User:Cadwah/Guides/Levelling your Alt
The Basics
How you level your character effectively in Urban Dead is one of the first questions you ask yourself. I have found that the best strategy is to decide what type of Alt you wish to create before you start. There are three types; Survivor, Zombie and Dual Nature (In this instance I define dual nature as an alt that wishes to perform both when breathing and dead so a cultist would fall into this category as well as the more usual definition). It makes sense, both from a role-playing perspective and skill selection to play your character right from the start as you mean to go on. Obviously once you have climbed the skill tree sufficiently you can switch to another style of play quite easily but when you start out XP is hard to come by, it is important to buy skills that will get you more XP and allow you to fulfill your desired function within Malton.
Obviously there are many subsets in each category but for the most part the starting skills and the build order will be similar. I will list one build guide for each which I believe to be the fastest and most effective way to level your character.
Hopefully you're reading this before even creating your new Alt, if you are, I implore you to choose your name wisely... Try to avoid txtspk, offensive or crap names. You're going to be stuck with it for an undetermined amount of time. Hell, I should know right!
Survivor
In my experience the quickest and most effective way to level up as a survivor is to start life in Malton as a Doctor, you will start with Diagnosis and two first aid kits(FAKs) and you get placed in a hospital, which is nice.
To start with check if anyone needs healing in the hospital you are situated, calculate how many heals you can administer, a FAK will heal 5HP, then search for more FAK's until you have enough, heal whoever you can as fast as you can. Use any spare AP to search for FAK's, if there is no-one to heal, search, you can carry 50FAK's. Don't be tempted to step outside, there are hungry zombies outside and they love fresh meat. Rinse and repeat until you have 150XP to buy free-running.
Ok, now you are set! Time for a little homework. This map is your friend, add it to your favourites in your browser. Find your location on the map. Now if especially lucky you will be located near a mall, if not, you want to find a mall closeby, the 4x4 blocks on the map. Look for one situated in the middle of a nice patch of GREEN, Avoid Ridleybank, Dunell Hills, Whittenside and Pitneybank. Ridleybank and Dunell Hills have resident zombie hordes, Whittenside and Pitneybank both have Forts which not only attract zombies but player killers and idiotic, weak minded folk who look grizzled, wear trenchcoats and carry imaginary katana's.
Plan your journey carefully, make sure you have the AP to get there safely and make sure you know where the nearest hospital to the mall is, this will be your base of operations until you are all grown up. Click on the suburb on the map, it should show where the nearest VSB entry point is (also ruined buildings are great entry points as you can free-run out of them).
Once you are situated and safe in your new EHB hospital, you need to plan yourself a little medic run. Use this map for this. Find your location and click on the building you are in. Then underneath the map toggle the free-running lanes on. You want to work out a route that is no more than 20AP, here is an example.
Survivors congregate in the tactical resource points like malls, NT buildings and Police stations, incorporate them into your medic run. How often you complete the run is up to you, however always spend your spare AP searching for FAK's, they are your ticket to XP. Accumulate as much XP as possible. You should keep at least 200XP in reserve. There should be an NT building within your medic run, Introduce yourself here, say something along the lines of: I'm based in the xxx Hospital and will be healing you here regularly, please contact list me in case I need a revive anytime soon.
There will come a time when you will end up dead, the next most important skills for my build plan are the zombie skills of Lurching Gait and Ankle Grab! This will mean you won't have to spend 10AP to stand up, buy them the first time you die (This is what you've been saving that 200XP for!). If you've been nice to the NT people, you should get a revive pretty quickly!
You should be accumulating XP pretty quickly, there are normally lots of players based in and around Malls, how you spend this XP is up to you, however, Don't buy First Aid! What madness is this I hear you ask. Well, First Aid allows you to heal 10HP instead of 5HP, you still only get 5XP though. So, if a survivor with a maximum HP of 60 is on 30HP, you can heal 6 times without First Aid and only 3 times with First Aid. So not buying First Aid actually increases the amount of times you can heal someone, effectively doubling the amount of XP you can get from each injured player.
My build order would be something like this: Free-running, *Lurching Gait, *Ankle Grab, Construction, NecroTech Employment, Lab Experience, Necronet Access, Body Building. Then Hand to Hand Combat and Knife Combat. These skills will make you a useful survivor, you have no need whatsoever for guns. Or Trenchcoats or a grizzled appearance or a psychopathic look in your eyes for that matter! The ideal inventory at this point is: A Toolbox, A DNA Extractor, 5x Revivification Syringes, A knife (Not a Katana) and the rest of your pockets filled with FAK's.
