A Lethal Shade of Winter
As the nights grow longer, the darkness seems to grow deeper and more terrifying. For many of us, this provides a fine excuse to seek out the warm glow of a fire (or at least a light bulb). However, if you’re the type who faces danger with bravado, reveling in every surge of adrenaline... well, this update is most especially dedicated to you, my friend. Read on, if you dare!
Be Careful What You Wish For...
For months, we’ve heard your plaintive cries.
“Nightmare Zones aren’t hard enough,” you said. (link)
“Where are all the plague freaks?” you asked. (link) And asked. (link) And asked and asked. (link link)
“We need a REAL challenge!” you insisted. (link)
All right, message received... and welcome to the LETHAL ZONE!
This new ultra-hardcore difficulty mode presents the very toughest version of State of Decay 2 that you’ve ever seen. Zombies are even more dangerous, resources and weapons are even harder to find, and blood plague kills you even faster than in Nightmare.
And yes… all the freaks have blood plague. You’re welcome.
Just as with the other four difficulty levels, you can either set your entire game to Lethal, or you can move one or two difficulty sliders up to dabble with this terrifying new experience. Here are the challenges you can look forward to.
Lethal Action
Combat is murderously unfair.
- All sources deal +100% damage to the player (compare to +60% in Nightmare)
- Infection gains from zombie attacks are +100% (compare to +60% in Nightmare)
- Infection from plague consumables is unchanged from Nightmare
- Blood plague kills survivors within 5 minutes of infection (compare to 10 minutes in Nightmare)
- Zombies can cause nearly twice as many different injuries as they do at lower difficulties, leading to deeper injury stacks piling up
- Duplicate injuries instead apply 80% of that injury as trauma (compare to 66% in Nightmare)
- Dodging costs +100% Stamina (compare to +50% in Nightmare)
- Vehicles take +300% damage from hitting or getting hit by zombies (compare to +160-180% in Nightmare)
- They also take +200% damage from other sources (compare to +125-150% in Nightmare) The undead are terrifying and relentless.
- All freaks are replaced with the blood plague freaks from Heartland
- You can encounter hordes with one of each plague freak. It’s a plague party!
- Gun noise is raised by +150% (compare to +75% in Nightmare), bringing even more zombies
- Zombies will now chase a sound for up to 5 minutes (compare to giving up after 1 minute in Nightmare). Got your running shoes on?
- The baseline siege threat at your base starts at 8 (compare to 5 in Nightmare) Plague hearts are extremely tenacious and dangerous.
- Destroying a plague heart does not kill all nearby plague zombies.
- Plague Hearts take significantly less damage. Note that melee is now (comparatively speaking) a bit more effective than other options, rather than less. Get up close and personal, if you dare!
- Melee = -50% Damage (compare to -33% in Nightmare)
- Ranged = -62.5% Damage (compare to -25% in Nightmare)
- Explosion = -62.5% Damage (compare to -25% in Nightmare)
- Fire = -62.5% Damage (compare to -25% in Nightmare)
- Vehicle Impact = -75% Damage (compare to-25% in Nightmare)
Lethal Map
There’s almost nothing useful left in this town.
- About 70-80% of houses are pre-looted
- There are zero non-guaranteed resource drops of any kind
- That means you only get the resources you expect from looking at a site’s flyout on the Map Screen, if that, and never any surprise bonus rucksacks
- Other “lucky find” drops are similarly reduced to very low rates, or even zero, including a lot of mid-range guns Good luck finding a ride.
- The map has only 33% the normal number of vehicles (compare to 65% in Nightmare)
- Vehicles are always out of gas and seriously damaged Plague hearts are everywhere.
