[Facebook] The Last Stand: Dead Zone

[Victoria Raverna]

Found an interesting facebook game.

You scavenged food and water to feed your gang of survivors.. You scavenged materials to build your hideout. Collect weapons and armors for your survivors.

You can send out team to do RTS-like missions to nearby buildings or streets to collect resources. You can defend your hideout from zombie attacks and other survivors.

It is still beta. This is the fan page:

http://www.facebook.com/LastStandDeadZone

Also so far, it doesn't force you to nag your friends to ask them to join or force you to buy stuffs with real money to be able to enjoy the game.

[Paingod]

It's a pretty nifty game, for Facebook.

In particular I like that you can actually control your squad during the missions if you so choose. It's kind of fun to move through an area, scavenging with one person while using two others to watch his ass. I've gotten lazy (at work) and just send them off undirected sometimes; if someone comes back injured, that's fine.

So far my only mistakes I can pinpoint are:
- Not just directing my Leader as a combat specialist. I thought to try Engineer with him first, then switched to Healing, and then Combat - so I'm not focused in anything. Other team mates come in and do things just as well as you can, but with different abilities than you get. My Engineer is clearly better than I ever will be, as is my Scavenger. The Leader is a generalist and might as well just know how to shoot well instead of trying to compete with specialists.
- Wasting a few resources early on by stopping construction - you can move things easily after they're built.
- I burned through 20 "free" fuel they give you accidentally completing a mission early, but it's not an issue since I have no intention of spending money to buy more.

What the game might need is an inter-player market that people can use to trade goods for fuel and compete with the static prices the game offers.

[Paingod]

Okay, so I've been playing for a couple more days.

It's actually a nice diversionary game - something you might keep up in the background to ALT+TAB to while doing other things at home, like most FB games. The missions are fun enough and quick enough that they're easy to pull off as a brief intermission to something else.

I'm currently level 9, and have a few tips:

Spoiler:

Team:
- My Leader has been an acceptable Medic up to now, and Medic is the one class I haven't gotten (poor combat specialists). I imagine the Leader works best as a Medic. I hardly need to heal my people during missions as long as I keep them together and don't send them off alone. I've been focusing mostly on Combat with the leader and haven't added more into other areas.
- My Scavenger is invaluable. He single-handedly clears areas of resources while the team covers his ass. His bonus to scavenging is obvious when others try to do it. Pistol specialist.
- Engineer has been lackluster. She gets specialization with "Improvised" guns, but I've had only a handful of good guns in that category. She's mostly supposed to be for melee combat, which I don't engage in.
- Fighter has been very useful in combat (assault rifles), but moves slower than anyone else. When I tested sending people off on solo resource runs in low hazard areas, the Fighter was the one who came back uninjured.
- Recon is the fastest mover in the game, and is specialized in assault rifles and some other weapons. He's been a lot of fun to have around - a real "Johnny on the spot" guy who can respond to any area in the map in a few seconds.

Ultimately, I think I'd want two of every type to send off on automated missions as full squads, but only with one Medic.

Items:
- You can toggle types of items to look for in the over world map.
- Weapons found will be appropriately leveled to the area you find them in. Fighting in a level 8 area will yield level 8 weapons. Higher level areas also provide more resources when scavenged.
- Toolboxes are great items to find (Nuts & Bolts are hugely useful for base buildings) and seem to come mostly from hardware stores (shocking).
- Wood can be found in abundance through warehouses and residences.
- Metal can be found in bits and bobs throughout most areas, but as a resource in warehouses.
- Cloth can be found in warehouses and residences, and continues to be the most needed of all three.
- Food and water are both found in abundance in grocery stores, and to a lesser extend residences. Water is more scarce than food.

Buildings:
- Build to meet the needs of the next Survivor you can recruit first and foremost. The biggest thing slowing my progress down isn't structures, but gathering food and water (mostly water).
- Don't go overboard with comfort items and their upgrades. You'll only need so many of each (1 bed per Survivor, 1 shower, 1 outhouse) for some time. Build just enough to meet the needs of the next survivor coming in.
- Build Farms and Water collection early and keep them as priority items for upgrading as you go. All of mine are being upgraded to Level 3 right now.
- Wood, Metal, and Cloth drop locations are nice to have, but lower priority to upgrade than other things.
- Focus more resources on upgraded storage (all kinds) as much as you can. It's very nice to have 600 storage capacity and set up two groups of survivors to salvage the clusters of resources around your base while you're away. When you get back, you'll have 400-500 of each resource to build with.

