How to Claim an Outpost in State of Decay 2
Claiming an outpost in State of Decay 2 boosts community morale, offers special benefits, and helps everyone survive the zombie outbreak.
Having a community base is the first step to surviving against the zombies in State of Decay 2, but to truly survive, players will need to claim a few outposts. Claiming an outpost offers a host of benefits for the home base and the survivors, so it’s a vital step to take.
How to Claim an Outpost
Outposts act as an extension of the main community base in State of Decay 2. While survivors cannot live at an outpost, they offer other benefits such as morale boosts, food sources, medical sources, and even combat assistance through things like air strikes. However, all outposts offer the same three benefits as standard:
- Character switching at outpost
- Supply locker at outpost
- Safe area around outpost
Ideally, you should be claiming an outpost that offers the community some additional benefit – don’t waste an outpost slot on an empty house that has nothing but the basic three benefits above. As for actually claiming an outpost, there are two requirements:
- All nearby zombies to be dead, and
- Influence points
Clearing out the nearby zombies is an easy task, as there tend to be only a handful of the undead in the vicinity – unless of course you are trying to destroy a plague heart. Once the area is secure, approach the camp lantern and interact with it to pull up the menu to claim an outpost.
This menu shows what the outpost will provide up the top and the requirements for claiming the outpost down the bottom. Every building type offers various outpost benefits: a coffee shop offers morale boost, buildings with a food icon offer daily food supplies, and military bases grant combat abilities. Ensure that the outpost offers the benefits the community requires, and so long as you have the available outpost slots and influence points, the outpost can be claimed. Gaining more influence points is important if you want to claim more outposts, as they tend to get fairly expensive.
At the very beginning of State of Decay 2, only two outposts can be claimed. This limitation will play a large role in the decision of what outpost to claim. Visit the command center in the base to increase the amount of outposts that can be claimed. To do this, head to the main base and down to the command center. Interact with the command center and under “Actions” choose the right-most icon, “Upgrade: Command Center”. This requires a few resources to complete, but once finished, the amount of outposts that can be claimed will increase.
It can be a good idea to have an outpost in each major area of the map, that way you won’t need to travel back to base to deposit any loose items. Another advantage of having many outposts scatted in the corners of the map is that they act as safe places where you can safely sit in the menu while you upgrade skills and deal with improving the community morale.
As you progress through the game, an early outpost might not be so useful anymore, so it’s a good idea to abandon it, freeing up space for a more relevant option. To abandon an outpost, press the View button to bring up the map, go across to Base and highlight the node on the outpost you wish to abandon. Select the outpost and then under “Actions”, select the Abandon Outpost option. Abandoning an outpost refunds some of the influence points, which can be used to claim another outpost.
