As you explore the world of State of Decay 2 you will scavenge for all sorts of goods ranging from useless to invaluable. Obtaining and utilizing the right materials is critical to growing your community, but sometimes you simply cannot find what you’re looking for. Influence is the currency of State of Decay 2 and is earned a plethora of different ways. However, it also used for building Outposts, facilities, and even using the radio. One of the most common uses is spending or earning it at traders throughout the world.
There are two places where you can buy and sell items in-game. The first is with wandering traders that will randomly appear on the map for a short amount of time. These merchants typically carry a nice assortment of items including weapons, ammo, rucksacks, and crafting materials. Once a merchant arrives in the world you will be alerted via a radio message and shown their location on the map. Areas that merchants spawn aren’t guaranteed to be safe, so make sure to kill any zombies before beginning a transaction.
Speak with the merchant and select the trade option to bring up both yours and the seller’s inventory screens. From here you can purchase or sell items for the amount of Influence listed over every object’s picture. You can always buy back what you sold to a merchant as long as they are still in the world. If that person leaves then the item that you sold to them is lost forever. Almost everything is worth Influence, but the main items you should trade are luxury items such as cigar boxes, shampoo, or other odds and ends.
Every merchant sells something different, but typically they will always have mods, rucksacks, and books. We recommend only purchasing mods and books since it’s pretty easy to come across sacks of materials in State of Decay 2. Books are especially important as they allow you to learn valuable skills to improve your base. As for mods, we recommend waiting on purchasing these until you’ve upgraded to a new base. This will ensure that you know exactly what your base needs and not waste valuable Influence.
The real merchants you want to visit are those that sell “Exotic” items. They rarely appear – in over ten hours this merchant has shown up twice – so always visit them when they appear. You can buy everything from rare mods to special weapons that can only be acquired via this trader. These items are expensive, so only go to them if you have a few hundred Influence to spare.
Finally, you can trade items at any time with the various enclaves that you are friendly with. Unlike merchants, enclaves will not vanish after a set amount of time. However, enclaves will have substantially fewer goods for trade and most of the time they are simple items such as medicine or ammo. This will improve if you continuously help a certain enclave, but this will take a bit of time. Unless you are really desperate for items in the field don’t waste your Influence here. This is a precious currency and wasting it on frivolous purchases will put you at a disadvantage.