Zafehouse Diaries 2 is a game where you control survivors of a zombie apocalypse. It's a turn-based worker placement game where you choose what each survivor does each hour or so - exploring properties around town, scavenging for supplies, fortifying buildings and essential survival activities. The core gameplay is punctuated by simple yes/no moral quandries that can set your group against each other and disrupt your progress.

The game has several scenarios of differing difficulty, which vary in the objectives and the initial set-up as well as some of the mechanics.

This guide will cover the basic gameplay elements, provide some general hints and tips, look at the different scenarios in detail and then go through each achievement with notes about how to go about them.

Version information

This guide is in draft and requires more content to be complete. I hope the content thus far is of use to someone. I am now undertaking a second edit, four years after I published the early draft. It is now 2022.

Characters

Your group has between 1 and 5 members. Each person has a different set of skills rated from 0-5 stars in steps of half a star. The greater the number of stars, the more capable the person is at a particular task you ask them to perform.

Group relationships

The group performance is affected by how well they get on with each other. Their individual relationships vary from poor, through average, to good or even great. Characters with poor relationships work badly together and may make mistakes at crucial moments. Conversely, people who like each other work well together and can lift everyone's mood.


Characters may have prejudices - gender preferences, issues with age or race, dislike of people from poor, or wealthy backgrounds. Some prejudices might be overcome by a character redeeming themselves during the game. Otherwise relationships can be managed using rumours to play to people's prejudices - but rumours can have negative as well as positive effects.

Equipment

Each character can have one piece of protection equipped, be it a hard hat, leather jacket or full body armour. Also one weapon, either a melee weapon or a projectile weapon of some kind. Melee weapons are potent against small numbers of zombies and are very quiet, whereas most guns are good when there are lots of zombies, but noisy and use ammunition, which is in limited supply.

Health, injuries and medicine

Characters may get injured battling zombies - suffering from lacerations (which can be treated with bandages) or contusions (which cannot be treated with bandages.) Injuries reduce character skills. Painkillers can temporarily allow an injured character to ignore their injuries. If an injury becomes infected, then antibiotics can help prevent the character turning into a zombie.

Characters will take painkillers and antibiotics automatically if they are in a location where the medicine is in the supplies. If there is only one pain killer and two characters want it, then one of them will get annoyed when the other takes it. Bandages must be applied by someone and will only be effective if their skill is good enough.

Locations


The town is made up of a 7x5 grid of locations. There are two types of locations, houses and special buildings. Houses are smaller than special locations (although they vary in size), tend to have fewer zombies in them, and tend to be around the outside of town. Special buildings are places like hospitals, churches, stores, pubs and diners. They are typically larger than special locations (although they vary in size), centrally located, can contain dozens of zombies and being in them can trigger unique events.

Characters are either at one of the locations, or are in-transit between two locations.

If characters are at a location, they have access to that location's supplies, automatically using any tools suitable to the task they are assigned. They will also be called to defend the location if the noise they make attracts zombies. They can interact with one another and the location, possibly triggering special events, keep themselves clean, or eat a meal.

Characters may also be sent on missions which will necessitate them moving between locations.

Missions

By dragging one of the character tokens on the map from their location to another, you create a mission. A character can go alone, or you can include other characters in the mission either by dropping their token onto the same target location, or by selecting them in the configure mission screen.

There are three types of mission. Breaches, Investigations and Sniping.

Breaches involve the character(s) making entry into the target location, using force if necessary, and trying to clear it of zombies. The breach mission is also used simply to move characters (possibly carrying supplies) from a location to one that has previously been cleared.

Characters will breach through a window if there is no-one to let them in, kill any zombies in the first room (using breaching skills), and then move through the location, killing zombies (using combat skills). You can set the risk to determine when the characters withdraw in the face of opposition. Higher risk means more chance of injury or death, but you will be repelled by zombies less frequently.

Investigations involve the character(s) working out how many zombies surround the property and how many can be seen inside through the windows. Bringing along a tool that improves investigation can assist. The risk you take determines how many walls of the location are scouted. Low risk is just one wall/windows, Medium covers three sides and high covers every side. There is a chance with higher risk investigations that someone will get injured.

Sniping is a special form of investigation, which involves the characters following up an investigation with an attempt to shoot at zombies through the windows to try and thin their numbers. This uses ammunition, but can thin the numbers of zombies ready for a future breach.

Play the game

As you play you will get a feel for what tactics work, what order to do things, and the dangers that your survivors face. You may learn this quicker through experience than by reading a guide. My way is not necessarily the best and only way - just the way that worked for me. Your mileage may differ.

