Dying Light – Hothead Joe Locations & 6th Anniversary Week 1 Guide

This guide includes the fixed spawn locations of Hothead Joe, his loot table (based on my observation), tips for farming him and tips for the event in general.

  • Note: For second week’s guide click here.

Hothead Joe Locations (Slums)

Location 1/3

Near the train shed with 2 toads, 1 goon and multiple gas tanks.


You can shoot Joe from the yellow railway wagon. Just make sure that you stay on the right side of the wagon if you wish to be out of toads’ range. The lower wagon next to the yellow one isn’t as safe since Joe can sometimes hit you and infected can easily climb on it. You can select Stuffed Turtle or Underground Parking as your active quest and exit and re-enter the game to farm this location. This location is easier to farm compared to the next 2 locations since there are fewer zombies nearby and more room for you to dodge.

Location 2/3

On the road bridge with lots of zombies.


I don’t suggest staying on top of cars if you are thinking of camping. Instead climb the structure that has two signboards and shoot from there. You can select Bright Mountain Tunnel as your active quest and exit and re-enter the game to farm this location.

Location 3/3

In the tunnel downhill from Stuffed Turtle. (Thank you Atlasuir for discovering this spot!)

I don’t suggest staying on top of cars if you are thinking of camping. Instead climb the white van or better yet, jump onto the survivor bus from there, which is the safer alternative. There are quite a lot of virals surrounding the survivor bus. Dealing with them first is a good idea. Although there is hardly enough room to dodge Joe’s attacks here, the zombie spawns seem to be inconsistent. This place is either very crowded or rather empty. Coming back after killing the virals may be a cause of this. You can select Stuffed Turtle as your active quest and exit and re-enter the game to farm this location.

Hothead Joe Locations (Old Town)

Location 1/3

is near the left bottom corner of the map , next to the boltor feeding ground.


You can shoot him from the white van but be warned that he can still hit you if he gets too close so don’t hesitate to move a little. You can select New Antalya Apartments as your active quest and exit and re-enter the game to farm this location. This location is easier to farm compared to the next location since there are fewer zombies nearby.

Location 2/3

On a bridge near the twin towers.


There is a hot dog stand next to Joe. This is a safe place to shoot from as virals can’t climb it and the Joe can’t attack you. You can select Three Moons Restaurant as your active quest and exit and re-enter the game to farm this location. While this place looks empty, it can get crowded fast if you make noise.

Location 3/3

At the beach which is at the north-eastern corner of the map.

The beach umbrella that’s still erect is the safe spot to shoot from. You can select Three Moons Restaurant as your active quest and exit and re-enter the game to farm this location. This place is the easiest to farm since there aren’t any zombies nearby.

Hothead Joe Loot Table

This section is purely based on my observations and these values (%) represent relative frequencies.  I will update this section until the sample space reaches 100 trials (kills) to give more accurate values. I haven’t noticed the difficulty having any effect on this loot table.

Loot Table

  • Amount of times killed: 100
  • Hothead Joe’s Pack dropped: 50 (50%)
  • Rare (blue) weapons dropped: 32 (32%)
  • Exceptional (purple) weapons dropped: 9 (9%)
  • Legendary (orange) weapons dropped: 9 (9%)

You also always get a common (white) HyperArgument hammer from him.

  • Damage: 1822 (with max legend tree bonus)
  • Durability: 45
  • Handling: 15

Bounty Reward

You get a nearly impossible to find (gold) HyperArgument hammer for completing his bounty.

  • Damage: 1822 (with max legend tree bonus)
  • Durability: 90
  • Handling: 15

Info On Special Rewards

Hothead Joe’s Pack includes 5 GREcipe, 1 King mod, 2 exceptional (purple) mods, 3 jewel caskets, 3 super molotovs and 3 military medkits.

GREcipe gives +25% health, infinite stamina, roughly +50% increase in speed, +20% regen time for 60s.

Farming Hothead Joe

Recommended Ranged Weapons

Crossbows are my number 1 recommendation.

  • Golden and engraved shotguns (highest damage output)
  • Advanced police rifles
  • Ranger (The Following expansion – Revolver) (Rais’ Gun if you don’t have the expansion)
  • Dragon’s Breath (Bow)
  • Gust of Wind (Shu Warrior bunle – Crossbow) (Upgraded Crossbow if you don’t have the bundle)
  • Volkatronix (Retrowave bundle – Rifle)
  • Ox Cannon (Ox Warrior bundle – Shotgun(?))

Recommended Melee Weapons

  • Last Hope (Crafted with pickaxe)
  • Volatile Hunter Baton (Volatile Hunter bundle) (Crafted with pickaxe)

Tips For Farming

  •  Higher difficulties make him significantly harder to take down.
  • Whatever weapon you use be sure to go for head-shots and dodge frequently. If you have trouble at this step then i suggest using freeze weapons such as Freezing Grenades or Snowballs to freeze him and then go for head-shots.
  • Once you kill him you can re-spawn by selecting the closest quarantine zone (mentioned above) as your active quest and exiting and re-entering your saved game.
  • You don’t have to exit your save to re-spawn Joe. Simply entering and exiting a quarantine zone will do the same. (Thank you Psychedelic Shadow ^_^ for this tip!)
  •  The safe spots i have given above are ideal to shoot from. You can throw melee weapons from the safe spots too. Just be sure to go near Joe once his attack is finished to pick up your weapon.

General Tips For Week 1

  •  Only random survivor events and not the fixed ones count towards the event.
  • A survivor is counted as “saved” when he offers you a reward Sleeping doesn’t re-spawn Hothead Joe.
  • I may have noticed an increase in the survivor events and i may have come across more reinforcements during this event. If that is correct then this event is good for requisition pack farming.
Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 7933 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices. My first official job in the game industry started back in 2005, and I'm still doing what I love to do.

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