Imagine The Walking Dead but it’s a game, with abilities and endless replayability. Stories from the Outbreak is a seamless blend of turn-based tactics and roguelike elements.
The pixel graphics might not appeal to all, but they have a lot of depth and in this guide, I’ll be sharing some tips to help you get started with Stories from the Outbreak and plan ahead.
Table of Contents
Shield Up
Runs start easy, but enemies get tougher as you progress. They have attacks that can either one-shot you or apply status effects that whittle down your party’s health in a few turns. The best way to avoid getting your team wiped is to always have your shields up.
Janis and Samanta can grant protection to themselves and others, so it’s vital to have at least one of them on your team, especially when starting out. I usually prefer Janis because he can taunt enemies into attacking him and protect his teammates.
Choose Trinkets Wisely
Trinkets grant your party permanent bonuses that can change your entire play style and rarer trinkets are more difficult to come across than the common ones. You should upgrade your party based on the available trinkets and vice versa.
Every trinket you’ve accumulated appears at the bottom left corner of the screen and you can view them whenever you want.
Managing Your Party
Overview
As you keep progressing through the nodes, you’ll come across new members who’ll join your party. However, you can enter combat with only 4 members and the people who entered the party first will be picked automatically.
Any members that join your party after it’s full become idle. You can switch them between teams and you should do it because of its advantages.
Party Vs Idle
Members assigned to the Party role will be the first to participate in combat and other events. Members in the Idle role won’t participate in most activities, but they slowly regain health. You can also call members from the Idle role into current combat, provided there is an empty slot on the field. However, doing so during combat takes time.
Role Management
In Stories from the Outbreak, You can only switch players in between roles before entering combat and in most cases, you should let a damaged player rest and bring someone else into battle. But do note that increasing your party size indefinitely is also detrimental due to the healing mechanic.
You need 2 Food per member to heal them at healing nodes. All members are counted when you heal. So if you have 4 hurt members in the Party and 2 healthy members in Idle, you’ll still need to spend 12 food to heal them. You can only heal targets with abilities individually when they are in active combat.
Role management is therefore a crucial part of the game. Based on the situation and supplies, you may need to sacrifice a member or two so that the others can live on. That’s because if you don’t have enough food, even healthy members will suffer damage when you reach a healing node. So be wary of your party size and food at all times.
Picking the Right Upgrades
Every ability in the game can be upgraded once and you can go one of two ways. Take the Carnage ability for example. You can either upgrade it to deal less AOE damage (Mayhem) or deal more single-target damage to enemies (Deicide) who are at full health. Before choosing the upgrade, consider the rest of your teammates and your trinkets.
Deicide is better in the early stages, but it falls off as most enemies are much bulkier in the mid to late game and they can easily tank 40 damage. So if you’re in the late game, it’s better to pick Mayhem.
Making the Best of the Worst
As mentioned earlier, not everyone will make it out alive, and that’s a good thing. You won’t have enough food to sustain them, so it’s better to use them as fodder so the rest of your party can push forward.
Just make sure you have a strategy based on a few key members and make it a priority to protect them.
Map Analysis
Selecting the right node is also important if you want to make it out alive. Picking every fight along the way is not the answer. Pick your battles and keep an eye out for healing and resource-gathering opportunities. Here is a breakdown of all the nodes:
1. Question mark – Random event that could give permanent stat boost, fight, extra loot, etc.
2. Apple – Usually 1-3 foods. Sometimes there will be a skill check that can lead to battles if it fails.
3. Fuel – Gives fuel or skill check for fuel.
4. Skulls (Yellow, Orange, Red) – Enemy encounter and deeper color means more difficult enemies. Red is the boss encounter.
5. House – Three options: You can either heal, take no damage, or lose health due to hunger.
6. Medical symbol – Mostly heal but sometimes you can get food or heal for more.
Know your Classes
There are four character classes in Stories from the Outbreak:
1. Tanks – Has abilities that heal, add protection, and aggro enemies towards themselves.
2. DPS – Damage dealers can dish out consistent damage and are crucial to taking down high-level enemies.
3. Support – Has healing and status removal abilities that help keep your teammates alive. Some characters can also buff your party, letting them deal more damage as the battle goes on.
4. Tactics – Tactics characters have unique, overpowered abilities. However, they require a specific setup and can only be pulled off in the right team compositions.
Winning games requires a balanced party. For beginners, we recommend starting with one tank, DPS, and support. As for the fourth member, make it a DPS, support, or tactic. It’s difficult to heal two tanks simultaneously, so it’s better to use the fourth spot for something else, like dealing more damage, healing or buffing allies, or applying status effects to your enemies.
Never Quit
If you’re sure to lose a battle, don’t quit, as you’ll lose experience points. Playing out the entire battle nets more exp, which makes your character stronger in future runs. So even if you’re losing, kill your character to end the game instead of quitting.
