Dying Light 2 – Basic Guide (Starting Off)

My personal basics on how I would recommend on starting off (either new or second playthrough).

Guide to Basics

All credit goes to spookie!

Spike n Hakon (Prologue)

I don’t really have any recommendations for the prologue. I say you should collect everything that is available to you for easy crafting and what not later on. When you enter Old Villedor and finish Makers Of Plague you are allowed to freely roam all of old Villedor.

Exploration

After Hakon lets you loose and you can free roam I suggest getting to a high point and pulling out your binoculars and marking all the locations you can get. Do this a few times when you remember in new areas just for easy access and you don’t have to run all over the map to discover things.

Inhibitors

There are 126 inhibitors in Dying Light 2 and it will be a challenge to find some of them.

If you are out exploring and see this at the bottom left.

Try figuring out where it’s located and collect the inhibitor inside of the chest. Some inhibitors will be in buildings around the town so make sure to get them. Skip to my section “Skills and Inhibitors” to see what to do with these.

Windmills and Safezones

Next, after locating the 5 windmills and 6 safezones in Old Villedor go around the map and unlock all the ones you can currently do with the base stamina. (You’re able to unlock mostly everything with 100 stamina.) Use the windmill’s altitude to locate the other locations with binoculars. The only windmill you will have trouble with is the “Cherry” Windmill, as it requires 300 stamina to be able to climb it.

You can bypass this with around 200 stamina, an endurance booster and some climbing tricks.

Unlocking all of these windmills will grant you settlements in the territory they are in. This means that you get sidequests and vendors.

Airdrops

Third, by now you should have some airdrops already marked on the map. Some can be hard and some can be quite easy. They will require you to do some crazy parkour most of the time but their rewards are useful for how easy they are. Inside of them contain military tech, (Important upgrades.) inhibitors, (Increase Health and Stamina) and items for you character.

Airdrop THB-04B “requires” 300 stamina to reach, like with the Cherry Windmill you can get away with less stamina with some crazy moves and endurance boosters.

Quarantine Zones

Fourth, these areas are really dangerous and can be difficult to do even at night. When doing these make sure you are the same level or above as the zombies so you can choke them out with ease and don’t have to fight your way through them all. You will get 4 inhibitors inside of these buildings. They will have 2 basic floors with 1 inhibitor on each floor. The last floor is a little bit more difficult with 2 inhibitors.

GRE Anomalies

Fifth, GRE Anomalies are like the open world bosses of Dying Light 2, I recommend being a level or two higher than them so they are a lot easier to take out. These can be hassle with all the running around and Virals chasing after you. Use the environment weapons (spears) to help you out. Looting them will give you an artifact valuable and let you into the GRE container where there are 2 inhibitors waiting for you.

Looting

Finally, after getting everything above and you want a break from climbing search Forsaken Stores, Dark Hollows and Convoys. I wouldn’t say this is a requirement but if you want extra crafting materials/money/gear I would loot these places.

Farming For Trophies (Important Upgrades)

Virals drop uncommon trophies and rare.

For this technique find a UV light and go to ground level. Get a howler to detect you and it will start a chase. Go back the to UV light and put your back towards the UV light. Let the virals come at you and kill them over and over again until you decide you are done killing them. This will grant you many trophies (You will need quite a bit to fully upgrade blueprints)

Quests

Side Quests

There are many side quests you will find in Dying Light 2.

I suggest grabbing as many as you can at once then completing them in whatever order you like. Some of these quests are easy and some of them are tedious or not enjoyable, but they will give you XP and other rewards. As soon as you can get the quest “First Biomarker” do it. This will give you an inhibitor. The quest giver McGregor:

Later on most of the quest you began to receive are parkour challenges, I found some of these difficult but if you have the right stamina skills and level you will not have any problems.

Main Quest

You can go about doing the main story in whatever pace you want in whatever way, but I will say try and do every side mission in between missions because some sidequest may not be available later on and they will score you really nice XP.

