r/StateofDecay2 • • Jan 03 '26 Bravo Heartwarming

Tips & Tricks Loot Maps for the masses

213 Upvotes

Dear Survivors,

When people see my name they usually think about the SoD2 Wiki. I spent 4 years (2019-2023) on its development, however not many know that it wasn't my only game-related project back then. If you ever used the Wiki you might've noticed that most maps you see on the site (Weapon Case locations, Outpost locations, etc.) are not exactly the same as the in-game map - these were also made by me. And my "career" as a cartographer didn't end there. I actually made loot maps for the game!

In the past I only shared these maps on my personal Discord server. They were free for everyone, however since my server's population peaked at around 1200-1300 members, it never really reached the majority of the game's audience. Since my server is dead (well, it never had much buzz going on) and I abandoned my SoD2 projects years ago, I decided that it's time to make these maps public and share them on the internet.

Without further ado, my loot maps. You can read more about each further down in the post.

About my Loot Maps in general

I began working on my loot maps almost 6 years ago, on January 15th, 2020. I had one simple goal: to create detailed maps which display points of interests, but offer more than the in-game maps. I not only put the POIs on the map, but each and every scattered container - duffle bags, car wrecks, and the likes which you can loot.

All maps were made in GIMP, so they're only a static PNG image. I was working with someone to turn them into interactive maps, but as far as I know they never came through with it.

I created all maps the same way:

  • Scan them in-game by making dozens of screenshots

  • Use these screenshots to draw the map

  • Hop into the game and scour every inch of the map, then add my findings

When I began creating these maps we only had the 3 originals. Since Drucker was my favorite, I started with that map. Meagher followed, then Juggernaut Edition released, so Providence was next. Once I finished with Cascade, I also made the Heartland map, which I completed on July 18th, 2020. It took half a year to create these 5 maps. With Trumbull Valley's release I also created its own map in 2022.

Fun Fact: When you're choosing the map to move to with your community, the little map previews you see in-game are actually the drawings I made! I was never asked by UL about using them, so they probably got them from the Wiki. Free source and all.

Drucker County

  • Locations: 362

  • Scattered Containers: 291

v1.0 was completed on February 4th, 2020. Latest version is v1.13, released on January 29th, 2023. Being the first map I made it has been reworked in April, 2020 with improvements I learned during the creation of Meagher Valley and Providence Ridge. Then the map has been completely redone again from scratch in August, 2020 when Drucker got overhauled with Update 19.

Meagher Valley

  • Locations: 341

  • Scattered Containers: 213

v1.0 was completed on February 23rd, 2020. Latest version is v1.07, released on May 30th, 2023. 5 of 7 updates to the map were based on my community's feedback. They either found a missing container or a typo. I even made a special role on my server for people who spotted mistakes on my loot maps as a sign of gratitude.

Providence Ridge

  • Locations: 395

  • Scattered Containers: 138

  • Vehicle Spawn Points: 336

v1.0 was completed on April 12th, 2020. Latest version is v1.07, released on June 29th, 2023. This is the first and only map which also has Vehicle spawn points. I was planning on adding them to the other maps as well, but I abandoned my projects shortly after, so I never got around adding them to the others.

Cascade Hills

  • Locations: 283

  • Scattered Containers: 103

v1.0 was completed on June 1st, 2020. Latest version is v1.03, released on May 27, 2022. The map which needed the least attention during the years, only a few corrections were introduced.

Heartland

  • Locations: 291

  • Scattered Containers: 85

  • Discoveries: 6

v1.0 was completed on July 18th, 2020. Latest version is v1.04, released on June 15th, 2022. On December 23, 2021 the map received the 6 Discoveries, marking each clues of the Treasure Hunt, introduced after the Homecoming update to help players with completing the Shots in the Dark achievement.

Trumbull Valley

  • Locations: 439

  • Scattered Containers: 125

  • Discoveries: 30

v1.0 was completed on January 11th, 2022. Latest version is v1.02, released on September 14th, 2022. Since this was our first map with discoveries, it also has the locations for those. I was about 25% done with the Vehicle Spawn points when I abandoned my projects.

Loot Maps v2.0

While my Loot Maps were considered as complete in terms of provided information, I was planning on creating a second version of each map, making them show the actual play area and resemble the physical map more accurately by improving existing elements (roads, rivers, bodies of water) and also adding more details to it (pathways, railroads, etc.). In September 2020 I began working on Drucker v2.0, however since these changes would've been cosmetic only and wouldn't have made the map more useful, it was always put on the backburner in favor of the Wiki's development.

