While Zafehouse Diaries 2 is an excellent game, the learning curve can be rather steep for new players.

I must have gone through a good 30 attempts just to complete the first campaign after the tutorial (Roadkill).

Through these many attempts and beyond I have experimented with different approaches and have come up with a few generally effective ways to survive which I will share with you in this guide.

In any campaign you start out with anywhere up to 5 survivors, each with a different relationship to one another.

Usually 2-3 of them are armed with weapons and, if you're lucky, some protective gear.

You can click on the photographs of each survivor to view their current equipment, relationship to other survivors, and status effects.

You will usually start out in an unfortified location with a few different actions like cook, barricade, modify, etc, available to you and some diary entries and a notepad to help you make sense of what you need to do next.

If you drag click survivors on the board and then click on a different building you can send them there on either an investigative mission, or a breaching mission.

String together these basics with the possibility of random events and you've got Zafehouse Diaries 2 in a nutshell.

A lot of the success you will have in this game will be due to good management and selection of survivors according to their attributes, including their relationships with one another.

You will usually get at least two pairs of survivors with a good relationship to one another.

If you see a solid green line between two survivors that means the relationship is good and there are no prejudices.

If you see an arrow pointing one way that means the survivor on the receiving end of the point is the victim of prejudice from the pointing survivor.

If you see a line of crosses between two survivors, that means they hate one another for one or even several reasons.

Green in any instance means the relationship is usually good.

Yellow means the relationship is average.

Red means the relationship is dysfunctional.

The above rule of thumb usually works even if there is an arrow going one way (although that's not ideal). If there is a crossed line between two survivors it will usually be red regardless.

The main thing to remember is that if you're going to have two survivors work together, try to make sure they have a green solid line between them, or a one-way pointing arrow that's green at the very least.

If there are two survivors who share some common skills that you would really like to be able to work together (such as two really good breachers who have a one-way prejudice), it can be effective to spread a rumor about both.

You can spread one rumor every 24 hours, and there are a set number you can spread per game (directly proportional to the number of rumor topics available).

To get an idea of the best rumor to spread you need to know about your targets.

Say you have two survivors:

One "elderly" "uneducated" "straight" "priest" who "claims to be tolerant" but "doesn't like the look of" one of your other survivors who is:

A "young" "highly educated" "gay" "firefighter" who's last name is "Lopez".

Straight away you can see why our priest wouldn't like our firefighter. Our priest is, unfortunately, a racist.

But they both have a high breaching skill and your other survivors are better at other things. What do you do?

You might spread an "Activism" rumor that says your firefighter "Spoke at a rally" for "Elderly" "Racists" or "Uneducated" "Priests". To be clear you're not allowed to customize your rumors, but you are allowed to change them to a different type.

Say an "Activism" rumor doesn't quite work the way you want to make your priest feel closer to your firefighter. You can change the type of rumor and usually you will get something that makes one survivor appeal more to the other. If spreading a rumor about your firefighter doesn't fit, you could try spreading a "Connection" rumor, hopefully you'll have one available for the priest that says they're a long lost cousin with the firefighter or something. Play around and you'll usually find just what you need.

When it comes to breaching there are a few main factors that will determine whether your survivors live, die, or get injured.

- Knowledge of the location's number of zombies and breaching rooms is important. Unless you've got at least one survivor who is equipped with a body armor or riot shield, and armed with a combat machete, combat assault rifle, or combat baseball bat, you should avoid breaching a location that you have not first investigated, and certainly avoid the larger buildings until you're strong enough to clear them. I usually send someone who is armed to do a High Risk Investigation before sending a breaching team to do a Low Risk Breach. I have every survivor breach into a room that has no zombies in it. If I have to breach a room with zombies I choose the one with the least amount, and I take a saw or sledgehammer along in my take-with item list to increase the breach capabilities of the group.

- Equipment is equally important. You can wrap a survivor who is not great at breaching in body armor, and give them a combat machete and they will often come out on top. That same survivor naked with a regular pool cue will not fare well. As a rule equip your breachers with the highest Combat star rated items, and the best armor you can give them. Equipping them with high Breach star weapons is not necessary.

- Breaching skill of the survivor helps. Usually you don't get survivors with great breaching skills, at the very least I try to send in people who have 1.5 stars in that skill at a minimum. The rest I'll have as investigators, modifiers, and cooks.

