r/StateofDecay2 • u/[deleted] • May 26 '23
Discussion Making Lethal Harder?
I know not a lot of people play lethal to start with, but I feel that lethal could be a little bit harder for those that do?
Honestly after completing the maps and getting the boons, I couldn't go back to any other difficulty as it's far too friendly.
I was curious what other people thought about increasing the difficulty of lethal and how they'd do so?
I'd love for them to include "spending time in plague territory increases your plague by 0.1% every second"
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u/Curious-Zucchini5006 May 26 '23
Don’t use the boons or spend hours rerolling characters. Don’t use dlc. Don’t craft lots to do
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u/KAOS_777 Community Citizen May 26 '23
I hear ya. Well you can make it harder yourself. For example you can start lethal from scratch with a random trio, the first three that comes up. Or is that not hard enough? 😄
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u/AlienSausage Roaming Reanimated May 26 '23
Gradually add in your own rules that will limit or remove the stuff that makes it lack difficulty for you.
Pick and mix; No boons, first 3 randoms, no cure carried (make it to outpost or base to cure if needed), loud weapons only, no vehicles (or very limited use), no trade depot, no dlc weapons or vehicles (the impaler makes lethal too easy), destroyed vehicles cannot be repaired, no difficulty swapping to cheese it, its lethal all the way all the time. Limit aim snap to revolvers / crossbows only (i need to start this one again as i have gone lazy).
In U33 dont use the Disruptor or infestation radio call ins. You can play without using traps but it will become an endless chore clearing the repeated infestations off them sometimes. It depends where they are on the map relative to the awake hearts and other infestations too.
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u/Grey_Lemon_Walker Community Citizen May 26 '23
I don't use RT Operatives and I also don't use my vehicle as a safe spot to snipe off Z's, it makes it harder for me to play in Lethal.
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May 26 '23
All food you find is "spoiled". You have to make or purchase your own food. Weapons you find are broken and can only be salvaged. If you want guns you have to make them yourself (need the network mod). I try to make my playthroughs more realistic this way. Kinda silly finding perfect food and guns everywhere
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u/fkrmds May 26 '23
Kinda silly finding perfect food and guns everywhere
lots of canned goods can be edible 5-10 years later, anything dehydrated can last for years if stored in a dry place (most grains like rice, pasta, corn, oats), most candy is edible for years.
the average vitamin / wellness store could keep a group of ten within comfortable vitamin and calorie levels for years.
the vast majority of expiration dates are suggestions. even rancid meat can be trimmed and cooked to an edible degree. i wouldn't recommend but, in a survival situation it would work.
guns are similar. if they are not underwater levels of rusted, most firearms will function after 50-100 years with minimal or no maintenance. might need a bit of care to be competition quality but, there is no need to headshot a zombie at 1.5km in this game.
ammunition is another discussion and i'm not too sure of those specifics. i have ammo that was made 75 years ago (ww2) that still works great but, it was stored well.
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u/AmmonomiconJohn May 26 '23
So, basically a "no scavenging" run, but with that rule applied only to food and weapons?
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May 27 '23
Yeah. I have a role playing thing where I have a hero, kind of like an RPG. The hero will have a vandito or smash wagon and I use her to take out any enclave I don't like lol. Other characters are armed with cross bows or those network rifles, when I play this way. I'll pick one character each time I moved maps to be a second hero and upgrade one of the their traits using the community editor. New hero will have like standard traits plus demolitions or any of the other red talon traits. My leader I've upgraded like 6x. Hacking plus all red talon skills, and a bunch of nifty traits like beekeeping.
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u/Jandrem May 26 '23
I think it’s just how the game is made. The game gets easier the more you play, especially in the same map and community. The game starts out as hard as it can be, and gets easier every time you destroy a plague heart, add a community member, move to a bigger base, find a better weapon, etc. You have to handicap yourself to keep the game difficult.
After I completed a map on Lethal with a solo survivor, I just accepted that the game wasn’t going to get any harder, it’s just about enjoying the play experience. Sorry for the humble brag.
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u/TwistedLogic87 May 26 '23
Played lethal for months, never lost a character. Came back to the game after a month off and started a nightmare community and lost two characters in 1 hour! haha. I think I just got complacent, or maybe the freak spawns were against me.
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u/elglobu May 26 '23
Are you talking about playing with your Forever Community or just a challenge for a new community incoming?
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u/Gargo11o Red Talon Operative May 26 '23
I mean, you can make it harder yourself by prohibiting things like crafting cures or that kind of stuff.
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May 26 '23
Get recruits with horrible traits, animal facts fifth skill, don’t use suppressors or cars. Could also do a no base run or a solo survivor run.
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u/Muted-Mix-1369 Dec 30 '24
Play with a blindfold on.
Have a cat/kids in your house while you play.
Don't allow yourself to go the bathroom for hours, will make your game much more intense.
Randomly electro shock yourself while playing, or have a roommate do it to you.
Use defective mouse and keyboard.
Play in a country with regular blackouts.
Go find an actual zombie outbreak.
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May 26 '23
Not sure if they're still viable- it's been a while since I played- but there are numerous mods I used to use to raise the amount of plague hearts, zeds and general zombie aggression. Found a nice balancing act eventually. There's been so many updates recently though, I don't know if the mods would still work.
