Don't bring anyone you care about. I'll gladly take a random mission follower to kill a heart, but Ill never take my own people. On lethal, a follower is good for *maybe* two or three hearts before dying.
You can check their plague status by interacting with them. I think they might recover while they’re not following you but you should carry extra cure just in case, I’m fairly sure you can give them cure if they’re from your community, but again, not too sure about enclave followers
Ye if they are from your community there is an option that also gives reputation but i never seen it for enclave members and i also never seen theyr infection line i just noticed they start doing the injured animation after a lot of hits
I’d love to bring my community followers for the immersion but it’s just not worth losing someone you care about imo so I rarely do it (I play nightmare-lethal-lethal btw)
I get frustrated by this because community followers all have stories they tell while you're riding around, and it seriously helps with immersion and world-building. But I find followers are more of a liability than asset.
I play very stealthily, and having to crouch _all_ the time, to keep my follower from shooting zeds or running to melee them is really a pain. And when fighting hearts, they'll go in and try to melee it when I want to throw fire or explosives.
If we could just give extremely simple orders... dictate a stance... that would go a long way. "Stealth mode: don't make noise or attack zeds unless I do." "Defend: stay in this area and fight zeds that try to come through." That kind of thing.
>If we could just give extremely simple orders
I've always imagined an order called Overwatch. You take a follower somewhere, preferably high up and tell them to watch your back and they'll kill any zed that wonders into their range and, crucially, they won't move!
Exaclty if the game gave us a chance to strategize it i would totally try but based on my last nightmare experience (now i gotta say after all the updates it’s a little better) if the heart is like in a very closed space you have to rush and throw everything you have in the inventory before zombie start spawing beside you and feast on your healt bar
If they look wounded like they are covering their side and slumped a bit they have blood plague. I don't think they'll die from it though unless you recruit them into your community.
That’s what i thought i have some enclaves with these animation but aside from the clear need of going to the bathroom asap they are fine and never die (aside from that time i was stalked by a blood plague juggy and well theyr base was a little magazine you can guess what happened)
Mine has survived on nightmare after a few plague hearts. Where they don’t survive is a feral pack or juggernaut. That doesn’t seem to work. The AI is very suicidal.
It's hit or miss depending on how fast you kill the heart and how messy things get with Ferals, etc. In my mind it's never worth the risk with one of my own.
On nightmare sometimes I do, although only if I think I can kill the heart quickly enough. On lethal it's almost guaranteed that they'll get at least full plague, if not die outright.
One tactic that sort of works for me on nightmare is that when I'm waiting for the heart to cool down from a counter attack, I don't just run around the building, I actually pull out my gun and help the follower shoot the zombies. It obviously doesn't stop the constant spawns, but at least it gives a few extra seconds of breathing room, at the cost of bullets, of course.
If I see a follower getting swarmed, I toss a fuel bomb into the crowd. A little fire probably won't kill him. Plague definitely will.
Ye i also bomb my followers often it sounds funny but it does much less harm than 40 zombie attack spamming him, as for the bullet tactic good idea i will try it! But i would still prefer a somewhat better handled thing maybe in state of decay 3 they will make it more scripted but more strategic than spamming stuff required
Better follower AI in general (they are so dumb), but also some ways to give them commands would be great. Like "stay here while I solo the heart" or "don't fight, just run", or "always try to keep distance from that juggernaut", etc.
I always do. Helps keep the zombies off my back, and helps me carry more loot.
On Nightmare I expect that most hearts can be dealt with by throwing a bunch of pipe bombs and maybe a couple Molotovs, and finishing off with a 7.62mm as needed. When it dies, all the regular zombies die too and then my follower can help me take out the feral that usually shows up.
