Daybreak is a State of Decay 2 DLC co-op Zombie siege defense mode for up to 4 players online. Where you play as a Random Red Talon (Volunteer) Soldier to Defend a Technician against the zombie horde. Your objective: Keep the Technician Alive & Survive until Daybreak. The siege mode consists of 7 waves that are 5 minutes each. Standing between the zombies and the technician there is a wall. The wall consists of several panels that may or may not need to be repaired during the fight or between waves if they become heavily damaged. When you first load in, there will be a heavily damaged wall that will need to be repaired with a repair kit that every player starts with in their inventory. Any player can repair a wall panel so long as they have a repair kit in their inventory. You will also notice 3 boxes at the very back. These boxes start you off with a moderate amount of supplies & equipment to help get you through your first couple of waves. The first 2 waves must be done with what you have on hand and what's in the boxes in the back. After that, CLEO will drop air support containers to aid you in your survival. It is vital to retrieve and loot these resupply containers after every wave. Don't forget to share with your teammates if you have them. You will have approximately 2 mins. between waves to do just that. If the Technician is wounded during the fight you can heal them using a bandage from your inventory if you have one as long as they are not in combat. To do this go to the back of the technician while they are preparing the device and use the button prompt.
It is not split screen co-op.
Dying:[]
If you manage to find yourself in the unfortunate event of an untimely, unwanted & unexpected death everyone will be notified as the screams of your character verify their own horrific demise. You will drop all of your current inventory in a loot bag and have to wait 15 seconds to re-spawn. Your character will turn into a blood plague zombie and have to be slain to retrieve any lost equipment. Your area of death will then be marked on the map to help you & others locate any lost equipment you may have dropped. Any player including yourself can loot this drop bag and it will stay on the ground until it is fully looted. Upon re-spawning you will be another soldier entirely with a randomly selected melee weapon & a fully loaded gun to get back into the fight with. Dying in Daybreak does not affect your community in State of Decay 2 story mode whatsoever. These Red Talon soldiers are considered completely different and separate people from your community in a completely different area. Even if you join in Daybreak using your radio command during story. You can not and will not play as your community members in Daybreak. So rest assured that if you die in Daybreak you fortunately didn't in fact get your community member(s) killed. They make it clear that you as a soldier are expendable. The Technician is not. If the Technician dies the game is over. A short cinematic will play of your loss and you will have to start from wave 1 again with your starting equipment if you wish to try again. The map will be reset, as well as the 3 supply boxes in the back. Anything you store in these boxes/ drop on the ground does not carry over to the next defense instance. There are no checkpoint waves. You must defeat all 7 waves in one go while keeping the Technician alive in order to win. You will however get to keep any prestige points and unlocks that you may have earned during that last session.
Progression, Unlockables & Prestige:[]
While playing Daybreak you will earn "prestige" and "unlockables" which can then be used in State of Decay 2 story mode. Unlocks are earned for surviving waves 3, 5, & 7. Unlockable items include a number of unique Daybreak weapons, Red Talon facility prefabs for story mode such as a workshop 3 that allows your stored weapons to be passively (slowly) repaired over time, a new watchtower, and new explosive devices including quick deploy minefields, grenades & more. Prestige is used in story mode to purchase earned/ unlocked Daybreak weapons, mods, explosives and facilities from a prestige trader to upgrade your community & base with.
- Prestige points cap at 99,999.
- Prestige points can only be earned by playing the Daybreak DLC.
- Prestige points are only used and spent in Story Mode.
The prestige trader is located under Daybreak on your radio menu in Story Mode so long as you bought and installed the Daybreak DLC for State of Decay 2. They can be called at any time for free. Do note however that if you haven't played Daybreak yet and you call them, their supply will be extremely limited. If they have anything, you will not be able to purchase any of it until you have earned prestige points by playing Daybreak. As everything they sell cost prestige points. Again, Daybreak can be started at the main menu or by initiating it using your radio menu as stated above. Most of the available items wont even show up in the shop menu until you have unlocked them by playing Daybreak.
Prestige is needed for all of the daybreak related content. You can not even craft CLEO ammo packs without it which is used for CLEO weapons that are earned by playing Daybreak. These weapons consist of a weak smg that has 128 round magazine to a Heavy Sniper Rifle that can 4 shot a juggernaut with a 8 round mag that takes 2 bullets per shot. Both weapons use CLEO Ammo.
Victory:[]
Upon defeating all 7 waves and successfully surviving until daybreak completes the mission. Congratulations, you have won. You will be notified that you have done so as well as be awarded with a small victory animation. A reward screen will pop up showing all that you & your team has accomplished during the night as well as showing you what you have unlocked. You will be rewarded with prestige based on the number of zombies the entire team put to rest along with all 3 unlocks achievable for a single play through. If you manage to survive all 7 waves from start to finish you will usually get about 1,000 prestige for that play through. Note: Daybreak will have to be completed several times to unlock everything for both Daybreak and State of Decay 2 Story Mode.
"Congratulations on your battle soldier, now get back out there and win us the war against Zeds!" -Unknown
Post Game:[]
- You keep what you unlock for daybreak as a selection of starting equipment.
- Anything unlocked for State of Decay 2 can now be bought at the prestige trader.
- You lose anything that was leftover in your inventory, left on the ground or put in the supply boxes.
When Starting a new instance of Daybreak you will lose all leftover equipment that has been found during the last match except the equipment that you unlock through playing Daybreak for Daybreak as your starting equipment. This "unlocked" equipment can be selected from a pre-match weapon selection screen just before the game begins after selecting "Play Again?", "Start" or "Find match". The supply boxes inventory, technician health, players health, players inventory, wall health, and map will all be reset to their default settings. To what they were when you first began the game. Any leftover weapons, ammo, supply drops, throwables, and consumables that were on the map at the end of the last round will all have been cleaned off the map like they were never there (map reset).
Once you have unlocked everything there is to unlock you can continue to play Daybreak for prestige points to spend in the story for various things from the prestige trader. Keep in mind that you can only have 99,999 prestige points stored at one time. This can be checked in daybreak by going to the main menu in daybreak and opening up your collection. Your prestige is also displayed on your base screen while in story with the (^) icon if Daybreak is installed on your system. It will be in the same box where you view your influence.