Survival Basics

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You are probably sitting in your couch, chair or some comfy ol' sack eating chips, drinking a cold coke waiting for your mom's to bring some more. Isn't life just lovely?

Wake up chump, zeds are knocking on your door, the food is all eaten by rats and blimey you got an infected arm!
Time to freshen up your apocalypse survival skills!

## Endurance

Every survivor has traits to their names. Some may be athletes, making them a bit tougher when it comes to stamina, and some may be buffed out mothertruckers with plenty of health.
However at some point you become tired, you take a bad fall or a zombie gets the best of you in a battle, turning your day a bit worse.

After exploring for a while you will fatigue, taking a penalty to your stamina (20%, 40% etc), this may temporarly be fixed by drinking a cup of Coffee, Energy Drink or several stimulants.
Stamina is alfa & omega when you are fighting, running out of stamina puts your survivor in great danger, therefore rest is important to keep them in tip top shape.

The other and essential part of your survivors are their vitality, also known as health. Some traits may improve the amount of vitality your survivor has, and improving skills like Fighting increases the amount of vitality you got. When an survivor gets hurt you can use a range of painkillers to refill the health bar, however you can sustain several injuries, permanently lowering your health until the survivor recovers in the base's Infirmary (Having one is a great boon)

## Stealth & Noise

Your enemies are flesh-eating degenerates, totally oblivious to reason they will charge head on to whatever makes a noise. Therefore stealth and silence is important to remain undetected and unscathed by these foul and dirty zombies.

State of Decay features a stealth system rewarding the player for being silent, or intentionally making noises. When scavenging and you want to keep intact it is important to utilize obstacles and the environment to your advantaged. Crouching in the bushes makes you invisible to the zombies, crouching in general is more stealthy then walking and generates no noise, however walking up in plain sight while crouched is not recommended.

While scavenging for supplies and searching through fridges, shelves and bookcases you may accidentally tear down a bottle, cup or books making a loud noise. When thus happens you must be on your toes as that surely will bring the attention of quite a lot of zombies. Pressing down LMB while searching increases the speed of which you search, but increases the chance of making noise.

However noise may be to your advantage, as several objects and tactics can be utilized to lure away or attract zombies to other locations, either making your scavenging easier or saving a friend in danger.

Firecrackers, Kitchen Timers, Wind-up Clocks etc are great objects to attract zombies, giving you the opportunity to slip past the confused zombies.

Vehicles can either honk their horns or drive by to attract zombies, and the Police Cruiser's sirens is an excellent way to make your presence noted.

## Illness & Prevention

From time to time you may experience that one of your survivors contract a disease, normally its just a bad case of coughing, nothing to worry about right? hehe right?....

Those being sick gets a green picture in the survivor list and the type of sickness is written on it and on the info card.
Stocking up on Medicine and having an Infirmary prevents illnesses becoming worse or fatal, however sometimes a shot to the head may be the only solution.

After completing the mission Home Away From Home you encounter the new disease Black Fever which instantly reanimates its host, making it a very deadly virus should the infected suddenly die inside your base. To avoid your survivors becoming victims of this plague you should have enough Medicine in store, and if someone falls victim to the Black Fever consider mercy shoot them.

There may be several types of illnesses present, everything ranging from Coughing, Fever and Black Fever, where as the latter is the most troublesome. Normally survivors with the two first mentioned illnesses will recover.

Having someone with medical experience in your party is another great way to avoid fatal incidents.