The Last Stand: Aftermath is a rogue-lite set fifteen years after the zombie apocalypse ravaged the world. You play as "volunteers" who, having recently been infected, have been tasked with securing supplies and knowledge in the dangerous world outside of the walls of the colony, called The End.

To borrow a phrase from another title, this is a story of how you died — each volunteer is living on borrowed time, and even if they do nothing they will die of their infection. The goal is to accomplish as much as possible, laying the groundwork for further success by later volunteers.

Played as a top down twin-stick inspired survival game, you will explore, scavenge and craft while facing the hordes of the undead, some mundane and some (of course) special infected. Many elements are randomized, so each run is different from the last.

That is not to say this is just a random zombie splatfest! There is a story with objectives to hit as you progress, providing context for your actions and background on the game world.



Playing with a gamepad is highly recommended, as rumble cues will tell you when you are near certain items and when zombies notice you, among other things.

It is a tremendous game and I truly hope you enjoy playing it as much as I am.

Survivors come and go, and with them their weapons, items and gear.

The most essential components to your long term strategy are Knowledge, Supply and Batteries, so any decision that allows you to collect more of these is paramount, and form the basis of much of this advice.

Knowledge is gained through finding documents and items detailing the Old World - books, journals, notes, tape recordings and so on. You can find these anywhere, from gas station bathrooms to storm cellars — even among the possessions of the recently re-deceased.

These are spent at Radios - which may be found randomly in buildings, or sometimes in H.E.R.C stations.

Supply is gathered through finding special Rucksacks that you store in your car's trunk, or through Supply Caches — which require batteries. Supply has no benefit during a mission and can only be spent prior to leaving The End on a new run.

Batteries are likewise scavenged and found randomly. You can also craft them with Scrap + Electronics. Batteries are invaluable as they can be used during missions to power devices that dispense Vaccine, to boot up Supply Caches, unlock special chests and more.

Batteries are rare enough and spent frequently enough that anything you can do to acquire more is a Good Thing.

While Batteries are lost if you die on a run, Supplies and Knowledge are not!

Supply can only be spent at the start of the run.

Supply purchases can offer permanent starter items, temporary starter items, random drop unlocks, new volunteer loadouts, and even just regular items for your current volunteer. These items are spread across the categories of Knowledge, Unlocks and Equipment.



As of 1.1 gear insurance is no longer in the game, removed due to 'exploits'
Gear Insurance selects three random items from this character, to carry on to the next. You will possibly have hundreds of items by the time you die — not worth it unless you take extra steps.

As the game does pause when you open your inventory, you can proactively dump out your entire inventory except for the three items you wish to carry over. Stacks of items, such as ammo, count as one item, so this can be a very effective way to ensure a large stipend of ammo from playthrough to playthrough — although it is tedious to do this.



Given my rate of progress, I am running out of good Knowledge items while still having many Supply items to buy. So it may depend on you, but I say — not worth it.



Unlocks covers new volunteer loadouts as well as new crafting recipes. Recipes learning from Supply cannot be learned elsewhere — for example, you can't craft a Bloodluster even if you have the ingredients, having read the recipe online.

Each new run has three random volunteers from among your available loadouts. I have yet to see a volunteer's beginning loadout be so valuable that I didn't replace it within a map or two. I would say not worth it, but I like unlocking these.



Equipment is the most varied.



White items are just items given directly to your current character.



Green items place a finite amount of the item in the armory, with the quantity specified in the detail pane.



Yellow items are permanent unlocks, available in the armory immediately and for all subsequent runs. While this is useful, not all of these are created equal — items like rags are so abundant in the game that it makes no sense to take it here.



Red items unlock new random drops in the game. I would prioritize these just because it adds to the fun and randomization of each run.



Yellow and Green items appear in the armory, located to the right of the Supply vendor itself.



Permanent (yellow) items are denoted by a star; green items have a quantity listed on them.

If you take nothing else from this guide, know that Knowledge Retention should be your very first skill to unlock and what you should exclusively put points into before moving onto anything else. It will drastically accelerate your progression through the Knowledge tree.



Infection Resistance is essential but you shouldn't invest in it until you begin finding it to be the limiting factor in your runs.

