YMMV / Death Road to Canada

• Angst? What Angst?: While there is a plethora of problems that can crush the hopes of your party, death is strangely not one of them (not directly, at least). Characters don't lose Morale (or even mourn) if one of their teammates die, be it from zombies or some other reason on the Death Road. Likewise, if a party member with really low Loyalty betrays your party in a certain text event, your characters will take damage, but no hits to their Morale.
• Awesome Music: The music in the game is extremely catchy to say the least. Courtesy of Joey Grady.
  • "Green on Green". A calm melody you hear while you watch your car speeding through the Death Road. It can soothe your nerves after a tough looting map.
  • "Nobody Cooled It". A cheery and extremely catchy upbeat theme… that only plays when your car's engine is on its last legs.
  • "Rigor Mortis Rag". A jolly and uncharacteristically joyful theme for a zombie apocalypse, but that still fits the ridiculous tone of the game.
  • "Four Under The Floor". The theme for the Dark and Haunted Mansion is appropriately spooky and mournful.
  • "City of Lost Hope". The theme that plays during the City of Crushed Hopes, the final, grueling 4-hour siege of the game on the higher (or Crueler Bandits) difficulties. The sad, yet hopeful sound of this music can make you fight to your last if you have endured a particularly nasty journey to Canada so far.
  • "Canada, Ho!", or "Canada, Schmanada". A Triumphant Reprise of the main theme that plays as you brave the last stretch of the game with what little resources/teammates you may be hanging onto.
• Best Level Ever: There are quite a few stages that yield lots of loot, stat boosts, or even rare characters, all while still being manageable and not being overly difficult:
  • For the first stage in a run, the stage with the most loot and least walking by far is the Rest Stop. The loot is piled neatly in one of the building's rooms, and there's extra food in the vending machines. It's not uncommon to find a valuable firearm or advanced melee weapon here.
  • For City stages, the Hardware Store often yields gas and durable melee weapons. You may even find a Chainsaw! The Lost Safehouse/Infested Stronghold are also places worth going, as they have tons of loot (and many weapons for the latter).
  • For Always be Looting stages, the Sporting Goods Store and Hardware Store are much like their city counterparts, but merged with the Y'all Mart layout, which greatly increases the chances of finding good melee weapons (and finding more of them).
  • The Concrete Bunker is guaranteed to have at least a few guns, one of which is of the advanced type (Auto Shotguns, Assault Rifles, Uzis, etc), and loot of all types sans gas.
  • The Dark/Haunted Mansion is a villa full of goodies, though it can be difficult to navigate without a flashlight (just bring one and everything will be fine). There's a room that's guaranteed to have an awesome melee weapon...or something like Pukeyballs, Turrets, or haunted silverware.
  • The Giant Animal leads to a variant of the Commercial Row stage on steroids. It has double the functional store rows. The vehicle provided isn't worth hijacking (think of an even worse version of the many vans in the game), but the stores themselves still provide what they do.
• Breather Level:
  • The various Cabins are a nice "in and out" stage with decent loot. Some even provide cars, and in the siege variants, the stage is sufficiently spacious and not too agoraphobic.
  • The Gas Station holdout levels are quite easy to survive in thanks to the propane tanks that can be thrown at the zombies for a spectacular explosion (just don't get caught in it). There's also always plenty of gas to grab from the station itself, and plenty of supplies. Sadly, it's not the typical randomized siege and is chosen in Always be Looting.
  • The Last Sale at Y'all Mart might be intimidating… until you realize you can run into the store, grab the supplies, then spend the rest of the siege outdoors. It tends to get less hectic outside even with zombies spawning from the ground.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Sacrificing a disliked party member intentionally can be this.
  • You can set NPCs on fire or blow them up with explosives where they would otherwise be immune to Friendly Fire. This includes the hated Anime Salesman.
  • Being able to circumvent a bad event due to a combination of personality traits can feel very good. Especially if said event ruined one of your runs.
  • Being able to tell the Dinkdoor owner to COOL IT provided you already have such a character on your team.
