Here are some of the things that you wish you had known sooner when you started playing Dead Island 2.
In Dead Island 2, the action can move either fast or slow. The game’s opening act fails to impress. As it turns out, it’s not the quests or the dull environments that make it boring but rather the repetitive tempo of the game. Thankfully, we take more control as the adventure progresses and our weapons and abilities grow.
The game doesn’t hold your hands too much and really wants you to go out there and explore between the hordes of zombies, piles of loot, and skill cards to collect. After playing Dead Island 2 for several hours, I realized that there were many things I missed out on from the beginning and would’ve made things much easier if I had known before. So here are some of the things that you wish you had known sooner.
Unlock All Available LOCKBOX
In Dead Island 2, Deep Silver wants you to go off the beaten path and discover its environment. Many secret areas, hidden stashes, side missions, and missing contracts will provide the best items, resources, and skill cards. But you need to keep an eye out for the Lockboxes, as every map has quite a few. All you need is to find the zombie with the key to open them, but the game doesn’t tell you where to locate these zombies and what they look like.
It’s effortless if you follow a few guidelines. For instance, if you find military supplies case, the key will drop from an army infected, such as a drill sergeant. If a stash is hidden in the laundry room locker, its key will drop from the cleaning staff lady, and so on.
Additionally, try to pay attention to the names of the zombies because uniquely named and non-described infected are the ones you are looking for. So you can completely ignore the regular ones. And not all zombies with the key spawn right for a start. Sometimes, they appear after a particular phase in the main story or after completing specific side missions. They also tend to spawn relatively close to the cash locations. So if you don’t see them immediately, it’s OK to move on now and return later.
Don’t Ignore the FUSE
Many times in Dead Island 2, you will find these panels that require fuses to open up. You would generally want to open these since they always open up a garage or other secret areas filled with crafting materials and extra loot cash for more powerful items. Unfortunately, fuses can be found rarely in the open world, so a more immediate solution is to buy a bunch from a nearby vendor.
They only cost about 1500 each, but it’s worth buying a bunch every time you buy a vendor in any of the safe houses. The loot inside these cases will also help you level up fast. So you can always get something that’s immediately useful eventually. With the abundance of drops, you can just sell the items you don’t need.
Complete Side Quests
Side quests in Dead Island 2 are indicated with a blue icon on the map, and these are mostly simple fetch quests. They are relatively easy to complete and will involve helping other characters. Most of the time, these quests provide skill cards that you cannot get otherwise on top of the extra loot and XP. So it’s always worth it to do them as they become available. Each map has a few of them, at least with new ones appearing as you progress through the main story.
A lot of the areas appear locked at first and unlock later once you complete certain side quests. For example, one of the Beverly Hills houses has an entire section that you can only open up during the sign mission called The Ballad of Ricky Rex, which further gives access to other lockboxes and unique spawns for the missing keys.
Carry an Elemental Weapon
Combat in Dead Island 2 is fun, and the game gives you the freedom to deal with the ever-present groups of zombies the way you want. But you don’t have to fight them all since they constantly respawn. So it’s OK to skip most of them towards your destination. But when you’re overwhelmed by them, lead them to a corner where you can use an elemental weapon, which causes great damage. That’s why carrying at least one elemental-type weapon will make your life much easier.
For instance, whenever you see a bunch of infected in or around the water, you can electrify them all at the same time. Similarly, there are many oil-spilled areas that you can set on fire or corrosive chemicals you can spill to melt even the toughest zombies. But keep in mind that some of them can have additional resistance from either of these elemental damages. So carrying different types of elemental weapons is always a plus. If you don’t have many such weapons, target the zombies around canisters, barrels that deal extra damage.
There are lots of other ways the game lets you confront large groups of zombies without even having to use your own weapons. Curveball and other throwable grenades, bombs, molotov, etc., are the other mechanics to keep in mind. You will find these while exploring and also when progressing through Dead Island 2. They are very handy for damaging a single or even a group of zombies. It’s always best to take enemies from a distance when all things fail, and as they don’t even get consumed, they have a cooldown mechanism. So you should always make sure to use them. There’s even a skill card to reduce the cooldown, so you can spam them more often.
