This month, State of Decay 2 turns two years old! To mark the occasion, we’ve created a content pack full of items that celebrate the history of the State of Decay franchise. Some are specifically drawn from our past, while others are brand new to the game.

We thank all our players, from those of you who’ve been with us from the first days of our apocalypse to the folks just joining us with the recent release of Juggernaut Edition. We hope this content pack brings back some treasured memories while also creating fun new ones!

In addition to the new Anniversary content pack, we’ve made a bunch of bug fixes and gameplay improvements, including:

• Increased speeds for reloading firearms and refueling and repairing vehicles.
• More improvements to combat with juggernauts, this time focused on melee weapons.
• Improvements to follower AI in combat.
• New beneficial community events driven by survivors with good morale.
• Adjustments to mission pacing to reduce stress and randomization.

Read below for all the details!



The Anniversary Pack adds 8 new weapons to the game, including two heavy weapons you can find by scavenging.

• Safari Razorback .44: The sidearm to grab when your elephant gun runs dry. Includes a muzzle brake and a military-grade scope. Unlock this beastly revolver by completing a task from the Bounty Broker.
• F45 Tactical: A heavy, durable combat pistol with an optic, large mag, and fast-firing trigger. Claim this very special pistol by completing a task from the Bounty Broker.
• AKS-74U Valentine:  Hard-hitting and fast-firing, this high-capacity submachine gun includes a sight and is chambered for rifle rounds. Add this gorgeous assault weapon to your arsenal by completing a task from the Bounty Broker.
• Ancestral Talwar:  One of two unique blades wielded by the heroic Gurubani Kaur, who first appeared in the updated Breakdown mode in State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition. Unsheathe this lethal weapon by completing a task from the Bounty Broker.
• Heirloom Khanda: The second of Gurubani Kaur’s iconic swords. To wield this hard-hitting blade, complete a task from the Bounty Broker.
• Industrial Wrench: The One and Only. Made in the USA by the Big Ass Wrench Company, and guaranteed to last as long as you do. Make it yours by completing a task from the Bounty Broker.
• Beetle Mallet: One swing is all you should need to knock down that horde... which is good, because you'll be exhausted after two. This heavy weapon can be found by scavenging in the game.
• Brick Hammer: Surprisingly lightweight and easy to swing for its size and knockdown.  For now, this heavy weapon is found exclusively in the remains of destroyed plague hearts.

This content update also includes four new outfits, a new hat, a new vehicle, and a new facility mod that’s perfect for celebrations!

•  Logo Ninja Hoodie: There’s just one way to make the ninja hoodie more awesome: by adding the logo of your favorite zombie survival game! You can unlock this outfit in your Closet by logging into the game between May 19, 2020 and June 28, 2020.
•  Undead Green Cattleman Hat: Now this is a hat that shows your true commitment to celebrating. Just like the Logo Ninja Hoodie, everyone who logs into the game between May 19, 2020 and June 28, 2020 receives this hat as a free gift!
• Sand Shark Hoodie: Last seen on a unique survivor in the Breakdown DLC for the original State of Decay, this iconic outfit is now available for any of your community members to wear, because it’s already waiting in your Closet!
• Brown Logo Combat Tee: Not everybody can pull off the t-shirt with combat pants look, but you’re special. Good news: this outfit is free to all players, so go check your Closet now!
• Red Talon Bomber Jacket: This sharp-looking jacket will make you the envy of all. You just have to complete a bounty for the Bounty Broker!
• Trumbull 4x4: This midsize pickup is designed for off-roading, with increased ground clearance and more suspension travel. In order to take it for a spin, you’ll need to complete a bounty for the Bounty Broker!
• Anniversary Cake Oven: Last but certainly not least is a very special facility mod that lets you craft fiery, zombie-killing “anniversary cakes.” Because a party’s not a party until you’ve invited a bunch of zombies over and set them on fire. Talk to the Bounty Broker to learn how you can score this unique facility mod!

Remember that all hats and outfits you’ve unlocked are shared across all communities on your account.


As you’ve likely noticed, we’ve started retiring older content packs to make room for the new content. Already this year we’ve retired the World War 2 Pack, the Fearsome Footage Pack, and the Go Bag Pack.

This month the Critical Response Pack is joining the list of retired content, and in June we’ll retire the Trumbull Valley Pack to make room for another exciting set of new items.

When a content pack is retired, you keep anything you already own. However, you can’t acquire more items from retired packs, nor can you continue making progress on bounties from those packs.

If you don’t manage to complete all the bounties from a pack before it’s retired, don’t fret! In a world where corpses walk, nothing stays dead for long ...