  • Cutting loose on the final sieges of the game if you were hoarding ammo so far. It feels extremely satisfying to whip out your automatic weapons, explosives, or gas-powered weapons to annihilate the zombie hordes that have been making your road trip so difficult and send every last one of them to kingdom come.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • "That Bear Stole My Stuff" is the worst of the "Walking Events", which occur when your team is struggling to find a new vehicle after losing one. Unless someone in your party is a crack shot or is an impatient strongman, you'll be forced to choose between losing all but one type of supply or taking one or two hit points of damage for each character in your party.
  • Bandits, at least without certain types of characters. Most of the time, it'll come down to either losing a severe amount of supplies, or else taking (a lot of) damage. If you have traits such as Paranoid, Oblivious, or Charming, though, said characters more often than not get a Moment of Awesome as they outwit, ignore, or reason with the bandits.
  • Fire sparks. Often found in the Burning House/Blazing Inferno and sometimes found on highways, a single spark landing on a character is enough to light them on fire. This can easily deal one to three points of damage, depending on how long it takes for the fire to die out.
  • "Who Can Be Trusted?" has you send someone to distract bandits. If you have no one in your party with their Loyalty revealed (or all your current characters have low Loyalty), there's a chance that you'll pick a character with low Loyalty who will then turn on you and deal damage to the rest of the party. There's another other option that is to plow the car through, but that results in everyone taking damage and heavily damaging the car to the point you can lose it and have to face Walking Events in bad shape. There's also the matter of Composure. Without it, even with sufficient loyalty, the chosen party member will panic and take damage. This is where the Civilized Trait really pays off.
  • "Misplaced Keys", involves a gator snatching up your current car's keys. Without good strength, fitness, or shooting, those keys are gone, and the event relies on one's mechanical skill. It may be tempting to use this moment to improve one of those combat skills, but more often than not it ends in failure.
  • "Traffic Jam" is almost certainly a moment where you abandon your car without question. One option is AGGRESSIVE OFFROADING! which is only available when someone in your party has low Composure. If said character also doesn't have high Wits, your party and car take damage. Finding a New Route requires both high Wits and not high Attitude to get through freely (low Wits means damaging the car and dampening the party's morale, while high Attitude costs a lot of gas and eats up food as a result of taking a rest). Bench Pressing a Car is little different from abandoning the car entirely, except one character at least gets +1 to Strength instead of a chance of finding various bits of ammo. Essentially, this event requires a very specific set of personality traits to get by without fuss, and only the Paranoid trait is guaranteed to succeed for at least one option (there is no Trait that guarantees low Composure and high Wits).
• Ending Fatigue: Before you reach Canada, you have a long journey ahead of you, but the three final challenges were basically made to drain everything you might have stockpiled up until there. By the time you reach the final map, you might be screaming for the game to end already due to the fact you'll be either running extremely low on ammo and/or teammates.
• Funny Moments: Given the lighthearted nature of this game, this happens often.
  • A character with the Oblivious trait can ignore some bad events. One of them has an angry old man which usually delivers a scathing, morale-crushing rant, but the character with Oblivious will simply ignore the old man, who will be so baffled by it that he will stop ranting. The last words on the event? "[Character] wasn't paying attention the whole time, and gets more drawn into their own little world."
  • Another Oblivious positive outcome from the "Cowardly Bandits" event, an Oblivious can shout "WHAT DID YOU SAY?", which will (somehow) terrify the bandits and make them run away. The kicker? The character really didn't hear what they said, they weren't even trying to be intimidating.
  • One of the possible buildings in city locations is a "Department of Motor Vehicles". Inside is a long, long line of skeletons. One of the rooms in this building contains another long, line of skeletons. If the player skips ahead to the machine, they can then change their name — with one of the options restoring a huge amount of morale by simply adding "Cool" in front of the character's existing name.
  • The very end of the game — where the crew reaches Almost-Canada — features a defense segment similar to a siege — this time with Canadian Mounties, beavers, and moose to back you up. Furthermore, the Canadian Mounties wield hockey sticks as weapons and occasionally apologize to the zombies they're beating up. The siege ends when a Humongous Mecha arrives. One of its weapons is "Eh-zers".