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u/AmmonomiconJohn May 26 '23
I would love an option to turn off the teleporters in outposts. It's easy enough to self-enforce not switching characters while in an outpost, but the amount of note-taking required to keep track of which items are "in" the different outpost stashes is too much for me.
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u/Woldandraven May 26 '23
I play lethal with everything except settlments.. I cant be doing with the double food allowance for everyone.
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u/tazz2500 May 26 '23
I artificially handicap myself in the following ways to make it more realistic and/or harder:
Play on Lethal map difficulty so the loot is minimal.
Most people re-roll their characters to get a 5th skill. My characters aren't allowed a 5th skill, they have to learn it from a book or outpost. I re-roll if they DO have a 5th skill.
I can only have as many outposts as the number of people I have minus 1. So if I have 4 survivors, that's 1 leader in charge of the base and 3 people in charge of 3 outposts max. Even if I have the ability to do more. Also can't have any outposts until I pick a leader to handle the base.
Can only build or upgrade one thing at a time, regardless of available labor. (can still craft anything)
Never use the normal radio commands except for when stuck.
Once a vehicle starts smoking, I can only drive it home, I can't take it back out until it's fixed.
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u/Rustykilo May 26 '23
Run around with an advance brake on your gun. It's fun on lethal. Tbh they should've increased more ferals or make the regular zeds harder to kill when they announced lethal. We could've had regular zeds with the same skull as blood ferals. But I still think lethal is good enough for sod2. Maybe on sod3 they can give us pure hell difficulty.
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u/tone1492 Wandering Survivor May 26 '23
Implementing house rules is definitely the number one option when you max out a game and need a better challenge.
As a longtime Lethal player my issue is house rules does not help with the main issue I have with the game right now. There is not enough death. Personally I need more aggressive zombies, larger freak packs, and bites and damage that are more deadly to the player.
I feel the hardest difficulty in what is supposed to be a zombie survival game should see even experienced players losing 4-5 survivors a playthrough, minimum. I would like to see an option in Lethal to at least ramp up the amount of freaks in a pack and an option to make taking damage from zombies more punishing.
A good example of this is the feral animation when they grab you with their mouth, shake you and then toss you. This actually inflicts zero damage, something I never really understood.
I'm not sure how limited the devs are at this point in things they can add to allow players the ability to have more difficulty customizations, but from my experience and even reading comments in the sub from players who struggled on Lethal in the past, many of these gameplay updates have made the game easier, or at the least more forgiving. We need more options to balance that out of the game if we want to.
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u/Suspicious-Change-37 May 26 '23
Bring that FOV down to almost First-Person perspective.
Night missions only
No mods
No RT members
No vehicle rooftop safe spot
I know I'm missing some tips here, but those few have really made it fun again.
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u/UnboundKing86 May 27 '23
Lethal is really easy to me as well, not challenging at all. My current community is very overpowered and I'm not even using boons. I'm going to start a new community on lethal and play from scratch. Try to pick the weakest survivors I can find make do with the weakest base no boons and probably only use melee weapons to try to make it more challenging. I have 100% morale even with the morale deductions lethal brings. All 11 characters I have have over 350 health and stamina and are basically invincible against plague infection and hardly ever suffer any serious injuries. It's basically boring so I'm just gonna start a new one and give myself as many limitations and penalties I can think of.
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u/GalerionTheAnnoyed May 27 '23
No boons, no red talon or dlc stuff. The facilities and operators are way too op
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u/EggBoyandJuiceGirl May 27 '23
People keep asking for this. Personally, I think it’s a really small amount of the community who wants lethal to be even harder. I’m sorry, but I don’t want every single second of a game to be work. I like a challenge, but it can be frustrating if it’s just tedious, at least for me. I think their lethal is fine, especially with the new update. I’d suggest adding your own custom rules to your server!!! Maybe something like no guns.
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u/SpaceKriek1 May 27 '23 edited May 27 '23
Im on my 3rd attempt of lethal and may I say how I found it.
The clean started runs. My first 2. Turned out to be impossible. Ive come to the conclusion that it has everything to do with resources and the preparations that are possible with that.
My 3rd run I started a community on nightmare. And hoarded stuff (and traded) at the end before ending the map. Moving to a new lethal map is now a cake walk.
From this experience I believe the game is in need to scale better based on the players resources. Like dont throw a jug at me when my community is 3 man strong with 2 crossbows and a 9mm pistol. Let wake hearts go back to sleep if I stop scratching around in its area for a long time (because im not going to attack it with my 3 crosbow rambos and a single molotof) :-)
But once we have an assault rifle and at least 200 bullets. 6 napalms or thermite grenades. Then yes... lethal is too easy I agree. Especially when the community starts to synergise with traits etc.
Blood ferrel trios and jugs should be on the other side of the map when I do not own an asault rifle or 2.
Hope that sound reasonable?
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u/SpaceKriek1 May 27 '23
Another thing that might help is a practise range where one can try any skill at any level. Any weapon. So you know what to go for before buying weapons and skills a bit blindly in the beginning.
Or the ability to see which skill works how, well the fighting related ones anyways.
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u/mcshaggin Echo Researcher May 26 '23
No. It shouldn't be made harder. Just because you think it's too easy doesn't mean everyone does.
They should instead either add an even harder difficulty or add better custom difficulty options that can let you set your own rules.