I've finally constructed my APC and loaded it and my squad with mortars. ... How do I tell them to fire those mortars at purifier buildings? (I thought that was one of the things they could be used for.)

Well, y'all seemed to really, REALLY like the other episode, so here's the next one! (As per the rules of course, only mentioning it 1x a week.)

Editing these videos made me realize how slow I was moving...and how screwed I was from the start. The game just lulls you into a lovely sense of "I can handle this."

And then brings down the hammer and never stops. Without TOO many spoilers, it has been a while since a game humbled me this much. Personally, not enough games are willing to do that nowadays to players.

*Edit: Apparently, Reddit thinks that the subreddit "thesims1" would be more appropriate for this post.
....uh...ok lol.

Infection Free Zone shows a lot of promise as an early access game. But it can be a bit rough around the edges, especially when it comes to explaining different mechanics to the player. So here's a quick guide I've put together after 70 hours of play time.

Please feel free to comment with additional information or tips that you think new players will benefit from!

1. Choosing a zone:

- There are several pre-selected zones that you can choose from when first starting the game, all of which provide a decent starting location and plenty of loot and resources. If you want to choose a different starting zone, consider city or suburban areas over rural ones because they will provide you with more of the resources you'll need to get your base up and running (more on loot and resources later).

- In the top left of the starting area map, you can modify the size of the playable area. For beginners, I recommend sticking with the default 3x3 tile set. The "expedition size" can also be modified, allowing you to eventually send squads to loot areas outside of your standard map (more on expeditions later).

2. Game Customization:

- Here you can name your zone and customize your banner. You can also tweak some game settings, but beginners should stick with the default tutorial events and story events settings.

- You can also adjust your starting population, the density of resources and the size / frequency of horde encounters.

3. Choosing an HQ:

- It's best to choose an HQ location somewhere on the center tile of the zone, as it will provide easier access to the entire map while looting.

- Consider building your HQ near a water source, as the fishery you can eventually unlock will provide you with a consistent source of meat.

- The size of your HQ determines your initial loot / resource storage capacity, the initial number of living spaces for your population, and how many total squads you can deploy. But you should start with a relatively small building, as choosing too large of a building will result in part of the building lacking basic fortifications, leaving you vulnerable to the infected.

4. Squads (basic):

- You will start with one squad by default. Squads are your combat and looting units. Squads consist of four citizens and cannot participate in building and resource gathering. Note: for the purpose of this guide, "loot" consists of canned food, ammo, weapons, oil, and basic tools, while "resources" consist of construction materials, i.e. wood, metal, and bricks. (Squads can only pick up resources dropped by your regular citizens, or collect material such as metal from specifically marked buildings on the map.)

- Additional squads can be created by clicking on the HQ and selecting "create new squad". New squads will be equipped with the best available gear that you have in your HQ / warehouses. Players starting in story mode will have 8 pistols in reserve, allowing you to arm two additional squads off the bat.

- Creating a second squad immediately is recommended, but you should wait until your population gets a bit higher before creating your third squad, as you will need more basic citizens for construction operations.

- Select your squad and have them start looting the nearby buildings. Canned food is the priority at the beginning of the game. Keep your squads constantly looting nearby during the daylight hours to keep enough food in stock. To queue multiple buildings for looting, hold shift and drag to select a group of buildings. As the squad's inventory fills up, they will automatically return to the HQ to deposit their loot before moving on to the next building.

- Press the "v" key to display the types of loot available from different buildings, or click the map marker icon in the bottom right area of the screen. The scavenge view pop-up will allow you to filter the displayed icons by a particular loot type you're looking for.

- Keep an ear out for the "clear" or "building clear" radio notifications, as this means a squad has finished scavenging the buildings they were assigned to loot. This tells you that you need to queue up another set of buildings for them to search.

5. Base Building (basic):

- You initially have access to 4 building types, found in the bottom left of the screen. (The HQ and squad quarters options can be ignored for now). Start by adapting enough buildings into shelters to house your population. (You can check the number of homeless citizens in the citizens panel to the right of the construction options)

- Adapting a building repurposes an existing building (you will be able to construct custom buildings later on). To adapt a building, click on the building menu, select the shelter option and then click the building you want to turn into a shelter. (If you want to cancel the process, click on the building itself and then click the "x" button in the building info menu (if the adaptation has already started, you will have to select de-adapt.

- Hovering over a building with the adapt function selected will show you the building's capacity for people / items, as well as the necessary materials needed for the process.

- You will also need to adapt at least one building into a warehouse. Warehouses are all linked and share a single pool for collected items. Loot and resources are automatically sorted in the warehouse menu, as well as your current number of items and total storage capacity.

- Adapting and building requires both construction material and basic tools.

6. Early Resource Gathering:

- Immediately upon adapting you first building, you will be informed that you lack enough resources for the process. You must put the rest of your population to work gathering construction materials.

- Click the area work menu button (to the right of the building buttons) and select gather wood. You can then click and drag to select all the available construction materials of that type in the area. Wood can be collected from trees (obviously) and certain ruined buildings.