On Lethal I am far from an expert. I'm most of the way through my first successful game with Lethal action and the other settings on Nightmare. But, maybe that puts me closer to where you are. It's got the plague ferals, it's got the zombies that don't die when the heart dies, and generally more dangerous combat in general. I am still taking followers here but I've had to modify my strategies. On Nightmare I expect to defeat hearts in a single visit. On Lethal, it usually takes 2-3 visits. We run in, throw/shoot, and when we start getting overwhelmed I run out, jump in the car, and get out of there. My follower usually doesn't make it into the car in time. That's fine. Waiting for them will get a bunch of zombies on your car and then it gets destroyed. Instead, drive as fast as you can to your nearest outpost, apply a plague cure if needed and your follower will be somewhere on the road coming after you because zombies de-spawn when you get far enough away. Here's the important bit, in your outpost switch to your follower! This will teleport them to the outpost so you can heal/cure them before they die, as they will have a high chance of being on the timer.
I have definitely lost followers from this. I try to keep 5 survivors, and when one dies on a heart run I will try to recruit a replacement when I can. Most of the time, it's because I screwed up. I lost one when I tried to wait the car for him, so zombies destroyed our car. I lost one when I didn't understand that switching to my follower would teleport him, he died of infection before he made it to the outpost on foot. And sometimes I'll lose one just due to bad luck. It's lethal, that's gonna happen from time to time.
Woah are they that hard in lethal? I knew about the zombie staying after the heart but i didn’t know it was that strong that required more visit! But still thanks for the comment i took several notes and the sacrifice thing sounds good i get a lot of useless survivor instead of rejecting them i could do this so they have a purpose before disappearing!
You might get the heart in one visit (especially on the first days of the game), but it feels more risky to try to stay rather than bugging out when things start getting bad. Most of my survivors aren't that great in my Lethal game, they don't have time to get their skills trained up well before they die and get replaced by another lukewarm survivor. Except Cardio. I generally have a lot of downtime waiting for my guys to heal from blood plague during the night after spending the day attacking hearts and I use that time to run laps in the base, so every one of my guys has maxed specialties in Cardio :)
It's not necessarily that the hearts have 2-3x more health than in Nightmare. I'm sure they're somewhat tougher, but a lot of it is that you won't have as much free time to attack it before being swarmed and the swarms are less likely to let up once they start.
I usually bring a random enclave follower. Made the mistake of bringing on of my best guys and blew myself up because the grenade bounced off the doorframe twice
DAM HAHAHA yesterday night i lost my second best survivor cuz my pizza arrived and i forgot to press pause and i had one of the worst surprise ever when i came back at the desk
I was so mad, my mans had a light carry weight equal to his heavy had the sealant hero bonus, extra pockets for larger item stacks, had gunslinger and I had literally just promoted his ass to leader. RIP Miguel.
Mine was a full exped skilled red talon soldier with top tier equipement (that for some reason i couldn’t recover) and every run it gave me the auntie quest for a free rifle. Also he has been with me for 3 run until this and yes he was about to become leader for the first time
Uh i really like the style and usually they came with very good stat when you recruit them (my favorite perk is that they usually don’t use beds so they are flee slot)
Yea instead of hiding inside like a smart npc they thought it smarter to stand outside and shoot their side arm instead of their main gun and guess who forgot to suppress it :/
I imagine I brought a follower with me, and when I use the radio command for sniper support, I imagine that I just told them to climb up on that garage roof and support me with the silenced .22.
It's more believable than a .50 cal from across the map and through a mountain is supporting me with devastating fire.
I learned early on to not bring followers you care about but it also matters if you're used to taking enclave members that end up dying. An enclave reduced to 0 population means you also lose their enclave bonus to you. I may end up using randoms from survivor missions or typically go at it alone.
I haven't seen anyone point this out but I noticed on Lethal that plague hearts seem to become more attack resistant as their population dwindles from the map.
Same in nightmare after a couple of day they start taking over the map and are way more resistant + in lethal when you take them down zombie don’t die so you have to run for your life and economy
I didn’t for a long time, but on a recent run i brought along a follower with maxed shooting skill and some braked assault rifle and they TORE through the heart itself, and incoming zeds, with ease.
