Dying Light: Aldemir

[Part of the Dying Light diary - spoilers ahead!]

Apart from the Sad Face plan not working, we get news that Jade and the cure research have been taken by Rais at the museum so we sneak and ambush his dudes, easily taking them down.

His second line of defense is an undead horde you are supposed to jump over, but DL stacks it so we all drop down and cleanse the area of zombies completely. Looting them all afterwards takes quite awhile.

Look at all those loot pinatas!

Finally we get to Jade but she too has been bit. Rais gives us one shot of antizin for torment's sake, and after tripping balls for a bit, Jade uses the antizin on us before going ape on Rais' next bunch of goons as she turns. I then snap Ms. Aldemir's neck while DL and Jim take care of Rais' last lieutenant.

Of course, Rais manages to get away.

Insight: Fire crackers are super handy if you get into a horde and have no time to bathe in their guts for a disguise. Apparently the noise and light is always more attractive to them than people are.

Dying Light: Oh Baby

[Part of the Dying Light diary - spoilers ahead!]

Hoping to catch up with Jade, we go talk to a group who help smuggle people into the next sector: Old Town. This involves a trip through the sewers and a betrayal as said people also work for Rais. They have no chance against us.

On the other side a new map awaits, and find "the Loft" a safe zone run by Troy who has a bad habit of sending us to where Jade is not. We also run a side quest of getting the water running again, and since there are three separate places to do this, we split up and hit one each - followed by the main valve which is guarded by a sole volatile.

Having fought a mob of them previously, this isn't very dangerous. We also hit some quarantine zones including the Striped Dragon Hotel where we meet a new type of zombie: the baby. Its cries drain health AND summon runners. Not a good combo which puts it on the "kill on sight" list.

Never hesitate if you have the shot.

Insight: The skill to cover yourself in zombie guts which makes you undetectable to zombies (other than volatiles) combined with the neck snap skill previously mentioned makes many horde encounters a cake walk. It also saves ammo and weapon durability.

Dying Light: Gladiator

[Part of the Dying Light diary - spoilers ahead!]

Returning to the tower we meet an even more upset Brecken. There's no time to sort out feelings though as Dr. Zere's lab comes under attack! We rush to the scene and kill some of Rais' goons but find the good doctor has been kidnapped.

We tail them back to Rais compound and find it suspiciously empty, until we all get knocked out via cut scene ambush. We awake in a pit arena with no gear. Rais is there gloating with Dr. Zere at his side. After monologing he unleashes zombies on us, because they collect zombies in containers for fun apparently.

The "real" Harran virus.

The litter makes decent weaponry and we manage to fight the waves off. As a finale he even drops in a demolisher, but given we just fought three of them at the prison this guy is a piece of cake. Especially after I knocked off his helmet via a thrown table leg. Rais is not pleased, and when he comes down to gloat we take the opportunity to disarm him and kill a few of his dudes.

Dr. Zere is hit in the commotion and says that all hope now lies with Jade who is taking his research to a Dr. Camden in the next sector. A massive parkour escape sequence follows, though not so much escaping from DL who specifically goes back to kill some snipers. Scott free, we get out on the road and promptly collapse from our injuries, only to be saved by Brecken and surprisingly, Karim who delivers bags full of our confiscated gear.

Insight: There is an skill unlock to throw melee weapons. I found that it's not really useful (especially if you want the weapon back) outside of this particular fight.

Dying Light: Darwin Award

[Part of the Dying Light diary - spoilers ahead!]

Despite being repeatedly told to just chillax in the Tower, Rahim had taken the explosives Jade brought back and decided to take a small crew to explode a not so nearby volatile nest. We find his team all dead on the overpass, and he himself hiding in a train car because I guess he was ambushed by zombies? What do you mean there'll be zombies in the zombie nest? DUHHH.

The idiot then hands us the explosives which HE HAS ALREADY ACTIVATED and tells us to finish the job. With just 4 minutes that doesn't leave us much time to argue so we run for it, right into the construction site nest, planting bombs in the midst of all types of zombies.

Better get running!

