The Walking Dead Saints & Sinners: Wasteland Survival Guide (Tips & Tricks)

Anything you drop in the bus will remain in the bus when you come back, just be aware that some items when they are loaded will load at different angles that you placed them.

I highly recommend everyone decorate their bus, as you day begins and ends here.

Walker parts if dropped inside the bus will despawn.

Station 13
– Station 13 has some weird noises on it, but it’s probably just an easter egg or something

Station 47
– Station 47 always has something useful on it. You should always listen to it before leaving the resting place
– Make sure before you go to bed you set the station # to 47

– This is the Tower’s station

Station 54
– Station 54 is used by the reclaimed but there’s never anything useful on there
– When you’re messing around on the bus or near your benches just set the station to 54 to hear some great tunes
– JB will use Station 54 for his broadcasts
– This is the Reclaimed station

Station 61
– Channel 61 is the one with Casey. After speaking with Casey always default the station back to 47
– You can still hear Casey request to speak with you even if you’re not on Station #61

What I like to do is this…
– Wake up collect the intel from station 47
– If Casey needs something, switch to his station get it done, and then switch back to station 54
– Listen to 54 while choosing my weapons, looking through my trunk, recycling stuff, crafting, etc
– Set the station to 47 before going to bed

You can store all your firearms here
– I like to keep my bows and shotguns on the right, middle rack for walker heads, and the far left section for rifles
– However I personally recommend using the middle rack for pistols, revolvers, and maybe some melee weapons

Use the rightmost 4 slots to store your bows and shotguns
– Laminate Bow
– Improved Bow
– Double Barrel Shotgun
– Nova

Use the six middle slots for zombie heads or your pistols and starting melee weapons
– .30 revolver
– .45 revolver
– 9mm pistol
– Shiv
– Nightshift
– Cleaver
The middle six slots are also a great place to store The Sheriff, as well as the National Guard Knife

Use the far left section to store your rifles
– Bolt-action rifle
– Lever-action rifle
– Assault rifle

The last spot you can use however you wish, i like to keep an Esteemed Mortal there
If I had the DLC, I’d keep The Judge there

Dead have grown in number, supplies have dwindled
– It’s a very gradual process, don’t worry about it.
– Just make sure to max out your backpack with each journey

Supplies have dwindled
This process is to give you a rough idea of what to expect, it is by no means perfect
– I think that the game just very gradually removes supplies to the point that it’s noticeable but doesn’t hurt the player’s progress
– For example the world spawns a total of 200 items
– Every day it removes 2 items until day 50, where it caps out at 100 items per map

Dead have grown in number
– Just normal walkers 5 days
– Poison walkers appear 10 days
– Shirtless walkers appear 15 days
– Elite walkers appear 20 days
– More poison walkers 25 days
– Less normal walkers 30 days
– More elite walkers 35 days
– Less shirtless walkers 40 days

Drinking from the flask saves your game, so make sure you take care of everything before calling it good for the day because you don’t want to load a save and realize you forgot to bring something or do something

You can skip days by drinking from your flash, this can be used to increase the difficulty if you find the standard difficulty a tad bit easy

If you screwed up during the day, just reload the save from when you arrived or better yet from before you departed in case you forgot to craft something. Which is why it’s so important to craft and take care of everything before you hit the sack

Recycle all the junk you possibly can. If there’s something you want to keep because it looks cool or you want to decorate your bus with it, you can find it later. There is almost nothing you can’t get at some point later in the game

Grab zombies by the heads. They won’t bite ya 😉

Grab zombies by the heads and throw them back. This important for staggering them and hitting them from behind if you don’t feel like trying to hit them under the mask/jaw.

Climb onto stuff. Do this if you ever feel overwhelmed. They can’t reach you when you’re on a car or dumpster.

Don’t needlessly kill walkers
– Killing walkers doesn’t give you any xp or loot. So only kill them if necessary
– Killing walkers takes away your weapons durability, puts you in danger, but also costs you valuable time you could be spending scavenging

If you hear the bells drink some nutria stew and book it out of there

If you hear the bells and you have some walker innards, put them on, and then leave

The game gives you enough time to explore before the bells ring. I always have a quarter time remaining with a moderate amount of sprinting requiring only 1 nutria stew

They want 1 of 3 possible items; food, bandages, or medicine.
There are 4 types of beggars, one for each type of item above, and a fourth that’ll take anything.

Make sure you carry at least 2 of each item on you. One for you and one for them, because their reward is a box of stuff, which contains a ton of crafting materials, especially if you give them stuff you’ve made.