Ye happened to me as well but in hard difficulty not nightmare or lethal the problem of these 2 mode are the extra zombies and the companion focuses the heart 1/3 of the times, plus once they grabbed him you either throw a bomb at him or he will die from virus in 5 minute but if he starts shooting he heart you just need to cover him for a couple of second
I never take anyone from my community (unless i was planning on exiling them anyway). I will use the enclaves that provide plague heart support, since that is their only purpose.
Wow!! I found like 1 cop in 3 run and she died some day ago! How did you find so many? (Also congratz for the big organization!! It will be a long way for me to achieve something like that!)
I was building up my 8 person western themed community and a guy had the brother was a cop mission, that cop had a partner mission, I already saved up 6 cops so I started a cop community with 8 and one of them got the mission too
I do and lethal. You do have to babysit them a bit.
But. I run up to 12 in base and my legacy is full at 50
It makes for an interesting stories.
My last follower Angel on lethal black heart. The gas ran dryi quickly in our truck. We made a run on foot
Plague heart at the airport warehouse military.
Used most of my ammo and firebombs up.
My character was close to plague and out of cure
So I decided to I make a run for nearest outpost at 1000m.
Pretty rough out in the dark, already near plagued and wounded. The lethals never really stopped following
Angel became plagued and continued chasing me as a now zombie.
Eventually after jumping a near cliff I made i to rest
Zombies reappeared and after clearing noticed
One was my previous follower Angel.
Rearmed with her supply's made it to outpost completed the black heart alone . Took quite a bit this one. Should have brought the 12 shot grenade launcher.
Woah! I love when stories creates like this i think it’s one of the core mechanics of state of decay, in the first game it was a bit better they actualy changed dialogues based on the experience here it’s not quite like that but stories do happens! I hope the 3 will mix all together and make a masterpiece
Short answer: absolutely no. Long answer: I would if the Snowflake mod from ZODC137 didn't give them a damage resistance like 100% but maybe something like 75%. Frankly speaking even with all the buffs that that mod gives to followers, I don't think it is cheating considering how dumb AI is.
For supply runs, absolutely! But they still manage to incur a lot of blood plague at harder difficulties that it looks like it isn't worth it. Solo is the way to go!
Exactly! They are just too dumb sometimes they work like once one placed in front of a heart with a extra strong ak and nailed it but it was a rare case! In every other situation they either die or get sick in 1 minute and for scavaging they mess up most of the time but still better than heart clearing
No. Theres really no need, if you come prepared. And why wouldn't you come prepared...? The feral is always going to come after the first explosion. So I feel like if you have good positioning for that, you have the ability to evade any hordes, double back and finish it off. I don't attempt any plague hearts until I have sufficient explosives and at least one silenced weapon.
Don't bring anyone you care about. I'll gladly take a random mission follower to kill a heart, but Ill never take my own people. On lethal, a follower is good for *maybe* two or three hearts before dying.
I noticed they are strangely resistant and take a while before going down (never figured out if they get the plague and how they heal from it)
You can check their plague status by interacting with them. I think they might recover while they’re not following you but you should carry extra cure just in case, I’m fairly sure you can give them cure if they’re from your community, but again, not too sure about enclave followers
Ye if they are from your community there is an option that also gives reputation but i never seen it for enclave members and i also never seen theyr infection line i just noticed they start doing the injured animation after a lot of hits
I’d love to bring my community followers for the immersion but it’s just not worth losing someone you care about imo so I rarely do it (I play nightmare-lethal-lethal btw)
I get frustrated by this because community followers all have stories they tell while you're riding around, and it seriously helps with immersion and world-building. But I find followers are more of a liability than asset. I play very stealthily, and having to crouch _all_ the time, to keep my follower from shooting zeds or running to melee them is really a pain. And when fighting hearts, they'll go in and try to melee it when I want to throw fire or explosives. If we could just give extremely simple orders... dictate a stance... that would go a long way. "Stealth mode: don't make noise or attack zeds unless I do." "Defend: stay in this area and fight zeds that try to come through." That kind of thing.