Write a description, it is your mission statement as a survivor, those with ridiculous descriptions are the first ones to die in the event of a break-in. Try and use humour and entertain the people who took the time to find out who you are! In your zombie description, make it apparent that you are a useful player and that you really would like a revive. Having the right skills helps, I am far more likely to revive a player with construction and the scientist skills than a gun toting moron!
Now to explain the knife, this tactic is not always welcome so you must be absolutely sure by asking, in game, first if it is ok!!! Otherwise it is likely to get you killed, pantsed and on the shit list very quickly. If someone is agreeable to let you stab them and then heal them back up, then this is the fastest way to gain XP, you have a 50% chance to hit with your knife once it is maxed, it will do 2 damage however you get the full 5XP for the heal. A lot of players do not mind, we all know how difficult it is for new players in this game, some of us even write guides on the subject.
Zombie
No suprise here but the starting class you should pick is Zombie. No really! You start out with Vigour Mortis which gives you a 35% chance to claw and a 20% chance to bite unsuspecting folk. I have to warn you this is going to be a real slog for the first few levels.
The one thing that is in your favour is a skill that doesn't even cost you XP, it's your ears. Listen out for groans, they are the equivalent of someone ringing the dinner bell. Aim for the most recent/closest groan and spend your AP attacking the humans there.
If there are no groans then you need to hunt for your prey. Because it costs you 2AP to shamble from block to block it is important that you give yourself the best chance of finding a building which is wide open or even better a survivor stuck out on the street. To do this always travel diagonally in the same direction. By doing this for each 2AP you spend 5 new blocks become visible to you as opposed to 3 if you travel up, down, right or left on the map. Try and aim to stay in Yellow or preferably Orange suburbs.
If you find a building with it's doors wide open along your route first of all you need to determine whether it is worth going inside. If the building is lit (Yellow) spend an AP to move inside and see if there are any survivors lurking there. If the building is ruined I shouldn't bother wasting the AP. If the building is a Cinema, Bank or Club and the building is not lit I would try and find somewhere else, your already low hit chances will be halved in a dark building.
When you find a survivor you want to expend all of your AP dealing damage. At this point, you gain 2XP for each successful claw hit and 4XP for each successful bite. Even though you have a lower success rate for biting if we believe the RNG it is the preferred way to attack. For example with 40 attacks you should hit 20% of the time which is 8 bites which gains 32XP, with claws you should hit 35% of the time which is 14 attacks which gains 28XP. However, we don't believe the RNG as it is satan's spawn and without doubt claws are the way forward, the higher hit percentage is key here! If you're lucky the survivor will already have been gnawed upon and be at low HP, if you deliver a killing blow you will get a 10XP bonus.
Once you get to 100XP it's time to buy your first skill. Hopefully because you are staying in yellow and orange suburbs you won't be getting killed on the street too often. You should buy Death Grip, this now gives you a 50% chance to claw your victims. Continue to hunt for XP, your next skill should be Lurching Gait which allows you to spend just 1AP per block and the next skill should be Ankle Grab which reduces the monumental 10AP it takes to stand up down to 1AP. If you feel that you are getting killed too often and there is a plentiful supply of streetmeat feel free to choose Lurching Gait and Ankle Grab before Death Grip but those three skills are your bread and butter!
The next skill you should buy is definitely Rend Flesh, this will increase your claw damage to 3 which in turn gives you a 50% gain in XP from your claw attacks. Quickly followed by Memories of life so you can open doors, once you have these skills you can now stop being so feral and actually look at cracking open some buildings. I wouldn't attempt to open anything above QSB, it's not worth your AP, let someone else do the hard work.
Now you need to save your XP until you have 300, once you do get a revive and buy Free-Running and Diagnosis and Body Building. Free-Running is useful for when you get a pesky combat revive so you can find a nice tall building to jump out of and Diagnosis shows you survivors HP status meaning you can target who will be the easiest kill in a full building. Body Building gives you 60HP and makes it a bit harder to kill you. Spend some time to find a Flak Jacket it works if your a zombie too! Those wishing to death cult in the future might want to pick up Hand to Hand combat and Knife Combat at this point as well as a knife for a generator killing spree.
The build order from here on out is dependent on what you want to accomplish here is my suggestion: Tangling Grasp;Feeding Groan; Ransack; Neck Lurch; Digestion; Infectious Bite
You'll be racking up the kills in no time!
