The Ultimate Shelter, Crafting, and Loot Guide for Into the Dead Our Darkest Days

10 Fast Tips for a Quick Start

1. Pick Daphne and Penny: Daphne gives extra food and medkit crafts. Penny is extra stealthy, simplifying executions and hiding.
2. Prioritize Telescopes: Unlock new locations first. This provides more options if you must bail from a dangerous area.
3. Scout, Clear, Haul: Use this method. Scout with a stealthy character. Clear with stronger fighters. Haul remaining loot with high-capacity survivors.
4. Find a 2nd Shelter ASAP: Shelter attacks intensify every other night. Moving resets intensity to 1. Keep moving to save planks.
5. Loot Priority: Prioritize dismantle items; they’re worth multiple inventory spaces. Coffee, alcohol, and chips are great for topping up survivors early.
6. Upgrade Priority: Focus on Workbench as needed, then Dismantling Bench 2, then Cooking Area 3. Get Communal Area & Portable Beds to level 1. Max Weapons Bench & Medical Area to 3, then max everything else.
7. Number of Survivors: Aim for 4 survivors early on to juggle scavenging and crafting. Expand to 5 late-game to run multiple scavenges per phase.
8. Which Survivors to Recruit? Best early survivors: Joe (Texway Gas Hart St) for his dismantle bonus & +2 backpack space, and Frank (Fire Station No.8) for cooking & blunt weapon bonuses.
9. Zombie Shuffling: Use connected rooms, doors, and hiding spots to move zombies from unexplored rooms into cleared ones. This conserves weapons.
10. Use HP/Medkits as a Resource: With extra medkits, proactively use loud melee weapons or fists to kill zombies. This saves quiet shivs/screwdrivers for when stealth is critical.

Quest Tip: Your Escape Plan is a multi-stage objective. The later stages will often send you into high-threat, locked-off areas. Do not rush them until you have crafted Level 3 weapons and armor.

The 10 Tips: Expanded and Explained

Here is a more detailed breakdown of these core strategies.

1. Pick Daphne and Penny

If you are just starting out, this duo will carry you. Daphne’s Good Cook skill gives you more food per craft, which is essential from early to late game. Her First Aid Training also increases the first aid kits you get per craft. Penny’s Sneaky skill reduces the range of the sounds she makes and makes her harder to detect when using hiding spots.

2. Prioritize Telescopes in Areas

When you enter a new area, your first goal should be to climb up and reach the telescope. You can find these in locations tagged “New Locations Discoverable” on the map. This expands your zone options, unlocks new and better shelters, and gives you more places to loot. It is best to get these out of the way early in case you need to leave an area and come back later when you are better prepared.

3. Scout, Clear, Haul

This is the go-to method for safely and efficiently looting any location.

• Scouting: Send in your stealth character (like Penny). Equip them with stealth weapons, lockpicks, and bolt cutters. Your goal is to explore as much as possible, open all locked paths and shortcuts, and activate the telescope. Stealthily kill as many zombies as you can. Bring back weapons and any materials you are low on.
• Clearing: On the next run, bring your tougher survivors. Bring some stealth weapons but also your harder-hitting, high-durability loud weapons. Focus on clearing a path to the best loot spots. You can use louder weapons in enclosed rooms if you close the doors first.
• Hauling: Finally, bring your characters with the biggest inventory slots. If you have cleared the zone of all active zombies, you can send them in without any items to maximize the loot you bring back.

4. Find a 2nd Shelter ASAP

The longer you stay in one shelter, the more intense the nightly zombie attacks become, ramping up from 1 to 3 damage on your barricades. Moving to any different shelter (even an old one) resets this intensity back to 1 damage. Keep moving as needed.

Important Shelter Tip: Before you leave a shelter, make sure it has at least 2 barricades left. That way, if you must return to it during the night, you will survive the attack with 1 barricade remaining, giving you two phases to craft more.

5. Loot Priority

Not all loot is equal. Here is what you should prioritize.

1. Dismantle Items: These are your top priority. They provide multiple slots worth of resources while only taking up a single inventory slot.
2. Stealth/Medium Weapons: These help you clear more areas, which means you get more loot. You can never have too many.
3. Coffee/Snacks/Alcohol: Use these to keep your survivors going in the early game while you build your upgrades. Do not be stingy with them.
4. Metal: You will need metal for almost everything. Always bring it back.
5. Water: You need water for cooking and growing veggies. Grab as much as you can until you find a shelter with a water filtering system.

6. Upgrade Priority in Order

You must be efficient with your upgrades. We recommend this specific order.

1. Workbench: Upgrade as needed to unlock new stations.
2. Dismantling Bench 2: Get this early for a huge influx of materials.
3. Cooking Area 3: This stabilizes your food supply.
4. Communal Area Lvl 1
5. Portable Beds Lvl 1
6. Barricade 1 (You can skip this until later if you keep moving shelters).
7. Weapons Bench 3: This is a high priority. Do not craft weapons until you get this, as the lower-tier ones are not efficient.
8. Medical Area 3: Get this after your weapons bench. Level 3 reduces the materials needed to craft medkits.
9. Max the rest.