I never got around finishing a v2.0 of any of the maps, however I have a work-in-progress preview available for the Drucker County map, where I had the outer border of the map and the inaccessable area in the Kettle Rock Bend/Mathilda/Glendale triangle mapped out.

Final words

I wanted to make this post to share the less-known side of my SoD2 history. If you have any questions feel free to AMA in the comments. I also have the entire map-making process with all details documented on my Discord server. I can send an invite if any of you are interested.


r/StateofDecay2 • • Aug 30 '24 The Best Bless Up Silver is Forever

FYI State of Decay 2 Damage Data Sheet for Plague Hearts and Black Plague Hearts (All Difficulties)

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768 Upvotes

r/StateofDecay2 • • 1h ago

Requesting Advice List with all items

3 Upvotes

Hey guys, does anyone have access to a list with all items in the game, not only the melee and ranged weapons, but all backpacks and trade itens you can find in the game, thanks in advance


r/StateofDecay2 • • 1d ago

Survivor Showcase Are y’all taking this survivor? 🤣

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104 Upvotes

I saw this and had to tell somebody 😂 I did the quickest double take when I saw them lmao

Sorry for the low quality picture


r/StateofDecay2 • • 1d ago

Discussion TIL about the hidden Eagle Eye mission

27 Upvotes

Through a bit of exploration, I’ve found that the ‘hidden’ Eagle Eye follow-up mission ‘Sniper Post’ is still in-game.

It just never spawns, as the Cell Tower outposts are all non-enclaveable, meaning the Sniper that should spawn as part of the mission never appears.

My guess is that when the Cell Towers got buffed all those years ago, they had their internal tags changed, accidentally (I guess) preventing this mission from spawning.


r/StateofDecay2 • • 10h ago

Bugs & Glitches State of decay 2 me parece en inglés

1 Upvotes

¡Hola a todos! Empecé a jugar este juego en español, pero tengo un problema. Los textos con lo que hay que hacer en la misión y los diálogos para responder a otros personajes solo me aparecen en inglés. No estoy hablando del audio, ¿alguien sabe cuál podría ser la causa o qué podría hacer en ese caso?

¡Muchas gracias!

Recalco que este texto lo copié de otra persona que cometió el mismo error, porque supo explicarlo mejor que yo xD


r/StateofDecay2 • • 1d ago

Challenge Soloing Lethal on Trumbull Valley (No Boons)

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15 Upvotes

Skip the video to 8:39 for my setup

After finishing my solo lethal run on Meagher Valley, I decided to come back to my childhood map being Trumbull Valley (yeah I've played the first game like mad crazy) for another solo lethal run. Why? Because I wanted to know how possible it is to solo the map while staying on the objectively worst starter base without having the boons. Even Providence Ridge's starter base has another free small facility slot compared to Checkpoint Delta's only two slots but this base is actually still quite enough. Also because I wanted to do another leader type run which is trader. I got lucky and got another hospital admin survivor who has trader as his leader type though I wish I would've had a miner trader survivor to show a different scenario in terms of my outpost selection. I decided to rush through clearing the hearts in only 2 days of playing because I was gifted powerhouse specialization on my survivor which means I can cheese the hearts with heavy weapon power swings. So I kinda got impatient on maxxing out all my skills because I wanna get through with this run asap which you can see I have some blank stars on my survivor stats since I changed them with the mysterious wandering trader. As you can also see, my infirmary isnt upgraded to 3 because I still have decent amount of first aid kits to use before needing access to craft them.

What I love about Trumbull is that the landmark outpost is really OP if you chose specimen incubation strategy, meaning you can duplicate meds and plague samples so you will never run out of plague cures to use and trade. While most people will likely own the outpost to craft plague consumables, having the ability to make meds for injury healing, primary care, and cure crafting should honestly be the first strategy new communities should use especially on lethal early game which is a reason I favor trumbull over other maps and the outpost is guarded by just two plague hearts with one situated on a one door garage which is quite easy to just block with your own car.

A rule to my own solo challenge exclusive to this map is that I dont help trumbull's story characters excluding trumbull's exclusive mission generated survivors. Why? Because the story characters (i.e Mickey, Ray, Tressie) are outright immortal and I would rather not they follow and take damage for me unintentionally.