- There are 3 times the standard number of plague hearts (compare to 1.5 times in Nightmare)
- Plague hearts are hidden, and the radio command to find them is available (same as in Nightmare)
- Plague hearts are allowed to cluster up with each other like crazy (unlike in Nightmare)
Lethal Community
Your survivors know they’re doomed - All survivors have a -30 Morale penalty (compare to -15 in Nightmare)
- All survivors gain experience at -60% the normal rate (and Nightmare is now -30%)
- Nightmare used to be -50% but we reduced the penalty
- All survivors gain standing at -40% the normal rate (and Nightmare is now -20%)
- Nightmare used to be -30% but we reduced the penalty Resources are consumed quickly
- Survivors consume 2 Food each (compare to 1.5 Food in Nightmare)
- Food outposts provide 2 Food to compensate, and this time, they won’t break your entire community when the update launches
- Costs at the base are increased over Nightmare in a few areas:
- Ammo costs are +150% (compare to +100%)
- Materials costs are +150% (compare to +100%)
- Parts costs are +100% (compare to +50%)
- Weapons repairs cost +50% (compare to +25% in Nightmare)
- Vehicle fuel efficiency is reduced by 25% (compare to no reduction in Nightmare)
Other Difficulty Changes
From the Wishlist (link): Nightmare Action now features blood plague screamers and bloaters in addition to the existing blood plague juggernauts
Blood plague bloaters now do half as much plague damage on exploding, because otherwise, they were literally instant death when hit by a vehicle at Lethal
This is balanced out by a more intense Burning Lungs injury (replacing the usual Gas Inhalation)
Blood plague screamers also have a new injury they apply to avoid a problem with one-shotting survivors at Lethal difficulty
Now they apply a single-shot Chemical Burns injury 75% of the time
We reduced the prevalence of crossbows across the board, as players have reported that they were showing up too often
They used to spawn more often at higher difficulties. Now they look like this:
- 75% standard on Dread
- 66% standard on Nightmare
- 50% standard on Lethal
Fuel efficiency (which is increased at Green difficulty and reduced at Lethal difficulty) now lives on the Community slider, instead of the Map slider.
Optimized for Xbox Series X|S
To support the release of the new Series X and Series S consoles, we’ve been working hard to improve our performance and visual quality on these devices. Prepare for blazingly fast load times, improved image quality, tighter controls, and a solid 60 frames per second at full 4K (Series X) or 1080p (Series S) resolution.
With these improvements, the Xbox Series X|S is by far the best console experience for State of Decay 2 players. We’re working hard to make even more optimizations, and also to bring these improvements to the PC platform as well.
Don’t Worry, Stay Frosty
Just in case you’re freaking out over the new Lethal Zone, we’ve also provided a new array of equipment and outfits designed to help you keep your cool. The Stay Frosty Pack includes 11 bounties, plus 4 firearms you can find by scavenging. All 15 items are brand-new to the game, and we’ve designed these bounties to be a bit easier to complete so that you can earn bounty items more quickly.
• Cold Turkey: Line up a perfect shot for your holiday meal with this long-range shotgun, fitted with a choke, an oversized scope, and a large tube magazine. (Bounty Item)
• Midnight Solstice: A lightweight survivalist’s crossbow, fitted with a powerful scope for long-range shots. (Bounty Item)
• D-Bartini: The short-barreled version of the D-BAR, perfect for packing on long hikes. (Bounty Item)
• Samurai SMG: A globally popular submachine gun, with excellent handling, capacity, accuracy, and rate of fire. An all-around useful weapon. (Bounty Item)
• HB PDW: The Huntley-Basher Personal Defense Weapon is a submachine gun stripped down to the basics, resulting in an ultralight, snappy assault platform. (Found by scavenging)
• HB SD Blackout: This configuration of the HB submachine gun includes their patented integrated suppressor technology. Delivers significant power without the noise to match. (Bounty Item)
• HB Snow Fox: A top-of-the-line submachine gun from Huntley-Basher, featuring rapid fire options and quick reloads. Winterized and reinforced, with an extended magazine to boot. (Found by scavenging)
• Otoe Howlitzer: The last and most essential design of post-apocalyptic gunsmith “Bubba Fitty,” this lightweight .50-cal is a blast to use despite its slightly diminished range. (Bounty Item)
• Tactical Walking Stick: Basically an escrima stick made of durable composite materials. Don’t be caught on a hike without one of these close at hand. (Bounty Item)
• Yukon Pathbreaker: This lightweight titanium survival axe isn’t the fanciest tool in your arsenal, but it’ll probably save your life one day. (Bounty Item)
• Maintenance Bench: Install this facility mod and spend a few parts to temporarily reduce durability loss for your weapons. (Bounty Item)
• Winter Camo Tactical Uniform: Okay, we admit it: this is mostly for style. But even though it’s not snowing, you’ll still look cool wearing it. (Bounty Item)
• Winter Camo Boonie Hat: Goes perfectly with the matching tactical uniform. Or wear it with whatever you’d like, we won’t judge. (Bounty Item)
This also means it’s time to say farewell to the World War 2 Pack, at least for now. And be sure to finish up those bounties from the Go Bag Pack before it leaves circulation later this month. But on the bright side, we’re reviving the warm, toasty Bundle Up Pack, ensuring that it’s ready and waiting when the Go Bag Pack hits the gas and makes its escape!