Being the fastest, I'm the only one who reaches the highest floor (only 4th floor accessible) where the actual volatiles are but with no time to spare I just plant the last bomb and run for it, making it out with 20 seconds to spare. My brothers had found lower exits and were ahead of me at this part, and from a safe distance away we then watched the whole structure implode on itself. It was very impressive.

A short trip back to Rahim revealed he had turned, and I gleefully break his neck. Idiots don't deserve to live.

Insight: There is a neck break skill you can unlock to use against everything else which will 1 hit kill them but requires you to get behind your opponent. It does not work on volatiles. I tried.

Dying Light: Junk Collectors

[Part of the Dying Light diary - spoilers ahead!]

Side quests continue, as we clear a motel, unlock caches and pawn shop supplies, fetch chocolates and movies for Gazi the hilarious retard and help General Jeff at the makeshift Fort Jefferson to turn on the gas for his "firewall" defense (which results in his entire safe zone exploding).

Shields keep you alive against explosions. And bullets.

Their usefulness drops as you level up though.

We also climb a freaking high bridge to collect the bridge lights which doesn't result in fun times for Jim, but we certainly all have fun with a gun challenge provided by a zombie movie producer who gives free temporary firearms and unlimited ammo to kill zombies in a time limit.

Eventually we make it back to the Tower where Brecken is losing his people and his morale. Jade suggests we go raid one of Rais supply dumps at a nearby school so we do, arrowing the thugs inside and find a supply of dynamite. Almost as good as antizin I suppose?

We are rewarded with a grapling hook which makes travel faster exponentially, though not so much for DL who likes to loot every single corpse. On the flip side, this means we have an over supply of junk that clears some of the lesser fetch quests. What Dr. Zere asks for next though is something we don't have... the insides of a "bolter" zombie.

Insight: The grappling hook trivializes escaping from volatiles, as long as you remember to have it equipped and aren't caught in an open field.

Dying Light: That's not Rais

[Part of the Dying Light diary - spoilers ahead!]

Turning on the comms is not enough to satisfy Karim, so we are next sent to get protection money from a bunch of local outposts which is easy enough as no one really wants to get Rais' ire. In between we are collecting air drops, even killing Rais' dudes for it, and sneaking around at night past the volatiles.

We also came across the Sunny Apartment quarantine zone and cleared it room to room. Having a pistol from a police car certainly helped a little. The Underground Parking quarantine was much harder as it had patrolling volatiles who needed to be dodged while looking for supply crates amid the alarmed cars.

Survivor sense somehow gives you x-ray vision when it comes to volatiles.

DL took up distraction duty with his favorite firecracker / molotov combo while Jim and I did the searching. At the end I think there was only one volatile left as the rest had burned from DLs efforts.

Despite all our hoop jumping, Rais decided to only pay with a handful of antizin instead of the original two crates worth. His next task involves some sort of perversion with Jade so we tell him "We'll think about it," when in reality we were thinking "Can't we kill this guy now?". Our loyalty to the GRE also wavers more when they advise we -should- just hand Jade over.

Insight: While firearms are bad outdoors in that the sound attracts everything, you should definitely make use of them indoors - unless trying to sneak of course!

Dying Light: Getting the Drop

[Part of the Dying Light diary - spoilers ahead!]

After spending the night snoozing at the safe house, I return to the Tower to finally meet up with my brothers (coop mode! yay!) and the Tower leader, Brecken - who is injured and upset that his team got pwned during their failed supply run last night. With Antizin running low, there's not much choice but to try again. We outsiders volunteer.

Called in some backup!

Since the better armed and more violent "brigand" faction seems to get to air drops really quickly during the day, we need to go for night drops and risk the "horrors" instead. Sounds like a plan! There are a bunch of other fetch tasks the other plebs at the Tower ask for as well, so I make a shopping list.

In the meantime Jim goes to stock up and craft supplies while DL goes and hits on Jade, the woman that saved me on arrival. Once we're all done with our *business* we move out and start clearing out as many safe zones as we can, all while moving towards the last reported drops... which are empty - to no one's surprise.

Just as the sun gets low, a cargo plane flies into view dropping another crate of vital supplies. This is it! We race to it and find it is full of antizin, then like the obedient GRE dogs we are, we take a handful for ourselves and TORCH THE REST. Just like we were ordered to.

Insight: More people makes it more fun, but also less scary. :)