  • Just having dogs on your team significantly ups the odds of having something funny happen. Dogs can have the same personality combos as humans, so a Paranoid dog can be prepared to handle bandit ambushes and other such things. This is coupled with an impressive number of text events that have their text or even result changed if a dog participates in them; for some, the dog has their own way of dealing with the event, and for others, they get frustrated and achieve nothing.
  • One of the text events has bandits ambushing you in a house full of zombies and they threaten to yell and attract them to you if you don't give in to their demands. An Angry-Strong character has the option to simply knock two of them out cold with absolutely no warning. The result implies the rest of the bandits are so dumbfounded by the suddenness of the reaction that they just leave without doing anything else.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Some of the rare characters in the game qualify. Of note is L*nk, who starts with high strength, high loyalty, high morale, and being able to find unique weapons through events. Because of this, he becomes an extremely valuable party leader when fighting through zombie hoards. And if you get the Muster Sword, he essentially becomes a One-Man Army. The only downside to him is that at low morale, there is sometimes an event where he tries to do his Spin Attack in the middle of the party, usually hurting them, and that he only has two inventory slots, one being occupied by his sword.
    • The Anime Girl's exclusive weapon will tear through zombies like nothing, in addition to having a high-damage projectile with infinite ammo, despite her low strength. Her decent fitness and maxed out attitude don't hurt either. Of course, her 4-mission limit before exploding puts a damper on her role as a true game breaker. However, if you manage to make her talk to the customers of the Anime Salesperson, their "love for anime" will arrest her mutation indefinitely… or 99 days if you're playing on Endless Mode, making her a permanent recruit for most game modes and letting you tear through zombies with impunity without worrying about her exploding. She can still leave or die as any other recruit, however. It's also possible to detach her weapon if she's transformed into a dog.
    • Another rare character, Giga Guy, is this. While he can only use one weapon, said weapon, the Giga Guster, is extremely powerful. It requires no ammo, using it causes no fatigue, and it can be charged to unleash a stronger shot or fired as fast as the player can spam the attack key. Giga Guy makes things a total joke, with the only downside being that he costs 20 food to recruit.
    • El Satan, the wrestling champion, counts as an early-game example, since he is able to lift zombies and toss them around like furniture (he doesn't even have to wait for them to be downed!). This can save a lot of resources when it comes to breakable weapons in addition to being a powerful attack. His only downside is that he can't use guns or chainsaws.
    • Alvis is a Jack of All Trades example of this. He's got maxed-out fitness, good strength and shooting, and knows Kung-Fu, allowing him to deal lots of damage even without a weapon. It's easy to determine his loyalty as well, given that his Composure is always low (it requires low Composure and Loyalty to be able to rob people). He's also able to stay in the party when reaching the Despair Event Horizon, changing appearance instead of ditching or fighting the party (this only works once; if it happens again, he's gone for good).
    • There are various other characters with very high strength and/or fitness stats that focus on powerful melee combat such as the Sumo Wrestler, Fencer, Contender, and Valkyrie.
    • Gordo has high combat stats in both melee and ranged combat, as well as completely neutral personality stats, making choices in text events regarding him reliably predictable. The only catch is that he's a character that needs to be found in a city ruin, which requires quite a bit of luck (or the City Seeker trait) and exploration. Rck Grimes is quite similar in this aspect, although his personality stats are much higher in exchange for having only slightly lower melee and ranged combat stats than Gordo (sans composure, which is always at the lowest).
  • The Paranoid trait is extremely useful. Characters with it have special actions in events that would allow them to save the group from potentially dangerous situations. Sure, some of the actions of a Paranoid character can deny them a benefit occasionally, but the aforementioned Paranoid character is the only one affected. Overall, Paranoid characters can have a lot of rewards in events with little risk.
  • The combination of the Surgeon class with the Civilized trait can get you through many text events without much trouble at all, due to having high personality stats along with high medical and average mechanical skills. The only downside is the permanent decrease in morale, which prevents this character from going beyond neutral morale and above.
