History YMMV / StateOfDecay

** 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 and keep your immortality, leaving you free to explore the valley to your hearts content.

** 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 [=NPC=]s for backup, it stands out as a very dangerous mission without substantial preparation and luck. It's also very much a LuckBasedMission, 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.

* TheScrappy: Lily the MissionControl, who is unkillable, unplayable (yet still consumes supply), and [[BrokenRecord 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.
** If there's one trait that may be the most detrimental to a survivor, it's "Improves cardio slowly" (it's actually named "Asthma Attacks" or "A Pack a Day", but the effects of both are the same). The time you invest in trying to max out the stat of a character that has this will most likely be better off spent leveling up all your other survivors.
* ThatOneAchievement: 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 even any medicine at all, injured/sick members can heal on their own, even if they were on the brink of death. Entire guides have been written with tips ranging from running people over with vehicles to hunting down bloaters to purposefully have them explode on the player. It is, however, mildly humorous that one of the most difficult achievements in a game with zombies and {{Permadeath}} is just getting someone to die.
* ThatOneLevel: 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 [=NPC=]s for backup, it stands out as a mission that's very dangerous without substantial preparation and luck. It's also very much a LuckBasedMission, 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.
** 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 has to go to the trailer park in Spencer's Mill, 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 of Spencer's Mill and north of the church also is an area best avoided, as it is almost always crawling with zombies, and more will continuously spawn.

* DemonicSpiders: 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.
** Gets downplayed once you figure out a surprisingly simple trick to killing them quickly. Do a combat roll the moment they lunge at you, and while they're lying on the ground, immediately turn around and do a finishing move.

* DisappointingLastLevel: 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 simply ran out of time and shipped the game as is.
* EnsembleDarkhorse: The survivor Karen Tolbert is surprisingly popular on the Undead Labs forums. This despite the fact that she only appears in one story mission and has some of the worst survivor traits.
* GameBreaker: Characters with the Reflexes skill have access to 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 either single zombies or small groups by knocking them down and then 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.

** The Bloater, which takes only one shot to kill, but explodes into a cloud of poisonous gas which quickly drains both 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.

* LeftHanging: Throughout the Lifeline DLC it's implied that the plague is not naturally occurring and may have been a result of experimentation gone wrong. However, after completing all of Sasquatch's hunts, these plot threads are then dropped in favor of the [[spoiler:bog standard NukeEm]] ending.

* TheScrappy: Lily the MissionControl, who is unkillable, unplayable (yet still consumes supply), and [[BrokenRecord constantly nags]] players about missions they haven't completed ("Hey, have you checked out the survivors I've mentioned?"). Also, she is one who gives you the "Memento" mission.

** SWAT zombies, especially if a character specialise 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.

* ThatOneAchievement: 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 even any medicine at all, injured/sick members can heal on their own, even if they were on the brink of death. Entire guides have been written with tips ranging from running people over with vehicles to hunting down bloaters to purposefully have them explode on the player. It is, however, mildly humorous that one of the most difficult achievements in a game with zombies and FinalDeath is just getting someone to die.

* GoddamnedBats: The Bloater, which takes only one shot to kill, but explodes into a cloud of poisonous gas which quickly drains both 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.

* GoodBadBugs: 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.

** Doubles as DemonicSpiders, 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.

* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: 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 them those up.

* TheScrappy: Lily the MissionControl, who is unkillable, unplayable (yet still consumes supply), and [[MostAnnoyingSound constantly]] [[BrokenRecord nags]] players about missions they haven't completed ("Hey, have you checked out the survivors I've mentioned?"). Also, she is one who gives you the "Memento" mission.

** 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 below .50 caliber from a sniper rifle or 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 aforementioned high-caliber and shotgun rounds is to melee attack them or use explosives, which becomes problematic when 5-8 of them are mixed in with a horde.

[-Return to the Video Game page [[{{VideoGame/StateOfDecay}} HERE]]-]
----

* GameBreaker: Characters with the Reflexes skill have access to 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 either single zombies or small groups by knocking them down and then 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.

* GoddamnedBats: The Bloater, which takes only one shot to kill, but explodes into a cloud of poisonous gas which quickly drains both 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.

* LeftHanging: Throughout the Lifeline DLC it's implied that the plague is not naturally occurring and may have been a result of experimentation gone wrong. However, after completing all of Sasquatch's hunts, these plot threads are then dropped in favor of the bog standard [[spoiler: NukeEm]] ending.

* TheScrappy: Lily the MissionControl, who is unkillable, unplayable (yet still consumes supply), [[MostAnnoyingSound constantly]] [[BrokenRecord nags]] players about missions they haven't completed ("Hey, have you checked out the survivors I've mentioned?"). Also, she is one who gave the "Memento" mission.
** If there's one trait that may be the most detrimental to a survivor, it's "Improves cardio slowly" (it's actually named "Asthma Attacks" or "A Pack a Day", but the effects of both are the same). The time you invest in trying to max out the stat of a character that has this will most likely be better off spent leveling up all your other survivors.