On State of Decay’s Weapons, Skills, Durability, Stealth, and More

Undead Labs designer “Foge” has penned an excellent blog entry on the developer’s website that really gets into the nuts n’ bolts of their forthcoming zombie RPG, State of Decay. He leaves nothing unturned – combat tactics, character progression, weaponry, vehicles, item durability, and a whole lot more is all covered in detail:

Skills

It should come as no surprise that different survivors have different abilities and skills. Each survivor you rescue is a bundle of potential wrapped in a bag of goo that zombies love to munch. The skills of your current survivor will absolutely influence your tactics in the field. Over the course of your (hopefully long) career you’ll acquire a particular set of skills, skills that make you a nightmare for the reanimated corpses trying to take over the world.

As your survivors, um, survive the zombie apocalypse, they’ll get better at doing so, and the specific skills that they are using affect their growth (as a human being and as a tasty snack). Want your survivor to get better at shooting pistols? Then you should take that survivor out into the big, bad world with a pistol and get to work getting better. Of course some survivors have natural talents that are going to allow them to grow a lot more in a particular area, which isn’t to say that you can’t find a way to increase your aptitude, but that may require some.

Specialization

At certain points in their growth you are able to choose specializations for your survivors. Specializations are skills that reinforce your survivors natural expertise and play style, that give you a powerful advantage over the shambling masses.

The choices you make about how your survivors grow is critical. It expands their tactical capabilities. Is it more useful to have a survivor that can pick locks, or one that can move quickly in stealth? Do you want the crack shot, or the unstoppable bruiser that can soak up a ton of punishment? Do you want a particular survivor to be able to master the use of pistols? There are a lot of different types of objectives that your community needs to pursue in order to reach your goals, and each of your survivors can help you get there in different ways.

The choices you make are also final. Once you’ve chosen a specialization for a survivor it is permanently part of that survivor.