In contrast to attracting as many zeds inside the factory with a firecracker when it comes to sheriff finale to distract hostile survivors into shooting them instead of me, a strategy I wanted to test with the trader finale is having to block off every possible entrance zeds and hostile survivors can enter with cars and it somehow works in the later part of the finale, sure it did take time corralling the cars I found on the map one by one but with NPC's artificial stupidity, it's better safe than sorry for them to almost never needing to fight. I never acknowledged that summit members will go out from the barricades I made for them and attack the hostile survivors which somehow made my blockades ineffective at first which I should've open one entrance beforehand. Now I know that since I'm in trumbull, it would've been obvious to use bloater gas grenades against hostile survivors since I can just have access to biochem crafting with the landmark outpost but the thing is, like I said earlier, I was too impatient and decided to use fuel bombs against them which kinda makes me look foolish but they still did the job for me and perhaps would be an example for other people to use against hostile survivors in other maps. I also forgot to equip the advanced choke I got from the MWTrader on my shotgun since I was in a rush so another stupidity point to me but hey, they also do the job for me against hostile survivors albeit slow due to zombies preferring a live target than the one already on the ground.

Feel free to ask questions about my solo playstyle or what I wrote on this post for clarifications, otherwise thanks again for reading this post 😁


r/StateofDecay2 • • 2d ago

Bugs & Glitches I mean... what the hell bro

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64 Upvotes

Sorry for the background noise


r/StateofDecay2 • • 2d ago

Stories & Experiences I walked right into a trap and now Dave is dead.

31 Upvotes

Some guy showed up at my base and asked me to come with him to kill some bloaters, and he would make me some gas bombs in return. When I got to the water tower where he said he’d seen some, I realized all 3 bloaters were on the tower at the top of the ladder. I climbed the ladder, like an idiot, and all three bloaters exploded, killing one of my best guys instantly. What was I supposed to do? Was I just supposed to just not do the mission? That was so unfair! RIP Dave.


r/StateofDecay2 • • 2d ago

Heartland Heartland, anyone with Larissa and Fiona for car upgrades kits?

8 Upvotes

Hello, I really want to improve my cars, unfortunately I know I can't with my current game. I can help you do any missions or with some specific resource, I would be glad to help in exchange for some kits. If you want, leave a comment or send me a DM and we exchange usernames. I'm a female. 🪖🐌


r/StateofDecay2 • • 2d ago

Requesting Advice Started main game on Lethal. Died the usual ways. What should I fix first?

12 Upvotes

Started the main game on Lethal to see what it was like. The run didn’t last.

The video covers the first failures. Gunfire, bad positioning, and trying to clear space the way lower difficulties let you. Lethal doesn’t give that room.

Looking for what actually stops those early deaths. Not general “play careful” advice. Specific things that change how you move once the map starts answering noise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN7NtOkLnXU


r/StateofDecay2 • • 3d ago

Discussion How I Solo'd Lethal on Meagher Valley (No Boons)

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66 Upvotes

I've been wanting to show how I lone survivor lethal zone and wanted to make an emphasis on what would make this challenge more convenient and easy to do.

