Discussion Some highlights from my Days Gone Survival II No Upgrades playthrough

[Frag Maniac]

I did use 1 upgrade early on in the game, the silencers, but these are all captured well after that, and are done with no upgrades. I also started out clearing NERO checkpoints without using any NERO Syringe perks by injecting Focus syringes, but not buying the Focus skill, which is the only way they can be used. In retrospect I could have saved the clearing of NERO checkpoints mostly for the World's End story missions, which would have also given me nearby ammo restocking lockers for some of the tougher Hordes, but I still would have been left with 2 World's End missions not completed. This is because there are 11 World's End checkpoint missions, plus the mission at the start of the game where you have to get sterile bandages for Boozer, and there are only 10 Focus syringes.

This game is also unpredictable as far as whether the percentage of completion toward killing a given Horde will reset to zero once you stray far enough to resupply ammo and grenades. For this reason I only completed the 3 hordes contained in the campaign and a few others, focusing just on the campaign ones capture wise. One of the biggest challenges of killing hordes with no upgrades is Deacon cannot reload while sprinting. I did however complete a few of the challenges, but since they can take time to get gold on each challenge contained in each challenge, and are quite arcade and can be exploited with easy cheeses, I didn't capture any.

This is the knife boss fight against the Ripper faction leader. It shows how to beat him quickly with no damage taken just by making sure you do 5 knife slashes each attack, leaving him stamina drained and open for further attacks.

This is the 1st point where I thought no upgrades might not be possible, but I sufficed by placing a couple of remote bombs, ramming him into the railing, and firing 1 shot to explode his bike. It's pretty much impossible without upgrades via chasing him down though.

This is the first Horde you must destroy in the campaign. I was able to go a little longer via stealth than I normally do, but I always break stealth when there's no more nearby propane tanks to lure them to, as it can be hard to lure a lot of them to farther ones without being spotted. I used the bike to get to a spot where I could run through buildings to slow them down, then zig zagged through the fenced area using explosive barrels.

This bike chase mission was a bit harder than the last one due to being very hard to precisely place and time remote bomb explosions. You invariably get dropped to the point of a Target Escaping warning at the start, but can make up ground just enough by taking a more direct route.

This is the second campaign Horde mission, where you need to collect fertilizer for the truck bomb. It went way faster than I thought it would. I used the bike after the first attack, to make the horde cool down, and refuel. I didn't even use all the tanker trucks I could have. I've come to find this is the easiest of the 3 hordes required for completing the campaign.

This is the 3rd Horde mission the campaign requires you to complete, and at 500 Freaks, also the biggest. It went faster than I thought it would due to using a lot of throwable weapons from a concealed spot. I however struggled as I usually do to kill as many Freaks as I wanted to with the extra large propane tank, only about a half dozen. A Reacher nearly caught and killed me at the 7:09 mark. This fight seems to almost always have a Breaker, Screamer, or Reacher lurking nearby at the start (at least on Survival II anyway). When they come midway into dealing with the horde while you're being chased though, it's extra scary.

 

[Metal Messiah.]

Good work. Thanks for the tips, I will watch the videos once I get back home. I also need to re-install the game again on my system, and start playing it from scratch. Btw, 500 enemy count is insane ! But no doubt it's a horde mission. I presume this one is located on Old Sawmill, in Lost lake region.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Good work. Thanks for the tips, I will watch the videos once I get back home. I also need to re-install the game again on my system, and start playing it from scratch. Btw, 500 enemy count is insane ! But no doubt it's a horde mission. I presume this one is located on Old Sawmill, in Lost lake region.

500 count is common if you use even the base level of the Massive Hordes mod, which is how I played Survival II last time, but with upgrades. If you use the higher increment versions of the mod, the hordes can get much bigger than that. The way the mod works regarding horde scaling is they spawn like 250 at a time. It's the only way they can actually fit in a lot of the smaller horde hibernation spots.

And yes, that 500 horde mission is the only one in the stock game of the ones that have to be done in the campaign that's 500 Freaks large, and it is indeed at The Old Sawmill. I've learned however when doing this Survival II no upgrade run, that it's not about the size of the horde, but the setting you fight them in, and whether they reset to 0 if you leave to restock ammo, grenades, and gather supplies to craft other throwable weapons.

None of the 3 hordes contained in the campaign reset to zero, you can easily do them in chunks. I was really doing other hordes mostly to get enough trust points to get all camps to level 3 trust. The only ones I ever need to do that with are Copelands camp, and the Diamond Lake camp. 1 Freak ear = 3 trust points, so it definitely adds up.

If you do other hordes to clear them as missions though, you have to take them more seriously, and the ones that reset become quite hard to clear without the ammo saddlebag upgrades for the bike. A lot, in fact most of the hordes that reset when you leave to resupply also have little to no items nearby to kill them quicker, like tanker trucks and explosive barrels.