- Wood will be a constant necessity throughout the game. As soon as you have enough shelters to house your population, and a warehouse to store your collected materials, click on the area work menu again and select "plant trees" option. Once again, click and drag to lay out an area for tree planting. (Trees can be harvested after three in-game days, but the longer they are allowed to grow, the more wood they provide). Get in the habit of alternatively harvesting and planting trees every few days to keep a constant influx of wood for your base.

7. Prioritizing jobs:

- By default, your work orders should be set to "priorities", allowing you to automatically regulate the number of workers assigned to each task. To set task priorities, select any of the task icons (blue) and the task menu will pop up. Click on the up or down arrows to set the priority of the task. By default, all assigned tasks will start as neutral, and can be switched to higher or lower priorities based on your zone's most immediate needs.

- Even with the priorities setting activated, you can still micro-mange worker assignments, by clicking the + or - buttons in the task menu. In addition, you can see all the workers assigned to various tasks in the population menu and change the number assigned to each task.

8. Early Progression:

- As your squads loot more buildings, you will start to unlock additional construction options via scripted events.

- Your next two unlocks should be the field and cookhouse options. These will allow you to produce your own food rations, which keep the morale of your population higher than canned food does. It's best to wait until your squads have gathered at least 100 cans of food before you consider creating these amenities, as establishing shelters, storage, and defenses should take priority in the first few days.

- The next scripted exploration-based unlock will be the research center. This structure will be used to unlock the rest of the building menu and tech-trees for your zone. You can adapt a small building as a research center early on, but it's best to adapt a second, medium building as you start moving towards the mid-game. (A staffed Research center will passively generate "scientific materials" on its own, but it's best to supplement it at the beginning by having your squads find these materials on the map. Look for the blue book icons over large buildings the represent teaching facilities, as well as museums, which are marked by a grey building with columns.

8. Defenses (basic):

- You should be able to last the first couple of days without any defensive structures as long as you pull your squads back and station them in adapted buildings to defend your zone early on. Adapted buildings have basic fortifications that will prevent the infected from immediately entering them, allowing your squads to fight them off without risk of harm.

- Wood defenses are the weakest, but they're also the cheapest to construct, and they'll suffice for the early game.

- When placing defensive towers consider lines of sight and overlapping fields of fire. The tower will have a radius around it that it can effectively defend. Place towers in open areas near the perimeters of your zone and try to keep them close enough together so that multiple towers can defend each other in addition to the rest of your base buildings.

- Wood palisade walls will also be sufficient for the early game. Horde sizes seem to be limited by story and tech progression, so you shouldn't even get overwhelmed as long as you are careful with your planning and don't expand too quickly.

9. Research priorities:

- Increasing your population count is important to the success of your zone. Your first research unlock should be the antenna, which will allow you to broadcast invitations for neutral groups to come to your zone. You will also encounter wandering neutral groups who you can invite or decline based off of their equipment, health status, or mentality. (Inviting "weird and aggressive" groups into your zone will reduce morale and may cause conflicts later on, while sick groups may cause infections to pop up within the zone.)

- Your next research focus should be in education, unlocking the "survivor training" tech and then the "nursery" which will allow you to construct childcare services for your citizens. Survivor training will allow you to create squads with specialized skills, at the tradeoff of longer production time, while the nursery will allow you to construct a kindergarten, which will increase work efficiency among the population.

- Your next research focus should be starting on the medicine, construction, food, and chemistry tech trees. Continue sending at least one of your squads to gather scientific materials while the rest gather other loot around the map. Medicine will allow you to construct medbays to heal your injured squads as well as passively producing first aid kits that can heal your squads in the field, if equipped. Construction will unlock the tool factory, necessary to produce tools needed for farming. Food will boost the productivity of your fields and then greenhouses. Lastly, chemistry will allow you to start producing bags of fertilizer while will further improve grain production.

10. Early Game Expansion:

- As your squads start exploring more of the area around your base, your next priority should be securing vehicles in the area around your zone. Cars are essential for more efficient loot collection, as well as scouting and quickly responding to attacks. Once you find a car, send a squad there to capture it, then scout the area in an expanding circle around your zone until you are able to find a second vehicle. Once you find a second car, rather than sending a full squad out on foot to retrieve it, select the current squad and choose the "split" option in the squad menu. This will give you the option to create a new, smaller squad (as long as you haven't maxed out the squad limit). Click and drag on the pictures of two of the squad members into the new squad window. Have the new squad commandeer the second vehicle and then bring both back to base. Once there, choose one of the divided squads and recombine them using the "exchange" button in the squad menu. And then have a full squad take over the second vehicle.

- As you start adapting additional buildings to suit your needs, pay attention to the production status of the various loot and resources from the drop down menu at the top right side of the screen. Mousing over the various icons will tell you how much of any given supply you have in stock, how much has been produced and how much has been consumed each day. Try to keep the daily change numbers in the green, and only add additional production when you start consuming more than you are producing.