Heavy Hitting and Weapon Durability allows melee to carry you through many tough encounters. Both of these effectively increase the lifespan of your melee weapons, allowing you to be more selective with what you pick up - no more boards or pocket knives for you, my friend.

Between these two, focus on Heavy Hitting first - killing zombies faster means less damage taken.





Modified Radio allows you to detect, via audio cue and gamepad rumble, survivor caches. These will have multiple useful items such as good weapons, meds, ammo and batteries. There are usually multiple caches on each map, making this a tremendous investment.



Radio Jack disables the Battery requirement on upgrade stations. Batteries are way too important to waste on level-ups, and this also allows you to spend Knowledge Points more freely in a run, essentially removing the decision and just allowing you to do it.



While health items are not hard to come by with good scavenging and crafting, getting more health back per item means you don't need to expend additional resources crafting better healing items. As your Mutation Bar progresses, medkits will overheal you anyway, so they become less needed as time goes on.

Brawling has its uses early on, but with the upgrades to melee weapon damage and durability you'll never find yourself needing it. You do need at least one level of it to move onto Heavy Hitting.



This allows you to access certain fenced-off areas, and red lockers found in later maps.



I found the red lockers to be more prevalent in city locations, while the fenced-off areas don't spawn as readily. While the red lockers generally had good loot, fenced-off areas did not. Not a skill to rush to.



These grant access to certain chests and underground areas that you find more readily in later maps, with good and plentiful loot.



Due to not being of use immediately, you may want to put this one off.



Each of the two upgrades in this node increase carry capacity by 10, for a total of 60 carry weight (40 base + 10 + 10). Absolutely not worth it.

Update

With the 1.1 patch, the developers changed the encumbrance system with the following:

• default carry capacity is now 50 (up from 40)
  
• knowledge upgrades increase this in four stages, up to a maximum of 120
  
• encumbrance is now a 4 stage system that racks up penalties to move speed as well as stamina consumption with each tier
  
• sector stashes allow you to ditch unneeded gear, gifting it to future expeditions

Outdated as of 1.1

With the base carry weight of 40 (60 with Knowledge upgrades), which can go a little higher with a specific mutation, you will likely always be encumbered after a few maps of looting.

Who cares?

Encumbrance, once you reach the threshold, increases stamina usage across all categories (running, kicking doors, melee attacks).

There are so many useful items that it is much better to merely be more cautious with your increased stamina drain, than it is to try to discard items down to the limit.

The most important thing to know is that there's much more to scavenge than just what is shown to you in Focus Mode.

Focus Mode shows you things like Fuel, Crafting Stations, Basements, Antivirals, H.E.R.C. stations and so on - major points of interest. Exploring the map fully will always yield much more than these destinations.



Likewise, there is more to scavenge beyond what is indicated in the counter at the top of the screen in certain locations. These do not count items immediately outside the house, nor do are there counters for items around the map, such as those in cars, campsites, trash bins and elsewhere.

Often, the last item in these areas may elude you, and it's best to move on rather than spending valuable minutes hunting down the last scavengeable item in a location.

The container or location you're scavenging affects what you'll likely pick up!

While actual contents are largely random, certain items are more likely to spawn in certain containers than others — and some are guaranteed drops.

For example, you may have seen those large white water storage tanks in trucks or compounds, and those will have clean water (or nothing).

Batteries are often found in the blue electrical boxes on telephone poles, if it doesn't contain scrap or electronics.

Houses usually have some food, as do certain stores and restaurants.

There's still a chance to find good stuff anywhere, but over time you will begin to know whether it's worth the time or risk to dive into a certain location for looting.

Ground Items

There are some items that are not in a scavengeable container — boards, bottles, bricks and herbs.



Boards are basic melee weapons that can also be used to craft a specific melee weapon once you acquire the recipe; do not pick up every board you see.

Bottles and Bricks can be thrown to distract enemies. Regrettably, these items do not damage zombies at all even when you score a direct hit. While bricks are used in crafting a certain weapon, bottles are not. Don't bother picking these up.

Herbs can be crafted into healing items that cure poison, restore health and restore stamina respectively. They are insanely useful and you should collect all of the herbs you find.

H.E.R.C. Stations contain Antivirals, and may contain supplies and a radio as well.



They can be seen in Focus Mode with this icon.



Initially locked, you must kick-start the generator to open the door. This does call a horde!



