So I'm not sure if the game continues "living" even while you're offline like the first one did. I got back on tonight in my non-tutorial community and I didn't notice anything missing or lower supplies. Granted half the community supplies were still at zero because I was only an hour in and hadn't built up the community properly yet.
I'm currently hiding out on a billboard during the middle of night 3, waiting for dawn of day 4. It feels just like the first game did to me so far with some changes and additions.
So far I've managed to get my population up to five with the addition of two strangers. Put up a watchtower, machine shop and infirmary in my three available spaces. I still don't have any outposts. Outposts are a lot more expensive than I remember them being in the first game. To put an outpost in a house costs 400 influence. I have yet to spend any influence at all after probably 4 or 5 hours of gameplay and I'm only up to 465 influence currently, which I'm saving up for the 1,000 influence I need to move to my next home site.
I don't know if it's the best home site you can have in Meagher Valley, but I discovered Mazzara Farm while helping a stranger find his buddy. It's a big ass site like Snyder Trucking in the first game. It comes with existing country kitchen, well house, crew house, grain silo storage and two parking spots, with the ability to build on 2 large slots, 1 small indoor slot and 2 small outdoor slots for a total of 5 additional facilities that you can choose.
Now that sounds pretty damn good to me, granted there might be something even bigger and better since I've only discovered at most 10-15% of the entire map via billboard and cell tower spotting.
Be ready for infestations up the ass. I've already destroyed 3 or 4 infestations and I'm looking at another four currently active infestations on the map right now. At least one or two seem to pop up 15-20 minutes in real time.
Also, be careful and try to keep various enclaves happy. While in the first game you never really had any dangerous enclaves of other human survivors, this time around, it's possible to piss off other survivor groups or have them turn hostile towards your group through your actions or choices, leading to war between you and other groups. And from what I've read, the AI doesn't suck at shooting in this game. One review talked about how they had trouble lining up headshots on an enemy survivor and one of their community members got shot and killed during a shootout. So make sure you work on training your people in the firearms and shooting skill, because it may come in handy.
And as I've been typing, a FIFTH infestation popped up down the road from my home site. It lead to an interesting comment from my follower about how if we don't start knocking down these infestations, we're going to have a siege on our hands. Now, as someone who really didn't watch any of the new features videos, I don't know if that's just a one-off comment, or if you let infestations go and build up on you, then it leads to something called sieges. I'm sort of intrigued at the possibility of zombie sieges.
Edit - So I'm not sure about "sieges" being in the game, but you do get hordes up the ass if you let a bunch of infestations build. I have 5 active infestations and at one point in the middle of night 4, there were 8 different hordes in my quarter of the map. Even right now there are still 5 active hordes and that's after killing 5 or 6 others I've come across.
Also best to wipe out infestations early. When an infestation forms, it has 6 zombies and 1 screamer inside. If you let it go long enough, that eventually increases to 8 zombies and 2 screamers. And if you still don't clear it yet, it eventually increases again to the point of 10 zombies and 3 screamers inside the building. Yeah, learn a lesson from uncle Pancakes. Four of my five active infestations have reached that 10 zombies/3 screamers level. Those are going to suck to actually clear out. Learn a lesson from me and clear your infestations out early while they're still small and easy.
One thing that I sort of dislike from the first to the second game, hordes are underwhelming. Most hordes are only 6 zombies and maybe a screamer in size. I have seen one or two that go up to 8 or 9 in size. But nothing like the massive roving 10-15 or more zombie hordes like there were in the first game. The first game, I would avoid hordes unless I was near outposts that had traps enabled or was in a vehicle. Now, I just go running in swinging and bashing and wipe them out.
There also seems to be a lack of special zombies so far. In 4 or 5 hours of gameplay, I've seen one bloater zombie and that's it. No juggernauts, no ferals, no other special zombies. So they seem to be a bit far and few inbetween in this game compared to the first. The only thing you have to really worry about is blood plague zombies as your characters can easily become infected with the blood plague from attacks by blood plague zombies. Then you gotta deal with the whole finding and making a cure that the tutorial started community has for the storyline.
Also, cars are definitely fewer than the first game. There's no more having your choice of a couple trucks, a couple two and four door cars and a cop car or two in one small neighborhood like the first game.
So far, in an area probably a quarter size of the map, I've located a working ambulance with 3/4ths of a tank of gas. A Rhames V with an empty tank that is your vehicle you abandon due to no gas at the start of the game. A Rhames V that does work and has 3/4ths of a tank of gas, though it's located next to an infestation. A Desperado that is both destroyed (needs to be repaired) and has an empty tank. A second destroyed and empty gas tank Desperado. A working military truck that has an empty gas tank. And a working passenger van with over 3/4ths of a tank, though that likely belongs to the nearby community of survivors that I'm supposed to meet at that house.
One quarter of the map, and only seven potential vehicles that can be used, and only three of them that actually have gas in them. Yeah, vehicles are a whole hell of a lot more rarer, special, and something you don't want to just go banging around and destroy while driving somewhere. You better do your best to make those babies last.
Edit - OK, now that it's daylight and I'm jogging the 750+ meters back to my home site, I've since come across one bloater that was walking and a second bloater just now that is lying in the middle of the road like a booby trap, as well as just watched a horde form right in front of me 20 yards away. So now I'm up to 3 bloaters so far for special zombie sightings.
Edit 2 - Well, I just had my first "shit my pants" moment. It's late at night, maybe 4 or 5am, it's just barely starting to get light out and you can just start to see more than 10 feet in front of you. I'm running a mission with a survivor of another enclave, going to save his buddy trapped in a garage. We get there and there's an infestation inside the house next door, a horde passing by, and out of nowhere, I get attacked by a feral while a juggernaut is 30 yards away. After literal minutes of hacking and slashing, there is a mound of probably 20 or 30 dead zombies on the ground and somehow the four of us come out of it alive (although both my people were near death levels of health. Thankfully the juggernaut seemed to disappear.
Or so I thought. As I was starting to type this up, with the map window pulled up, suddenly the map disappeared and I got yanked back into the world with the picture of a fucking juggernaut screaming next to my active character INSIDE my home site. It took dozens of gun shots from all 5 of my community members to get him down on his knees so one of my AI members could run up and kill him.
So make that 2 "shit my pants" moments in a matter of 10 minutes or so.
And now suddenly I'm seeing a lot of special zombies. I went from seeing none to having seen over two dozen bloaters, one feral and one juggernaut so far.
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