- Debuffs, while they happen, are best kept to minimum on your breaching team. The maximum amount of debuffs I ever managed a breach with for a single survivor without dying on a high equipment level was 3 lacerations, a contusion, and a fever. Attempting a breach later on with just one more laceration killed that survivor (although they took out an impressive 74 zombies in a hospital and allowed my one remaining weakling to escape on Deadline).

- Relationship Health is last but not least. In fact if you're sending more than one breacher into a location you will need to consider this. If you send 4 people who hate each other into a building they will argue and split up, resulting in getting themselves killed or injured; but if you send just 2 survivors into a building who have a great relationship, they will hunt as a team and will likely come out of it without a scratch. If you have to send people into a building who hate each other, at least try to give them seperate breaching rooms. Better yet, pick the one with the best equipment, highest breach skill, and least injuries and just send them in alone. You'll be surprised what a lone survivor can do.

When it comes to breaching I have experienced an equal amount of injury using both guns and melee.

When it comes to defending against the mob, I've found guns worked better to kill more of them on approach and avoid injury.

When it comes to investigating/sniping, I've found guns to be helpful in clearing just one or two zombies from a location before sending a breacher in when my team was still in the starting stages and had low quality equipment.

However, my style is that of a reckless breacher, and I've actually still won by sending my survivors in alone and blind with melee weapons when time has been short (provided they had good equipment).

My verdict is that guns are great for versatility in campaigns where taking a slow methodical approach is an option.

However, for campaigns where speed is of the essence and you don't want zombies following the noise because you don't have time to barricade, or just for speed runs, melee weapons are the far superior choice.

While you should take every precaution to make sure a breach is going to be successful with the bare minimum of injuries resulting, you will eventually get hurt.

The thing is with breaching you're damned if you do, and even more damned if you don't.

If you don't breach you can't find food, weapons, tools, clues, and most importantly: Medical supplies.

Medical supplies will not only heal your team if they get hurt, they'll also reduce the risk of injury turning into a zombie infection.

While bandages can be hard to come by, it is completely worth the risk trying to get them, as they cure the majority of your injuries instantly. You'll find a few in random houses. On that note, breaching the hospital is also very lucrative if you can manage it.

When you use bandages, make sure people with a high Treat skill are involved in the healing process. It makes for far less waste of this valuable resource.

If you do get hurt, and you don't have bandages, assess the extent of the injury to make a judgement if that survivor can continue breaching.

Depending on the situation I will usually replace a breacher and/or bring them back to base to rest/heal if they have more than 2 lacerations, and if they reach 2 lacerations I would only have them breach something small and well investigated with another survivor they get along with well. If multiple survivors are injured it just means you have to rely on teamwork more.

The way you cook can make a big difference over the span of a game. Instead of cooking just basic meals, try to pick someone with a high cooking skill level and create Invigorating and Stimulating Meals. If your survivors are constantly invigorated or Stimulated in their status effects from eating these meals, they will perform better in just about every way.

I tend to leave simple meals and snacks behind in places I'm only breaching for resources. I take any Invigorating and Stimulating meals with me, if you have a couple of people with a good relationship and good cooking skills making meals from ingredients you find you'll get a lot of them in no time.

While you should modify everything as soon as you get the chance, consider modifying your tools first. If you modify a tool to have a high modify rating, you can equip your survivor with it, and then order them to modify; which will result in higher quality modifications when you tell them to prioritize modifying combat items. The higher star rating you get on a combat item, the more likely the survivor using it will stay alive when it comes to a variety of situations in-game.

In any given campaign I will usually barricade 1-2 buildings completely, and then add a fence.

This makes sure that if it all hits the fan I have a backup base to go back to.

There is a bit of a strategy to it though.

When choosing a building to defend location is key.

Typically I will first mop up the starting corner of the map with investigations and breaches in the first 2-3 days. I usually skip barricading the first house, and will barricade one closer to center left (or center right depending on where I start), and later I'll barricade one building in the dead center or slighly over the opposte side to where I started, then investigate and breach the rest of the map from there.

This serves to minimize time spent barricading every house I break into, and allows me to breach every building on the map quicker, as I can just use the buildings I breach for resources as temporary bases for my breaching team to extend my map reach until nightfall, when I retreat to the nearest fortified and fenced building (where I keep my cooks, tinkerers, and investigators).

Defense situations in temporary breacher bases rarely happen if you keep moving, and breachers are usually the strongest to handle it anyway. Just leave the people that need to be protected behind your fences while your big boys go out to conquer.

Thanks for reading my ramblings. I hope that they help you to conquer all of the campaigns in Zafehouse Diaries 2.