Tailor your approach to your survivors

Most games of Zafehouse Diaries 2 will involve a random selection of survivors with a unique blend of relationships and skills. Your starting moves should be tailored to the group you start with. At least one of the scenarios involves an entire squad of soldiers with combat weapons and armour. Your approach to the game may be different with these guys compared to a bunch of random civilians.

Take your time when you can

Some of the scenarios introduce overt time pressures, but many do not. When you don't have to rush, don't. Even on normal difficulties, pushing too hard will kill characters. Characters dying often prompts other characters to die because of the sudden loss of skills and numbers. The tutorial is the exception. It rushes through steps which can lead new players to learn bad habits. Slow down if you can.

When a character is injured in a breach, the temptation is to keep pushing on regardless of injuries - but characters perform so much more poorly when injured and can die more easily. Let them heal before you push forward if you can. Injuries heal in a couple of days, even without bandages. The only time pressure might be finding antibiotics to deal with the possible zombie fever.

Take the time to craft good equipment and scout out the next target carefully, and bypass difficult targets until you have decent equipment. Even then, thin the zombies inside before trying to breach. Low risk first. Multiple visits rather than trying to do it all in one. Building-by-building movement, rather than hugely long multi-hour journeys.

Relationships matter

Regardless of star rating, if multiple characters are performing a task and they do not get along well, things can go badly wrong. If someone is not getting on well with the group, having them perform solo activities and keeping them out of the house might be better than getting them involved in a task. For low risk activities like barricading and cleaning you might have a minimum of an average relationship. For high risk activities like breaching and patrolling, make sure the relationship between teammates is better than average.

Always be modifying

If you have a character that's good at crafting in your group, modify every item that you find. Yes - sometimes you get a flimsy result, but a lot of the time, the improvement in capability more than makes up for it. Try and gain a tool that improves modification first so you get an increased chance of a good result when modifying weapons and armour.

As you have a maximum of five members of your group, you only need to keep a maximum of five tools with bonuses to certain skills (like breaching). Any more is just dead weight, unless the old lady comes to swap with you.

Silence is golden

Remember that you can switch a location's activities to take longer, but make less noise. When you have just cleared a property, but have not yet barricaded it, it is crucial to keep the noise down, otherwise you will have to defend against an attack. Feel free to retreat from a location to a more secure one if there is a storm, or you've just made a lot of noise.

There is probably a strategy involving a lone member of the survivors moving around cleared locations and making lots of noise to attract zombies to those locations, leaving the rest of the group less hassled - but I have not experimented with this yet as there are already few survivors to use and dedicating one member to this task seems to lack value.

Guns for show, knives for a pro

What I mean by this is to save your guns and ammunition for clearing the larger locations, thinning particularly crowded rooms and for defences. Use silent melee weapons for smaller residential properties and for patrols. Sniping from a location can quickly deplete your ammo, which is more valuable spent on gaining access to new locations to search them.

Traps

Traps are great and can rapidly thin a cloud of zombies from around a property. Use experimental traps as often as you can, only switching to regular on sides where your characters will be travelling between locations.

However traps take furniture to build and re-build and you can run out. Each set of three traps can often be built from neighbouring properties, so if you're holing up somewhere for a while, you might want to pick a location which is surrounded by others to the North, South, East and West and make use of the furniture in those locations to trap the sides of your bolthole. This saves the furniture in the central location for that critical fence. Or rebuilding the fence once it's been broken by zombies.

Synopsis:

Five well-equipped survivors have unlimited time to search a relatively quiet town for a flare gun in one of three different locations. They then need to clear a fourth location of zombies and fortify it before firing the flare to win the scenario.

Walkthrough:

You can play this one of two ways. A quick method which worked for me is below. You can also be methodical and systematic and try out all of the orders and missions. Be aware that the difficulty is turned down for the tutorial. You may not get a good feel for what works best under more standard difficulty. So once you are familiar with the basic controls in the tutorial, you will want to move onto something tougher.

Quick method

1. Optionally select the survivor who is having the most relationship trouble and start a rumour that improves their relationship with the others.
   
   
   
   
2. Select all of your survivors and search the location you start in until it is "thoroughly searched."
   
   
   
   
3. If you can, select all of your survivors and have them modify, until every possible item is modified.
   
4. Select all of your survivors and send them to breach one of the three map locations with a question mark (potential site of the flare gun). Take all of your supplies with you. Don't worry if you are slightly over weight limit, or have to travel a long way. Set the risk at "High". Don't worry about scouting or selecting breach point.
   
