By now most players playing Dying Light have finished the story, but what else is there to do? Sandbox games have the advantage of providing an insane amount of content just beyond what the story has to offer. Dying Light has the weird disadvantage of being a bit offbeat, but that's okay because there is so much to do in the game that has nothing at all to do with the story. 

In fact, the community at large loves the game not for its dry and slow moving story, but for the wealth of fun to be had in the big world. The only reason that you do the story is to actually unlock other activities. Here are the five activities you HAVE to check out: 

Quarantine Zones 

These are mini puzzle areas full of hordes of infected, but generally have different methods of dealing with them. A shopping center has a huge horde locked behind a door. By instinct, you will turn off the electric floor, but the switch breaks, leaving a huge horde waiting behind the door. The trick here is understanding that an explosive or molotov can wipe the entire group, along with a trap, or dragging them into one of the hallways and fighting one by one. Either way, the trick is to figure out how to deal with them. 

Side-Missions 

There are side quests/missions everywhere. The first one is getting medicine for Gazi, but they range from dealing with creepy serial killers to mundane fetch quests that quickly turn crazy. Some are at night, some are at the day, but for the most part they're all generally way more interesting / fun / unique than the story itself, and provide value and depth to the game world far beyond Rais. 

Seriously, the missions beyond the main story show the struggles, history, and just how deep the story really is in the town in a total World War Z (the book, not the move) fashion. You'll be shocked at how good some of the stories are. 

Challenges 

Challenge missions are side quests that require you to do something within something, like cut 30 zombies in half within a minute and a half (for Psycho, in which the advice here is to simply use firecrackers to mob them up to get some clean cuts). Some other ones are races, with checkpoints. You'll see these on your map with the stars around a symbol. 

Battle Journals / Trophies / Voicemails / etc. 

Collectables litter the world, with trophies hanging in hard to reach places or out of the way and battle journals in specific areas in the world. Hunting these down is a great way to farm achievement points in the game, in addition to just having fun. Every tower for instance has a trophy at the top, you'll usually run into the first few during the story campaign when you need to activate the radio towers. 

Anyway, collectables are everywhere and collecting them can be a fun and exciting way to discover other activities as well. 

Co-Op & Night Hunter 

Not the last activity, but the last one I'd say is my top, is the Be a Zombie mode. This Evolve-clone like system is neat - although with some issue. Players can hide in water and can be way more powerful than your weak starting zombie is, but after leveling up a bit, playing as the Night Hunter is actually pretty cool.  

Likewise, playing in night co-op and fighting the Night Hunter can be crazy good fun if everyone works together. Oh and anything co-op is great fun. You can literally replay the game in co-op mode, like seriously, for real, and it's an entirely different game because having a second, third, or even fourth player there reduces the difficulty dramatically making tense missions into casual arcade hack / slash events. 

I mean the difficulty is still there, the zombies hit just as hard, but now there are two people or more smashing them in the face. Night time play becomes insane as well when it's a group of four running from volatiles instead of just yourself. Try it out! 

Anyway you cut it, Dying Light has a ton of replay value, so get out there and hunt some infected! Oh and don't forget the DLC missions (more story content) and the upcoming hard mode / stadium mode! 


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Dying Light Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 15, 2016

About The Author

Get in the bush with David "Xerin" Piner as he leverages his spectacular insanity to ask the serious questions such as is Master Yi and Illidan the same person? What's for dinner? What are ways to elevate your gaming experience? David's column, Respawn, is updated near daily with some of the coolest things you'll read online, while David tackles ways to improve the game experience across the board with various hype guides to cool games.

Comments