Survivalist for Noobs :) Thread - Survivalist

I've been doing a lot of comment and forum crawling over the last few days, and have played it extensively for the past 2-3 weeks, so I thought I'd compile a big list of all the little tips and tricks that I've picked up through my travels. (Don't worry, I won't spoil any locations of goodies, you'll have to find those yourselves!).

1. Save often!
This may come as a given in a game as brutal and unforgiving as Survivalist, but make sure that you save often, and try to incorporate a rolling save method (where you save on block 1, then next time, on block 2, and so forth). There's no telling when you could run into a few white strains or looters unprepared, get yourself killed, and drop an hour of gameplay.

2. Know your survivors!
Especially as the game progresses, try and remember the names and appearances of all your survivors. Assign them however you like, just make sure that you remember whether Jacob De Vere is building, or guarding, or farming. The survivors have a slight tendency to get lost or walk miles finding water because they're too good for your grotty well.

3. Timing is key!
I find a lot of this game is based on timing. Time when you bring your survivors back from their exploration, so that you're not bored for half an hour watching the 'Sleep Deprivation' meter slowly count down. Time your shots. Wait until enemies get as close as possible before firing a shotgun shell, it's enough to kill a green/blue strain outright from close range. Most of all, don't fire an assault rifle or sniper unless completely locked on, as you're very unlikely to hit anything otherwise.

4. Know your limits!
There are many areas of the game, especially in the beginning, that are just too strong for Joe to take on by himself. As a general rule, 1 survivor is safe in green territory, 2 are safe in blue, 3 are safe in red, and 4 are (kinda) safe in white. If you see zombies of a stronger strain than my suggested 'safe' amount, turn around, or be VERY careful. In addition, don't go sprinting into a looter camp without first ascertaining how many looters are in there. You don't want to try and fight off 6 angry shotgun wielding men when you've only got 2 survivors with you.

5. Create a strong exploration party!
To do this, find 3 additional survivors who can hit at least 4 stars in both fitness and firearms, and ensure that one of these has a good medical skill. Now, depending on what you are doing, equip them accordingly. Always ensure that the medical person has a lot (10+ bandages), give them all at least a normal backpack, and as high condition bulletproof vests as you can muster. If you are just exploring through the infected, equip 3 survivors with shotguns and give Joe, whom you should control, with a sniper (if you have one), or an assault rifle. AI will just waste bullets with the AR or Sniper. If you are engaging looters, equip your survivors with a molotov or two each, and throw these at enemies in watchtowers, and in addition, take one shotgun from a survivor and instead give them an assault rifle. If you do this, you should be safe from most threats around the map.

6. Build in advance!
When you're looking to expand your group, don't wait until you have the survivors before building the requirements. Always build enough shacks and outhouses so that when you recruit 3-4 new people in a short time, they all fit in fine. Otherwise, every survivor in the camp will lose respect for you.

7. Offense is the best defense!
At regular intervals throughout the game, you will be met with random hordes of zombies or groups of looters coming to hunt you down. Always go out and meet these attackers away from your base, especially if they are looters. Zombies can cause problems and bite your low-fitness farmers and doctors, especially if they come from red/white-strain towns such as Pequeno Canyon or Monkey Wrench Gulch. Looters will always initiate an attack on your base by lobbing molotov cocktails everywhere. They will burn your crops, walls, shacks, and outhouses, and just generally be annoying. Send your strongest fighters to meet and engage them before they pose any danger to your camp.

8. Make use of temporary survivors!
This is an especially useful way to take down looters in the early game. Both Charlie Cashman and Sarah Slaughter of Fort Kohai, and many other survivors elsewhere will follow you anywhere between accepting and completing their relative quest, and Sarah will join you afterwards if you ask her to. Make use of these 'free' survivors to go and take out anything that might be causing you a problem, or any tough sections that you need to progress in the game.

9. Loot everything!
Make sure that you have a small section of your community dedicated to 'pack-muling'. That is, sweeping the towns that you have recently explored and killed zombies in, and looting anything and everything. This way, you can keep your initial exploration team freed up in case they need to carry other items, and you have something to do whilst the exploration team is sleeping.

10. Be careful who can see you!
Once you have the brain scanner, you will notice that you can easily shakedown and obtain lots of gold from many of the richer survivors if you have enough respect from them. However, if you do this in front of other survivors, whether your community or the other, they will lose approval for you. Make sure that you shakedown any survivors away from their friends, in order to avoid this.

11. Wire fences = fire repellent!
Wire fences cannot be burned down. If you don't have the time to constantly engage attacking looters as they come at you, then put wire fences a few blocks in front of your wooden ones. This means that looters can't throw molotovs at your precious wooden structures and cause as much chaos as they usually would. However, be careful, as they can shoot through these fences.

