Dead Island

[Fiach]

Hope you enjoy it mate, it can be a bit glitchy (I'm on third play, no patch and havent had anything serious yet).

I would suggest Xian for first play (or Purna), Xian has the most Stamina, so she can haul a$$ if she needs to get outta Dodge in a hurry. Purna uses guns that are not available 'til Act 2, but her Rage attack makes her pull out a special gun that will kill a Thug in a few shots (you will come to know and love Thugs  >:D). Purna is the ONLY character able to make guns viable, dont bother using them except on humans with any other character.

Dont forget to buy the Rage (could be called Fury) skill and dont forget to use it, its awesome, to use it (360 controller) Hold B for about 2 seconds, if you just hold it for a second, you will use a medikit.

Buy Medikits! They are only 200 and may stop you dying and pay 1000's of dollars in penalties.

Alot of things you will need to pick up, these are important.... Wire (for electrical mods), Batteries for same, Deoderant for Bombs, Duct Tape (because it holds the universe together :)), Alcohol and Rags (for Molotovs), Detergent(called Bleach by and NPC for some reason, for bullets and Incendry Bombs), Scrap Metal (Bullets), Oleander (for XP in Act 3).

Dont worry about dying, its effect is minimal especially if you have little money (penalty is a %age of your money), you will respawn in  couple of seconds near where you died, any enemies you killed/wounded will still be in that condition.

Molotovs :
Two people can make them early in the game one will ask you to get gas to burn bodies he is the most costly, the next is Harlan he is one alcohol bottle cheaper which is significant. You can make them yourself with less alcohol plus a rag, when you get the schematic, I dont bother because by then I have plenty.

The best place in the game is the Hotel, when you get the mission to go there, Dont Complete IT! Just go in there and go to the Bar (about 12 alcohol bottles), then go to the kitchens, raid all the fridges for Brand Champagne, leave the building and Re-enter and all the stuff (plus enemies) will have respawned, do this until you get fed up.

Bring the Champagane to Svettie a russian chick in the northernmost bungalows, she will give you diamonds in exchange worth 1500 each.

You will get a Shock Mod and a Machete around the time you rescue a guy from a helicopter, Shock Mod will w%&k on (my preference) Cane Knife or Machete. If you play on console there is a guy in Moresby who always sells Purple Machetes SE of the church opposite a Tool Bench with alcohol, (he is not in the PC Version).

DUPE WEAPONS :
If you are running low on weapons due to degradation, you can dupe a weapon, Throw the weapon, while its in flight, open your menu and drop the weapon, this will spawn a second weapon, rinse repeat. I didnt know this until second playthrough and I dont consider it a cheat because Inventory Space is severly limited for carrying extra weapons and Modded Weapons degrade even faster and the company patched the weapon degrades, so I think its valid to use it.

Enemies:
Thugs, chuck a molotov at them or drop a gas cylinder on the ground and entice them towards it and then shoot (or throw weapon) at the cylinder to detonate it.
Rams, let them run at you then jump to the side and let them run past, turn and shoot/stab their back.
Mob of Regular Zombies, find a car/dumpster, climb on to the bonnet/hood, crouch and slice and dice, your molotovs will burn you too, so be careful when you use them.
Suiciders kinda look like The thing in the Fantastic Four, they will blow up if you throw a weapon at them.

Rams and thugs give tons of XP, so seek them out for easy kills.

Inventory Space :
You will meet Jin late in Act 1, she will hold stuff for you, Be aware that she will leave you during a VERY tough mission, so make sure you always have essentials, eg always keep a stack of Molotovs and maybe 10 Deoderant Bombs, a stack of Medium and Large Medikits.

You are limited in the amount of ammo you can carry initially (50 pistol bullets), to carry more pick up enemy guns that are full they will hold 15 bullets each and keep them in your Inventory, when you need more bullets, drop the guns and they will add the bullets they contained to your Inventory. You wont need to do this unless you are Purna and just want to shoot stuff, you should find enough ammo wherever you need it most.

Good Luck :)

[JRD]

It sounds a bit like a Far Cry After Death game...  ;D

Hve fun killing your zombies, PZ!!

[Art Blade]

Thumbs-up, Fiach, for the aid. Nice post, useful for anyone new to the game  :) :-X

[mmosu]

I'll say! I don't really consider myself new to the game anymore, and I didn't know most of that stuff!! 

[PZ]

Thanks guys!  ;)

Excellent advice, Fiach, and coincidentally, I did start as Xian even though I had no idea why!

[Fiach]

Watched this movie tonight, it reminded me alot of the game (no connection), but yeah, speaking of Xian, worth checking out :)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0471041/

[Art Blade]

Hehe, I got that film, too.. not top notch but still worthwhile.  :)

[Fiach]

Somethings that occured to me while playing last night.