• The basic Shooting skill now awards improvements to Reload Speed.
  • This means that Gunslinging specialists are no longer the only ones who can manage to reload an AK-47 without fumbling the magazine.
  • Survivors with Gunslinging can still get far quicker at reloading than everyone else (and their maximum is still the same). The baseline is just higher for all experienced shooters.
    • You still want Gunslinging if you’re packing the Eternal Guard’s Infinite Rage — not that you ever really need to reload that one.
• Last month, we fixed some problems that cropped up when fighting juggernauts with guns. This month, we’re extending that fix to melee weapons.
  • Hitting a juggernaut in the back now does more damage than hitting it in the front.
  • Hitting a juggernaut while staggered now damages it properly.
  • Weapon impact now makes a major difference. Heavy weapons are over three times as useful against juggernauts as close combat weapons!
    • Don’t try stabbing a juggernaut to death with a screwdriver unless you’re looking for a bad time.
  • Some weapon balance was done to help clarify the differences here. Specifically, heavy weapons (especially heavy blunt weapons) are now far and away the hardest hitters.
    • The Bell Club, Persian Meel, CLEO Mace, CLEO Hammer, and CLEO Greathammer have had their impact reduced to ensure that heavy weapons can fulfill their role as the heaviest of weapons.
    • The CLEO Greathammer had it’s swing cost reduced to compensate, since it’s primary strength is impact. It’s still top of the charts for blunt weapons.
• Gas cans and toolkits now work 50% faster than before. You still don’t want to use them in the middle of a fight, but you also won’t want to claw your eyes out by the time they’re done.
  • Advanced toolkits are unchanged. Because standard toolkits got faster, the advanced toolkits are now only about five times as quick, instead of the usual eight.
• Rapidly opening and closing the Supply Locker no longer locks your character in a search animation.
• Using the Interact button to finish a zombie now takes priority over a whole host of other interactions, not just container searches. This means you’re less likely to enter a vehicle or start a conversation when you’d rather be busy snuffing zeds.
• It is now much easier to find those last few outfits and hats you’re looking for, as the random selection process is no longer making invisible fruitless attempts to offer you outfits you’ve already unlocked.

• AI-controlled humans now engage more thoughtfully in combat, making better decisions about weapon use, staying focused when surrounded by zombies, and responding appropriately to freaks.
• AI-controlled followers will now prioritize getting into the car when you’re trying to beat a hasty retreat from combat, instead of going for just one … more … kill.
• Zombies near a player’s base will no longer be inexplicably drawn inside to cause unnecessary fights.
  • Zombies, especially hordes and freaks, now also do a better job at avoiding safe zones of all types.
• Knocking the helmet off an armored zombie no longer attracts attention from other zombies.

• Twice a day, characters with morale of Stable or higher now have a chance of finding extra resources each day, finding useful items, or finding weapons.
• Twice a day, characters with morale of Cheerful or higher may provide a variety of bonuses to the community, including morale boosts to all members of the community, resources, items, etc.

• Mission pacing has been re-tuned to reduce pressure, limiting the number of similar missions that can exist at once, and reducing the overall size of the typical mission list.
• The mission system also now pays more attention to context, with examples like:
  • Offering ambient missions when you’re away from base, and personal missions when you’re at home.
  • Making sure you have a resource available before asking you to donate a rucksack of it.
• The Bounty Broker’s introductory mission now generally appears when you enter his area of the map, rather than immediately after the starter missions are complete.
• Enclaves will now generally accept rucksacks of “Mystery Meat” to satisfy their requests for food. The game still won’t recognize that this makes you a terrible person.
• The starting mission when skipping the tutorial in the Dread Zone now correctly causes all plague hearts to appear on your map.
• Warlord: To Stop a Thief now avoids getting hung up if a character is accidentally killed by a zombie.
• Warlord: Might Makes Right now avoids getting hung up on the objective to upgrade your Fighting Gym to level 2.
• Builder: Useful Utilities now recognizes the power and water provided by the Prescott Fire Station, and no longer asks you to double up on them.

• We fixed a problem that occasionally removed an incorrect plague heart from the map UI, causing it to seem that you had destroyed all the plague hearts on the map when you hadn't.
• We revised a couple of common icons in the UI to make them easier to understand.
  • The icon identifying the Consumables tab on the Supply Locker now more accurately represents the items you are likely to find inside.
  • The map icon for “move to this location” mission objectives is now more recognizable as an arrow when zoomed all the way out.
  • Vehicles delivered by a radio command now have a different icon than supply drops summoned by a radio command, to help distinguish between them.
• Vehicles delivered by a radio commands are now always visible on the map until you first get into them (no matter how zoomed out your map is), just like supply drops summoned by radio commands.
• We fixed a bug that could cause players returning from multiplayer to lose access to their Difficulty menus.
• We fixed a bug that, under rare circumstances, was causing the Map and Difficulty selection interfaces to persist on-screen after they were supposed to go away.

