One Playthrough + One CommunityThis is a fairly simple way of doing all the achievements in a single community. You CAN change difficulties and get all of the achievements with one community.
Basically, you will build a strong community on normal then switch to nightmare or dread. You will keep your team and all the weapons, skills and items you have but lose your base and some vehicles. You will then delete local saves after completing each legecy.
0 DaybreakI would suggest working on Daybreak during the early phases of the campaign to give you the opportunity to get some CHLOE weapons and strong recruits.
1 BuildStart out your community in normal mode. I chose Meagher Valley and found it to be a simple map. Your goal is to build your community up with a diversely skilled team that has at least one of all four hero types. You can check what type they are by going to the menu, community, hitting

and scrolling to their stats.
Right now you want to build up a great base, stockpile weapons and parts, build influence, upgrade all skills and promote all citizens to hero status. It is OK and advisable to take out some blood hearts for points and practice. Elect a leader if you like.
BTW, close combat is great; do not equip a weapon for close combat only a knife.
-Assuming you are working on a full completion, spend some time on daybreak earning prestige. Use the prestige to purchase prefab buildings and then use it to recruit some talent.
-Build a fabrication to make the best weapons possible. Equip all people with great weapons that they are skilled with. (close combat should only carry a knife). Destroy fabircation when done.
-Build a lounge to train all the community
-Trade with the mysterious trader(only appears on Friday, Saturday and Sunday in real time). You are looking for facility mods and 50 call weapons and grenade launchers. Sell all rare goods, knives, extra facility mods, duplicate or unwanted training manuals extra backpack. Then sell extra weapons and guns that you did not break down into scraps. Parts are just as important as influence. Keep at least one of each calibre weapon.
-Scrap any extra guns and weapons too.
-Trade with the Red Talon for weapons too.
-Build a lot of repair kits for the vehicles. They are more expensive in higher difficulties and vehicles break easier.
-Make some blood plague medicine as you might need it right away and blood plague is more deadly on higher difficulties.
-Wrap up other easy achievement that will be easier to do on normal difficulty.
- You should be in good standing if you have 5000+ influence and 600+ parts.
1.2 LeadersHaving a leader unlocks a few building options. You can always demote a leader. All this does is lowers their hero status down to citizen again. Whatever hero perks they have will have to be re-earned via trainings or missions. Whatever building you built will stay.
2 Change DifficultiesChanging difficulties essentially starts you over but fortunately keeps some things from the starting difficulty.
Pros:
-All characters will keeps their stats, skills and status.
- All items will be in your chest
- All rucksacks will be in the vehicle or on the character from before
-All facility mods will go with you and buildings will be broken down into materials automatically
- All of your current community goods(ammo, meds, food etc) will come with you.
Cons:
- Only 2 vehicles will come with you{leave the two with the most storage in parking spaces before switching.}
-All plague hearts will return
-Outposts will vanish(destroy current outposts to earn some influence points back
-Since all of your buildings are gone, they are now in the form of materials. The bad news is that you now have way more materials then you know what to do with and they will start deteriorating. To avoid this, after switching difficulties load any excess materials into rucksacks and store them in vehicles or on the ground until your storage can handle them.
- Any relationships with other enclaves will be wiped.
-4x Nightmare very difficult but will only have to clear out the plague hearts one time. There is a very good chance you will lose your leader during the Warlord run
or
-3x Dread Zone + 1x NIghtmare Safer but will take more time to rebuild your base and destroy all plagues for both nightmare + dread.
As soon as you make the switch, travel to the base that you want and start building it back to where it was. All of this building will probably attract hoards and your base will likely get attacked often. If you armed your community with great weapons and super powerful guns, this will be easy. Also, remember to load your vehicles with excess materials/rucsacks.
One thing to consider for your idle community, despite them shooting guns, they do not use ammo. As long as there is a single round in the gun they will fire it all day. The big guns like the .50 cal, grenade launcher and big CLEO guns are almost always better in the hands of the idle community. It is a pretty sweet sound having your whole base firing big guns when there is a siege.
3. Destroy the Plague HeartsOnce you have your base and outposts all figured out start taking down the plague Hearts. They usually go down with 3-4 Molotovs/fuel bombs combined with a 60 magazine 7.62 /auto-shotgun. Apparently a .50 cal rifle takes them out quick too. C-4 and theramite are great too.
Driving around in a survey car is a quick way to map out the entire area and find all the plague hearts. They are usually pretty durable if you dont take out too many zombies with them.
Bring a follower with you always. There is an exploit where you can have a third person with you. If you start a side mission that gives you a second follower, you can drag them along anywhere you want them too. Always sneak into a plague heart otherwise your dummy buddy will run in start whacking not leaving you enough room to start a fire. Another options is to bring someone from outside your community instead.
You can do these hearts in segments too. If things go wrong, you can simply hit start and quit. When you restart, you will be in the same location with the heart having the same damage as before. Plus, the enemies have been cleared.
Hostiles may be able to get a single lethal head shot in. If for whatever reason you decide to fight hostiles, do it in the daytime and let the dead do most of the dirty work. Make a lot of noise and use gasses to hurt them or attract more dead to them.