Even without unlocking the door, the H.E.R.C. Station may have an Antiviral dispenser on the right side, which requires a battery to access.



Once opened, you will see a few different items to interact with. Not all of these are in each H.E.R.C. Station!



On the left is another Antiviral dispenser, which rather than requiring batteries instead needs a certain amount of infected blood. You can scavenge these from dead zombies.

You can only buy one Antiviral from this dispenser, no matter how many blood samples you have.



There is also a radio, which is sometimes powered and sometimes requires a battery.



There are also two chests, one white and one red. The white chest contains medical items, while the red one has weapons. The contents are randomized.

These chests are not worth it. I have spent a whole battery to get a single bandage in some cases!

Antivirals pause the progress on your infection. As your infection progresses, your maximum health lowers and you gain Mutations. Your infection progresses faster if you are attacked by infectious zombies — identifiable with purple gas flowing around them — or if you are poisoned.





The short answer is: use them immediately. Their duration is not impacted by traveling with the car or any other action, so there is no reason not to use them immediately. This means you benefit from higher max health for longer, and should you accidentally get hit by an infectious zombie or trip over your feet into a poison cloud, then you're not really punished for it.

If you do happen to be holding onto one when you are poisoned, use it immediately to stop the rapid progression of your infection.

Antivirals also heal you, so keep that in mind.

It is absolutely worth it to spend Batteries on Antivirals over Supply Caches!

Lastly, you can re-inject even if you're still under the duration of a previous injection; it just refreshes it to the full duration. Useful if you need to grab it and go instead of waiting for it to expire.

The Last Stand: Aftermath is a roguelike and the area where its randomization is most prominent is in its weapon offerings from run to run.

I have had runs where certain weapons never seemed to spawn, or runs where firearms I found remained unused as their ammo never dropped.

Fundamentally, any guide that says to use a specific firearm shouldn't be trusted, so my recommendations will trend towards what kinds of weapons to look for or prioritize.

Melee weapons are fairly straightforward and reliable despite the randomization aspect. All the same, there are some things to consider:

Bladed or Blunt
Bladed weapons are superior. Fully upgraded, most bladed weapons kill standard zombies in one hit, while most blunt weapons did not. Blunt weapons are good for knocking a crowd around, but my recommendation would be to avoid being in a crowd in the first place.

One or Two-Handed
Two handed weapons are slower but hit harder, which is nice for standard zombies and essential for the special types. Two-handers will stagger specials more readily as well.

Slow or Fast
This only matters where armored zombies are concerned. Your character will do a kind of quick hop-step to close the distance for melee attacks, so dealing with the slower windup can be a non-issue.

Fast weapons are great for one thing: dealing with armored zombies. Their armor seems to fall off after 4-6 hits regardless as to your weapon's other properties.

Improvised or Standard
The game does not distinguish between these, but for the sake of discussion this is the difference between a combat knife versus a kitchen cleaver — and you should always prefer standard weapons as they hit harder and have higher durability.

It can be worth offloading some of your durability loss onto improvised weapons, such as dealing with armored zombies.

Crafted or Not?
Crafted melee weapons are amazing and among the best weapons in the game, especially the ones you unlock via Supply purchases as you level up.

Most of these require you to craft Melee Parts first:
Melee Parts (Scrap + Tape)

Supply Unlocks
Warhammer (Melee Parts + Brick) — 2 handed blunt
Bloodluster (Melee Parts + Scrap) — 2 handed bladed
Gear Axe (Melee Parts + Gear) — 2 handed bladed

Discovery Unlocks
Knuckckle Dusters (Scrap + Rag)
Hand Blades (Melee Parts + Knuckle Dusters)
Spiked Board (Melee Parts + Board)
War Pick (Melee Parts + Pipe)

Of these, the Bloodluster is far and away the best melee weapon, crafted or no. It is so insanely cheap to craft (two scrap one tape), hits like a truck and applies bleed damage, which can finish off some specials if they (or you) run away during a fight. Bleed damage synergizes with a few mutations as well.

The Gear Axe does more damage, so I'll craft one and save it for tough enemies, but I'll craft as many Bloodlusters as I can and use then almost exclusively over any other melee weapon. The Gear Axe also requires a gear to craft, which is among the rarer items and is also required for Firearm Parts.

