This guide will require that you battle some psychos, but will avoid the Food Court crash that occurs on day 5. You should be level 50 and have the mega buster from the getting the “zombie genocider” achievement.
Print out these two guides (or be near a PC to access them).
http://dr.newcenstein.com/dead-rising-list.html2022-09-11 edit: The above site seems to be no longer available, but you can still view them via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20161027001817/http://dr.newcens...[Don't eat any food until you have all the books]
Get the mega buster from the security room.
Go onto the rooftop, kill Otis then pick up his raw meat.
Head back into security room then into the entrance plaza and pick up the health book from "The Sinister Read".
Head back to the security room, through the rooftop and into the warehouse.
Grab all food in the warehouse (including Susan's cookies).
Head into Paradise Plaza and go cook the raw meat in "Jill's Sandwiches".
Take the bathroom shortcut to Wonderland Plaza.
Pick up the other health book from "Sir Book A Lot" on the upper floor.
Head to North Plaza via the lower level passageway.
Loop around North Plaza counter clockwise collecting all the food and the final survival book (in the room next to Crislip's). I didn’t actually bother getting the food in Crislip’s itself.
[It's now ok to eat food so if you need a top up eat something of low value first like the cookies. Chances are you will need to eat at least one item in order to be able to carry everything at this point.]
Once you have all the food, head back to Wonderland Plaza and climb on top of the beauty kiosk (there are two in front of the bathrooms), drop most of your food in this safe spot and then use the food map to go around the rest of Wonderland Plaza, collecting everything and returning it to this safe spot with your other items.
Stay here on this spot eating only when you need to - I would recommend eating the smallest value items first, but keep at least one low or medium item value (e.g. an apple or cookies) in case you need to heal when you are traveling from one area to another (less likely to waste the valuable items that way).
Once you have eaten enough such that you can carry all your remaining items then move on to the next area: Food Court (we're going in a counter clockwise loop around the map BTW).
When you enter you should be faced with SMG Carlito, but he’s pretty easy to kill with the mega buster. You can try and shoot him from afar or just climb up the crates around the back onto his level, keeping the other side of the corner from him and wait for him to stop shooting before popping out to kill him. Carlito is actually located in the safest area here so drop your food items there and go collect all the food in Food Court and return them back here like you did for Wonderland Plaza. Sometimes Carlito’s box will throw things over the ledge when it opens so be sure to check you have gathered all three items.
This will form the basis of the pattern for each area we will visit, i.e.
- Deal with any psycho(s)
- Collect all the mall/dropped food
- Camp in a safe place until you can move on to the next area
To keep this guide brief (since it’s mostly just a pattern to follow) I will just list the subsequent areas that I went to and who I fought there:
Al Fresco Plaza [Isabela – camp in fountain or “Flexin”]
Entrance Plaza [(nobody) – camp in “Ned's Knicknackery”]
Paradise Plaza [Ross – camp on Blue ledge by stairs over “Kids’ Choice Clothing”]
Movieland [Heather – camp behind behind counter in concession area]
Entrance Plaza [Hall family – camp in “Ned's Knicknackery” again]
You can find the specifics of where to find each of those psychos in the list at the top. Timing can be important and if you don’t fancy taking on the Hall family for example, there are other decent alternatives on day 6 such as Carlito, Kent or Cletus, but the advantage with the Hall family is that they are there all day. Chances are you’ll gain more time that you lose from the odd sniper shot. Brock might be a good target on day 7 should you find yourself short of food having avoided them.
You will also probably need to get a new mega buster from time to time. I think I went back twice. The first time I went to Entrance Plaza I went right through to security room (via second level shortcut) and came straight back. Another good opportunity would be either just before or just after you go to Movieland.
I didn't end up needing to go into Crislip's, the Leisure Park or the Maintenance Tunnels, but after fighting the only the above additional psychos I had enough food to not need to do anything on day seven and had three wines left at midnight.
Thanks to “DrNewcenstein” for the maps and list and “G0NE R0GUE” for the original idea for basis of the map loop.