Additional Updates
Achievements
We’ve added four new achievements to the list, worth a total of 100 Gamerscore:
Lilac and Spoiled Gooseberries (25) — Kill 25 blood plague bloaters.
Bless Me Now With Your Fierce Tears (5) — Begin a session with minimum difficulty set to Lethal.
Barber Shop Quartet (30) — Kill one each of the four blood plague freaks with minimum difficulty set to Lethal.
Retrieve Biomass (40) — Kill a plague heart with minimum difficulty set to Lethal.
All existing achievements that required you to complete them at Dread or Nightmare difficulty now also allow you to complete them at Lethal difficulty … though why would you?
Systems
From the Wishlist (linkety link): We’ve overhauled the value of prestige (the currency awarded in Daybreak) to make each Daybreak session more rewarding, and to make CLEO firearms more economically viable.
You should now expect a given Daybreak session to award about twice as much prestige as it did before.
All your means of obtaining ammunition for CLEO weapons in the core game have been made more affordable.
The Red Talon Crafting Station can now craft CLEO ammo without charging prestige — it only costs the Ammo resource.
The CLEO Relay can now call in CLEO Ammo Drops for an influence cost, not a prestige cost.
CLEO ammo sold by the Prestige Trader now costs half as much prestige as it did before.
We’ve also updated the reward tiers in Daybreak to loosen up the requirements.
This means you can now unlock more powerful items at Wave 3 and Wave 5.
The only reward item that requires you to win Daybreak to unlock it is the CLEO Relay.
From the Wishlist (sorta): The Mysterious Wandering Trader can now show up on Mondays (in addition to Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays), to fit into more players' schedules.
The Dread Action difficulty slider now correctly reports that zombies do not appear on the mini-map under normal conditions.
We also fixed several minor issues with UI readability.
Missions
The in-world mission markers that we originally used for the opening missions in Providence Ridge now apply to all missions, throughout the game. That means you can see your current mission objective as an icon in the HUD, not just as an arrow on the mini-map.
If this isn’t your thing, you can disable Show In-World Objective Icons in the HUD section of the Settings menu.
When your survivors start a new campaign complaining that they are out of gas, you can no longer immediately open the trunk of their vehicle and find that it is full of gas, and that your survivors are idiots.
The built-in facilities found in the Prescott Fire Station now count properly toward progressing the Builder: Safe at Home and Builder: Strength in Numbers missions.
Facilities
The actions on the Staging Area that accelerate build times now take only five seconds to trigger, rather than half an hour, which defeated the purpose.
The “Parking” indicator when driving a vehicle into a parking slot at your base now reliably appears very quickly, so you know for sure that you’re in the right place.
Gameplay
We fixed a bug that was preventing multiplayer clients from busting open doors by sprinting into them in the host’s game.
We fixed a bug that made it possible to take a community member’s backpack without emptying it first, causing all the contents to teleport into the Supply Locker.
Throwing an explosive now cancels a heavy weapon swing, rather than turning the weapon invisible, as neat as that was.
We also fixed several minor outfit clipping issues.
Clouds no longer continue to move while the game is paused. Because that was just weird.