Factions

There are 2 main factions in Dying Light 2 you can choose from.

Peacekeepers

They are the protectors/police of Villedor they keep everyone “safe”. The faction is overall not too bad if you’re into order and some chaos. I wasn’t a fan of them too much because the characters didn’t suit me. The rewards you receive after giving them influence through assigning power and water are not as useful as you might think. They give you traps around Villedor for enemies, personally this isn’t my thing.

Survivors

They are trying their best to live out in the world in the zombie apocalypse. This is the faction I stuck by with on my two playthroughs. I liked the characters quite a bit in the survivors. When you assign them power and water they grant you better ways to traverse Villedor. I found this way more useful because you will be running around quite a bit and this speeds it up.

Overall

Whatever faction you want to do is your choice. There will be certain choices that do matter in this game when it comes to factions and characters… choose wisely.

Skills and Inhibitors

Health and Stamina (Inhibitors)

There are 126 Inhibitors and a max level of 21 for both health and stamina as of right now. I’m going to give you advice on what you should do when upgrading these.

Starting

When getting your first inhibitors level Stamina to level 5 first.

After that upgrade Health to level 5 also.

Continue this technique until your stamina is level 15. To show what I mean…

• Stamina – 5 – stamina 10 – stamina 15
• Health – 0 – health 5 – health 10

You can upgrade freely to what you want to do after this. This is just meant to balance it out but you want to make sure stamina is always a bit higher at first since it will be of more importance.

Combat and Parkour

There are 24 skills in both skill trees.

You will most likely max out your parkour tree faster because of how much you use climbing and other ways of traversing. Combat might take a while depending on your play style and how many quests you choose to do. I’m going to point out some first skills you SHOULD get before level 6 on each then I set you free to whatever you want to do.

Combat

• Perfect Dodge
• Air Kick
• Dropkick
• Vault Power Kick
• Head Stomp

These are all useful knocking your enemy over and making them vulnerable to your attacks.

Head Stomp and Dropkick are really useful early on these can one shot certain foes.

You can unlock whatever you want next. In my opinion the combat tree is not my favorite when it comes to skills.

Stamina

• Firm Grip
• Active Landing
• Fast Climb
• Far Jump
• Dart

These will really help with getting around faster. I would go towards Wall Run and Wall Run Jump next, you will be incredible at scaling buildings with these two. After that you have free reign over what you want.

Inventory

Weapons

Early on weapons don’t matter too much in my opinion but when you are able to mod weapons I would do that as soon as possible. Weapon mods can stagger enemies and later on when they are upgraded they can really ruin your opponent. Getting a bow and arrow from either vendor, drops and quests is important too. Bows do lots of damage and when combined with elemental arrows they can stop enemies instantly.

Gear

Focus on gear armor as this will help protect you but pay attention to some stats because they will be helpful even if you don’t notice it. Artifact gear grants you more stats. Don’t buy gear in stores, I haven’t found something cheap and worth it ever.

Accessories

When I play I don’t really focus on these too much other than the obvious grappling hook but these can be really useful. You can use items that attract zombies away, make zombies vulnerable and explode zombies. I would focus on upgrading the throwing knife a bit too, this can be really powerful when upgraded.

Lockpicks

Upgrade the blueprint for these almost immediately. You can instant break locks and have practically unbreakable lockpicks.

Consumables

Crafting these is very useful, you will find many materials to craft these in Forsaken Stores and Dark Hollows. Don’t overuse immunity boosters and don’t overuse military medkits unless it’s an absolute emergency. Upgrade the blueprint to the Medicine, this upgraded is almost as good as a military medkit.

Finale

I would say that everything that I have put in this guide will help you get through the beginning easy and get you started on your path fast. I left out the Central Loop in this guide but use what I’ve said in this guide and use it for the Central Loop as well, it’s very useful. I hope this helps someone. Good hunting.