You can kill the beggars for their stuff, but nutriastew, restorative bandages, and herbal medicine are cheap enough to not really warrant this.

Collectibles. Use a guide to find them, but they don’t provide any bonuses as far as I’m aware.

Storage Chest
– As far as I can tell it has an unlimited amount of storage. Just place an item on the last page, and a brand new page will be added. Very useful for storing an insane amount of walker innards

Walker Innards
– Head to the area with the pump regulators and church at night. There should be a lot of walker innards spawned on the ground, and shirtless zombies will randomly spawn. This is a little secret area of the game where you can collect all the walker innards you could possibly want

Resting Place Church Area
– This area has an insane amount of loot if you look around every nook and cranny. Enough to max out your whole backpack. It’s a great place to visit to get a free day’s worth of supplies

Ammo
– Keep your ammo at least 100 for pretty much everything

Side Quests
– If you’re gonna do side quests, make sure you cover yourself in walker innards so that you don’t waste any time trying to complete the mission
– If you take a side quest, that’s pretty much all you’ll be able to accomplish that day with some additional scavenging

Killing Humans
– Humans are not a threat in this game whatsoever. Shotgun to the chest is all you need but don’t be afraid to go all Jason Voorhees and sneak up to melee them
– Honestly for the longest time i just ran up and stabbed them in the head, don’t be afraid to get close to them, you’ll be fine

Looting
– Always stay till you have 1/8th remaining. There is always better loot, and don’t leave simply because you have a full backpack. Replace what you have with better stuff as you find it.

VR tips

– Disable the hud, it’s annoying and puts down the immersion
– Disable subtitles, they also break immersion
– Disable all hud elements all-together once you learn how to play the game

– If you find the text or textures to be blurry, sometimes moving your headset up or down sometimes makes things more clear
– Set your control type to hybrid. It’s way easier on the fingers
– The game can be really dark sometimes, so go with a balanced brightness of 50%

Safety tips
– During my many hours of playing this game, I’ve had a couple instances where i’ve hit my computer desk because of the limited play area around me. So be careful when trying to do melee in this game in a small space
– Don’t do overhead throws unless you want to bruise a knuckle on your ceiling. Underhand throws go farther and are way safer in vr

You’ll want to focus on the melee bench first.
The sooner you get the backpack the better. On the way there you’ll unlock two great stamina perks, a 2 handed melee weapon, and also an amazing weapon to throw at enemies (nightshift).

All the other benches hinge upon you looting and scrapping, so the sooner you get the backpack, the faster you can unlock all the stuff in the game. I had access to everything 10/10/10 in about 2 weeks (14 days).

You want to switch priorities to the survival bench next
The sooner you get herbal medicine the better. Regular medicine is rare until day 30 (when it’s plentiful), and the difficulty as well as amount of poison walkers gets harder and harder with every passing day. So rush herbal medicine. Final upgrade requires 30 sugar so make sure to collect those twinkies.

While working on those two stations you’ll also want to upgrade the gun tree to get access to the Double Barrel shotgun and it’s ammo
This’ll allow you to handle encounters with hostile humans with ease, which is what the gun bench is really all about. Getting access to the DB shotgun and the ammo is pretty much the soft cap here while you work on the other two benches.

List of Supplies
• X
What supplies to prioritize
• X
What supplies not to prioritize
• X
What junk to collect
• X
What junk not to collect
• X

Revolver
• It’s good against walkers, but is inferior to the DB shotgun vs humans
• If you’re ever in a pinch, just whip out your revolver and take care of the walkers
• Keep it on your left or right hip if you don’t have time to use a bow and have a poison walker close to you
• Keep it on you for emergencies if you get overwhelmed by walkers

DB Shotgun
• The one hitter quitter
• Kills humans in a single shot at medium and short range. If your problem is human DB is the answer

Bolt Action Rifle
• It’s too slow for my tastes but it kills humans in 1 shot.
• The rifle is like an early game nova just without the spread and being bolt-action, but also being long-range in addition to short and medium range.

9mm Pistol
• Best 1 handed firearm in the game.
• Magazine, 5 star durability, medium damage, kills walkers and humans with a single headshot, and also packs 17 rounds.

Gunsmith
• It’s a passive perk on the way towards the Nova.

Nova
• Takes the DB shotgun and improves upon it in every single way.
• Better ammo capacity, faster reloading, better durability, and it even looks way cooler
• The Nova is an endgame weapon you’re always gonna have on you.
• If your problem is human, the Nova is the solution.