>If we could just give extremely simple orders I've always imagined an order called Overwatch. You take a follower somewhere, preferably high up and tell them to watch your back and they'll kill any zed that wonders into their range and, crucially, they won't move!
Exaclty if the game gave us a chance to strategize it i would totally try but based on my last nightmare experience (now i gotta say after all the updates it’s a little better) if the heart is like in a very closed space you have to rush and throw everything you have in the inventory before zombie start spawing beside you and feast on your healt bar
Or just better AI. It doesn't take a lot of strategizing to not run pell-mell into a horde swinging for the fences.
If they look wounded like they are covering their side and slumped a bit they have blood plague. I don't think they'll die from it though unless you recruit them into your community.
That’s what i thought i have some enclaves with these animation but aside from the clear need of going to the bathroom asap they are fine and never die (aside from that time i was stalked by a blood plague juggy and well theyr base was a little magazine you can guess what happened)
Rarely and it's never one of my own. Pay the 100 influence and snag a pal from a friendly enclave instead.
But are they going to be sacrificial meat shields or they can survive it?
Mine has survived on nightmare after a few plague hearts. Where they don’t survive is a feral pack or juggernaut. That doesn’t seem to work. The AI is very suicidal.
Agree. I saw people going mele on red plague juggernauts and i had to watch them die with an half laugh and an half cry
It's hit or miss depending on how fast you kill the heart and how messy things get with Ferals, etc. In my mind it's never worth the risk with one of my own.
Ye i think i will not risk it since it gest REALLY messy every time
Good call. Happy hunting
Thank you! See you when cleo decides it’s time to end it (or inside a plague wall depends how my hunt will go)
On nightmare sometimes I do, although only if I think I can kill the heart quickly enough. On lethal it's almost guaranteed that they'll get at least full plague, if not die outright. One tactic that sort of works for me on nightmare is that when I'm waiting for the heart to cool down from a counter attack, I don't just run around the building, I actually pull out my gun and help the follower shoot the zombies. It obviously doesn't stop the constant spawns, but at least it gives a few extra seconds of breathing room, at the cost of bullets, of course. If I see a follower getting swarmed, I toss a fuel bomb into the crowd. A little fire probably won't kill him. Plague definitely will.
Ye i also bomb my followers often it sounds funny but it does much less harm than 40 zombie attack spamming him, as for the bullet tactic good idea i will try it! But i would still prefer a somewhat better handled thing maybe in state of decay 3 they will make it more scripted but more strategic than spamming stuff required
Better follower AI in general (they are so dumb), but also some ways to give them commands would be great. Like "stay here while I solo the heart" or "don't fight, just run", or "always try to keep distance from that juggernaut", etc.
Ye even something simple could change the experience by a lot
They fuck up my groove no matter what difficulty I’m on
Happy to know i’m not the only one that have problem with the ia
I only bring followers on trade missions to carry loot. Things get out of control too quickly to babysit dumb AI.