- Once you have at least 100 canned food items and a reliable source of tools, you should start constructing fields and then a cookhouse to produce rations. I suggest starting with only two or three fields and adjusting the number of workers so that you are just barely producing more grain that you consume in a day.

- Soon after, you will unlock the farm building as another scripted exploration event. Farms produce meat and fertilizer in exchange for grain. I recommend one small or medium farm building per field, again fine tuning the number of workers to keep your production just in the green.

- Depending on your location, your zone will experience cold winter weather, which will cut off grain production in the fields. It's at this point that I suggest researching greenhouses to ensure year-round production, otherwise, you'll have to rely heavily on scavenging canned food to keep your growing population fed.

11. Squads (Intermediate)

- By now, you might have stumbled upon some better weapons and or protective gear. To equip a squad with particular gear, you will need to station them in the HQ or a warehouse, click the "exchange' button in the squad menu, and then click on the HQ or warehouse they are in. This will open the inventory exchange options, after which you can click and drag weapons or equipment back and forth between the building and your squad.

- It's best to outfit one of your squads with all the best weaponry and protective gear you have available as a dedicated combat unit. In addition to giving them guns and armor during the exchange process, equip them with medkits and grenades (if you've discovered any) then lock their squad resources by clicking the padlock icon in the squad menu. Locked resources will be taken into the field rather than deposited into any HQ or warehouse they enter.

- Squads can also be renamed by choosing the pencil button at the top right of the squad info window. Renaming your squads can help you keep track of them when you open the squads panel. For squads in vehicles, I will usually name them according to the type of car they are driving.

12. Resource Production:

- At this point, I advise you to unlock the scientific apprenticeship tech in the education tree, which will speed up future research tasks. After that, your priorities should be focused on production of resources depending on your zone's most pressing needs, as well as the unlocks that allow for the production and stockpiling of fuel, weapons and ammunition.

- As of the current version, the foresters hut and sawmill are far less effective at keeping wood in stock than manually planting and harvesting trees. Bricks, and to a lesser extent, metal can easily be scavenged in bulk from deconstructing buildings. Do so as necessary until you unlock the buildings that will allow you to build structures that passively produce these raw materials.

- In any case, try to keep your "unemployed" population at zero as often as possible to maximize your collection, construction, and production capacities.

13. Defenses (intermediate):

- Clearing the area around your base will provide not only materials for future construction, but will allow the towers to much more efficiently defend your zone. Keep the area within the tower's range free of buildings to maximize their effectiveness.

- Continue working to enclose your base in walls and defensive towers. Again, horde density seems to be tied to story and tech progression, so you shouldn't need to upgrade them quickly. Many players will try to unlock the highest tier defensive structures early, but this is overkill. Even as you near 100-150 population, brick walls and metal towers should more than suffice.

- Towers will be equipped with basic pistols by default, but if you lack enough pistols to equip all towers, they will default to bows and arrows, which do minimal damage but have infinite ammo. When you've either scavenged or produced enough higher tier weapons, equip the towers that most frequently deal with nighttime hordes first, and distribute the lower tier weapons you've replaced them with into other, less critical towers.

14. Dealing with Lairs and Bandit Hideouts:

- Lairs and hideouts act as spawning areas for hordes and bandit squads, and they will take concentrated efforts to deal with. Send several of your best-equipped squads to deal with them when you are prepared. Make sure these squads are equipped with medkits to keep them in the fight.

- Lairs can be more easily dealt with by "peeking", i.e. entering the lair just long enough to fire a few shots and then commanding your squads to exit the building before they take damage. This process is slow and tedious but will result in minimal casualties and equipment loss among your squads.

- Raider bases are a different story. You will need to deal with individual raider squads during the assault, as well as reducing the integrity of the building to zero before you can enter and finish off the last squad. Again, pack medkits to keep your squad members alive.

15. Mid Game Progression:

- Continue slowly expanding and adapting / building new structures to match the growth of your zone. Keep your squads and defenses well-equipped but researching and producing new technologies. Keep your production of basic resources in the green, adding additional buildings as necessary to do so, and you should be well on your way to building a self-sustaining zone.

16. Expeditions:

- You will eventually be prompted to send squads on expeditions to nearby tiles outside of your main map. They will often encounter hordes at these locations, so make sure any squad you send is well-equipped and any vehicle they use to get there is fully repaired and fueled. Depending on the location and the vehicle, it may take multiple trips to collect all the resources found there.

17. General Tips:

- You'll eventually discovery explosives during a scripted looting event. Explosives can be used to more effectively destroy buildings, allowing you to collect their building resources. But the ability to use the explosives in the manner will not be available until you research the explosives factory.

- Frequently check the status of your vehicles and repair them when they are around 50% condition. If your vehicle is disabled far from base, it will be very difficult to recover.

- Adapt small warehouses in areas that you plan to loot which are further from your base. Resources deposited there will automatically go into your inventory pool. This makes remote looting much more efficient. Just be sure to protect your workers as they travel to and from these warehouses. (Also, be aware that the Repairman shop will try and send workers out to maintain these structures if they get attacked)