Lever Action Rifle
• It’s a bit awkward for me, but it’s pretty good against humans.
• The recipe is hard to miss during the main story, so once you find it, you can pretty much rely on it as an alternative to the DB shotgun if the ammo capacity and reloading is bothersome to you

.45 Revolver
• A good upgrade over the .30 revolver, especially if you deal with humans. One shot to the chest puts them down. Goes very well with the shotgun. However it’s inferior to the 9mm pistol, so I just don’t use it much.

Assault Rifle
• Unfortunately not very useful once the Nova is unlocked. Nova kills in one shot while the Assault Rifle requires several.
• However, the assault rifle is a lifesaver if you find yourself overwhelmed.
• It’s effective against pretty much everything, so it’s a great choice for having over your shoulder or on you backpack side slots

Shiv
• It’s ok in the beginning, but it’s completely inferior to the cleaver
Stamina for running
• Don’t be afraid to run in this game. As long as you carry at least 1 nutria stew, you pretty much never have to worry about your max stamina being too low
Nail Bat
• Looks cool but is inferior to other two handed weapons
Stamina for fighting
• Good upgrade on your way towards the backpack
Night Shift
• Very good for throwing, as well as a superior version of the knife as well as the shiv. It’s expensive compared to the cleaver though
Backpack upgrade
• The best upgrade in the melee bench. Gives you an additional slot for a large weapon as well as a page for extra loot, so 10 extra slots overall (1 large weapon & 9 small slots)
• Rush backpack as soon as possible
Cleaver
• This is the best one handed melee weapon. It’s super cheap, solid durability, good sharpness, and can decapitate, thus increasing its durability further. It’s incredibly cheap compared to other melee weapons
Nail Bomb
• Hate it. Inferior to the bot bomb
Better Gear
• Great perk reduces fall damage, as well as providing other benefits
Grass Cutter
• 5 star durability, 5 star sharpness. And it’s relatively cheap
Absolution
• Same stats as the grass cutter but looks cooler IMO
Bot Bomb
• Best bomb in the game. It attracts walkers, blows up on countdown, looks cool, and is very difficult to accidentally kill yourself with
4th and Pain
• More expensive then cleaver without enough value to justify it
Esteemed Mortal
• Inferior to the grass cutter and absolution, but looks so Mad Max I love it
Proximity Mine
• Inferior to the bot bomb
Claw
• Looks cool, but the cleaver is way cheaper and offers greater return on salvage when supplies truly become scarce later on. Plus its a thrust weapon and not a slashing weapon

Nutra Stew
• Only eat nutria stew. From this moment on, your entire diet consists of nothing but nutria stew.

Sterile Bandages
• Use this to heal yourself when out and about

Laminated Bow
• Very good early game, critical before Herbal Medicine becomes available for dealing with poison walkers

Arrow Bundle
• The improved bow is the best weapon in the game, and its primary ammo is standard arrows, so make a bunch of these. I like to have at least 30.

Survival of the fittest
• Another passive perk, so whatever.

Bowyer
• Passive perk, whatever.
• Very useful for saving you some costs on an additional arrow bundle.

Lure Arrows
• If you need to use your pistol, shotgun, rifle then go right ahead. Just make sure that after you’re done, you shoot a lure arrow off into the distance so the walkers go elsewhere
• Lure arrows are great for getting walkers to leave an area you wish to explore
• Lure arrows are incredibly cheap to make, and they’re actually pretty underrated.

Herbal Medicine
• If you can’t find medicine in the world, use your herbal medicine.
• The only thing that really damages you max health is poison walkers, and they do it by about 25%. And if you get hit by 2, your health is at 50%. Yikes that’s pretty bad so go ahead and always bring at least 2 with you. You will find plenty of regular bandages out in the world.

Toughen up
• Passive perk, whatever.

Restorative bandages
• Surprisingly cheap, and fully restores your hp. It’s a better sterile bandage.

Compound Bow
• Better than the laminated bow and the best weapon in the game. The gear station is built around the bow, so it only makes sense.

Explosive Arrows
• Takes out wherever gets hit by it, and anything near it as well. Almost makes the nail bomb and proxy bomb irrelevant.

Boosters

Jambalaya
• Do not use Jambalaya. Its effect isn’t really that noticeable.
Gumbo
• Do not use Gumbo. It requires too much protein.
Bignet
• Do not use beignets. Sugar is too valuable.