   
   
   
   
5. Tend to any injuries and search the property thoroughly.
   
6. If you have not found the flare gun, go to 3. and repeat for the next location with a question mark.
   
   
   
   
7. Once you have the flare gun, select all of your survivors and send them to breach the circled map location which has been suggested as a good place to fortify. Take all of your supplies with you. Set the risk at "High". Don't worry about scouting or selecting breach point.
   
8. Select all of your survivors and get them to barricade until every entrance is fortified.
   
   
   
   
9. Select all of your survivors and assign them all to firing the flare gun.
   
10. Scenario complete.

Synopsis: Five poorly-equipped survivors have unlimited time to search town for the parts to fix a vehicle they have identified at a specific location in town. They also need a map before they can make their escape.

Compared to the tutorial, Roadkill can be a bit of a shock. The main issue initially is the lack of equipment and supplies, quickly followed by the number of zombies surrounding the property and in neighbouring properties. Players that learn winning aggressive strategies in the tutorial will come unstuck and could get frustrated.

Roadkill rewards a slower and more systematic playstyle. Players should try and stay quiet and use quiet weapons, scout target locations with care and feel comfortable using investigate (snipe) to wear down zombie numbers in a target location before trying to breach. Using low risk mission strategies can pay dividends. Also taking the time to manage injuries after fortifying. Building fences around certain fortified buildings, but avoiding sniper nests and lookout posts is advised.

Fleeing from aggressive events is perfectly acceptable if you have not finished securing your current location. It is also acceptable to breach and clear a location using loud weapons and immediately retreat to avoid a zombie defence. The locations seldom see zombies re-enter them once they are clear at this difficulty level, even during storms.

Preparation for a breach

• Investigate the location with a survivor, preferably taking a tool that boosts Investigate (modified binoculars if you have them). Use Medium risk if you can, orientating the three sides of the search pattern to maximise the number of windows the survivor will look in.
  
• If the survivor does not get a good look inside the property. Try again.
  
• If there are many zombies in the property, you may need to thin their numbers. Use your best sniper to investigate(snipe) with a suitable weapon equipped (good sniping score). Scoped crossbow is the best, but scoped rifles, scoped shotguns or scoped pistols will do too depending on your ammo. Use Low risk and aim for a side with a window into the room with the most zombies inside. Feel free to increase the risk if there are not that many zombies outside, and if the survivor is not having much luck.
  
• If the survivor snipes a few successfully, but then on susequent visits cannot seem to hit any of them from the window - it's time to breach. You will waste ammo trying to kill all of the zombies in the building.
  
• A team of two uninjured breachers that get on well is ideal, preferably with the best protection gear you have. They need weapons with high breach (for the first room) and combat (for the rest of the property.)
  
• You can use more than two for larger properties, but larger groups often have to split between rooms and might not work together as well for smaller properties.
  
• Each breacher can take and use one tool with a breach star rating to boost their breach rating.
  
• If it is a large building with large spaces that have no windows - assume they are going to be packed to the rafters with undead and bring guns and ammunition instead of melee weapons.

Priorities after successful breach

1. If you used loud weapons, and there are lots of zombies around, don't be afraid to immediately retreat to a previously fortified location until the immediate risk of zombies assaulting the property have gone away.
   
2. If this is a location you are not staying in, or one like the petrol station, that has little in the way of furniture, it might be just as well to do an immediate and loud search and then leave.
   
3. If you are staying for some reason, then the first thing to do at this difficulty level is barricade. Use as many people as get on well as you can, each with a tool that boosts barricade skill available. Once all entrances are fortified, build a fence.
   
4. Once that's done, you can worry about injuries. If you don't have any medical supplies, then you will want to search the location thoroughly.
   
5. Then you can split your attention between food preparation, modifying equipment, building traps, and moving supplies from other locations to this one if required.

Synopsis: A lone survivor has unlimited time to fix the power to a spotlight on a property in town and use it to attract other survivors, then survive for as long as possible, perhaps making use of a secret location in town which has a city farm that generates food (as long as they can keep the power on). There aren't that many zombies and they aren't that aggressive to begin with, but can one person on their own make a difference?

Synopsis: Five civilians find themselves together in a town full of infected zombies. They have done well initially, securing a few guns and ammunition. Now they've found out that a rescue chopper is on its way. However, they don't know when. They don't know where. They have no radio, or idea what frequency the helicopter uses, but if they can find one - if they can find clues as to where the helicopter may land, and when, then maybe, just maybe, they can signal it, and leave this accursed settlement.

