Looting

***"Definition of looting; anything taken by dishonesty, force, stealth, etcetera."***

Looting (also known as **scavenging**) is an essential part of game-play within Dead Frontier 2. "Looting" is a term used to describe the action of searching for food, beverages, weapons, armor, or any other item found within the game around the game world. While looting may be considered theft of goods in modern society, in a post-apocalyptic setting like Dead Frontier 2 sets in, it is crucial to the survival of the many survivors still fighting the infected.

Survivors are very dependent on looting as it is the only way many of the game's items can be brought into the hands of players. With the exception of cosmetics and special cosmetics, all items are able to be found within the game world, this includes weapons, ammunition, clothing, food items, drinks, medical items, and miscellaneous items. Many of these items can be traded to other players or sold at the trader found within outposts. Items that are labelled '**Cannot be traded**' cannot be sold or traded to other players, but can be scrapped. A few examples of these include books, dyes, enhancers and Mission (Item Type).

Loot quality is dependent on a number of factors, the first being the player's level. When it comes to looting, the player's level is the first thing being considered, as some items within the game cannot be found until players meet a certain level, these levels are 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30. The reason for this change is to handle the issue of lower level players moving right to the highest level areas of the game world and earning the best items right away. (Example: A level 5 player can only loot up to level 5 weapons in a level 20 zone.)

The second factor in deciding loot quality is the zone/area in which the player is looting. If the player reaches the level requirement of the area, they will find items assigned to the loot pool of that level or less. This mechanic is in place to ensure that high level loot cannot be found in low level zones, which would allow over levelled players to loot with significantly lowered risk factor. (Example: A level 20 player can only loot up to level 10 weapons in a level 10 zone.)

The third factor in deciding loot quality is the player's perks/stat points that relate to looting, these stats/perks may increase the odds of finding a particular set of items within the game world. These bonuses can be achieved through the 'Looter' perk in the skill tree or bonuses on equipped weapons/clothing.

Bonuses include: 'find weapons chance','find ammo chance','find medical chance','find food chance','find drink chance','find clothes chance','find superior item chance','find rare item chance', 'find elite item chance'.

The fourth and final factor in deciding loot quality is the building in which the player is looting. Specific building types offer an increased amount of loot of a specific type depending on the type of building it is.

## Basics of looting

Players can walk up to certain objects (they will be highlighted with a yellow glow surrounding them), and search them for useful items. In Dead Frontier 2 only certain things from all possible objects in the room will be able to be looted. Given every room can be looted (typically 0-2 spots) the chance of finding an item is fairly high. Objects that can be searched include; corpses, wrecked vehicles, furniture, and trash cans. Each object may only be searched once. Other players may search the same object if it is looted by another. Loot is per player.

If the player decides to reject an item by selecting "No" when prompted to take the looted item, the object searched will remain highlighted yellow and can be searched again to yield the same item. If the player is to leave the room after declining an item, that object will no longer be highlighted or be able to be searched, the exception to this is exiting the game/server and reconnecting without leaving the room, in this case, the object will still be highlighted and able to be looted. There is a small chance for rooms within an outpost building to contain a loot spot should the player need to loot safely, but this is not common.

*Note: Loot spots regenerate at 10:00 AM GMT every day.*

Loot rates in Dead Frontier 2 are completely random, there are no guarantees that a player will find certain items in particular locations. As the player levels up and ventures into higher difficulty zones of the game world, the loot that the player can find will increase in quality, however, as the quality gets better so does the difficulty of the game. In higher difficulty zones players may encounter new types of infected that are much tougher to handle, larger numbers of infected, infected that sprint and more.

A message "Hold 'E' to search" will pop up when players are near an object that can be searched, these objects have a yellow highlight around them. With no stat bonuses into search speed, it takes 3 seconds before the game notifies the player whether anything was found or not, simulating the time taken to search something. It is possible to move while searching for an object, but aiming down the sight of a weapon will interrupt the search, meaning it is not possible to fire a weapon while searching. An exception to this is melee, swinging a melee weapon will not interrupt the search process as long as the player's cursor does not leave the object.

The minimap is very useful to remember which rooms you have looted or not.

*Note: Search time for looting may be decreased by using the 'Looter' perk in the skill tree.*

## Looting and Selling for newbies

When you are low level, you will probably loot and collect whatever useful items you find to sustain yourself. However when you reach higher levels, you might find selling whatever extra loot you have for cash is more useful.

While looting, your inventory will begin to fill with found items. Once your inventory becomes full you cannot continue to pick up items. At this time it may be wise to return to an outpost to sell your spoils or drop/use less valuable items to make room for better goodies.

Once you have returned to an outpost to sell any of the items you have found, make your way to the trader NPC found in the first room upon entering and interact with him. Once interacting with the trader, you may notice you are able to buy items, sell items, view any outgoing offers to individual players, or view any incoming private offers from individual players. To sell items; select the word **"Selling"** in the middle of the marketplace window.

Now, if you are not selling anything, your selling list will be empty. To sell an item from your inventory located to the left of your selling list, **select**the item you are trying to sell, then select **sell** under the inventory tab. Then a window will appear enabling you to state the price of an item you want to sell, enter a value (or 0 for free) then select **sell** once again. One final confirmation window will appear asking if you really want to sell this item, finally, select Y**es** to put your item on the marketplace.