• We continued to make minor improvements to the maps to remove trouble spots where players could navigate to weird locations and get stuck. We also stapled down a few floaty props.

This update is a return to form after the massive release of Juggernaut Edition! It includes the new Pawn Shop Pack at the Bounty Broker and a host of other fixes and tweaks, including:

• A fix to address invisible zombies in multiplayer and the dreaded Error 3 disconnects.
  
• A massive overall increase to weapon durability, muzzle brakes that improve durability, and a free one-time repair for all weapons.
  
• Juggernauts that take more damage from higher-caliber firearms and headshots.
  
• Infestations that don’t repopulate right after you clear them out.
  
• Irritable characters that can more easily be prevented from starting fights.
  
• The ability to stealthily kill your way through a horde.

Pawn shops are intriguing locations filled with a wide variety of unusual items, from appliances to guns to jewelry. In that spirit, we’re offering this new array of useful gear and outfits for your survivors. It’s like the pawn shop came right to your door with a delivery!
This content pack adds seven new weapons to the game, all of which are available via new Bounty Broker challenges.

• PPQ 45 — A .45 caliber variant of the PPQ frame that uses polygonal rifling instead of “lands and grooves” to achieve extraordinary accuracy.
  
• G45 — An evolution of the G19 that incorporates years of field experience into a new, highly durable version of the classic pistol.
  
• Hunter SKS — This rifle was modified with a scope and brake for pinpoint protein procurement. Now it has other uses.
  
• Non-Compliant SKS — This SKS joined an outlaw biker gang, adding full auto conversion, a high-capacity “double stack” magazine, and a high-speed optic.
  
• Wyrmling — A gorgeous new close-combat weapon that pairs well with its larger cousin, the Wyvern.
  
• Wyvern — The most elegant blade you could expect for three installments of $29.95. Pick up the Wyrmling to complete the set.
  
• Guandao — An ancient, heavy blade meant to be swung with power. Use it to vanquish hordes of your enemies.

In addition, the pack includes five new raincoats and matching rain hats to keep your survivors dry in these rainy months. The black set can be earned by completing a pair of Bounty Broker challenges, while the other four sets are all added to your Closet for free! And remember, all hats and outfits you’ve gained are shared across all communities on your account.

We had previously announced that this update would see the retirement of the Critical Response Pack. Instead, we’re keeping that pack in the rotation for one more month!

In other words, you have a little more time to finish those Bounty Broker challenges from the Critical Response Pack before it’s replaced in Update 17 with another new pack of goodies. Future content pack releases will still “cycle out” one pack to make room, but this means we’ll now have four packs in the current rotation instead of three.

We hammered on our multiplayer networking code and fixed several issues with zombie synchronization. There should be fewer invisible zombies, more accurate positioning, and a major reduction in the dreaded Error 3 disconnects.

We’ve doubled the durability of all ranged and melee weapons! But we haven’t changed the way repair works — more durability means higher repair costs. So, you’ll repair half as often for twice the cost. This should make weapon durability behave a bit more realistically while leaving the game’s parts economy intact. As a side effect of these changes, the number of parts salvaged from these weapons is now roughly doubled. To smooth the transition into these new values, we’re repairing all the weapons that currently exist in your saved games. Enjoy!

To keep pace with our recent restoration of suppressor power, we’re further improving muzzle brakes to keep them competitive.

• Muzzle brakes no longer cause a weapon to make additional noise.
  
• Brakes now improve weapon durability, making repairs less frequent on any weapon to which they are equipped.
  
• This effectively grants 33%, 50%, or 100% more shots (for handmade, professional, and advanced brakes) before repairs are needed.

Brakes also improve control even more, allowing even notoriously squirrelly weapons to produce predictable, modest, recoil when equipped with the highest level muzzle brakes. To round out this balance pass on weapon mods, we’ve buffed chokes. Chokes now provide dramatic increases to range (50%, 100%, and 150% for handmade, professional, and advanced).

• A high-end choke now allows a shotgun to be effective at ranges previously reserved for longer pistols or shorter rifles.
  
• Chokes also grant modest increases to power (10%, 20%, and 30% for handmade, professional, and advanced)
  
• The power increase makes them more effective against plague hearts, hostile humans, and juggernauts.
  
