Beginner's Guide

The game **Dead Land: Survival** starts you off with an enormous ammount of energy and ressources as a mean to fast track you into the world during the tutorial. **Do not let this trick you!** As you progress, the feeling of abundance quickly disappears and you are left rummaging for resources.

This page contains a few tips and tricks written by some of the game's most dedicated players to help new players survive in this new world.

## Top player tips

### Andaho:

* Save the 'level up' refill for when you run out of energy.

* Don't claim items from the mailbox until you need them - inventory space is very limited.

* Save Zombie Ears (you need 75 for a task)

* Some task items only appear after you accept the task.

* Opening inventory while in battle uses a turn.

* Arena: Heal and make sure your weapon isn't about to break before entering.

* When you die, you lose 1 random item (or stack of items) and respawn in town with 50HP.

* It's a waste of resources to repair weapons that do under 28 damage.

* If you run out of scrap metal, you can find some at the area called "Grove" - there are no zombies there.

* These items have little use (or none) so should be sold for silver at the merchant: Matches, Lighter, Broken Cell Phone, Fir-Cone.

* When picking a level-up skill, click the background to close the selection screen.

* Join a clan to work together on clan trials, which give reward boxes.

### Jaw1997:

Normally when I play these types of games I tend to hoard as many different types of resources as possible in case they're needed for special upgrades for items in the future. However games that function like this one often give you garbage items that serve little to no purpose, so here is where I want to document (with your help) all of the different items and which ones should be kept/discarded (and how many special items should be kept, such as items for building the car)

I just started playing and find it frustrating that nobody has made a forum for which Items I should get rid of at the Merchant. So let's get started! (BTW, S = Sell Value!!)

Here's what I have so far:

* **Wood**: useful for early building upgrades and a couple of basic items and weapons, most frequently used to create Planks which are used for better upgrades and items. Hoard these as much as possible. S = 1
* **Food Items**: (any item that is consumed to restore health) Most can be sold in the early game at least, they don't offer much unless you hoard them in large quantities, and if you do they end up taking a lot of space for more useful items. I recommend hoarding the berries and selling anything that offers less than 10 health, unless you wish to craft better healing items with them. EDIT: Once you get the third storage chest at the Warehouse, focus hard on storing meats without cooking them. Allegedly there are some quests that require them, and meats are a pretty rare drop compared to other food types. Also berries will absolutely cover your arse, keep a fat stack of 20 at base and on you if possible. S = ?
* **Rags**: much like wood, these should be hoarded, at first for making basic armor and getting early upgrades made, then used to create rope and thick fabric which apply to higher tier items and upgrades. S = 1
* **Scrap Metal**: Judging from the comments people leave, this seems to be one of the most valuable resources, in the early game the metal seems to abundant but clearly this feeling doesn't last. Use extra metal on upgrading the car, don't bother using these to repair items either, its not worth the price. S = 1
* **Water/Soda**: These straight up give you energy, and as the comments suggest without energy you're stuck dead in the water without being able to progress very much. Hoard these like crazy! Water S = 3, Soda S = 2
* **Broken Cell Phones**: (Uncertain) The description insinuates that these should just be sold, but there might be a way to make these useful later on. They take up a lot of storage however, only 5 at a time per stack is ridiculous. S = 5
* **Cigarrettes and Matches**: (Uncertain) Same story as the cell phones. I'm hoarding them until more information is gleaned. S = 3
* **Empty Can**: used in the tutorial to create your first weapon, not difficult to find and uncertain if they do anything more. S = 1
* **Empty Jar**: (Uncertain) Appear to be useful, but I haven't learned their use yet. S = 1
* **Wire**: Used for crafting various items and building upgrades, hoard these as they are rarer than rope and planks. S = 2
* **Spring**: (uncertain) You would think these are used to repair the car but nope! At least not directly, their usefulness is to be determined. S = 3
* **Lighter**: (Uncertain) I get a pretty fair amount of these, so if they're useful I'm not worried about selling them for now. S = 3
* **Alcohol**: The description states these are used for crafting healing items, probably a good idea to hoard these EDIT: As I suspected!! These are used to craft First Aid Kits amongst other valuable healing items! The selling price just isn't worth it. S = 2
* **Planks**: Used mostly for building upgrades, and some useful equipment. You really need a lot of these to do anything! Craft them as often as possible! S = 2
* **Zombie Ear**: So far the only use I found is that you need 75 of them to enter Amelia's Dinner. (pretty sure that's supposed to be Diner, devs. lol) S = 7
* **First Aid Kits**: ...do I have to explain why you should hoard these? ok fine, they offer a whopping 70 hp and only sell for 3 each. Yeah, don't sell these.
* **Thread**: Used for crafting equipment, and I suspect for repairing as well. They seem to be pretty rare as I've only found one out in the wild thus far. S = 2
* **Duct Tape**: Only use I've found is equipment repairs, do hoard them however as even mid to late game gear uses them. S = 2