In contrast to melee weapons, there is a wide breadth of available firearms, most of which you won't use in a run due to randomization and back luck with spawns. Rather than recommend a specific firearm, here are some things to prioritize.

High Capacity
Unlife can come at you fast, and reloading is paused when you run or dodge. Being able to fire more without reloading is always valuable.

Fast Reloads
While there is a perk to reduce reload times, you will always see a drastic time differential between clip fed firearms (almost all of them) versus individual ammo reloads (shotguns). Shotguns are nice to knock a tough zombie off their feet, but never rely on it as your primary weapon.

Full Auto
Full auto weapons can fire single rounds if you are careful with your taps or trigger pulls, but the advantage of being able to quickly spray down a horde cannot be understated.

Long Range
While the longer range firearms are not full auto, they are incredibly useful in thinning a horde well outside of their detection range, especially if you're using a silencer.

Crafted or Not?
Crafted firearms are, sadly, not as wonderful as crafted melee weapons, with only an SMG, shotgun and flamethrower available. Each of them require Firearm parts, which can be difficult to craft with gears being hard to find.

Firearm Parts (Scrap + Gear)

Improvised Shotgun (Firearm Parts + Can)
Improvised SMG (Firearm Parts + Pipe)
Flamethrower (Firearm Parts + Oil Filter)
Flamethrower Ammo - Propane (Plastic Bottle + Alcohol)

Of these, the Flamethrower stands above the rest due to its ammo being easy to craft. However, it is more of an endgame weapon. First off, gears are somewhat hard to find, but can eventually be added to the armory as a permanent unlock. Second is it is best used if you have maxed out your flame damage perks. Most important though, is that most zombies can easily be killed by any weapon in the game, except Armored zombies — and the flamethrower ignores armor. These guys become a larger issue as the game progresses, so you're better off saving your propane and propane accessories until you start seeing many more Armored zombies.

Lastly, there are three weapon mods that are craftable

Improvised Suppressor (Oil Filter + Scrap)
Improvised Rifle Scope (Can + Scrap)
Bottle Suppressor (Plastic Bottle + Tape)

Of these, the suppressors should be prioritized, with the improvised suppressor being essentially silent even as it cites a mere -75% noise reduction.

Always load your firearms after equipping them! Equipping a new gun puts it in your hands with nothing loaded.

Fear elevation differences. You do not auto-aim up or down with firearms if your target is up or down a hill or some stairs. Likewise, this causes some melee jank — avoid fighting on hills or stairs if at all possible.

Lurkers naturally crouch and crawl just below some weapon's default trajectory; crouching can help you nail these guys from a safe distance.

Consuming canned food or bottled water will produce an empty can or bottle for crafting. Crafting with bottled water (to make bandages) does not produce an empty bottle.

You cannot manually drop Fuel. However, you will drop it if you enter your car.

Wooden chairs can be destroyed with melee attacks. This does not count against your weapon's durability. Radios in houses at kitchen tables are often inaccessible unless you break the chairs.

The game saves when you enter a new map. If you get stuck (it happens), quit to main menu and reload. RNG is applied on mapgen, so you'll be presented with the exact same map with the same loot as before. Yes, you can use this to savescum since nothing is saved until you leave the map or die.

You can choose to travel to a location even if you do not have sufficient Fuel. You will stop in a random small map, often between large groups of zombies. This map will always have Fuel, which allows you to get to your chosen destination.

It is not necessary to "clear" a map. Sometimes it is best to grab some fuel and move on.

You have three crafting stations: fire barrels, work benches and your backpack (default down on the d-pad). Some items can only be made at one and not another.

Zombies can't break fences.

Zombies do not communicate. If one notices you, it does not draw others even if it is standing in a group.

Damaged guns simply do less damage. Damaged melee weapons have less durability. You can repair each of these with scrap at a bench. Repairing a damaged melee weapon restores its durability to the "normal" value.

Additional Mutations are unlocked over the course of the game.

If you are having trouble determining where your shots are going to land, you can enable Enemy Outlines for aimed enemies under Options > Gameplay > Enemy Outlines. This defaults to "Focus Mode" but can be changed to "Aiming", which highlights any enemy you are aiming at — very useful as most firearms' range exceeds the on-screen reticule. (provided by oofda00)