Guides:Lone Survivor
This is a simple survival guide for lone, unaffiliated survivors.
Alone
When I talk about "lone survivors", I'm talking about survivors not associated with any organization or groups of other survivors, just a single human trying to live on his or her own.
The Rules
Run
The most important key to surviving is to keep moving. There will be many temptations to ignore this simple rule. Do not give in.
Keep moving. Do not stay overnight in the same place. Move diagonally, looking for opportunities to earn XP. If you hit an edge, move up or down a couple of spaces and start moving diagonally in a different direction.
Why? It's pretty simple. Any large collection of survivors attracts zombies. Any suburb known to contain a lot of survivors attract zombies. By moving, you reduce your chance of being someplace that zombies are currently targeting.
Hide
When you are down to 10 AP or less, start looking for someplace to hide. Find a building and get inside. Ideally, the building should be barricaded, and near more obvious targets for zombies, so they go there instead of where you are.
This is important: Do not hide in obvious targets. What are obvious targets? In no particular order:
Do not end your turn in any of the above buildings. (You might also want to check out the excellent shelter guide for more thoughts on this subject.)
Yes, it is tempting to stay in one of these buildings... For the same reason these buildings are targets for zombies. Stuff that survivors need (ammo, weapons, first aid kits, etc.) are to be found in these buildings.
But remember, the zombies are being played by intelligent human beings. They're smarter than your average cinematic zombie. So they know that these places are going to be frequented by survivors, and often form hordes to attack such places. No matter how well barricaded or how vigilantly staffed such a place is, it's no match for a determined horde. You do not want to be in one of these places when a horde attacks.
Therefore, hide anywhere else. It isn't that hard. Go to those places to get what you need, saving a little AP to go elsewhere afterward. It requires a little pre-planning, but anyone who expects to survive in a city crawling with zombies without a little planning deserves to have his brains eaten.
There is no safety in numbers. A big group of survivors is just like a big stockpile of food to a ravenous zombie. Keep moving, and hide in any other building than those listed above.
XP
If you just run and hide, you won't level at all. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail here about how to get XP; it all depends on what kind of survivor you are, and there are other guides for that.
So, in between the running and hiding, you need to be doing things that earn you XP. Killing zombies, extracting DNA from zombies, or healing people, all according to your skill. Plus, you'll probably need to scrounge for ammo and other needed equipment, like flak jackets, which are useful against homicidal survivors.
The key is to always leave some AP to hide. Hiding is more important than running, but don't get so distracted that you stay in the same suburb for days at a time. It is more important to hole up in a barricaded hotel than it is to shoot that zombie one last time, or search one more time for a first aid kit.
The first chance you get, buy the Free Running skill; this lets you run without going outside, where corpses will eat you if you end up stranded outside with no AP.
Summary: The Wanderer
- Once you wake up, move a few blocks in a diagonal direction.
- Do what you need to do to gain XP. This includes searching for needed items and killing zombies, among other things.
- When down to 10 AP or less, find someplace to hide, somewhere barricaded but not on the list of targets above.
- Next day, login and repeat.
Disclaimer
This strategy won't guarantee a zombie won't break into a building you're in and kill you. Nothing can guarantee that. But it will make it a lot less likely.
If you do get killed and don't want to play as a zombie (which is easy enough to do using a similar strategy to this one), there are things you can do. Don't panic, and don't give up. Above all, the key to this game is endurance.
This guide was originally written by Xiombarg.
Please comment in the talk section if you found this guide useful.
