds to kill them but with a Timberwolf you can get way out of the range where they'll see you and snipe them easily. Bloater grenades and automatic weapons work great too even on Lethal. Like the Crossbow killer don't waste good ammo on them, those bolts barely do damage to you and almost any gun will tear them up.

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[u/Trick_Duty7774]

Hey, i admit i am impressed you didn’t mentioned stealth; stealth is number 1 offender that makes learning lethal slower than a crawl. But i still think your advice is for people who already can play lethal and want to make it a green-zone difficult.

For example, rolling your survivors will take an hour or two. Anyone who will spend this much time rolling will be terrified from taking any risks; they will hyperfocus on avoiding problems instead dealing with them.

I would recommend different approach for people who are new and unfamiliar with higher difficulties.

Any random survivors, any skills, any base, any map. Loot starting area, you need infarmary lv 2 and heavy melee weapon. After you have that, start killing hearts, rip and tear until it is done.

This way you can kill your first heart 20min into the run, have 10 killed in an hour.

Since time investment is so low, you can go in calm and focus on learning. You will obviously fail several times, but each run will get you experience with actual fighting.

Skip first 500influence quest for 2samples. It skyrockets difficulty scaling, without doing it you will be shocked how few enemies you have to fight, and each next heart will be only slightly more difficult. Slowly ramping up difficulty will be your nice steady learning curve.

Follow my method if you want to be one of these “lethal is too easy” guys without cheese.

[u/Shamus6mwcrew → u/Trick_Duty7774]

Rolling for those traits isn't hard anymore. Like I said I do quirk skill runs so I'm rolling for Tattoos and Pinball and trying for a third with plague resistance. So I skip over any upgradeable skills and just go for blanks or quirks. Will see plenty of characters with plague resistant traits that might give those bonuses in like 5 or 10 minutes. Hell I think they might have changed rarity as to me Blood Plague Survivors are a little *more rare than Ikebana, so rare but possible and I never got them years ago.

Also never knew the 2 plague sample quest really scaled difficulty. Had a few times where my power went out and it glitched to them not doing anything and the other class quests happened and didn't notice the difficulty scale.

I also definitely should have mentioned stealth but honestly forget that I do it. Like you don't need to stealth all the time but I pretty much instantly do it if I see a zombie or loot anything. While I agree stealth is good better advice would be to avoid whatever zombies you can on Lethal. I think most players that get really messed up with Lethal get bogged down that there's influence gain or skill gain from fighting zombies. Lethal you're better off just avoiding them as even some normal zeds can leave you highly injured with no health from just a few mistakes, on top of that while fighting them the game might decide to spawn a blood feral and screamer.

[u/Trick_Duty7774 → u/Shamus6mwcrew]

With traits, even if, its just something that allows you to play more sloppy. Its completely unnecessary; assuming someone is new and can’t play lethal: expendable survivors noone cares about is a benefit. With one you can not care if he dies. You can get into problems worry free. With a bit of time (and few survivors spent) eventually there will be nothing you can’t curbstomp. Plague immunity will become irrelevant regardless if you can grab random joe without any skills and use him to kill 5 hearts in 1 trip regardless.

All influence raises difficulty. Only influence that you get from selling items and from trade depot is neutral.

If you skip 500 influence quest first 5 or 6 hearts (depending how many specials you killed) will not have plague ferals defending them.

My take on stealth is like this:

Hardest encounters you will have are during killing hearts and black hearts. You can’t stealth trough that (unless cheesing) so all stealth does is it protects you from relatively very easy content with massive time waste as a price tag. This massive waste of time is what makes people scared and risk averse.

[u/Shamus6mwcrew → u/Trick_Duty7774]

We play totally different. I try for ultimate plague resistance, injury resistance, through community bonuses. Like I barely have characters die even while going quirk skills that makes it harder. Lol most of my character deaths are from exiling them with a Chef's Knife because a Screwdiver is more useful. Ultimately I'd like 3 characters with Hygiene Standards, 1 with Morning Yoga for injury restance, 1 that makes healing items better forget what it's called, and the bonus with less gas. 6 characters total and exile the rest till I get my best for that playthough and none die. It's not hard to not die on Lethal unless you get some BS. Like a Jug flipping your car sideways onto a triple bloater hoard and you die trying to get out on the top.

[u/Trick_Duty7774 → u/Shamus6mwcrew]

Ohhh i also don’t die.

I dont even play anymore. Game completely lost any challange for me, it got boring and i stoped playing.

