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The leveling system in Surroundead is pretty simple: you kill something, get XP, and your character levels up after reaching a certain XP threshold. In this guide, I will teach you how to level up your character, which skills are present in the game, what they do, and how you can improve them.
How to level up the character
In the upper left corner of the screen, you can see the level of your character and the amount of XP required to reach the next one.
When you kill enemies, the character gets a certain amount of XP. For example, if the enemy is a zombie, your character will obtain about 60-90 XP, depending on the zombie type.
You can also kill animals such as bears, wolves, and deer, but doing so will only provide you with XP and meat (meat can only be dropped by deer). That’s why, in the beginning, I don’t recommend hunting animals and instead recommend focusing on hunting zombies.
In any case, the best way to level up your character is to kill everything you see. But be careful! You can meet armed men anywhere in the world, and they will try to shoot you. Don’t get close without strong equipment!
How to get skill points
Each time your character reaches a new level, it gets one skill point. Press “J” to open the Journal and go into the “Skills” tab. You can see the current number of available skill points as well as the skill tree where they should be spent here.
Each skill cell contains the number of skill points required to learn it. By design of the developer, the player obviously must have the opportunity to reset skill points by pressing the corresponding button. But in the game version I have, skill points don’t return after resetting, so be careful with this function. You may just delete your skills.
Each skill will show you a description on hover. For example, the “Combat Roll” skill will allow you to make a roll by pressing “C“. This is useful for dodging zombie attacks.
How to level up general skills
When I say “general skills,” I mean “fitness,” “strength,” and other similar skills. Such skills are enhanced by corresponding activities. Here is the list of what each of these skills does.
- Fitness. Improves stamina (a yellow bar) and player speed.
- Strength. Improves melee damage and swing speed.
- Toughness. Increases player vitality against incoming damage.
- Sneaking. Less noise made when moving.
- First Aid. Improves medical ability of player.
- Marksmanship. Improves weapon stay and holding breath while aiming.
- Reloading. Faster reloading speed of firearms.
- Thief. Improves ability to break into stuff.
And here’s a list of ways to improve these skills.
- Fitness. Run (particularly sprint) and jump.
- Strength. Attack enemies with melee weapons.
- Toughness. Get damage from enemies.
- Sneaking. Sneak up on enemies by pressing Ctrl.
- First Aid. Use medicines.
- Marksmanship. Shoot enemies in the aiming mode (middle mouse button). For example, the skill will be improved if you kill zombies using a rifle with a sniper scope and look through this scope at the moment the enemy dies.
- Reloading. Just reload firearms.
- Thief. Hack safes and doors using lock picks (only successful attempts).
Which skills are worth upgrading?
Surroundead, in my opinion, is an overly simple game. It’s a very complicated task to die there, even at the very beginning. For this reason, I would not focus on skills.
But if you want to have some goals to achieve, strive to upgrade fitness, sneaking, reloading, and strength. These skills will help you act faster and more effectively. Although I doubt that you will really need them in the current realities.