Pay Attention to Skill Cards
Skill cards are equally as important as the other weapons and tools you use in Dead Island 2. The first row lets you choose between the active abilities you want to use, while the ones beneath (Survivor, Slayer and Numen) are generally for buffing these abilities or your character in different ways. If you want to single-hit a target, a forceful blow into the ground, or a fierce yell that can both buff and heal you, all of these are possible.
For instance, using the Flying Kick ability, you can perform a powerful, damaging jump-kick attack that can make enemies vulnerable. But of course, there are more similar options given throughout Dead Island 2. Many of the skill cards are given when leveling up and completing main story missions. But the more unique ones will drop from side missions, loot caches, and sometimes just lying around in different locations of the maps you visit.
It’s also important to utilize the type of character you’re controlling play with right from the start since Dead Island 2 lets you choose between multiple characters, and they all come with two unique Innate Skills each. For instance, if you start with Dani, you get Thunderstruck and Bloodlust skill cards, and her Bloodlust ability lets her heel up when slaying multiple enemies fast. You can always find more ways to make your character tankier, or however you wish to play the game.
Autophage Build
This also brings to the Fury modes and the Autophage mechanic after a certain point in the main story. Dead Island 2 lets you go super zombie mode after filling the fury gauge by just killing zombies. However, this has a skill line indicated by the Autophage gauge in the skill menu.
There are three of these levels, and to reach the next tier, you need to just use these special cards with Autophage skills indicated on them. These are very easy to spot due to their distinctive icon in the center bottom, and they provide one tier each. You only need three cards to max out Autophage, but you can use more to find other interesting bonuses.
Higher tiers of Autophage boost the fury mode duration if you regain damage and even health. But there are some drawbacks, as the first tier reduces your peak health, and the second one stops your stamina from regenerating. The last one completely removes the passive health regen and reduces the effectiveness of the healing you get from consumables.
If you build around the max Autophage in Dead Island 2, it’s actually super strong despite these drawbacks, and there are even skill cards in there that completely remove them. With this build, you can almost go infinitely with a full Autophage mode if you have enemies to defeat. You can continuously generate that fury and also deal extremely great damage.
Upgrade Your Weapons
Like the characters, weapons can also be upgraded with new mods and elemental effects. Since there are many enemy types and weaknesses, you can always carry one weapon of each kind of damage and apply upgrades to any nearby workbench. Shock weapons are great because they stun enemies and deal continuous damage; they can also jump to many targets and spread through water.
Corrosive weapons in Dead Island 2 are also great since they literally melt enemies away. But in the case of Hazmat enemies, you can use a normal damage weapon to either blunt or slash as long as you deal damage.
You’ll, of course, find blueprints for stronger weapon mods progressing through the main story, the side quests, and the vendors to acquire more of them. But pay attention to the weapons with higher-level mods by default. You’d want to use these ones more since it takes a while until you can craft your own.
Dead Island 2 also lets you repair and even level-match your gear to your current level. So in case you have a really good item and want to wait to throw it away, apply repairs at the workbench and level that up in exchange for some cash. Repairing is something you’ll want to do often for the best weapons, but matching it to your level can become quite expensive.
Especially at the higher levels and for the higher quality loot. So only do it for the best weapons. You can also sell the mid-game items since you’ll constantly get new ones at every step. But you want to consider keeping the unique or legendary items you get in the game.
Dead Island 2 simply showers you with loot as you progress, and even the items you do not pick up because of limited inventory space will still appear in your unclaimed property later on in the storage locker. Leaving them lying around is the best idea so that you can retrieve them.
During the early game, it’s wise to scrap items and get the crafting component, and later on, once you completely max out the basic components, it’s best to sell them. So once you start getting many rare items, you can simply sell them for money and funnel that into just buying them.
Fast Travel
Fast Travel in Dead Island 2 unlocks soon after the main story progresses, and you will be able to travel fast using the maps around the safe spots. It will even let you choose whether you want to play during the night or day in the next location you’re traveling into. Though this makes no difference in the enemies that spawn, it’s easy to return to areas you visited before and grab the new items you were missing or complete new side quests.
I hope this guide helps, and if you have more ideas, please share them in the comment section.