4 Legacy GoalsWith the plague hears being cleared out, the end sequence starts. You have a few option here depending on your gaming preferences.
a.) If you have more time to devout to this game only, hit start and quit the game now. This creates a hard save and should back up your current game to the cloud. At this point, go into settings and go offline. The last part of the game should take about 1-2 hours for each of the hero scenarios.
b.) If you have to be online or do not have 1-2 hours where you can devout to the next step, continue on as normal.
By going offline, you will be able to go back and get all your supplies. But you may miss out on some great weapon. By staying offline for the next part, you also have the safety of being able to save any character from an accidental death.
At this point play out the Legacy goals that come up for your chosen hero. The hardest one to do is the warlord as their is a lot of fighting with hostile humans. The easiest to do is the trader and that one should be saved for your Nightmare run.
During your legacy goals, you will finally reach a goal that says "starting this mission will end your community,(or something like that.) While starting the mission does not necessarily end the game, finishing it will restart the game. Hit pause and quit the game. This will create fresh save point if you are playing online.
The safest step to take now would be to play the final of final bits offline. If that is not an option, that is OK too. The final step will probably take 15 minutes depending on the hero type.
When you start the game back up, it might take a few minutes of running around before the mission appears again. Bring a follower like always and remember, if things get hairy again, you can always pause and quit or even delete your current save from the console if someone dies.
Find videos of the final mission to avoid any surprises.
At the end of the final missions, there will be some dialogue and then it will fade to a cut-scene. If you are offline you have nothing to worry about. In fact you can play this out and start a new community if you are offline. When you are ready, delete your save from the console only. If you are not sure how to do this, follow the below steps written by wetwork M.~
FYI
*** Spoiler - click to reveal ***If you are worried about missing what happens in the cut-scene, all four endings are the same. Just your leader standing on a rock for a few seconds. sorry.
- Wait for the legacy goal achievement to pop (mine popped on the load screen after the mission) then press cn_guide then cn_start on State of Decay 2 game in your game tile, then select "Manage game & add-ons"
- Scroll down to "Saved data" and navigate to your profile name and select it.
- A window will appear stating you want to delete your save data for State of Decay 2. You want to Select the option of "Delete from console" only.[-i]
4.2 Rinse and Repeat
After deleting your save, go back online and start your game. This should bring back the saved data from the cloud.
Now, demote your leader and choose another. Complete their legacy goals, creating back up saves and deleting them when necessary.
5 Welcome to your Nightmare
After you have completed your third legacy it is time to complete the legacy for your final hero in nightmare mode. But first....
-cancel you outposts for influence points.
-load up excessive goods into rucksacks and stash them in vehicles.
-remember you only keep 2 vehicles when you switch difficulties
-build some vehicle repair kits and gas cans before you switch as nightmare is more expensive to build and your vehicles are weak as paper.
When you are ready, make the change to Nightmare. Do as you did before and build your base up. You might want to take your time here as sieges are more deadly now.
Again, feel free to take advantage of pause and quit. Restarting the game is quicker than recruiting and training a new leader. Also, turning off multiplayer gives you the ability to pause the game for real.
6.2 Final Hero
Take out the plague hearts again. Something that helps this out is to have a moveable outpost. Take an outpost and delete(via the base menu and clicking the antenna icon for the out post you dont want.) You can then set up and outpost or two in the area where there are plague hearts. In nightmare mode, there are more hearts and they are usually close together. You can now travel lightly back to the outpost plus the outpost will diminish a spawning area in the area that you are working on.
Assuming that you saved the trader scenario for last, your final mission will go like this. There will be a meeting with 3 enclave leaders and then an ambush with a group of 4 humans followed by a wave of all types of zombies and juggernaut. If you are playing of Meahger Valley, the battle will take place at the flooded factory{center of map}.
Some things to make this easier for you:
-Make sure you and your follower are at full health
-build a gym or a shooting range to increase max health
-use the infirmary to give you a 1 hour health boost
-use extra cars to block the entrances to the factory
-create a nearby outpost
-leave first aid kits and ammo in the factory before starting the mission conversation and other weapons too including a backup melee
-use remote whistling bombs to attract the zombies to the hostile humans
-use the gas launcher on the humans and then switch to anything else after they are dead
I would suggest that you delete the last save file locally. You never know if there will be some new DLC that you will want an existing community.
8 True Grit
Maybe you deleted the final save and kept your community or maybe let the scene play out and you started over again. In either case, the easiest thing to do is idle for your 100 days. I would suggest doing this in a new community. Again, you never know if there will be new DLC.
It is a little heartbreaking knowing that your survivors are starving and leaving the community as you idle. Know this, they are not real people.
Take any character and have them climb up high on something. It could be a cell tower, billboards or rooftop of a building. Set the game to have multiplayer on as this will allow you to turn your controller off and time will progress in the game. Also, change your Xbox settings to not turn off when idling or set to an amount you are comfortable with.
Idle when you are sleeping or working. I am idling as I write this guide. Poor bastard on that rooftop. 0 stamina, few bars of health. All alone on that rooftop. His community consists of one starving and depressed soul. 48 days to go.
If you are short on your 10,000 kills, you can always start another campaign on normal. If you are doing heartland or daybreak, those will count too.