Dying Light: Solo Finale

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

Safe from the bombs for now, we visit Dr. Camden and clear his lab of hostiles for him before finally chasing after Rais. At the door to his tower the game warns us that this is the finale and is only meant for single player, so we wish each other luck and enter our own instance of the event.

The first yard itself is home to demolishers and runners and I immediately choose to run past, mainly because I find killing demolishers unrewarding. In Jim's instance, he decided to kill everything! Which is impossible because they respawn. Lol.

I then found myself in a tunnel full of volatiles. GREAT. Not fighting this time! Fortunately I still have UV flares to spare here to run past these scum in a mad parkour sequence. Failure restarts you at the top of the tunnel, but doesn't replenish your flares. Somehow DL managed to do this in his run without taking damage and without flares, so I guess I'm just terrible?

Not a good time to go slow.

Finally it is into the tower proper where a dying Karim, shot by Rais, warns us of the mines upstairs. We would need to take a detour to the next building.

Insight: Bring a LOT of flares and medkits into the finale with you. :P

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: Temp Survivors

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

Clearing the school let a new small group of survivors in, led by the now one legged mayor who is being hunted by assassins. Naturally we help, finding these guys were sent by Karim who declares the mayor to be a scum. This proves true as he abandons us after we get him and his group a helicopter ride out of there. At least he left some supplies. Karim is there to tell us "I told you so".

We also find another group that camped out on a roof top of a building with electrified scaffolding. Alas, the on switch for said defense was at the base of the building which effectively trapped all of them up there to cyanide their way out.

Only those bit turn.

Finally night descends and we can go hunt for the bolter zombie Dr. Zere wanted. On the way to the train yard my bros get spotted by volatiles and have to go running, meaning I'm the only one that reaches the spawning ground, which of course is crawling with more volatiles.

I employ all my thief skills to find the damned thing but just can't seem to find a clean way down. With dawn about to break, there's no choice - I just jump in which turns out to be good timing. All the critters run as the sun rises (I'd be dead otherwise), but I spot my green covered target and fire off one arrow. Boom. Headshot.

Soon after we're up to our elbows in bolter guts. Dr. Zere will be pleased.

Insight: Bolters are weak and don't actually require a headshot. As long as you hit them, they should die.

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: Slip and Slide

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

The tunnel is home to abandoned trains... and a seemingly endless army or "runner" type zombies. Fortunately DL has taught his FEAR slide kick maneuver to us, and it proves very handy for dealing with them in tight quarters.

We ultimately need to run past them though and loot the large supply drops still in the train cars - as well as one annoying one on the side which requires Jim to watch my back as I pick a lock through the access gate. When we finally get out we're covered in so much zombie guck it's disgusting. Little did we know this would be a valid zombie evasion tactic later on.

Finally, smelling like intestine contents, we arrive at Rais' compound and discover he's the target that has the GRE file we came to get in the first place. Unfortunately his gun toting guards don't give us an opportunity to do anything about it. Instead we are sent to his aide, Karim, to work for antizin.

High places usually have wires you can use to zipline down.

Our first task is to climb up radio towers to try get the comms back on, much to Jim's dismay. I should point out that Jim likes to drink while playing and as the night goes on, these climbing puzzles become more challenging for him. It does become more amusing for DL and I to watch him attempt though. ;)

Insight: In co-op, someone can stay downstairs to revive people who fall.