### SilverEyes\_FR:

* **Broken Cellphones, Cigs, Matches, Lighters** can all be considered silver coin junk. You may occasionnally need some for a random quest, or some very specific upgrade (Town Hall upgrade can require a cellphone or two), but the very low number needed compared to the fairly high drop rate means it'll never be a chore to quickly find what's required. **My opinion: sell everything.**
* **Springs:** Except on a couple of shelter upgrades (the first one being "build sofa"), springs will not be useful until late game when you start crafting guns, of which they are a main component. Even then, not only will you not need that many springs, but you will also not be crafting a lot of guns since you're gonna start finding bucketloads of weapons by the time you start doing 4/5 and 5/5 difficulty nodes. Add to that that they have a fairly common drop rate. **My opinion: keep 1 stack of 20** for immediate needs, sell excess.
* **Alcohol:** Ultra-valuable crafting ressource, alcohol will allow you to transform the huge amounts of useless rags you'll be finding into valuable bandages, and those bandages into even more valuable first aid kits, pretty much your staple mid-game and end-game healing items. **My opinion: hoard alcohol at all cost,** as soon as you unlock workshop 12 you'll be glad you did.
* **Thread and Duct tape:** these are critical, since you need them to repair clothes and weapons. Do not waste any in the early game repairing junk weapons and armour, much better to craft new and to save those valuables for high def/high damage pieces of equipment. You'll also need them for some mid-game crafts. They are both ultra valuable, have average to low drop rate, and in **my opinion: hoard at all cost.**
* **Empty cans/jars :** Apart from the early game mace rotation (craft tube, fight with tube, break tube, use tube+ cans to craft mace, use mace, break mace, sell mace, rinse and repeat), there hasn't been a documented use so far for cans. And jars ditto. They also both have a fairly high drop rate. **My opinion: keep 1 stack of each** "just in case", sell excess.
* **Fish (raw), meat (raw), ribs (raw) :** These are rare enough, and will be required for various quests, either raw or transformed. The very low drop rate on fish and ribs, and the average drop rate on meat, will make it a chore to complete the quests in a timely fashion. **My opinion: hoard, and do NOT transform** until required to do so by a quest.

Coyotik - so far reached level 42, townhall level 6, so not sure if some items do not become more important later.

* Most of the "junk" items are indeed good only for selling. So far I've seen the following exceptions:
	+ Cigs - a quest asked for 5 packs. And it's a nice quest, giving you a crowbar.
	+ Empty jars - used in some building upgrades (agree with SilverEyes about one stack)
	+ Cellphones - townhall upgrades (one stack again should be enough)
	+ Water bottles - keep some empties for Tasks.
* If you can afford the inventory space, one item worth hoarding is sticks. Used for fried maggots and mushrooms, the former definitely appears in quests. Also later in the game there are some building upgrades that take sticks, and it really pains me to craft them from wood.
* Hoard skins, craft only when you really need leather, and generally don't waste it on anything unimportant, like crafting axes...
* Once you unlock Amelia's dinner, you can get quests AND storage there - and the nice thing about storage is that while you cannot craft in this location, stuff stored there CAN be used for crafting in Nightstone. So, rags, ropes, fabric, scrapmetal, wood are all good candidates, plus anything you're hoarding for possible future use. You cannot, however, use the remote storage trick to upgrade buildings.
* Quests can be accepted and cancelled to get rid of those you want to avoid - with the exception of leftmost quest slot in Nightstone. Those quests are unavoidable. Generally you should think twice before deciding to accept a quest. Some are not really worth it unless you're in a very active clan that is capable of doing the settler tasks trial. For example, getting new pump shotgun for the cost of approx 12+10+7 roasted foods isn't really worth wasting tons of wood on - you will never have enough.
* Some locations are worth visiting even without the intention to fight. Namely one of the two Abandoned Houses locations guarded by marauders has I think 4 cars that can be looted without having to fight, and one house in The Ashes, too. I usually don't bother clearing the other two houses unless I have 35+ dmg (to twoshot 61 and 70HP charred zombies, leaving only the 80hp ones to threeshot... with 31 (i.e. rusty m16) you might try your luck as well if you have spare food).
* Crafting and building improvements accept worn out items.
* You can also put items down into searched spots and return later to pick them up, until the timer runs out on the map location.
* When doing trials to kill certain enemies with a particular weapon, don't forget that you can switch weapons during the fight. I generally carry two weapons anyway - a crafted mace or anything under 28 dmg for 2shotting 1\* fights, and anything 29+ for 2\* and 3\* fights. And sometimes even a 2\* fight contains 3 measly common enemies, so I switch to the mace and 2shot them.
* It's a good idea to take perks that improve blunt weapons until mace does 19dmg. That makes it 2shot the stronger flavour of onehandeds. Likewise, cutting weapons until machete does 28. Other interesting damage numbers are 24 (twoshotting decayed, oneshot + fist for basic civils) and 40 (traffic sign) - twoshotting all charred.
* Trials to kill infected civil seem to accept also one-armed ones, at least I had it happen just now (2020-09-22).
* Woodcutting is essentially trading 10 bits of spare metal for 14 wood - so I go for it only when in need of ingots/nails (unfortunately there is no way to trade wood back to spare metal).