12. Keep on top of food problems!
When there are 10+ mouths to feed in your community, they can quickly eat up the canned food that you expected to last for weeks. Always make sure that for every 4 survivors, you have a farmer to keep on top of demand. In addition, if you have a spare survivor, use him as 'hander-outer' person. Go through with this person, harvest a bunch of crops, and have them stand somewhere in the center of your base, so that survivors will go to this person whenever they need food. This way, you can stop every ear of corn being instantly replanted, like the farmers insist on doing.

13. Keep insulin within reach!
It's not necessary to get every possible unit of insulin right away. However, always make sure that you have at least one quest that is near completion and will reward you with insulin, in case you can't find anymore before Alice begins to run out. As a general rule, try not to let her fall below 3 units of insulin. If you keep on top of it, it tends to be much less of an issue than you'd think.

14. Put your gun down!
When you are heading towards a looter camp, try not to aim your weapon. Instead of taking your aiming at them as a sign of aggression and instantly opening fire on you, a looter will run up to you and attempt to shake you down. This gives you time to work out how many are in the camp, and position yourself to quickly kill a bunch of them with a shotgun spray. In addition, in most camps, the looter that will talk to you is the one in their watchtower, meaning that you can pull a potentially annoying and tricky opponent out of his safety zone and quickly dispatch them.

That's all of the tips that I use often and can think of right now. Post in the comments if you have any more tips to put in my guide, and hopefully, this will improve your experience in the horribly fun world of Survivalist!

Edited by: itsHuds0n

Since your handing out tips I have no clue how to farm.

Wow, that was epic! I think I'll pin it for a while.

Slight correction to 14: you don't need to sheath your gun, just don't press LT (aim) as the looters will interpret aiming at them as a threat and start attacking you.

Caesar43 wrote: Since your handing out tips I have no clue how to farm.

You need a survivor with at least 1* in farming, (either through prior experience or a farming handbook) ears of corn, and a watering can. The survivor needs to press a with the corn EQUIPPED, and they will plant it in the ground where they stand. Then, they need to water it regularly. However, any survivor with the skill and items required can farm automatically, if you set them to do so.

bob_the_pr_bot wrote: Wow, that was epic! I think I'll pin it for a while.

Slight correction to 14: you don't need to sheath your gun, just don't press LT (aim) as the looters will interpret aiming at them as a threat and start attacking you.

Glad you like it, and thank you for making such a great game!

Are you sure? I thought I'd try just now and one camp i walked in with shotgun in hand and they still immediately opened fire. Is it to do with the looters personalities?

One other possible reason they might attack you is if they come up to mug you and you run away from them. Could be you walked away from someone without realising it?

bob_the_pr_bot wrote: One other possible reason they might attack you is if they come up to mug you and you run away from them. Could be you walked away from someone without realising it?

I see, that probably explains it. I think the first few times I ran in and then straight back out to get them to follow me, which explains why they opened fire. Thanks for that, Bob!

Don't ignore Alice on Day 1!

I wandered through town, saw her but didn't talk to her. Went for a long stroll in the desert beating up zeds.

Came back by a few fitness levels later, saw her dead and scrunched up oddly.

Now it seems I will never get map mode, command, pause, fast-forward.

Hmm. Should be a way around that, but I can't find one. Any manual override to enable these when Alice dies lonely?

If you recruit someone else besides Isham or Alice the game will assume you're no longer following the tutorial and the map mode, command mode, etc will be enabled.

Im trying to make a community strictly meaning recruiting all the survivors and building a big base only problems im runing into is crops dont grow even though i have like 6 farmers in a group of 17 i think also i cant seem to find any more watering can also i cant find a rocket launcher and i really need one to get into the military base

go to Los Ceros and rob someone twice with 2 people. The rocket people, make sure you have found brain scanner to see if you can rob them.

In regards to dealing with looter nests...

You can actually use this trick.

If you have a group, have them stand away from the encampment, tell the character you've chosen to approach the camp with to un-follow the group, and trade away their entire inventory. You could even let them mug you for any non-essentials because once you kill them, you can loot your stuff back anyways. Comply with all their demands and they'll mug you even if you have nothing. Alternatively, if you're rollin' deep enough you can just tell them "try it" and they'll balk.

At any rate, the looters may tell you to run along, but you can still wander through their camp, even un-grouping Survivalists at strategic points, and totally case the joint. I usually pick out who I'd like to recruit most and try to save them for last so they'll surrender. Half of my faction are ex-bandits! Anyways, I digress...

I imagine they think I'm some kind of crazy when I wander right into their camp alone with no gear and start asking "What's your name?"

And remember: Save is your friend.

I wish their was a quick save, that would be sweet.

i found it very amusing to destroy all the wells on the map and allow everyone else to fight each other for whichever one i chose to place, every one was wandering around the map looking for food while fema death squads also wandered around looking for the same food exterminating civilians for being " in a restricted area" lmfao all because no one could grow any crops!

im currently testing to see if building fences around all wells will work the same way, if so then the map will be untouched when the wandering begins!