7. Number of Survivors

Aim for 4-5 survivors. Four is a good number for the early and mid-game, allowing you to juggle scavenging and crafting. Once your stations are upgraded, you can get a 5th survivor to run multiple scavenges per phase. Do not be afraid to send a survivor on a “death run” with loud weapons to clear a high-threat area if you feel you have too many mouths to feed.

8. Which Survivors to Recruit?

Prioritize survivors who make your crafts more efficient.

• Joe: (Texway Gas Hart St) He is amazing. He has extra backpack slots and gives extra materials when dismantling.
• Frank: (Fire Station No.8) If you do not have Daphne, Frank is your go-to cook. He also gets bonuses to blunt melee weapons.
• Aubrey: She increases your medkit crafts, which is very useful for the late game.

9. Zombie Shuffling

This is an advanced technique to conserve weapons. It uses the zombie’s patrol patterns to lead them into different rooms. You can do this in long stretches of connected rooms with doors. By opening a door, you can lure a patrolling zombie out of a loot room. You can then sneak past them and lock the door behind you, trapping them. You can also use loud sounds or bottles to lure zombies into dead-end rooms you have already cleared. This is a great way to save your stealth weapons.

10. Use HP and Medkits as a Resource

If you have a surplus of medkits, do not be afraid to take some damage. You can use your plain fists to conserve weapons, especially in the early game.

How to Fist-Fight a Zombie:
The rotation is:

1. 3x Punch
2. Dodge (Q key)
3. Walk back, wait for the zombie to finish its attack animation.
4. 3x Punch
5. Dodge
6. Walk back, wait for the animation.
7. 2x Punch
8. Execute

After you punch a zombie three times, it usually becomes immune to stagger and will hit back. You dodge this hit, then walk back to create distance and let your dodge meter recharge.

Pro Tip: You can “kite” a large group of zombies. Get their attention, then run to a different floor or a dead-end room you’ve already looted. You can then sneak away, effectively “trapping” them in that area while you safely loot where they used to be.

Understanding Core Game Mechanics

Knowing these hidden systems is vital for your survival.

Penny’s “Sneaky” Skill

Penny’s “Sneaky” skill reduces the range at which zombies can hear her actions. This means she can perform stealth kills and other actions much closer to other zombies without alerting them, compared to a survivor like Daphne.

Understanding Sounds

1. Sneaking: This is quiet. Zombies will only spot you with their line of sight.
2. Walking: Walking sound can go through doors. A zombie must be very close to the other side of the door to hear you.
3. Running: Running constantly reveals your last known location. If you run by a closed door, the zombie behind it will be triggered. You can de-aggro zombies by running, then sneaking, then entering a new area (like stairs).
4. Stealth Takedowns: These make noise. Doing a stealth takedown right in front of an inactive zombie will wake it up. You must have some distance.

Stealth and Medium Takedowns

This refers to weapons. Stealth weapons (like shivs) are quiet. You can also use “Medium Takedowns.” This means if you are in an enclosed room with a single zombie, you can close the door, swap to a loud melee weapon (like a bat), and perform a stealth kill. It will still be a one-shot kill, and the closed door will muffle most of the sound, saving your fragile shivs.

Heads-Up: Watch out for Breachers. These special infected are drawn to your shelter during an attack and will actively destroy your barricades much faster than normal zombies. You must prioritize killing them as soon as they appear.

Phases of the Game: Early, Mid, and Late

Your strategy must change as the game progresses.

Early Game Strategy

Your first goals are simple:

1. Find a second shelter and prepare it for moving.
2. Find an Escape Plan. This is your main quest.
3. Conserve your weapons. Use zombie shuffling and fist-fighting to save your weapon durability.
4. Focus on the key workbench upgrades: Cooking Area, Dismantling Station, and your Workbench itself.

Mid Game Transition

This phase begins once you have stable shelter upgrades.

1. Focus on finding the “Big 4” crafting stations: Tools, Food, Water, and Meds.
2. Start specializing your survivors. Have a dedicated scavenger, crafter, and fighter.
3. Your priority is upgrading your Weapons Bench to Level 3. This unlocks the most durable and resource-efficient weapons.
4. Do not be afraid to use a gun. They are great for “Clearing” runs, especially if you have a survivor with combat skills.

Late Game and Your Escape Plan

This is the final push.

1. 1. Once you have your Escape Plan, plan your scavenges to hit the areas you need to progress.
   2. The later areas in your escape plan are much riskier. You should tackle these when you have more supplies, not when you are running dry.
   3. Be prepared for “activated” zombies. Some areas will automatically alert zombies, so have a good fighter and medkits ready.
   4. Stockpile medkits and ammo for the final areas.

Boss Tip: The final mission of your Escape Plan is the boss of the game. It is often a high-density, one-way trip. Before you commit, craft your best armor, healing items, and ammo, as you will not be coming back.

Conclusion

You now have a solid, proven plan for surviving Into the Dead: Our Darkest Days. This guide has armed you with the essential strategies for managing survivors, upgrading your shelter, and efficiently clearing locations. Remember to follow the “Scout, Clear, Haul” method, prioritize your upgrades, and never underestimate the power of stealth and planning. Walton City is a graveyard, but with these tips, you just might be one of the few who escapes. Good luck.