State of Decay 2 – How to Choose a Leader

Building and managing a community of survivors in State of Decay 2 requires more than a well-built base of operations. The group needs a strong leader, and it’s up to you to choose the best candidate for the job. Choosing a leader for your community requires a bit of deliberation on your part. We’ll show you how to go about choosing a leader in State of Decay 2 and what factors you should consider when picking a new leader for the group.

How to Create and Choose a Leader 

Choosing a leader in State of Decay 2 is not a decision that can be made lightly. Whoever you pick to lead your community of survivors will have a direct impact on how the story events unfold in the game. Before you can choose a leader, you must first spend some time playing as survivors who could fulfill such an important role. 

Each survivor has their own individual traits and skills. When a survivor becomes a leader, their personal attributes will directly affect the main questline of the game, so you’ll want to choose someone with traits that can benefit your community. In some cases, your chosen leader will also have a special facility built at your home base.

Once you have built your home base and have recruited a decent number of survivors in your community, spend some time with each survivor and mull over their individual attributes by bringing up the Map and selecting the Community tab. Here you can view the traits and skills of each member of your community. 

Think about which survivor would make a good leader based on their personal strengths. When you have chosen a leader for your group, press X to take control of them. Now, you must work to improve their standing so that they can earn more influence amongst the community. You can increase a survivor’s standing by completing tasks and missions as that character.

Ultimately, the goal is to increase your selected survivor’s standing so that they level up and earn the status of Hero. Survivors begin as Recruits and will move on to become Citizens before reaching Hero status. Once a survivor reaches the rank of Hero, they can be chosen to become the leader of the community.

To choose a new leader for your community, open the Community tab once more and select the State of Decay symbol. This will bring up a list of all the survivors who have reached Hero rank and who are thus eligible to become the community leader. You can hover over and highlight each eligible Hero to see a brief description of the sort of leader they will become once they are promoted. Use this to inform your decision when choosing a leader in State of Decay 2.

Electing a strong leader will help your community cure the Blood Plague and eradicate the zombie infestation in State of Decay 2. Plague Hearts are a crucial part of the process, so make sure you know how to destroy Plague Hearts to push back the infected hordes and keep the perimeter safe. For more tips, head over to our State of Decay 2 game hub.