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14 Things Dead Island 2 Doesn't Tell You
While you’re hacking and slashing your way around Hell-A in Dead Island 2, it's easy to miss information that would've saved you lots of time had you known earlier. Whether it's unlocking safes, crafting materials, or where to find handy hints to take down zombies quickly, our tips on things Dead Island 2 doesn't tell you will take you through some of the features not explained to give you the best head start.
14 Things Dead Island 2 Doesn't Tell You
Not Everything Shows Up on the Map
As you unlock each district, icons will appear on the map to show you where you can find things like fuse boxes and lock boxes. However, not everything will be visible. You’ll want to keep an eye on the Compass Bar at the top of your screen to find nearby points of interest and have them show up on the map. Some districts will have as little as 15 points of interest, while some will have a huge 40+ to find.
Fast Travel Isn’t Available Immediately
You can Fast Travel in the game, but you’ll have to wait until you’re a chunk of the way through the story before you can do so. Then you can start to zip around and revisit neighborhoods you’ve already smashed your way through. As soon as Fast Travel becomes available, you’re also limited with how and where you can use it. Each time you want to Fast Travel, you’ll need to find one of the in-game maps (which are usually located at Safe Houses) and go from there.
Once you do have this Fast Travel ability, you can check the map legend to see how many main story missions, side quests, lost and found missions, and points of interest there are in every district.
Named and Apex Zombies Drop Goodies
If you see a named zombie in the area, chances are, killing it will lead to a key being dropped. When this happens, it will always be a key to a lock box that’s somewhere in the vicinity of where you’ve just tackled the undead, but you might not always know where. You can easily check keys from the Keys Tab in your Inventory Menu, for a description of the lock box you’re looking for. Not all named zombies will drop keys, but there are 146 of them to find. As well as named zombies, you can expect Apex zombies to drop goodies, too.
But You Don’t Always Need a Key
Speaking of keys, you won’t always need one to enter a building. You’ll often find shops and buildings that will at first seem inaccessible as you explore. You might even see the red locked icon appear as you go towards a door. It’s always worth looking around and seeing if you can enter by simply smashing a window—just don’t forget to take out any alarms before you do. As well as this, some doors are locked by nothing more than a maglock, so all you have to do is smash electric boxes to get inside.
Keep Fuses on You At All Times
Don’t wander around wondering when you’re going to find some fuses, head straight for a vendor the moment you can! Fuses can’t be found and can only be caught, setting you back $1500 each time. The max amount you can carry at one time is 3 fuses, so make sure you keep them topped up at all times, so you can unlock areas that hold special weapons.
Health Slowly Replenishes
You don’t have to just rely on protein bars, energy drinks, or med packs. Your health will always recover, albeit slowly, when you’re out of danger. Each Slayer has a different stat when it comes to Peak Health and Health Recovery, so how quickly this happens, and how much health you have to begin with will depend on who you choose.
Eat Delivery Zombies Drop Food
If you do want to grab a protein bar or energy drink quickly, and you’re in the middle of slaying a horde, look out for Eat Delivery zombies. They’ll drop snacks and drinks from their bags as soon as you’ve taken them down.
Health and Recovery Items Have Extra Benefits
Medkits aren’t just great for healing in Dead Island 2, they’ll also remove any status effects for your character. So whether you’re on fire, or accidentally stepped in a bit of acid, pop a medkit and you’ll be cured. Energy drinks are also useful, not just for health recovery, but to build your fury meter as well.
Things Respawn
Whether you comb through every inch of the game collecting as much loot as you can, or you dash through and only grab the essentials, it doesn’t matter as over time all things respawn. Dead Island 2 encourages you to keep revisiting districts to complete side quests, find named zombies, or unlock secrets. During these revisits, you’ll notice areas will become filled with loot again. Stock up on as much as you can, then travel around when you need to upgrade your weapons to quickly find parts.
The Zompedia Makes Killing Easy
In the Collectibles Menu, you’ll find the Zompedia under Blueprints and Journals. This is your definitive guide to every Common and Apex zombie type you’ll encounter in Hell-A. Each Zompedia entry has four tips and tricks to help you deal with that particular zombie type by revealing its weaknesses. To unlock each stage of information, you’ll have to kill a certain amount of the specified zombies. For example, when you take on your first Crusher, you’ll find out that you can jump over their Overhead Smash attack.
Track Items
You can track items you need to craft specific mods or blueprints. While making the most of items respawning, why not track the parts you need? This way you can keep an eye on the number of parts you have and how many you still need to get your hands on.
Ignore the Skope Boxes at the Start
You’ll find Skope boxes in plenty of homes and buildings as you run around the game, and you might be wondering what they are, or if the “Server Offline” pop-up is related to your game. These will make sense later on in the game, so to avoid spoilers, just ignore them at the start!
Challenges Give You Permanent Buffs
There are a massive 84 challenges to complete while playing Dead Island 2, so you might not notice that some of these challenges actually give you permanent buffs. Aim to get these completed first, to give your character a little extra boost. Challenges that will give you persistent stat boosts or improve weapon damage include:
- Serial Killer - complete Combat challenges to boost Peak Health
- Weapons Expert - complete Weapon challenges to boost Weapon Damage
- Batter Up! - Slay zombies with Curveballs to increase Curveball Damage
- A New P.B - Slay Runners for a boost to Agility
Alternate Between Selling and Dismantling Weapons
At the start of the game, you’ll want to dismantle duplicate weapons to increase the number of parts you can use for mods and blueprints. However, you’ll soon find that with looting and dismantling, your inventory is full in no time. There’s a Storage Locker for your weapons, but rather than stuff this to the brim with weapons you’re not going to get much use of, you should start to sell your common weapons with lower stats and keep those with the best mods.
The aim is to get the rarest weapons you can and upgrade and modify these into powerful zombie-slaying machines—and for that, you’ll need money. Later on in the game, as you find better weapons, you'll also discover that even without perks they can be sold for quite a bit of money.
Looking for more Dead Island 2 Guides?
- If you're just starting out, take a look at Which Slayer Should You Choose
- Then head over to our Walkthrough pages for a detailed step-by-step guide on completing the main campaign.