YMMV / State of Decay

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The military pickup might be the developers just not wanting to create a whole new model of a Humvee, but real life US military actually do have civilian-model trucks in service. Not only that, having militarized civilian trucks rather than Humvees running about is actually more realistic, as the CUCV is more widely available in mainland America than the HMMWV because of their roles as support and maintenance, something that the more combat oriented Humvees are unsuited for.
• Broken Base: The Year One Survival Edition has caused quite the split amongst the fans. Proponents say it's a worthy remaster of the original game, with improved graphics and more content. Opponents say it's little more than an unpolished port of a game released barely two years before, with the graphics hardly being improved, many technical issues still unresolved from the original 360 version, and that the new content doesn't justify the price tag even with the pre-owned discount.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Short for deliberate, roleplaying decision, you are going to be hard pressed to pick any other home site than the Snyder Trucking Warehouse. Its central location, amount of space it offers, general security and number of outposts it can support are such massive and obvious advantages, no other site can even get close to it. The only disadvantage STW has is the fact you must use the outposts and landmines to secure it, but by that point of the game, it's trivial task to set those up.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Feral Zombies can quickly kill lone survivors, especially if they get the drop on you at night. It is surprisingly easy to lose Marcus or Maya on day one to a Feral zombie, and even in the late game they can blitz you and kill a survivor you may have expended a significant amount of effort and time leveling up.
  • Army zombies. In Breakdown, they replace SWAT zombies as the armored freak, and are the remnants of the US Army unit sent into the valley. They run fast, leap far, are immune to almost all bullets due to their armor (anything not using incendiary shotgun rounds is completely ineffective, even against the head) and in later levels become the most commonly encountered freak without question. The only way to deal with them without using the shotgun rounds is to melee attack them or use explosives, which becomes problematic when 8-10 of them are mixed in with a horde.
• Disappointing Last Level: The third and final town, which is only accessible near the end of the main plot, serves very little purpose. There are no story missions or side-quests there other than the game's finale, and Marshall contains enough resources that there's no need to loot the new town for supplies. It definitely feels like they were going to put more story-related content there, but ran out of time and shipped the game as is.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The survivor Karen Tolbert is surprisingly popular on the Undead Labs forums. This even though she only appears in one story mission and has some of the worst survivor traits.
• Game-Breaker: Characters with the Reflexes skill can use one of two utility skills: Spin Kick and Sweep Kick. They replace the standard kick, and they ALWAYS knock down the zombie it hits. This allows you to conserve ammo and weapon durability when dealing with single zombies or small groups by knocking them down and executing them one after the other. The passive bonus of the stat also counts; a faster Stamina regeneration rate, which definitely helps in improving their Cardio.
• Genius Bonus: Montressor is actually an appropriate name for a character who traps another behind a wall and leaves them to die — it's the name of the Villain Protagonist of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado". At least this game has a better ending for the one(s) on the other side...
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The Bloater, which takes only one shot to kill, explodes into a cloud of poisonous gas, quickly draining your health and stamina. Inhaling this gas however briefly can get a character sick and needs a few real-time hours to recover. Worse still, they tend to mix in with the normal zombies, so it's not always easy to spot and kill them from afar. They're most annoying when they hide just on the other side of a locked door during Zed Hunt missions. Also, running them over causes their gas to stick to your vehicle and affects your character until you leave it and let the gas dissipate.
  • Screamers cannot attack, but their scream drains stamina and makes you lose control of the character, who covers their ear in pain. Encountering these guys in a middle of a fight means a lot of health loss or even death.
  • Normal zombies on their own are no hassle. They become quite the pain when countered near specials, however. Spend too much time focusing on them and a Juggernaut or Feral will hand you your ass. Focus on the special and you'll find yourself getting grabbed by the normal zombies, opening you up to the special's insta-kill attacks.
  • SWAT zombies, especially if a character specialize in guns or bladed weapons. The only things that can reliably put them down is fire, blunt trauma and obscenely over-the-top firepower (.50 cal and grenades). They are just as easy to kill as regular zombies with blunt weapons and simple stomping, but it just happens every other weapon doesn't work.