    • Similarly, the Civilized trait with the Health Care perk allows you to start with very high Medical skill on the character, enough to heal up at 1:1 Med Kit/Health and up to 7 Med Kits at the start, in exchange for the lack of any shooting or mechanical skills. This allows you to take far more risks, be more reckless, and take damage while training your characters on text events if needed. Needless to say, this can be very, very useful.
    • The Civilized trait in general is powerful and combines well with many perks. First, it gives all the benefits of Charming. Then it also gives max composure and loyalty; loyalty is usually a mystery and having max loyalty is rare. Then it gives bonuses to medical and mechanical skills. All of this is given because of its alarming downside: a whopping 3 unit decrease in the amount of morale you can have, from 6 to 3. But besides the morale check for a dexterity boost at the end of a run, having high morale is only good as a buffer. Because a Civilized character's attitude is so high, they gain and retain morale more easily, including a crucial extra morale point when eating while having low morale. And even if they do leave due to morale bottoming out, they won't take anything from the party due to their high loyalty.
  • The T*S*T*C Class is a Min Maxers Delight when it comes to manual control. A character with this class has a Strength stat that is equivalent to being maxed out on a regular character, and can be raised six more times. This makes for some incredible furniture abuse and being able to use deadly, heavy melee weapons with ease. The catch is that this character cannot raise Fitness, but even then, it at least starts out at 2, which is still more than an unaugmented character's Fitness stat.
  • A similar example can be found by combining Megabuff with Fierce Temper. This immediately grants the character the "Angry-strong" trait (high strength with low composure), which can be helpful in various text events, as well as being handy with melee combat in general. Like with Alvis, it also makes it easier to determine if this character is loyal or not in a run due to the "Bandit" trait requiring low composure and loyalty.
  • A minor example can be found in the Big Bruiser trait. Their boxing skill negates the need to find them a melee weapon, and they have an additional health point. The only catch is their slower run speed, which can be more or less cancelled out if they're under AI control. They tend to be the ideal AI buddies to recruit for support.
• Goddamned Bats: Due to the randomized nature of the game some events can happen way before you are prepared for them.
  • The vast majority of events when attempting to find a new car, whether they hurt your party members or their morale.
  • The "Silent Guardian" event is a huge pain if it pops up near the start of your journey. Without a party with very high Strength, or just someone with high strength and low composure, there's no way to get past the guy blocking you without plowing the car through them, which will damage it.
  • The "Driving Range Last Stand" is this, without anyone with super high mechanical or a party with good enough fitness and strength. This also tends to appear near the start of your journey, where you almost certainly don't have either of those. You have the option of fighting a siege with only golf clubs scattered around as supplies, getting hurt as a result of not being fit enough, or driving past it and not getting any rest.
  • "Fight or Flip", which requires a random character to roll their strength or fitness stat to escape a zombie attack. This seemingly tends to target the weakest survivor most of the time, resulting in damage no matter what, and hardly the strong ones, let alone the one with high strength and low composure (this grants a guaranteed escape).
  • The bandit attack involving yelling to attract zombies. Unlike many other bandit attacks, this one mostly works on luck via calling out their bluff. Thankfully, with either a Paranoid or Angry-Strong character, this can be taken care of guaranteed, but otherwise it's another roll of the bullshit dice.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Customized characters that start off with extra items provide them to the party when they appear on the road, even if they aren't actually recruited. This can result in Gun Collectors providing a Pistol and Ammo (they hold onto their Rifle and Shotgun), Ultrafit providing a bit of food, and Health Care specialists providing lots of Medkits.
  • Randomized characters' combat or personality stats (not both) are measured if there's a paranoid (high Wits, low Attitude) character in the party when their recruitment page pops up (the player can either choose to accept or decline them afterward). If said randomized character is paranoid but none of the current party members are, their stats will be shown as they join, meaning they measured themselves.
• Low-Tier Letdown: There are many a recruit, rare or common, that end up being a burden on your team more often than not.
