u/Network_of_Trumbull

If so, Drucker County is gonna be lit! "Besides his nerve damage..."

Just watched it and now there's a feral screeching every time I answer the phone...

They sound great but very impractical... Just imagine trying to outrun a feral and hit a pothole... You're better off just using a car. Plus, your character must have some crazy stamina or a trait of being a cyclist to get away from imminent danger.

Do you think bicycles should be added?

Wobrant? Or Brantjak

Since State of Decay 2 lets us customize the difficulty with sliders, what if State of Decay 3 had a Freak Spawn slider?

• Turn it down and freaks become much rarer, but the world compensates with much larger hordes and more runner type zeds than shambler zeds. Imagine driving and finding a massive horde that extends the width of the road, blocking your path.

• Turn it up and freaks become much more common, but there are fewer regular zombies roaming the map. Again more runner type zeds but imagine trying to fight off a horde of five juggernauts or a pack of ferals?

• I think it would let players tailor the apocalypse to the kind of experience they enjoy most. Personally I love freaks and I'd definitely crank that toggle to the max!

Would you use a setting like this?

Instead of wasting precious food making fuel at the Distillery, why not refine a bloater?

If plague bloaters can have their glands harvested in Heartland to make Plague Busters, then regular bloaters should be harvestable to create fuel. They're basically walking bags of concentrated zombie gas anyway.

Not to mention how they are now, they're throwing up volatile vomit that's concentrated with chemicals that are more likely needed to create fuel. Scavenging is the main focus now and our survivors can find precursors to finalize the fuel during the chemical reactions.

*Bloater Refining*

- Find and harvest 3 bloaters.

- Bring the glands back and place them in the Distillery.

- have precursor chemicals.

- Your Chemist processes the materials into a usable fuel source.

- Result: 1 Fuel.

It's disgusting, probably smells like a plague zone, and there's a decent chance the whole base regrets the decision... but in a world where we're already turning food into gasoline, refining zombie organs honestly feels pretty on-brand.

All I need to do now is find the house of pancakes.

The Zeds are still sentient...

Has anyone ever noticed how the zeds react to fire? Not just in the "they eventually die" way, but in the flailing, screaming, panic running until they collapse kind of way.

What makes it weird is that in most zombie media, the undead don't feel pain at all. You could light a Romero-style zombie on fire, and it just stumbles along until it burns out. Here's the creepy part: this actually lines up with how the infection in SoD works. These aren't just reanimated corpses; they're biologically compromised hosts, more like a parasite or virus hybrid than pure "dead flesh walking." Which means some reflexes in the body are still intact.

It's almost like a form of rabies. When someone's infected, they don't consciously "fear" water. Their brainstem has been hijacked so when they try to swallow or touch water, their throat spasms, they convulse, they thrash around violently. It's definitely not pain in the normal sense but rather a neurological reflex caused by the infection.

Now apply that to SoD:

• The parasite still "cares" about preserving its host.

• The nervous system flips into overdrive, forcing the body to thrash and run in a last ditch attempt at survival.

It's not pain like a person would feel, it's more like the parasite pulling on the strings harder than ever because the body is literally being destroyed. if you think about it... that means SoD zombies are technically still suffering, still alive. They're not numb corpses. They're rotten puppets whose strings get yanked harder the more danger they're in.

This could be just be a game detail to make things more interesting but it does make you wonder though.