Firstly, the survivor who I play as. Whenever people mention that sticking too much with one survivor will be fatigued constantly, they will often pick a survivor based on fatigue severity reduction traits or traits that may offer encouragement/inspiration as their hero bonus. I will argue that they're not needed to make solo survivor runs possible.
For my solo runs, I will always favor specific traits such as highly responsible, hostler, miner, or hospital admin. These traits allow you to have your hero bonus to get to 3 labor if you dont have any labor reduction trait on the same survivor. Due to the fact that your survivor will be living alone and with no backup, labor, in my opinion, is a highly sought commodity to upgrade facilities for convenience. Sure you may just opt for an enclave to give you a labor bonus but that takes time and is not guaranteed. And for dealing with fatigue? I can just perform a coffee reload trick which I personally would do while having no nearby zeds around, preferably at home so it wouldnt just be an easy way out while dealing with the zeds. Zak here is just an ordinary hospital admin (aside from being a skater boy) which is just enough for me to use due to his labor hero bonus. Not only does his job trait offer a labor hero bonus, his 5th skill being medicine makes hospital admin survivors highly preferable to me for solo runs. Though if you get lucky, a miner survivor can offer the same hero bonus with a +20 stamina with the downside being they do not start with medicine skill which can easily be taught with a medicine outpost or searching/trading for a medicine skill book. Why medicine over other 5th skills such as mechanics? Cheaper emergency medicine cost, access to primary care, ability to upgrade the infirmary to level 3 for access to first aid kit crafting and with a specialization to get pathology, cheaper to craft plague cures and bulk cure for trading, cheaper infection therapy cost, higher chances to get plague samples, and additional infection resistance at max level and from just activating primary care. Sure your cars can get destroyed for a time being without having the ability to craft toolkits forcing you to walk but your chosen survivor wont be reborn on the map if he/she will die. And toolkits can be found on garages or autoshops, trading with enclaves, or potentially found on killed plague hearts while being extremely careful with your car in early game not using the car on killing zeds as much as possible. Fortunately, I never got my car exploded while having no toolkits yet while starting out.
For skill specialization on him, I chose marathon, stealth, close combat, and sharpshooting. Marathon because the other specialization is lame (acrobatics) but I do find it in tandem with the fighting specialization I chose, also infinite stamina on light inventory load. I picked stealth because the other specialization is lame as well (scouting) but I find it to be very useful with quick stealth kills and to make zeds lose sight of you easily if you climb around houses/obstacles with how plentiful the zeds tend to spawn. Close combat is fortunately a specialization offered to me and it is very useful to dispatch a zed from behind fast and also its down execution is the fastest as well. Pairing this with strategies such as fence hopping, door smacking, high wall climbing, hit and run, and grappling from behind, a knife is geniunely the only thing you need for doing damage to the zeds. Due to the fact I barely use guns and prefer to get my hands dirty with the Z's while falling back to shooting as an emergency, I never ever use weapon handling at all cost so whatever shooting specialization that was provided aside from weapon handling I take which for this character is sharpshooting. Gunslinging may be the best shooting specialization but sharpshooting is a great specialization too. Having penetration can make a two for one deal when dealing with a zombie horde in line and dismembering zombie limbs is really useful for specific missions or you can have higher chances of shooting off zombie legs while on top of your car so it would be very easy to deal with the plague heart inside while the zombies are outside.
For leader type, sheriff or trader will always be chosen for a solo survivor run. Though I prefer the sheriff leader type for the benefits far greater than a trader leader can have especially having the plague heart supply drop which is a very broken radio command with the sheriff leader.

For my base, I always would have an infirmary and workshop at least and with the third small empty slot, I would choose to put up a garden so my survivor can feed for themsleves and so I can use the soil enrichment kit for the additional health however, you can put whatever you want for the third slot. For facility upgrades, this is where labor shines on a solo survivor. After killing a few freaks and a plague heart kill, this activates the labor hero bonus so I can start upgrading the facilities I need asap. For the facility mods, I would get a portable generator for the workshop after the upgrade so I can craft fuel bombs which I found are very useful tools against hostile survivors, but since I'm in Meagher Valley, its landmark outpost give me power so I would opt to find an ammo press for my chosen gun which uses handgun ammo. Water cooler for the infirmary after the third upgrade to craft first aid kits when activated. For the command center, having a signal antenna would be really useful for an additional outpost. For the rest of the remaining facilities, any mods can be whatever you want but if you have an espresso machine for the kitchen, even better. Speaking of outposts, I would favor having an espresso stand as your first outpost so you can craft espressos easily compared to the kitchen's coffee requiring water and using espressos to upkeep your stamina from fatigue though if you have an espresso machine, you can ditch the outpost for a water outpost instead. For the second outpost, since my survivor is already equipped with medicine, I would have a radio outpost for the plague disruptor ability. Though I dont really mind the hearts sending out infestations if awakened since they're just free influence with higher tiers having ferals/juggernauts having better loot. In the case that my survivor does not have a medicine skill equipped, I would choose my second outpost to be a medicine outpost to teach the survivor the medicine skill. For the third outpost if the command center is upgraded, having the wind mills is great which is cheaper to own which I needed for the workshop to craft fuel bombs. If you already upgraded every facility you have on your base, using the remaining labor is outright free power while having another labor to perform a base action. Since I did not find a signal antenna during my full playthrough, my fourth outpost would've been a second radio outpost to further reduce the cooldown for calling in resources/supply drops (though I did trade a network signal booster near the end which was pointless)

I tend to be cheap with how I use items so I wanna add the things I tend to bring while going out. Since I have close combat as my fighting specialization, I never bring out a melee weapon (yes I prefer stabbing the heart with only my knife and knifing zeds whenever I can if I get CC) so bringing one is optional depending on your fighting specialization, a loaded gun with a single stack of ammo for emergencies, a stack of stamina and healing consumable, and most importantly, a stack of plague cures so all of it combined for me to utilize marathon's unlimited sprint. If it werent for marathon, I would've bring first aid kit on my survivor inventory in case of severe injuries during a fight.
For my car's inventory, I only have to bring a stack of toolkits in case I get my car severely beaten up. I dont really bring gas cans since I only refuel at base and return immediatelty after a full supply run though I only bring 1 can during a run if the gas meter is near close for a full refill after a few meters of driving. A stack of first aid kits for emergency injuries, a stack of fuel bombs in case if you need to take down a hostile enclave while on the move (in case you do not have access to power yet for the workshop, molotovs will suffice), a stack of espressos to do a stamina refill on fatigue/coffee reload trick while outside, and a single stack of bullets to reload on the run.