Cheese:
- Once you build a Recycler, the achievement for recycling 25 times earns you 15,000xp. It takes about 5 minutes to do this using 1 item at a time and gave me almost an entire level from 8 to 9.
- Clear an area, but hold your ground until the last moments to maximize experience earned through killing zombies.
- High level missions provide larger morale boosts for the team. If you're willing to send everyone at once with your best guns and keep them clustered together for safety, they can reap huge rewards in experience and morale by doing missions above their level.
- Barricades don't seem to offer any good way to lock them together to actually slow anything down when you get attacked by random undead.

I don't look forward to the day when my "Protection" wears off, but I'm currently the biggest threat in my area so I'm not too worried about getting ganked.

[IceBear]

I've had it lock up on me if I have Character B heal Character A and while that was happening I had Character A heal Character B. But it is a beta, and it's lots of fun

[Paingod]

I've had it lock up on me if I have Character B heal Character A and while that was happening I had Character A heal Character B. But it is a beta, and it's lots of fun

That would be a strange thing - and not just because you had two medics in one room

I'm level 10 and all that's left is surviving. I've done all the Tasks that came up, I've got just about everything I can build (except the guard tower), and I can add more survivors (I'm working on getting #7) but it's taking 1.3 hours for my crews to come back from level-appropriate missions. My food and water are capped and the only things I need are tons of building materials. Seems like this stage of the game is about finding efficient means of securing vast quantities of resources. I've only got a few scrap heaps left in my base to scrounge.

Still enjoying the missions - they're just fewer in number. I've started breaking up into two groups of three - leader/scavenger/fighter and engineer/scavenger/recon. Even though my folks are mostly level 7-9, they can handle missions up to level 12 so far with relative ease.

Recon really shines with his Assault Rifle. He's zippy, runs into the fray - hammers a few undead - runs off to the next group. My fastest killer, hands down. I've got my Leader using a long range rife that's proven to be pretty sweet in warehouses - put him in the middle of the large open area, and he hits everything coming out of the walls.

[IceBear]

Well, I am getting raided mercilessly by a L10 player an hour away from me (I'm only L7). All my players are constantly incapacitated so it's losing it's luster for me

[Paingod]

Well, I am getting raided mercilessly by a L10 player an hour away from me (I'm only L7). All my players are constantly incapacitated so it's losing it's luster for me

Well, that's just plain shitty.

My protection wore off a couple days ago, but I'm not getting attacked by anyone. As far as I can see, there's no good reason to attack anyone else unless you're just being an asshole. It's hard enough to gather resources (I assume these get stolen) without people taking them from you.

There is one guy visible to me who's level 10 but I'm still ahead of him; should be 12 soon. I feel pretty safe, unless he does some kind of exploratory attack on me.

[IceBear]

Yeah, I retailated just to see what happens. You can steal his resources, but his guys were much better armed than me and were killing my troops in 2 shots. Oh well...I wish the option to be raided was a toggle...if you want to raid you can be raided, otherwise you're safe. Running into aholes like that have ruined a few of these free games for me.

[Paingod]

Yeah, I retailated just to see what happens. You can steal his resources, but his guys were much better armed than me and were killing my troops in 2 shots. Oh well...I wish the option to be raided was a toggle...if you want to raid you can be raided, otherwise you're safe. Running into aholes like that have ruined a few of these free games for me.

Oh, there's a toggle... if you want to pay for it.

Generally as soon as people start attacking me I abandon these games. If you're willing to really work the game, you could probably get to 11th-12th level in the 6 days of protection they give you to start. The 'incentive' to pay them money so you can stand up against other players or be protected from them is absurd.