Quest Markers may not appear until you are in the area, so you need to uncover the whole map for some quests to appear, even then, some may not appear, so you will need to look them up on Youtube, some people will indicate on a map where the relevent quest is.

There are some "Escort" Missions that are mandatory and not difficult, but there is one, where you have to find Kwans cousin, this is (a) a pita to find and (b) a pita to do, due to the bugger aggroing every zombie in sight, so I would suggest dont bother with it, you get 1.5K xp, you get the same for killing a Ram or Thug in a couple of seconds.

There is a cool quest, where a guy asks you to find his daughter, you wont get it unless you look for it, the prize is a Lightning Mod for blunt weapons, so its kind of important if you use blunts. You need to go down to the docks, explore all down there until you find a warehouse, go past there a fair bit and a guy will call you to help him..... bit of a surprise in store here btw :)

There is a guy in the church will ask you for batteries, dont give them to him, you will need them for shock mods.

There is a skill that basically "stomps" downed zombies, its very handy and saves wear and tear on your weapons as its an instant kill (does about 30K damage), Jump Kick (instant knockdown) then hold cursor over the zombies head and a "stomp" icon should appear.

A couple of things about Purna.
As I said, she is the only really viable ranged character, she can hold more bullets and craft ammo with two skills that give extra ammo from crafting.
She also has the highest DPS with guns, because she has skills that increase her crit ratio, this is quite important when you consider using machine guns as each burst fires a number of bullets, each having a plus (+) critical chance, so this can be quite devestating. She also has a greater effective range with guns vs the other characters.
She also has a skill that enhances her damage vs "males", most zombies are males and all human enemies are males.
As you develop her rage skill activating it will kill a bunch of enemies and fully heal her (and team in co-op and rez dead team mates), this is a pretty awesome "Get Out of Jail free Card" :)

There are enemies called "Infected", they will come screaming at you very quickly, if they get near you, they will do alot of damage and are harder to kill (more HP), you need to stay calm and do one or two things, kick them when they are in range (they are very fast and its easy to misjudge), then aim at their head and melee them, or what I do usually (practice will make this easier) as they run at you, keep the cursor on their heads and when they are within kick distance, decapitate them Babe Ruth Style, this is quite satisfying and saves stamina (no kick) as sometimes they are not alone....again, dont sweat dying, it costs some money but money is so randomly picked up in large amounts its no big deal, I'm currently Lv 28/29 and I still die a fair bit, but it takes (I think) about 5 seconds to respawn quite near where you died.

[Fiach]

Before you go to city hall, remember that Jin will not be around for quite awhile, so take anything off her that you think you may need, bombs, health kits extra weapons etc. She will be missing for about 3 long and difficult missions.

A tip for the sewer sections, you quest tracker will always point the correct way, so explore every passage you can see and keep an eye out for ladders too as there are loot items like skulls and workbenches to repair your gear, you wont get lost because your tracker is active, but going down the sewers later with no tracker is just an excercise in frustration, so do it when the first time you are sent down (for the supermarket.)

When you go to City Hall through the sewers, its not immediately apparent what to do, so after you talk to the Mayor exit his office to the stairs and go UP a half flight and talk to a guy called Josh, he will then initiate the next sequence of events. he will say talk to the guard (down at the very bottom of the stairs), so, nip into the mayor office and take a bottle of alcohol (there are two there), talk to the guard, give him the alcohol and pass on through.  when you get to the supermarket, make sure you have a Gun!

Make sure you explore as mentioned above, while the quest is active.

Spoilers Shotgun and Pistol Mod.:

Spoiler

In the shop with all the shelf aisles and ice cream fridges, search the room thoroughly for a dead guard with a shotgun.

In the main combat area, do not leave until you find the STRIKER MOD, in the top left hand corner, you will see some boxes, the mod is there laying behind the boxes, easily missable.

[Fiach]

After you return to City Hall from the Supermarket, again it may not initially be clear what to do, go up stairs and you will come to a balcony that surrounds a lobby, there should be a Ram down in the lobby, blow it up ideally.

w@&k your way around the balcony to a large window overlooking the street, with a mounted machine gun, use the gun on the zombies below, you will be attacked by zombies, this can be annoying if you have a gun assigned to your weapon ring as the game seems to default to a gun when you quit the mounted gun, so it may be best to not have a gun equipped as you really need melee for this I think.

Anyway after you have dealt with the zombies, a door will have opened adjacent to the machine gun area. Go through here and kill Todd the Mayor (he did not spawn for me on one playthrough, so if he's not in the office, reload, otherwise you cannot leave this level). You have to loot his Universal key, use it to open the floor safe at his desk for diamonds.

Go downstairs to the room that had the Ram, there should be a PRIDE Shotgun mod in the centre. Then head down the stairs to a door that couldnt be previously opened without the Universal Key. There may be a Thug here.