• Since the 9mm pistol and the Nova shotgun have 5 star durability, you won’t need to worry about including other guns since these are more than sufficient for the problems you’ll be facing
• A grass cutter or absolution also has 5 star durability, and thus fulfills the role of having 2 spare melee weapons, especially since decaps consume less durability

Laminated Bow or Improved Bow (Back) always a bow or rifle

The improved bow is the best weapon in the game due it being long-range, silent, effective against elite walkers, regular/shirtless walkers, and poison walkers, as well as being effective against human enemies with the explosive tip bullets. Not to mention that the arrows can be used as melee weapons with durability surpassing bottles
Pull the bow from over your shoulder to take out poison walkers instead of using your pistol, shotgun, rifle, etc. It’s silent and easily accessible over the shoulder.

Double Barrel or Nova (Left Slot on Backpack) always a shotgun
• This is the only weapon you should be using on human enemies. One shot to the upper chest or head from close or medium range results in an insta kill
• Double barrel is unlocked very early, and is pretty much all you need even at end game
• Nova improves upon the double barrel and is superior because of its 5 star durability, 8 ammo clip, and that you will rarely face more than 8 human enemies at any given time
• Death squads and patrols will fight amongst themselves, pull out the Nova, kill the survivors and then loot the battlefield of the spoils

Grass Cutter or Absolution (Right Slot on Backpack) or any other 2 handed melee weapon
• Both are the same offering 5 star durability, 5 star sharpness, ability to decapitate, and just being overall very good for dealing with walkers
• The durability is enough to last you a whole day if it’s your only melee weapon

9mm Pistol (Left Hip) or any kind of pistol, revolver, or magnum that you want
• 5 star durability, magazine, 17 rounds, medium damage
• Once you’ve gotten good with the pistol you won’t need rifles

•Cleaver (Right Hip) or whatever 1 handed melee weapon you want really
• Very cheap to craft and is better than the shiv and nightshift
• Offers the great return on supplies

In order to maximize the amount of loot you collect in a single day you should have roughly 3 blank pages, with your first page reserved for stuff you might need that day

2 walker innards
• 1 to use right in the beginning and just walk straight to the building you want
• 1 to use after the bells have rung
• Pretty much you’re gonna want to use one right at the beginning, and one right at the very end
• If you have additional walker innards, use them however you please

2 nutriastew
• 1 to give away for a box of stuff or as an emergency backup
• 1 to use if you do a moderate amount of running

2 bandages
• 1 to give away for a box of stuff or as an emergency backup
• 1 to use on yourself if you get overwhelmed by walkers or humans

2 herbal medicine
• 1 to give away for a box of stuff or as an emergency backup
• 1 to use on yourself if you kill a poisoned walker up close

1 bot bomb
• Use it to take out a horde of walkers that got attracted to an area due to gunfire, or a herd after the bells have rung
• Don’t use it against human enemies since they advance towards your position, and they’re easy enough anyways
• I always bring one bomb with me just for fun. I make it a habit to use 1 bomb a day, whether it be the nail bomb, proxy bomb, or bot bomb

Bus
• If you anger the tower enough Mama will send her troops after you and they’ll appear at your home base

Catacombs
• There’s a lot of skulls you can salvage from the catacombs in the resting area
• There’s always either 1 or 2 zombies that spawn there

The Shallows
• Put on some walker innards, head inside the blue mansion, and everything you can possibly want/need is located there or in that general area. Don’t bother with anything other than the blue mansion

Rampart
• Put on some walker innards, head towards the school, and everything you need is pretty much there. After you’re done just innard your way out of that area
• Innard your way to the school and search, innard your way to the other side of the school and search, and then innard your way after the bells. Done

Bottles
• Bottles are a big part of this game. You can break one (resources are the same even for a broken one) and use it to kill a zombie as well as collect 4 sharp objects. Razors are irrelevant due to the bottles which are scattered around everywhere

Walker Guts
• Walker guts last a long time, and are extremely useful for exploration, looting, making your way to another location, escaping, having zombies ignore you after a gunfight, etc. So pretty much they’re useful all the time.
• I’ve ran an experiment where I did nothing but bring walker innards with me, and no guns or melee weapons. It worked extremely well, especially if you use the environment around you such as broken bottles.

Fire Axe, Hatchet, Crowbar
• Useful for killing walkers in the nearby area as well as humans
• Useful also for breaking wooden boards

Lighter
• Can be used to stab a zombie through the head

Pillows
• Pillows are bulletproof, grab one and use it as a shield as you walk right up and cleaver some poor schmuck in the face

Food & Drinks
• Don’t consume these things, bring them back to the resting place and scrap them for protein which can be used to make a nutria stew