[Paingod]

I'm going to feel bad about abandoning my survivors. My Leader is 13th level and a skilled sniper/medic. My remaining crew is an Engineer (worthless), a Soldier (worthless), 2 Recon (awesome), 2 Scavengers (awesome), and 1 Medic (useful). If I had to start over, I'd have 3 Recon, 3 Scavengers, and 1 Medic by now. That would give me two good 3-man raiding parties and one 2-man for quick controlled jaunts. I expect Engineers will find some use when it comes time to enable Crafting (or not, it wouldn't surprise me).

The types of weapons each class is specialized with:
Leader - None (I generally use a Sniper Rifle)
Soldier - Assault Rifles, Melee, assume LMG's (haven't found one)
Engineer - Any Improvised (Rifle, Pistol, Melee, SMG)
Recon - Assault Rifles, Improvised Rifles, Sniper Rifles
Scavenger - Shotguns, Pistols
Medic - SMGs, Pistols

Levels that I've found types of weapons:
Sniper Rifle - 7, 13, 14 (rare weapon type; only have 1 level 7, 1 level 13, and 1 level 14)
Improvised Rifle - 9
Assault Rifle - 6 - 8
SMG - 8-14
Improvised SMG - 2-5
Shotguns - 5, 8-14
Pistol - All
Improvised Pistol - 4-6
Melee - All
Improvised Melee - 7-14

The Engineer starts of with ranged options and degrades into melee only specialty weapons. The Soldier gets Assault Rifles (which are still good against level 14 enemies) around level 6, but also degrades into only melee options. The Recon gets a good selection of Assault and Sniping. The Scavenger's shotguns never go out of style (the level 12 Tactical shotgun is awesome). Medics ... well, they heal people so it's okay that SMG's are pretty weak in general (I don't think the DPS number accounts for 25-50% accuracy)

I've hit a point where I'm basically running maintenance and slowly crawling towards the next survivor upgrade. Getting the 9th one is a huge challenge because I've built every building I can and all that's left is to upgrade them - each upgrade only provides +1 security or +1 comfort (some provide +2 but are hugely expensive).

I think I needed 65 comfort and 75 security to get the 8th survivor. Getting that meant building everything, including 3 guard towers. To get the 9th I need 85 comfort and 130 security. It's a crazy huge step, especially when I have to get it one point at a time. Granted, there are several "Security" structures that aren't in the game yet, so maybe I'd be working on those to get that 130 number.

The actual missions, while repetitive, offer a lot of good old fashioned isometric zombie slaughter. Still fun, and really the only reason I keep coming back.

[Victoria Raverna]

There is also a limit on upgrading for security and comfort. Beds can only be upgraded to level 5. The same with small barriers. I am a few points from my next survivor (number 9) but the cost is very high since I have built everything that I can and upgraded all cheaper options to max level 5.

[Paingod]

Do you think it's even possible to achieve the 10th survivor, then? Or would you need to "buy" that person?

[Victoria Raverna]

If all security and comfort items are limited to level 5 then I don't think we can get 10th survivor without paying or waiting for them to implement higher level things to build. Once my current upgrades are done, I'll get 9th survivor.

[Paingod]

Out of curiosity, what kind of team do you have?

[Victoria Raverna]

Out of curiosity, what kind of team do you have?

I have one of each type except medic then the rest are fighters which I now regret since I can't find good ranged weapons for them.

Got my 9th survivor. From looking at the requirement for the 10th, I don't think I can get that because of the security requirement if security buildings are all limited to level 5 and I can't build more of them.

[Paingod]

That certainly makes me decide that my next survivor will be a scavenger. That will give me 3x scavenger groups to use at once.

I hit 15th with my Leader and got to use my one and only LMG (Light Machine Gun) and the thing is monstrous. 13 range, 100 round clip, 15-20 damage per hit, .07 fire rate, 6 second reload. It even came modded for +10% accuracy and I've got on +18%acc/13% range glasses... My leader just stands in the middle of a level 15 street and literally sweeps it clean of undead and has a shotgun sidekick to protect him while reloading. Nutty.

I've got another 26 security to go before I get that last survivor.

I'm interested to see what "Crafting" lets me do. If all I end up doing is making more of the same things that I have now and rolling random quality for them it'll be pretty uninspired.

[Victoria Raverna]

We can now do crafting. I'm now focusing on upgrading the two crafting benches to unlock higher level weapon/gear to craft.