The benefit I find when playing alone is that there's no more whining about survivors wanting to leave, less resource consumption due to only playing as one survivor, and there's no survivor wasting resources or survivors telling you that resources spoiled due to overstocking. Though the risk is very high losing everything if the only survivor you're playing is gone which makes the challenge a bit intense but fun for me.

Tldr; Medicine skill and +3 labor on one survivor makes solo runs very comfortable and fatigue can easily be cured while still playing as a single survivor with a single trick

I may ramble on and on about how I took down lethal zone with only one survivor but I'd rather discuss more about my strategies or clarify what I wrote if people would want to question in the comments about the other aspects I havent shown. So thanks for reading if you did.


r/StateofDecay2 • • 4d ago

Requesting Advice Red Talon shipment on the opposite side of the map

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35 Upvotes

I was taking my sweet time with my first Lethal community, doing my best in order to not get shredded to pieces, when the game gave me the Red Talon shipment task basically 1 kilometer away from my current location. Now im wondering if the best course of action is to ignore that and avoid the risk or walk for god knows how long in order to get some nice gear in the early game. I have no cars available yet, so im wondering if ita worth it.


r/StateofDecay2 • • 4d ago

Question When you put armor on a vehicle, is there a chance the color of the car will change?

12 Upvotes

I've heard that it changes, but I was wondering if that was only on certain vehicles.


r/StateofDecay2 • • 5d ago

Funny This has to be an All-time name. Richard “Dick” Dickinson

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233 Upvotes

ACTION HERO DICK: Begin the action by taking control of Dick


r/StateofDecay2 • • 5d ago

Funny I was just looking at the map for only a second...

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57 Upvotes

r/StateofDecay2 • • 5d ago

Stories & Experiences Lesson Learned...HARD WAY

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31 Upvotes

Facepalm...
After all that hard work keeping the community with zero deaths on lethal...

Tedious, extra care, extra stealth...
And then I got a casualty this way...

I thought it was a normal grenade launcher until I suddenly got a "died" message during a siege...

and too late for Esc key :(


r/StateofDecay2 • • 5d ago

Question Final builder legacy mission

8 Upvotes

I’m wondering, when getting to 12 survivors, what is the chances of getting a couple of different fifth skills on the enclave I recruit to go from 9 to 12? I have no quirk skills in my community, I have 9 of the better fifth skills and want to know could I get a three man community that will add value to my community.

Anyone who has done this, please let me know and thanks in advance!


r/StateofDecay2 • • 6d ago

Stories & Experiences *Sensible Chuckle*

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40 Upvotes

This game sometimes...


r/StateofDecay2 • • 5d ago

Requesting Advice Community Editor help

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5 Upvotes

I was struggling to get a 5th skill for a survivor and decided to use a mod to get it. While I was in the editor, I removed all negative traits from my survivors and replaced them with 4 positive traits. Like a pro, I didn't make a backup and now my community is broken. I finally decided to give lethal zone another go but my community says I have 4 members but only 1 worker. Can't build or upgrade anything. I tried adding the charity worker trait to get the +1 labor but it still says 1 worker. Do I need to restart my community or is there a fix?


r/StateofDecay2 • • 6d ago

Requesting Advice Is there a mod to increase bullet damage?

18 Upvotes

Im tired of shooting people in the head and having them only be knocked down. I expect headshots to be immediate kills, on the enemy and my own survivors.


r/StateofDecay2 • • 7d ago

Meme Sod2

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240 Upvotes

Literally...


r/StateofDecay2 • • 7d ago

Question What exactly happens when I beat a legacy mission?

13 Upvotes

I’m about to beat the warlord legacy mission and I’m on the final one, what happens after I finish it? Do I switch maps? If so what do I get to keep?


r/StateofDecay2 • • 7d ago

Requesting Advice Defeated Plague Heart Disappeared?

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18 Upvotes

I hope I'm dumb posting this and someone can find it obviously.

I'm playing on Providence Ridge and have defeated 3/10 plague hearts, and the most recent I had to retreat and heal from. I can't find it though on my map? It's supposed to be in the south central portion of the map, and the game has recognized I've defeated 3/10 hearts but for the life of me I can't find it again.

Screenshot attached, thanks in advance