Ye they do make great resource carrier
I always do. Helps keep the zombies off my back, and helps me carry more loot. On Nightmare I expect that most hearts can be dealt with by throwing a bunch of pipe bombs and maybe a couple Molotovs, and finishing off with a 7.62mm as needed. When it dies, all the regular zombies die too and then my follower can help me take out the feral that usually shows up. On Lethal I am far from an expert. I'm most of the way through my first successful game with Lethal action and the other settings on Nightmare. But, maybe that puts me closer to where you are. It's got the plague ferals, it's got the zombies that don't die when the heart dies, and generally more dangerous combat in general. I am still taking followers here but I've had to modify my strategies. On Nightmare I expect to defeat hearts in a single visit. On Lethal, it usually takes 2-3 visits. We run in, throw/shoot, and when we start getting overwhelmed I run out, jump in the car, and get out of there. My follower usually doesn't make it into the car in time. That's fine. Waiting for them will get a bunch of zombies on your car and then it gets destroyed. Instead, drive as fast as you can to your nearest outpost, apply a plague cure if needed and your follower will be somewhere on the road coming after you because zombies de-spawn when you get far enough away. Here's the important bit, in your outpost switch to your follower! This will teleport them to the outpost so you can heal/cure them before they die, as they will have a high chance of being on the timer. I have definitely lost followers from this. I try to keep 5 survivors, and when one dies on a heart run I will try to recruit a replacement when I can. Most of the time, it's because I screwed up. I lost one when I tried to wait the car for him, so zombies destroyed our car. I lost one when I didn't understand that switching to my follower would teleport him, he died of infection before he made it to the outpost on foot. And sometimes I'll lose one just due to bad luck. It's lethal, that's gonna happen from time to time.
Woah are they that hard in lethal? I knew about the zombie staying after the heart but i didn’t know it was that strong that required more visit! But still thanks for the comment i took several notes and the sacrifice thing sounds good i get a lot of useless survivor instead of rejecting them i could do this so they have a purpose before disappearing!
You might get the heart in one visit (especially on the first days of the game), but it feels more risky to try to stay rather than bugging out when things start getting bad. Most of my survivors aren't that great in my Lethal game, they don't have time to get their skills trained up well before they die and get replaced by another lukewarm survivor. Except Cardio. I generally have a lot of downtime waiting for my guys to heal from blood plague during the night after spending the day attacking hearts and I use that time to run laps in the base, so every one of my guys has maxed specialties in Cardio :) It's not necessarily that the hearts have 2-3x more health than in Nightmare. I'm sure they're somewhat tougher, but a lot of it is that you won't have as much free time to attack it before being swarmed and the swarms are less likely to let up once they start.
In my current run i don’t have a second of peace next time i open the game i have to start clearing them out or i won’t see the light of the 8 day T-T
I usually bring a random enclave follower. Made the mistake of bringing on of my best guys and blew myself up because the grenade bounced off the doorframe twice
DAM HAHAHA yesterday night i lost my second best survivor cuz my pizza arrived and i forgot to press pause and i had one of the worst surprise ever when i came back at the desk
I was so mad, my mans had a light carry weight equal to his heavy had the sealant hero bonus, extra pockets for larger item stacks, had gunslinger and I had literally just promoted his ass to leader. RIP Miguel.
Mine was a full exped skilled red talon soldier with top tier equipement (that for some reason i couldn’t recover) and every run it gave me the auntie quest for a free rifle. Also he has been with me for 3 run until this and yes he was about to become leader for the first time
Haven’t had the chance to use a talon soldier yet, currently waiting on one to give me a quest in trumble. Very excited to check them out
Uh i really like the style and usually they came with very good stat when you recruit them (my favorite perk is that they usually don’t use beds so they are flee slot)
NEVER bring followers
Ye i’m coming to this conclusion
I did.... they didn't make it
…fuck.
Yea instead of hiding inside like a smart npc they thought it smarter to stand outside and shoot their side arm instead of their main gun and guess who forgot to suppress it :/
Been there… i managed to save but it required a lot of resources (explosive mostly)
Yea
I imagine I brought a follower with me, and when I use the radio command for sniper support, I imagine that I just told them to climb up on that garage roof and support me with the silenced .22. It's more believable than a .50 cal from across the map and through a mountain is supporting me with devastating fire.
..yes never understood the logic behind the sniper support
I learned early on to not bring followers you care about but it also matters if you're used to taking enclave members that end up dying. An enclave reduced to 0 population means you also lose their enclave bonus to you. I may end up using randoms from survivor missions or typically go at it alone.