  • The anime salesperson is universally disliked due to selling garbage items that are liable to break or are just plain weak. It's unfortunate seeing as how this guy often takes up space where a more useful trader would be. The only redeeming quality he has is to cure the Anime Girl's ticking doom clock, but whenever she appears, he usually doesn't. He's also a safe and easy target for "Cool It!"
  • The Clown. He often shows up early in the game, and you can't reject him from joining your party if you have room. He has mediocre fighting stats and awful personality stats. It's here that people deliberately try to ditch him via distancing him from the exit, or being a meat shield for zombies.
  • The Governor Emperor is a deliberate Joke Character who steals your food if you're foolish enough to let him legitimately join your party. Even as a temporary character, he has the lowest stats all around. You can't immediately reject him from your party either without taking a morale hit; you have to toy with him first by initially saying "yes" to his request, then changing your mind. If you have a full party, you can't avoid a morale penalty anyway.
  • The Cleaning Lady and the Debutante may as well be regular recruits, but are part of the rare character roster. They both have incredibly weak melee weapons that cannot be unequipped. It's quite unfortunate if one spends ZP to get a rare recruit only to get these wastes of time. The Cleaning Lady would later be removed from the random rare pool and be relocated to a unique trader post, the Final Hospital, where she provides the more constructive service of healing a party member and boosting that character's vitality for a price, as well as being available for hire, but the Debutante remains a tumor in the random pool. Downplayed with the Sports Fan and the Bee Man, who are similarly weak, but at least only appear in Trader Camps.
  • The Goat is absolutely not worth recruiting, as it can only be recruited without a full party, and doing so hurts a random party member. It always starts out with zero loyalty and attitude too, so it's worthless as a watchdog pet, and will screw you over when it gets the chance.
  • Common recruits that have low composure but high attitude force themselves onto the player's party if there's room similar to the Clown, whether the player likes it or not. More often than not, they end up being The Load.
  • Characters that revolve around "Cool It" can be this, as said strategy often ends poorly (unless fully charged). One example can be the "Irritating" ghost in the Haunted Mansion. Rather than boosting a useful stat such as strength, fitness, or vitality, talking to this ghost reduces a character's wits and attitude to the lowest value. Even if an already Irritating character outdoes this ghost, it doesn't count towards their COOL IT counter. There are also common recruits that start off with the "Irritating" stat, which trigger the "Dinkdoor" event. Here, the player must attempt to recruit this person, or respond with anger, lowering that character's morale, composure, and attitude stats. The only positive way to get through this without a full party is to have an already irritating character in the party to say "Cool it".
  • Characters with low Loyalty are usually a liability at best and a threat to your own party at worst, as they can abandon your party or cause potential consequences when put in charge of guard duty or other events. The cons of having low Loyalty far outweigh the benefits, so it's best to get these characters killed deliberately, or replace them.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The sound of your car's engine roaring is oddly satisfying to hear, even more so if your car is a Muscle Car or an Electric Hybrid.
  • The sound of zombie teeth flying everywhere. Often means you're putting the hurt on the zombies with little difficulty.
  • The sound of a random Zombo Point being acquired in the field.
  • The *ding* sound of something good happening in a random event.
• Nightmare Fuel: For a game that takes a Lighter and Softer approach to a zombie apocalypse, it still manages to pull off some legitimate creepy moments. A classic example is when the in-game time hits past evening, everything starts getting dark, all the zombies and characters that you're playing/leading as take on dark silhouettes (lessened if you use your flashlights), and you get a sudden dose of Mood Whiplash. And, no matter how hard you try, when you try to sneak around from the zombies, they will eventually swarm you into a corner. And when they do…
• Paranoia Fuel: Not knowing your survivors' loyalty easily falls into this. Should you keep them, or should you ditch them? Can they be trusted to not screw over your team? Save Scumming through force-quitting the game can mitigate this, but until that one text event that relies on loyalty, you're in the blind. Not even the Paranoid trait is guaranteed to mitigate this, and even a Paranoid survivor isn't always loyal…
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Banter between survivors can often meddle with morale at a moment's notice, possibly bringing a character's morale down low enough for bad things to happen. Some conversations and responses have no sense of pattern whatsoever, being unaffected by personality stats.
