If you’ve watched a show like The Walking Dead, you’ll know that in a zombie apocalypse, the unprepared always die first. If you play by the rules, you’ll die; if you don’t have survivalist skills, you’ll die. In other words, if you don’t know all the tricks, you won’t be able to make it far in a zombie apocalypse or in the new zombie game, The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land (Free). Unlike in a real zombie apocalypse, in The Walking Dead: NML you can buy IAPs to help tilt the survival odds in your favor, but who said that surviving should cost you actual money? That’s why I’m writing this The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land guide so you can survive without shelling out any money; you can keep that for your victory burger after taking down the walkers. The game is a combination of base building, RPG, and tactical gameplay, and you’ll spend most of your time with it expanding and upgrading your base, guiding your survivors through various sets from the TV show, killing zombies, and gathering supplies.
You’ll use those supplies to build and upgrade various buildings in your base that in turn will allow you to upgrade your survivors and your weaponry so you can go on more dangerous missions to get more supplies, and so on and so on. Since the game is F2P, you have an energy system (represented by Fuel in this game) that dictates how often you can play the game. While there’s nothing really ground-breaking in the game’s systems, they come together nicely and you’ll be coming back to the game again and again, especially if you like the show The Walking Dead. So, here are some tips, tricks, and general advice on how to get the most out of the game without paying real cash; after all, in the apocalypse money has no value anymore.
Base Building
To begin with, farms are more important to your camp than you would first think. They aren’t there to feed your survivors (apparently they eat air), but rather to give you supplies that let you build and upgrade buildings. So, make sure you build and upgrade as many as you can early on because that ensures you won’t run out of supplies. If you do run out of supplies and your farms aren’t producing enough, you’ll have to wait for quite some time before building or upgrading anything. If you have enough supplies stored, then you’ll be able to upgrade your various buildings as soon as they are available for upgrade. Since you can’t replay missions in this game, you don’t want to end up having a camp with low level buildings and not enough supplies coming in.
Speaking of supplies, make sure you build a Supplies Storage when you see your supplies too close to your storage limits; you’ll waste a lot of time if you can’t store all the supplies your farms are producing. Also keep in mind you can clear out the Junk around your base to make space for future buildings. When you have some extra supplies here and there, use them to clear out your base early on so when you get into the crunch of having to build the more advanced buildings, you don’t have to waste supplies on clearing out stuff.
In order to get some free supplies, make sure you come back to the game often and pop those zombies around your camp. This minigame will offer plenty of bonuses including things like Call Outs, so make sure you do that often. Also, watch all the videos you can when opening crates, check the achievements often to see how to get more rewards, and make sure you join a guild. Joining a Guild costs you nothing, but it opens up Weekly Challenges. Some of the weekly challenge rewards I got were pretty awesome.
The Mission Car produces Gas (the game’s wording, not mine), which is another word for Energy. Since the game’s F2P, the Gas will determine how many missions you can play before having to wait for your car’s gas to refill. While many players say you should quickly upgrade your Mission Car to have the ability to do more missions before hitting the gas wall, I would suggest first playing the game to see how much you play per sitting and then decide whether to upgrade the Mission Car. If you don’t find yourself running on empty while you play the game, hold off from upgrading the Mission Car and use your resources to other, more pressing upgrades.
Build a Workshop early on because you’ll need to keep upgrading your weapons and armor (which are pretty crappy early on). Having a high-level survivor with low-level weapons will be a major pain once missions get trickier. Don’t waste resources upgrading all of your weapons and all of your armor/clothes because you won’t need all of them. In most missions you’ll take two to three survivors (especially in the early missions), so you don’t really need to have six upgraded knives or four great bats. Prioritize upgrading weapons with a high-level ceiling or with multiple perks so your resources don’t go to waste upgrading a knife that you won’t use after Mission 3.
As for all those weapons and clothing you aren’t using anymore, scrap them to get some extra resources. In general, the moment you get a better weapon or armor, scrap the old ones you were using unless one of your backup people is using it. The Hospital really isn’t an urgent upgrade because during the early missions you’ll either kill everyone without a scratch, or you’ll get minor injuries that take a few minutes to heal. So, I would hold off on upgrading the Hospital until later on in the game. If you do find yourself often having to wait for your injured party members to heal, then upgrade the Hospital.