• This work also fixes a previously undiscovered issue where chokes would actually make shotgun effectiveness worse as you got farther from the target. Essentially, the same bug as the “suppressor bug” we identified in CU14 appears to have been stealthily lying in wait on the choke attachments since … well, a long time ago.

We made a full tuning and tweaking pass across the new heavy weapons. Without listing all the details, here are a few highlights:

• All heavy weapons increased in durability, some more than others. The biggest beneficiaries are the Sledge Hammer and the Groundbreaker Shovel.
  
• All heavy weapons gained additional impact (which helps against enemies with hit points, like juggernauts and humans). The biggest beneficiaries are the Coffee Can Mace and the Groundbreaker Shovel.
  
• Most heavy weapons gained tweaks to their additional effects, like knockdown and dismember chance. These are largely minor and varied, and most are beneficial.
  
• Most heavy weapons also had their weight and stamina-cost-per-swing adjusted. Most got lighter, and only a couple got a bit heavier.

Thanks to some excellent sleuthing by members of our community (especially u/TheErudite on Reddit), we learned that Juggernauts were not responding to firearms the way we intended. So we’ve made a few important fixes:

• Juggernauts now take greater damage if you use higher-caliber firearms and power-enhancing weapon mods. So the difference between an AK-47 and a .22 pistol really comes through. We’ve done a balance pass across all firearms to make sure players are rewarded for bringing more firepower to a Juggernaut encounter.
  
• Body shots to Juggernauts are now less effective, and headshots become increasingly effective the more you degrade the Juggernaut’s skull with accumulated damage, rewarding players who keep their cool while he's charging.
  
• Juggernauts no longer ignore damage when they’re in their “stagger” behavior, and can be staggered again sooner after recovering. This damage immunity was helping to mask the problem, and now the natural assumptions players make about whether they are hurting the Juggernaut are actually true.

And finally, Heavy weapons can now be found when looting a Plague Heart.

• Destroying an infestation now creates a temporary moratorium on the creation of new infestations, removing that annoying moment when an infestation pops up literally ten seconds after you cleared out the last one.
  
• The death of a zombie no longer automatically gets the attention of the horde they are a part of, making it much easier to quietly kill your way through a horde, one zombie at a time.
  
• When a zombie is on the ground next to a container, we now prioritize finishing the zombie with the interact button, rather than looting the container.
  
• AI-controlled humans are now able to shoot zombies out to the effective range of their weapons. (They were previously inadvertently limited to about 50 meters.) This is particularly valuable to characters staffing Watchtowers.
  
• AI-controlled humans now get into vehicles more promptly, avoiding walking in indecisive circles beforehand.

• We removed the influence cost to Reveal Map Exits at an upgraded Command Center, to smooth the path for players who want to try new maps.
  
• Checking a character into the Infirmary to halt the progress of Blood Plague no longer has an ongoing meds cost.
  
• Characters made “busy” by a mission can now still be checked into the Infirmary.
  
• We fixed an inconsistency in the amount of experience awarded for "Primary Care" when used by an Infirmary 3 or Field Hospital. It was 200, but now is reduced to 100 to match the same action on the Infirmary 1 or 2.
  
• We fixed an issue where “Emergency Medicine” awarded Mechanics skill experience, instead of Medicine skill experience. Or maybe your survivors were actually robots up until now? Didn’t see that coming, did you?
  
• The new Ranger SUV can now be upgraded to a Smashwagon, like other SUVs.

• The numbers that lead to characters starting fights based on their traits have been changed to fall in line with the existing morale thresholds. In general, this makes those characters less likely to start fights.
  
• Characters with “irritable” traits won’t start fights unless they are below “Cheerful”.
  
• Characters with traits that “start conflicts” won’t start fights unless they are below “Empowered”.
  
• Characters at your base will no longer complain about noise when the Threat level is less than 14.
  
• Morale-driven filth on characters is now visible in multiplayer. A reminder to make sure to shower before seeing other people.
  
• Running low on meds no longer issues an inaccurate “Food Dire!” penalty to morale. Survivors now recognize that bandages are not food.

• Now when you equip an item (like a weapon or a backpack) directly from your supply locker or from a vehicle, the game swaps your previously-equipped item back into that container, rather than dropping it into your inventory by default. We made this change because in our experience as players, this is what we actually wanted the game to do about 99% of the time. Note, this does not apply to lootable containers out in the world, which still cannot receive items from you, but can only provide them.
  
• You can now click and drag scroll bars in the menus if you are using a mouse.
  
• Moving to a new map in Nightmare no longer reveals all the Plague Hearts.
  
• Dead characters and empty leader slots no longer offer you access to their closets.
  
• We reduced the time it takes to load up and interact with the Community Screen, which was becoming an issue on some hardware.
  