    Survivor 1: If you tie a string around your finger it will turn purple!
    Survivor 2: Why would I want to know that, Survivor 1? WHO CARES?
    Survivor 1's Morale decreased :| → :(
  • AI Survivors have a strange way of thinking when it comes to picking up weapons (they tend to focus more on knockback than damage). They'll more often than not prefer to use weaker, lighter weapons, even if they're absolute crap and break easily. The Golf Club is one such weapon. Thankfully solved in an update where you can lock AI's inventory slots, forcing them to either use a certain weapon or never pick anything up so they'll actually use any unarmed skills they have.
  • Not being able to see all the personality stats of each survivor, unless that character's stats are predetermined (usually by personality or as a default setting for a rare character). This can result in some serious trust issues and other risks in random events.
  • Lethal and non-lethal damage types during text events. There is no way to know (besides in the rare cases the game outright tells you) what will kill a character and what won't. Some cases are obvious, but there are plenty of things that look fairly innocuous but will get someone killed, and others that might look like a bad idea but won't. And of course, this takes a toll on your medical supplies, since you can still be damaged the normal way.
  • The fact that the game tends to give you vans far more than other cars, due to how many of them there are. They guzzle gas like there's no tomorrow and are slow as snails. Their only redeemable quality of durability gets tossed out the window in text events anyway, and there's few situations where it helps in the field too.
  • While the "Paranoid" trait is usually awesome as it allows one to read random recruits' stats ahead of time in addition to having many more solutions when it comes to certain events, they'll either read the newcomers' combat or personality stats, never both. If a dog is rescued from a level, the Paranoid character may still read its combat stat, despite dogs never being able to raise their fighting stats at all. They also cannot read the stats of familiar or rare characters, which is a shame.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • There are a number of melee weapons that don't deal a lot of damage yet can still break easily, such as the Mop, Broom, Golf Club, and Knitting Needle. The Cardboard Tube is an especially intrusive example as the AI always picks it up and uses it for some reason, despite it not doing any damage whatsoever. The Piece of Wood at least has the excuse of being super easy to find via broken furniture and works as an expendable Emergency Weapon.
  • The Bow and Arrows tires out whoever uses it very quickly, in exchange for manually charged shots. Said shots have limited effect, and cannot be replenished without the Bow and Arrows perk. It's not worth using without the Bow and Arrow perk and high strength/fitness, meaning you have to tailor your entire playstyle around it and thus it's ineffective when found out in the field.
  • Downplayed with the Slug Shotgun. It's hardly any different from the regular Shotgun, except it doesn't have spread shots. Rather, it has a single accurate shot. Why not simply use a Cowboy Rifle? It's usually rare to come by anyway, only available in the Concrete Bunker and from the Shotgun Salesman.
• Solo-Character Run: It's entirely possible to win the game by playing with only one character from start to finish if you know what you are doing, you'll most likely not risk running out of food, but surviving sieges will take a lot of preparation and know-how since you'll be even more shorthanded than usual. You do get an achievement for succeeding. Solo runs also protects you against characters that normally force themselves into the party.
• Spiritual Adaptation: With its irreverent humor and Affectionate Parody of the Zombie Apocalypse genre, Death Road to Canada is perhaps the closest thing we'll ever get to a Shaun of the Dead video game. The tactic of giving large groups of zombies "the slip" is even an integral part of the endgame!
• Tear Jerker:
  • Losing a buddy can hurt, especially if he/she was a custom made character based off of someone you know. Losing The Load or The Mole in your party, on the other hand, falls into Catharsis Factor.
  • Group members are prone to violently snapping once morale is low. Some might steal your loot and run off with it. However, loyal buddies might actually leave a note, wishing you luck on your journey to Canada, before disappearing with all of their supplies returned to you.
  • If you have a dog in your party and the party is doing poorly, the dog may lose all faith in your team's ability to make it to Canada and refuse to continue on with you.