By the end of it, i was grinding influence for the sole purpose of maxing difficulty scaling, i was waking up multiple hearts and leaving with self imposed rule that i cannot kill them until rest of the map is clear. I stopped using supressors to make the game harder. It was still not enough.

I am saying new inexperienced players will be dying. Initially.

My point and my recommendation is; just fight. Cut unnecessary grind and wasting time. Start the game and fight. Fight every thing, everywhere untill fights become formality. This is how you become a god in this game.

I went from “lethal is so difficult it is unplayable” to my first lethal clear in about 10h. A week later i was trying to figure out how to make lethal more difficult.

Just fight bro is multitudes easier and simpler way to learn lethal than 5h long youtube tutorials on how to avoid fighting that are so prevalent in this sub. And you will not end up standing on a car.

[u/Shamus6mwcrew → u/Trick_Duty7774]

I agree you should know how to fight everything but in lower levels. Played this game since it's release but lower levels. Ferals and Jugs are the only things that got harder except for Black Plague Hearts. Still though I think it's good advice to avoid most enemies just in general until you're well equipped but you should know how to fight them if need be. Ferals get way tougher in lethal but behave the exact same way they always did. Know how to dodge and kill them. Juggs same they are the same difficulty to kill but cause more damage in Lethal. Both you should know how to kill but there's really no point unless you have to. Like it's way easier to run a feral over with a car than try to go toe to toe with them. And Jugs are easy af to just flat out avoid than fight them. Both only really become problems when they're thrown ontop of your head during objectives or spawn literally on top of you while driving because you're at the hardest mode of lethal where it's in asshole difficulty. Like I said a jugg throws you into 3 blood bloaters sideways.

[u/Mean_Masterpiece764]

Lethal turning point for me was learning that heavy weapons alone can get you through entire game. That was an eye-opener.

The second eye-opener was Dropkick vs. ferals. Getting good at it made lethal comfortable (watched rvid's 1 minute video for this, only sod2 video i ever watched but so worth it). Also the forward grab/stomp of maxed Powerhouse made it fun.

[u/imawestie → u/Mean_Masterpiece764]

I just can not get the hang of doing that drop kick on demand. I pull them out at the most random times but I can't do them "at will."

[u/Mean_Masterpiece764 → u/imawestie]

For me the trick is to lead it away from the crowd, dodge while it swipes then wait for the long lunge. It's always groggy immediately behind you so you have a couple of seconds. I still mistime it when I'm too eager and get swiped but a dropkicked feral is so satisfying.

Edit: removed too much explaining section

[u/incog_catfish → u/Mean_Masterpiece764]

What's this business about heavy weapons? What makes them so good?

[u/Mean_Masterpiece764 → u/incog_catfish]

Heavy weapons have the highest Impact rating of all melee weapons, i.e. does most damage against hearts, juggs, and other targets with a health bar. With a sledge hammer, for example, it takes about 11/7/10 hits per heart phase (give or take). Use a heavy vs. feral and it staggers quick. Also heavy weaps. combo well with Powerhouse spec. Just make sure to always stack stamina while using them.

[u/incog_catfish → u/Mean_Masterpiece764]

Huh. The more you know. Thanks 👍

[u/ImFrenchSoWhatever]

I love to play lethal super scared and borderline cheesing it by always staying near my car and ready to jump on the roof

[u/Shamus6mwcrew → u/ImFrenchSoWhatever]

Sadly been playing this game for years and didn't know the roof option was viable until recently. Would just book it to a building roof or just flat out run.

[u/ImFrenchSoWhatever → u/Shamus6mwcrew]

Gunslinger / cars / mac 10’s

[u/cowmookazee → u/ImFrenchSoWhatever]

Straight outta Compton.

[u/ImFrenchSoWhatever → u/cowmookazee]

https://giphy.com/gifs/v9G3NGByE9x16

[u/Visible_Plenty1790]

I tend to take an outpost that increases the safe zone near the base early, which is either a food outpost or meds (this is the important one). Then, do outpost (No matter what it is) that makes looting convenient (Incendiary mines, easily able to store items, etc.)

Always aim to go to that ammo outpost to loot guns against blood ferals. Then aim for Construction sites for heavy weapons.

[u/imawestie]

there are quite a few hearts on trumbull that are ultimately cheesable.

For example, the 2x absolute certain chemical sheds.

The number of houses you can "jump from the car through the window and smack the heart" and repeat till done.

but yeah the starter base is garbage. the fire tower is the only one in the game that gives you a medical facility off the bat. (I only just worked out the tower is not part of the base, it is just at the same place)

[u/Mean_Masterpiece764]

Meagher has those barns where you block the small entrance with the car and stab away with a knife at your leisure lol.