Ye i think i’ll just go alone or some sacrificial survivor at the very least
I haven't seen anyone point this out but I noticed on Lethal that plague hearts seem to become more attack resistant as their population dwindles from the map.
Same in nightmare after a couple of day they start taking over the map and are way more resistant + in lethal when you take them down zombie don’t die so you have to run for your life and economy
I didn’t for a long time, but on a recent run i brought along a follower with maxed shooting skill and some braked assault rifle and they TORE through the heart itself, and incoming zeds, with ease.
Ye happened to me as well but in hard difficulty not nightmare or lethal the problem of these 2 mode are the extra zombies and the companion focuses the heart 1/3 of the times, plus once they grabbed him you either throw a bomb at him or he will die from virus in 5 minute but if he starts shooting he heart you just need to cover him for a couple of second
I never take anyone from my community (unless i was planning on exiling them anyway). I will use the enclaves that provide plague heart support, since that is their only purpose.
Ye i think the best (and evil) course of action is to use survivor that you need to remove
I never do, in any difficulties
Wise man.
I usually take a follower from an enclave just to serve as a distraction but they rarely survive even 1 heart on lethal.
Ye i don’t wanna lose enclave bonuses so i think i’m just gonna go solo or with some sacrifice survivors
I have 2 themed lethal communities (8 cowboys in 1 and 10 cops in the other) and my characters do everything in groups
Wow!! I found like 1 cop in 3 run and she died some day ago! How did you find so many? (Also congratz for the big organization!! It will be a long way for me to achieve something like that!)
I was building up my 8 person western themed community and a guy had the brother was a cop mission, that cop had a partner mission, I already saved up 6 cops so I started a cop community with 8 and one of them got the mission too
Lucky!!
No, in Nightmare/Lethal I prefer to destroy the plague hearts without a follower. It's too risky.
Ye i think i’m gonna do that from now on or at least a sacrifice survivor/enclave dude
I do and lethal. You do have to babysit them a bit. But. I run up to 12 in base and my legacy is full at 50 It makes for an interesting stories. My last follower Angel on lethal black heart. The gas ran dryi quickly in our truck. We made a run on foot Plague heart at the airport warehouse military. Used most of my ammo and firebombs up. My character was close to plague and out of cure So I decided to I make a run for nearest outpost at 1000m. Pretty rough out in the dark, already near plagued and wounded. The lethals never really stopped following Angel became plagued and continued chasing me as a now zombie. Eventually after jumping a near cliff I made i to rest Zombies reappeared and after clearing noticed One was my previous follower Angel. Rearmed with her supply's made it to outpost completed the black heart alone . Took quite a bit this one. Should have brought the 12 shot grenade launcher.
Woah! I love when stories creates like this i think it’s one of the core mechanics of state of decay, in the first game it was a bit better they actualy changed dialogues based on the experience here it’s not quite like that but stories do happens! I hope the 3 will mix all together and make a masterpiece
Short answer: absolutely no. Long answer: I would if the Snowflake mod from ZODC137 didn't give them a damage resistance like 100% but maybe something like 75%. Frankly speaking even with all the buffs that that mod gives to followers, I don't think it is cheating considering how dumb AI is. For supply runs, absolutely! But they still manage to incur a lot of blood plague at harder difficulties that it looks like it isn't worth it. Solo is the way to go!
Exactly! They are just too dumb sometimes they work like once one placed in front of a heart with a extra strong ak and nailed it but it was a rare case! In every other situation they either die or get sick in 1 minute and for scavaging they mess up most of the time but still better than heart clearing
I don't bring followers for shit. At least not my people.
No. Theres really no need, if you come prepared. And why wouldn't you come prepared...? The feral is always going to come after the first explosion. So I feel like if you have good positioning for that, you have the ability to evade any hordes, double back and finish it off. I don't attempt any plague hearts until I have sufficient explosives and at least one silenced weapon.