  • While a majority of the soundtrack is upbeat, there is one song that stands out; City of Lost Hope, which replaces Frankenstein Goes to Jamaica as the Final Siege theme on the higher difficulty levels starting from Deadlier Rode Mode. Unlike the other songs in the soundtrack, it's slow and somber with a piano playing and what sounds like gunshots in the background. It can serve as a reminder that, no matter how comedic or funny the game is, the zombie apocalypse has still ravaged a majority of the world and civilization as we know it is mostly gone.
• That One Achievement:
  • "Dog Squad" requires you to finish the game with a full party of dogs— and only dogs. Several factors make this achievement extremely unlikely to accomplish. To begin with, you cannot begin the game by playing as a dog— you must start out as a human and find a dog along the way. You can make things easier by giving your starting character the 'Friend of Dog' perk, which increases the chance of them finding dogs on the road, but you still need to survive long enough to find multiple dog-recruiting events. You MAY get lucky and run into Woof, a Rare character that splits into three dogs when they 'die,' but you still have to find the fourth via a random event and hope the game allows you to recruit them and kick out the remaining human party member. Not helping things is that dogs have two-thirds the HP of standard human characters and cannot wield weapons unless they become the Sole Survivor of the party, which turns them into a Super Dog that can wield weapons and firearms, and even then they can only wield one at a time, unlike humans who can wield up to two, making it that much more difficult to survive even if you get lucky enough to round up a party of dogs. All these factors combined make it easy to see why this the least-obtained achievement in the game, sitting at a measly 0.4%.
  • "Has Left the Building" requires Alvis to reach his Despair Event Horizon twice. Obtaining Alvis himself is very much luck-based, and one needs plenty of time to break him twice. Getting Alvis himself to break can also be luck-based, as deliberately lowering morale may result in other party members' despair events triggering instead.
  • "The Loneliest Road" requires beating the game with just a single character, without recruiting anyone. It's difficult to fend off zombie hordes alone, and just as difficult to maintain a steady cache of supplies with bandits running amok.
  • "Mr. Popular" requires completing the game with Mason in the party. Mason constantly makes party members "disappear" through random events, mostly Despair Event Horizon events, which are more likely to occur when he shows up due to his inherent morale penalty, and he will leave on his own terms if he's alone. He is also the only character in the game that cannot stay dead and respawns if he gets killed in action. A party member will "disappear" every time this happens as well. You either have to hope you recruit him close enough to the border or you hold out long enough to find more party members to replace the ones that "vanish".
• That One Disadvantage: There are a number of character traits that aren't very useful compared to others, or at all.
  • As mentioned in Low-Tier Letdown above, Bandits should just be avoided. In addition to the usual risks of having a character with low loyalty and composure, characters with the BERSERK! trait cover this already alongside bonuses to combat stats.
  • Frantic Whiners have one less health point and a bad attitude in exchange for a faster run speed. It usually isn't worth it, not even pairing it up with the Big Bruiser to cancel that perk's weakness.
  • The benefits of being a Gourmand isn't worth it for the increased food consumption, and running the risk of higher morale drops when low on food. There are better ways to have higher health points. The Sumo Wrestler sort of walks this line, as he has excellent strength and fitness stats, but also has the Gourmand trait.
  • Being a Specialist deprives a character of all but one inventory slot, meaning they cannot switch between weapons on the fly. The combat stat increases may be tempting, but dealing with the limited inventory space, especially late game, might be a real pain.
• That One Level:
  • Due to the varying difficulty factors in stages, it can vary from run to run, but sieges are almost always here, as the party has to outmaneuver and survive a timed assault of endless zombies; on higher difficulties, the numbers can be overwhelmingly-high, the zombies can move at a brisk jog as opposed to their typical slow lumber, and indoors, waves can even rain down from the ceilings, to force the player to keep moving. Worst of all, unlike normal stages, you don't get to choose party members; everyone is forced to participate, even if they're tired and/or one hit from death. There are variants where merely lasting for an hour isn't enough; you have to navigate a maze in low light to the exit to escape. The only constant consolation is the reward at the end, which can boost stats, restore morale, or heal any wounds.