"Help! I don`t know how much I should sell my stuff for." Well, if you are really unsure about how much something is worth to be sold, then you should check its market value. To check the market value of an item select "**buying**" in the trade window. Type the name of the item on the search box and select the category that this item would belong in. Then proceed to select "**Search**" or press "Enter" on your keyboard. (There are a number of other options to make your search more specific, but these are not required.) Wait for the window to load and after its done loading, you will see a long list of the things you were searching for. The item sold on the list always starts from the lowest price to the highest. Now, you should have an idea on how much you should sell your looted items for.

Be careful not to sell at unreasonably high prices as no one will buy them. The items you sold will remain in your list as long as they are not sold. Yes, you can cancel an item that you sold in your selling list by clicking **"cancel**" located at the right side of the list.

When you're done putting your things on sale, your inventory should be about empty again and which enables you to continue looting if you desire. If your items are bought by someone, the money is automatically transferred to your account and a mail confirmation will be sent to you indicating your item was sold. (You may view this at the mailbox found in all outpost buildings.)

## Puzzle Chests

Some rooms will contain chests marked with ???. These are known as "puzzle chests" and will require a puzzle to solve before they can be looted. New zombies other than Stalker should not enter a room that contains a puzzle chest. The code for a puzzle chest will be the same for all players globally, hence a player finding the code can share it with other players, including via df2haven.com/missions.

There are several different types of puzzles, with the puzzle written in orange at the top of the game window when the user interacts (default: E ) with a puzzle chest. There are also several online tools to help solve them:

* Feral guide on Steam
	+ Letters puzzle with some letters missing
		- If there are exactly 4 letters and none are missing then try: A > 1, B > 2, C > 3, D > 4, E > 5, F > 6, G > 7, H > 8, I > 9, J > 0
	+ Digit followed by 3 groups of arrows
	+ Binary puzzle (a sequence of 0 and 1s in 4 groups)
		- 0 > 0, 1 > 1, 10 > 2, 11 > 3, 100 > 4, 101 > 5, 110 > 6, 111 > 7, 1000 > 8, 1001 > 9
	+ Numbers puzzle (a sequence of 4 numbers)
	+ Roman digits puzzle
		- I > 1, II > 2, III > 3, IV > 4, V > 5, VI > 6, VII > 7, VIII > 8, IX > 9, X > 0
	+ Morse puzzle (a sequence of . and - in 4 groups)
	+ Geometric figures puzzle (a sequence of circles, squares and triangles in 4 groups)
	+ Line figures puzzle (a sequence of 4 line figures)
* Box with on/off lights
	+ dCode Lights Out Solver - set your grid size, enter 1 for any lights that are currently out.
	+ Cubicle Ninja Solver - cycle over to the Monastery tab, edit the LAYOUT to the lights you are on, then change to editing the LIGHTS, then hit solve.
* 2x3 or 3x3 sliding picture tiles puzzle
	+ AnalogBit Solver
* Some chests will not have an orange puzzle at the top of the game window. These will require a 4-digit or a 4-letter code that will be written in a Book lootable somewhere in the same building, and like with other puzzle chests - the code will be the same for all players globally. Sometimes these codes are published by other players in df2haven.com/missions. Such books include:
	+ **[ Crumpled Notepaper ]**
	+ **[ Discarded Note ]**
	+ **[ Torn Piece of Paper ]**

## Unique Chests

Unique Chests are lootable objects that can be found anywhere indoors only, including inside of the 3 outposts, where there is one in about every other room. To open one, a non-tradeable **[ Unique Key ]** is required, which can be crafted at the Workbench inside any outpost. The standard crafting recipe requires 1x **[ Broken Keys ]** and $1,000,000 to craft one, or 9x Broken Keys and $9,000,000 to craft x 10, however during game Events alternative event-specific recipes may be made available instead. Broken Keys can be either bought from Trader or randomly looted with a low probability in any level 40+ area from normal loot spots, puzzle chests, locked rooms loot spots and boss loot spots. Both Broken and Unique Keys can be stacked in a single inventory slot up to x10.

Once you have a Unique Key in your inventory, you can interact with a Unique Chest (default hit E ), which will consume one Unique Key, and instantly (without the need to hold down the loot key nor having to wait for "Search Speed" progress) offer a chance to loot a random non-tradeable level 50 unique weapon or clothing piece, to which you can either accept or decline. If you decline (by mistake or because you did not have enough inventory space and needed to clear some) - you can interact with the same Unique Chest again which will NOT consume another Unique Key, *AS LONG AS* you have not left the room, switched characters or logged out, however the loot offered will not change. Although the loot is always non-tradeable (even for items which ARE tradeable when looted from e.g. bosses), yet they can be placed in the account stash and hence can be used by any of the level 50 characters on your account.

**WARNING:** If you interact with a Unique Chest, decline to pick up the loot, and then leave the room in any way (either through a door, by switching characters or logging out) - once you come back to the room, you will NOT be able to acquire the loot anymore, thus wasting a Unique Key. Therefore the best practice is to check if you have a free inventory slot and always accept the loot (as you can always scrap or discard it later).

## Problems faced when looting

Players cannot move too far away from the object that they are looting. If they do so, they will be unable to loot said object.

The largest hindrance faced when looting is the **presence of zombies**. Zombies are almost always in the way when the player is looting especially when you are in more confined areas. For example, staying in a certain spot to search for items could cause the player to be surrounded. Also, players may find themselves with very little time to search for an object before a zombie catches up and attacks them.

If there is a connection issue, it may take long amounts of time to loot an object, eventually, this will lead to the player finding an item or being disconnected from the servers.