[Fiach]

When you are sent to the police station for jin, the quest trail is quite long and dangerous, instead, teleport to The Warehouse and its entrance (manhole cover) is about 50 feet from there. You will see a Portal Map in the police station, if you use it, so unless you are really stuck, dont use it, you will have to return again though the sewers. There is nothing in these sewers not even health drinks, so I would suggest to just follow the trail.

SPOILER PISTOL AMMO RECIPE

Spoiler

In the office where the red switch is, to open the cell doors, there is a pistol ammo crafting recepie.

After you return from the Police Station, a quest will open that you may not notice, a guy in the church will ask you to go there again to get evidence. This is an important quest as, he gives two great mods, plus this mission opens an area with the recipe for shotgun ammo.

SPOILER SG AMMO RECIPE:

Spoiler

At the end of this mission you will come to an office and see on a desk something like Toms Data or words to that effect, when you pick it up, this opens a door at the other end of the room that you wont see unless you look for it, in here on the desk is the ammo recipe.

[Fiach]

Dead Island on Green Man Gaming €19.49.

http://www.greenmangaming.co.uk/games/action/dead-island/

[PZ]

Excellent advice, thanks, Fiach - love the spoilers by the way - just the kind of thing that I like to have advanced knowledge of - makes it a treasure hunt for me in a way.

I'm still playing ACR right now though - have not done any zombies for a while!   :-()

[Fiach]

Cool mate, I stuck them in because you cannot revisit those areas and if playing as Purna, you really need those items.

[Fiach]

I know some of you love to tweak your games, well there are ton of mods for DI, from changing the weather to making the game more difficult, each with varying degrees of difficulty in applying them. Some are available as a mod pack, incorporating a number of different mods in a way that allows them to w%&k together, opposed to applying them singly and inadvertently writing over previous scripts.

All mods come with the caveat....back up your save file before use.

I chose this one as what it does is good, but it has only a minor impact on being game breaking. It is also simple to install. Just download the zip file, open it and put the Data folder in your My Document\Dead Island\out folder.

http://www.fileplanet.com/223068/220000/fileinfo/Dead-Island-Balance-out-with-Weapons-Mod

What this file does mainly is :

Increase ammo carrying capacity, shops also sell ammo and guns from the start. They also sell katanas and wakizashi. So this is a pretty ideal mod for Purna and Xian, also you can carry more weapons 62 (I think) vs the original 12-18 (with Deep Pockets skill). The cash loot drops have been tweaked upwards.

One other caveat, DO NOT USE with Purnas extra XP skill, that will break your game totally as you will over level.

[PZ]

Nice one Fiach!  Wish I could use it, but I'm on console with this game - don't suppose that the mods w@&k with the console versions?

[Fiach]

As far as I know mate, thats not possible and btw, the current patch 1.03 kills the dupe glitch, I played three times with no patch, for what its worth. :)

That mod I mentioned,  I'm lv 19 with it now and its a pretty awesome way to play, but it does still make the game too easy, its really a "for shitz n giggles" mode :)

Lots of purple and orange weapons and lots of money to buy them with and weapons only degrade slightly.

[Fiach]

Pretty cool video of a mod for day/night/storm. Relly looking forward to that!

dead island DAY AND NIGHT version 1.2( new version tweaked)

[PZ]

That looks great!  :-X

[Fiach]

Well, I have been playing this game unpatched with no glitches for quite awhile. I upgraded to 1.3 to use a mod (great mod), this morning I launched the game and my save was gone! I was cursing Steam, like a sailor with the pox >:((

After a few hours I eventually found a solution on a Team Fortress board ffs!

It was caused by Steams Syncing being buggered up today, anyway the solution was simple in the end, Disable Syncing, also you can stop Steam Updating a game, right click on the game, choose properties, there are a few useful tabs there.

Never EVER buying a PC game again, I'm just too dumb to use them, it would appear.  :D >:D

[Fiach]

Added the day/night/storm mod, it looks great, it can be quite creepy watching Infected charge headlong at you in the cone of the flashlight. It only works in the Resort area, so remove it if going to Moresby or Jungle etc.

[Fiach]

Interesting cutscene in Moresby, a guy glitched through a wall in the church, found and activation point and clicked on it and it triggered a hidden cutscene, its a fly by/through of the city of Moresby :

Dead Island Hidden Cutscene

[PZ]

Added the day/night/storm mod, it looks great, it can be quite creepy watching Infected charge headlong at you in the cone of the flashlight...

In general, when those zombies get up and start at you, it is creepy - quite reminiscent of the zombie movies.  :-X

[Fiach]

Actually there is a Romero mod that makes them behave like the ones in the movies, where they have a vestige of memories of their past lives and they attempt to do things like get into cars etc.

[PZ]

That one sounds cool!  I just love the ability to mod a game - lets you tailor it specifically to your likes.  :-X