Wait... was that the sound of rotor blades?

Synopsis: A team of three soldiers have become separated from their unit and find themselves in a town infested with zombies and super-zombies. The town is due to be destroyed by aerial bombardment in just a few days. There's no time for cooking, tinkering, barricading or, perhaps, even investigating locations before breaching. They must find the electronic components to activate three separate kill switches around the town at the same time before the bombs fall. That's assuming they can keep power flowing to the three buildings. They have each other, and they are all trained at being able to apply bandages to themselves. As long as they've got bandages, they can keep pushing.

If any one of them dies, that's it. Game over, man. They have rifles and a lot of ammunition. What they don't have is anything to protect them from the claws and teeth of the infected. Some armour will be an early priority.

The question is - do you split the party to speed up the search?

Kill switch feels like a speed run after the slow pace of Roadkill and the fragility of Night life. Your people are soldiers, with assault rifles and plenty of bullets. They also have a terrific ability to patch themselves up after a fight where they get wounded. If they have a bandage, they try to apply it and sometimes it works.

However, they have under four days to locate three pieces of equipment and secure three locations and place one soldier in each before any power outages make them have to detour to fix the grid. They also cannot afford to lose a single member of the team.

The quickest way to approach the assault on the buildings is to split the team and breach three smaller residential locations at the same time. Medium risk is usually fine and there is not usually a need to scout locations first. After breaching, search each location thoroughly before moving on.

Keep your weight limits down between locations, but try and take as much with you as you can. Leave heavy meals, tools and unwanted pieces of headwear or armour behind. You start with no protection at all, so finding shoulder pads, riot shields and, if you can, body armour is a real boon.

If you're lucky, you will find all of the required devices in residential locations and won't need to breach any of the larger ones. If you do, however, wait until your team is together, scout the location once and pick your breach spot. Bring along your three best breaching items alongside your weapons and ammo.

There's not much nuance or tactical thought to Kill switch, but it's a nice change of pace to some of the other scenarios concerning civilians.

There are 30 Steam achievements, many of which can be attained simply by playing the game for any length of time and will require little additional explanation. Those which require some additional discussion have some observations noted below, obscured by "spoiler" tags. If you wish to see them, hover your mouse over the blocks of black next to the achievement to reveal the spoiler:

Fully loaded - Have five survivors, each with weapon and protection gear equipped at the end of a turn

Fresh meat - Complete "Safe as houses" the tutorial level

Reckless breacher - Conduct 3 high risk breaches in a single game

Zombie killer - Kill 100 Zombies

Safe havens - Have 3 locations fully fortified at the same time in a single game

Tinkerer - Modify 15 items

Bury the hatchet - Redeem a survivor. At some point when you have a group of survivors, one of the characters will offer another character the chance to redeem themselves by doing more of something. This can be something simple to arrange such as "doing more cleaning", or it can be difficult to arrange such as "kill more zombies during defences." It also seems to be independent of the character's skill. It is common for a character with no aptitude for breaching, for example, will be asked to kill more zombies during breaches. It may not be worth attempting to redeem the survivor in this case.

Zombie slayer - Kill 500 zombies

Trap happy - Build 50 traps

Reckless investigator - Conduct 3 high risk investigations in a single game

Family matters - Defeat the wandering armed mob. One of the common events you can encounter is an armed lynch mob roaming the town. They demand the group hand over a team member. If they are refused - a fight ensues. If they are driven off, they can return quickly and bring more people and more weapons. Having a spotter means you can see the mob as an icon moving around town. Traps are an effective way of thinning the group as they assault a location, and as they leave.

Zombie destroyer - Kill 1,000 zombies

Bait and switch - Give up one survivor to the Piper to draw away the zombies.

Into the mist - Walk into the fog found outside the General Store

Gossip ghoul - Spread 10 rumours

Guinea pig - Get experimented on in the Hospital. This event appears when the group has emptied the Hospital of zombies. Someone will offer them the chance to be subjects of an experimental study. If accepted, this achievement is unlocked. In my game, four survivors had positive buffs, two to do with reduction in hunger and two to do with boosting skills, the last survivor suffered from amnesia and kept misplacing supplies, which needed to be searched for again.

Party time - Crack open some beers in the Pub

Moveable feast - Release the farm animals or turn them into food

Outlast - Last 21 days in "Night Life" or "No Survivors" without losing a Survivor. No custom games.

1.21 Gigawatts!? - Fix power 10 times.