  • Doubles as Demonic Spiders, but Army Zeds are this as well. Immune to bullets (except .50 caliber rounds from rifles such as the M107CQ and Mk. 15 and incendiary shotgun rounds), they run fast and quickly become the most common freak encountered. It's not uncommon to have dozens of them spawn at higher Breakdown levels, and the player can end up killing hundreds of them in a single level. They also can mix into hordes, forcing the player to use explosives or melee weapons.
  • You'd think Juggernauts would be Demonic, but in reality they're this. Sure, they can easily ruin a survivor's day, but you almost never need to actually fight them. However, if they're in an area you want to loot, you'll have to flee and come back after they've despawned.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • In the main story, Marcus, Ed, and Maya are immune in the tutorial until you complete the "Escape" objective. As such, it's possible to max out your stats for Marcus and/or Maya without any fear of death. However, you don't necessarily have to be confined to grinding in Mount Tanner. After you climb to the top of the cliff, you can literally walk around the trigger that normally disables your immortality and keep it, leaving you free to explore the valley to your hearts content.
  • In Breakdown, it was originally intended that players would only be able to bring six survivors with them to the next level. However, players eventually discovered a glitch that, by sending survivors away from the home base and then manually sending them to RV, would allow them to bring as many survivors as they wanted. This was affectionately nicknamed 'roof riding'. Sadly this was fixed in the Year One Survival edition.
  • Via extensive glitching and some help from RNG, it is possible in certain builds of the game for pastor William to survive the game and never turn. With another glitch deliberately triggered, Alan could make it till the end of the game, too.
• Scrappy Mechanic: When the player loads a saved game, events are calculated and executed depending on how long it is since the last time the game was saved, to simulate real-time events. It's possible to close the game in a good position, then come back a couple days later and find that your survivors have eaten all your supplies and several zombie hordes have congregated and are heading straight for your safehouse. Luckily, the problem can be countered with little hassle by adjusting your computer clock close to the last time you saved the game.
• The Scrappy:
  • Lily the Mission Control, who is unkillable, unplayable (yet still consumes supply), and constantly nags players about missions they haven't completed ("Hey, have you checked out the survivors I've mentioned?"). Also, she gives you the "Memento" mission.
  • Survivors with traits that negatively impact their Cardio experience gain ("Asthma Attacks" or "A Pack a Day", the effects of both are the same). The time you invest in trying to max out the stat of a character with this will most likely be better off spent leveling up all your other survivors.
• That One Achievement: Unlocking "The Killer" sounds easy enough; just get one of your community members sick enough so you're forced to mercy kill them. But getting the simulation to work in your favor is a bitch and a half. Even if your community has no medical station or medicine, injured/sick members can heal independently, even if they are on the brink of death. Entire guides have been written with tips ranging from running people over with vehicles to hunting down bloaters to have them explode on the player purposefully. It is mildly humorous that one of the most difficult achievements in a game with zombies and Permadeath is just getting someone to die.
• That One Level:
  • The optional mission "Memento," where the player has to travel through heavily infested terrain to retrieve a novelty watch for Lily. You can improve the odds by calling in various expensive favors, but in a game whose main story points tend to give you a gang of NPCs for backup, it stands out as a very dangerous mission without substantial preparation and luck. It's also very much a Luck-Based Mission, as you may only have to deal with the Infested ranger station, or if you're really unlucky, you'll also have to deal with multiple Hordes, Feral zombies, and even a Juggernaut or two. The reputation goes so far, one of the most popular mods for the game simply adds a functional bridge to Ranger Station, just to make this mission less annoying to deal with.
  • Not so much a "level", but certain areas of the map are known for being very difficult and risky to venture into, due to high spawn rates of zombies and special zombies. Special mention must go to the Spencer's Mill trailer park, just south/southeast of the church home site. The small lake next to this trailer park spawns insane amounts of zombies, and going there is extremely dangerous if the survivor is not equipped with plenty of ammunition, throwables and health items.
  • The forest just outside Spencer's Mill and north of the church is also an area best avoided, as it is almost always crawling with zombies, and more will continuously spawn.

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