  • The "Backs to the Wall" siege. All the buildings are ruined, thus containing no additional rooms, and there is absolutely no loot whatsoever. At least with other Sieges, there's a chance of finding a little bit of ammo or even some good weapons!
  • The "Factory Complex" siege. Unlike the other gauntlets, the Sewer and the various roads, the path is far less clear and linear, which makes it incredibly easy to get lost.
  • The "Mall of the Dead" siege. The layout is the same as the Mall looting events: however, you have no extra rooms to run off to and you have to fend off a very large amount of zombies in an enclosed space for 1.5 hours, as opposed to the usual 1 hour. You have two extra allies in a pair of NPC Mall Cops: while fairly helpful on normal difficulty, on higher difficulties, they are of little help against the sheer numbers of zombies, especially since one will quickly run out of ammo and become nearly useless. Not to mention that there's only one exit to the level, which often means having to fight through the entire horde just to get out.
  • The "Stuck in a Ditch" siege is also ridiculously difficult on late game or on higher difficulties, due to the lack of space to maneuver around zombies. Unless you have Grenades, Pipe Bombs, or something that can handle large hordes of zombies, you can bet someone will bite it during this siege.
  • The despair sieges that can trigger if someone in your party is critically low on Morale: "Fatal Argument" for multi-character parties, and "Haze of Despair" for a Solo-Character Run. Both are 2-hour long sieges with a higher than usual count of zombies (though Haze of Despair has fewer zombies than Fatal Argument). How bad are they? Enough for the game to give you the option to quit then and there as you might not survive, or survive at the cost of wasting a ton of ammo. The only upside is if you do clear the siege, your party will get a massive Morale boost.
  • The event "Driving Range Last Stand" often appears at the beginning of the game. Unless your party starts out with incredibly high fitness or mechanical skills, you will suffer. Either you take guaranteed damage for your entire party, or you have to survive a siege with little more than golf clubs, which are weak and break easily. Alternatively, you can drive off with no sleep, but that leaves your entire party Tired, an ailment that seriously impairs their combat abilities.
  • The final siege, aptly named "City of Crushed Hopes", is this, no matter what. Overwhelming waves, an outdoor map with no good routes or areas, and a whopping FOUR HOUR timer (about four minutes in real time)^note most sieges (with the exception of the Despair sieges) last for 0.7 hours at minimum, and 1.5 hours at worst. It's highly advisable to gather as many high powered weapons and ammo as possible, and to search each of the buildings for additional supplies. Thankfully, the buildings in this siege can yield quite a lot of useful items, such as guns or explosives, as you will need them.
  • The Mall Rescue has a glitch that prevents the room that contains the rescuee from appearing (it usually appears within one of the stores located deeper in the level), rendering any difference between it and the regular Mall stage moot.
  • The Burning House/Blazing Inferno may yield a lot of loot, but it's on fire. Sparks of fire can fly everywhere without warning, and can easily cost health points. Fireproof characters shine here, but they're hard to come across and are rarely used.
  • The "Hazardous Materials" rare stage might be considered the most difficult of the bunch. Think of the sewer siege, but instead, you need to explore both wings of the sewer to rescue the hazmat team members for the full prize. It's common to get seriously bogged down by the zombie hordes.
  • The Untouched Grocery store may yield food in the hundreds, but boy, does the stage make you work for it! The entire store may as well have a zombie population akin to a metropolis, and they're absolutely relentless.
  • The more unpleasant-but-not-difficult variety can be found in places like the Furniture Store, Office, and the non-city Book Store (the city Book Store at least is surrounded by other buildings containing more loot), where loot is minimal and there are no beneficial gimmicks to the level. Places like these are best avoided.
• Underused Game Mechanic: There are Rare and Familiar variants of the default game mode and the extreme game mode, but not of the short, long, or endless game modes. Speaking of, Endless mode defaults to the extreme difficulty, which is unfortunate for those who want to try their hands at an endless run without starting off with massive zombie hordes and bandits that deal double damage.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Characters with low Wits sometimes bring up Barack Obama during car conversations, blaming him for everything. He was President of the United States at the time of the game's release.

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