Speaking of your survivors, they are split in three classes: Scout, Bruiser, and Hunter (warrior, tank, ranged, in other words). Upgrade your Training Grounds when you can, but keep in mind that it’s not extremely urgent because it will take some time for you to find survivors that are worth upgrading beyond level 2 or 3. After all, most early-game survivors are low-level characters and won’t go over Level 3. Don’t neglect upgrading it though because it won’t take too long for missions to start recommending Level 3 characters. By the way, take these Level recommendations with a grain of salt since you can easily make it through most missions even if your group has characters one level below the recommended level. Just make sure to have upgraded weapons, too. The order with which you want to upgrade your survivors depends on how you intend to play the mission part of the game, but I’ll talk about that in a bit.
The way you get more survivors in the game is either by using your Call Outs or by completing Episodes. Call Outs are quite random and more often than not will not get you the type of survivor you need. So, don’t be afraid to reject the survivor it gives you if he/she is either a low level common characters or is from a class you already have strong survivors in. You only have limited space for survivors, so don’t waste it on weak characters that can only be upgraded once or twice. You can get an extra slot with 100 Gold, but I really wouldn’t recommend it especially during the first 3,4 episodes, just as long as you remember to retire survivors that have outlived their usefulness. Just make sure to give any survivor you retire your weakest weapons and clothes/armor.
Survivor Team/Missions Tips and Tricks
Once you decide it’s time to take your team to face the zombie hordes, you have to pick your team members wisely. Scouts are good at killing zombies quickly and silently, Bruisers can incapacitate zombies for one turn, and Hunters can take out many zombies in a row but with the the danger of alerting more zombies. The best team for most missions is one of each type. When fighting zombies, keep your survivors close to each other because in the later missions zombies will often pop out from all directions, including behind you. If you are keeping you Hunter back so he/she can line up shots better, you are running the danger of zombies overwhelming and killing him/her. The best way to move about the mission is with a Bruiser and a Scout to the front and the Hunter close behind them. That way Bruisers can incapacitate, which gives the Scout more turns to kill the zombies, and the Hunter can offer support as zombies close in towards your front two and line up nicely for the kill.
You’ll have to use the Overwatch skill all the time, which is when you only move your survivors for 1 AP (out of 2) and then end your turn. When in Overwatch, our survivors will strike out at any zombie that comes close, keeping themselves safe. Keep in mind that when your Hunter shoots while in Overwatch, the zombies won’t be alerted. In order to make the most of Overwatch, pay attention to how the level is set up and use choke points to force zombies to come to your bruiser first. Since bruisers have the most health and can also incapacitate zombies, they are the best first line of defence.
Any tight spots in the level can also play havoc to your own plans because your survivors can’t pass through each other; be careful not to end up blocking your bruiser or scout with your shooter and having zombies attack the shooter. Also, take advantage of any ways you can attack zombies without getting attacked (for instance if there’s a cage door between them). Something that many don’t realize is that each survivor has a perk that you can use in a mission (usually just once per mission). Those perks, which appear on the survivor’s portrait, allow you to get critical hits and can often dispatch of a zombie.
The missions aren’t timed, but there is a timer of sorts in the form of incoming zombies. Depending on the state of your survivors, try to kill as many zombies as possible to gain extra XP even if you end up getting a few more scratches on your survivors. The more scratches they get the more time they’ll need to recuperate, but the difference between a few versus many scratches isn’t that much in terms of time, so try to take out as many zombies as you can before ending the mission. You could even have your survivors stand just in front of the mission exit point and kill as many zombies as they can. If things get tough, you just go one step back and you are done. Keep in mind, though, that if a survivor is too weak, he might get into a tussle with a zombie and you won’t be able to move him without killing the zombie first.
Finally, when it comes to missions, make sure you open the supply crates when you are near them otherwise you’ll have to backtrack a lot and might get a survivor killed. Use the Hunter to open crates so the Scout and Bruiser can protect her. Again, avoid keeping survivors towards the edges of a level because that leaves them vulnerable to zombies spawning from all around. And remember, zombies will only attack when alerted (either by gunshots or by a survivor going too close), so take advantage of distance to avoid getting mobbed.
That’s all for this guide. I hope you’ve found it useful, and I’m sure that if you follow all these tricks, you’ll make it further into the game without having to spend any actual money. If you have some additional ideas or some tips and tricks you’ve dicovered while playing the game, please add them in the comments; the more help players get the better. Okay, now go out and clear the zombie scourge of the face of the earth (or at least make a tiny little dent).