• The keybinding screen no longer issues a warning when you leave the older Dodge/Crouch action unbound.
  
• We’ve bound the option to delete Legacy survivors via the Main Menu to the X button instead of the A button to prevent unfortunate accidents.
  
• Remember last update, when we said that we had made it possible to bind Interact and Quick Finisher to the same button? We made a mistake. That arrived in this update.
  
• We also did some general cleanup work on the interface, making sure you can see what you need to see.

• We fixed an issue with map markers on vehicles that was making them very difficult to find in missions like Action Hero: Fast Cars, Rookie Mistake, and the Mysterious Broadcast with the abandoned van.
  
• We slightly increased the starting resources for players who skip the tutorial. You now begin with 6 food, 2 meds, and 3 materials.
  
• Builder: Gimme the Loot, though still rare, spawns more often than it once did.
  
• Builder: Pillage and Plunder no longer instructs you to stick a rucksack in your supply locker.
  
• Sheriff: Right of Way can no longer cost you an alliance with an enclave.
  
• Claiming the Shop has had its missing map marker restored, making the shop much easier to claim.
  
• Maslow’s Hierarchy no longer appears when you already have the Lounge it wants you to build.
  
• Who Should Lead no longer doubles up on the same leader tutorial if you recruit a new community member who matches your current character’s leader type.
  
• Connect with Other Survivors now handles the scenario where you start the mission already in the possession of a food rucksack.

• We added a console-only option to the Video Settings called TV Display Border (Overscan). You can use this to compensate if your television cuts off the edges of the game screen.
  
• We made several minor map fixes, with such effects as:
  • Avoiding players getting trapped by geometry, especially around their own parking spaces.
    
  • Preventing characters from spawning on rooftops.
    
  • Preventing players from getting trapped inside plague-engorged houses in Heartland. Because ick.
    
  • Creepy debris floating above the road. If you want to see weird floating debris on purpose, check out the game Overland.
• We fixed a few clipping issues on character outfits and hair.
  
• We also fixed a few rare crash and soft-lock bugs.
  
• We expanded our support for international keyboard standards. French AZERTY keyboards now use ZQSD instead of WASD by default for movement. New users and users who reset their keybindings will receive the change.
  
• Also, players with German and Italian keyboards can use 0 instead of = to sign out or reset their keybinds.
  
• And as with every update, we continue to improve our localization quality in several languages.

Gameplay

Characters whose maximum Stamina has dropped to zero no longer act as if they have full Stamina.

Characters no longer stutter when moving left and right when performance dips.

Localization

We completed the process of localizing all text in the game for players who read Simplified Chinese, including dialogue subtitles.

Settings

We fixed a problem that caused existing owners of State of Decay to end up with both Flashlight and Crouch accidentally bound to clicking the left stick on a controller.

If you have not already edited that control yourself or reset controls to default, then this update should correct the problem.

We made it possible to manually rebind Interact and Quick Finisher to the same button, where previously, you could only get them into that configuration by resetting all the controls to default.

We added support for ultra-wide 21:9 resolutions to the video settings drop-down.

Missions

Living at the Prescott Fire Station no longer prevents you from satisfying the Warlord Legacy requirement to build a Fighting Gym.

The built-in Workshop at the Prescott Fire Station can now be used to fulfill the crafting requirements of the Builder Legacy.

Prestige

Daybreak no longer inadvertently caps your prestige earnings at 9999.

Technical

We fixed some excessive, minutes-long load times that sometimes occurred on faster PCs.

We fixed a potential crash when viewing the Legacy Pool from the Main Menu.

We fixed an error that could occur when exiting the multiplayer menu in the Steam version of the game.

Other Changes

We fixed a range of minor audio issues, including music that wasn’t quite long enough for the updated credits.

We also made sure our most recent hires actually appeared in the credits for Juggernaut Edition.

See this on the official support page, here.

We are proud to present the official patch notes for State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition. We recommend reading through them before Friday, because there are a massive amount of changes you will want to know about!

Read them all here! https://www.stateofdecay.com/2020/03/10/juggernaut-edition-patch-notes/
(If you really like your patch notes detailed and supported by beautiful graphics and gifs, this is for you!)

New to State of Decay 2 and feeling overwhelmed? Did you try our previous tutorial area only to feel like you didn't have the tools you needed to survive and thrive? We address all this and more in our new onramp experience. Developers at Undead Labs tell you more about the decisions we made and why, and how it affects you.



Join us for our developer livestream every Monday, 3-4pm PT on YouTube/Mixer/Twitch (@stateofdecay) to answer your questions related to Juggernaut Edition, launching March 13!