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Dead Island 2 has a remarkably straightforward system when it comes to dealing critical hits. Whether using melee or ranged weapons, you almost always guarantee a crit if you know what weapon you’re wielding and how to use it. While it might be fun to simply grab a piece of rebar and start slapping the undead in the face, there’s a bit more to being a successful slayer than wildly striking at zombies.
Each weapon has a condition for dealing crits that you must be aware of.
Regardless of the weapon or the protagonist, you can slice, dice, and shoot zombies into gory chunks, by just taking a few moments to familiarize yourself with the weapon types the game offers.
How to deal critical hit damage in Dead Island 2
One of the best parts of Dead Island 2 is that it doesn’t have a critical hit percentage for each Slayer. It has a Critical Damage stat but not a to-hit chance like many games have. That’s because you’ll be swarmed with many zombies, so don't leave massacring zombies to chance. All weapon types have a guaranteed method of dishing out critical hit damage.
Your mods and perks also help with this as well, but at its default, each weapon has a simple method of making sure crits happen to whatever zombie you’re fighting. Even the most powerful Apex zombies can be smashed into bloody chunks with a few crits. Melee and ranged weapons both have their own weapon profiles to consider.
- Maiming: Deals extra damage to undead’s limbs. All limb hits with these weapons are automatically crits and also regenerate your stamina.
- Frenzy: After a set number of hits, these weapons begin dealing crits. Designed to slice and dice quickly through foes.
- Bulldozer: All Heavy strikes with these weapons are guaranteed crits. They also deal stability damage, so you can finish off foes with Skull Stomps much easier.
- Headhunter: All strikes to a foe's head will be critical damage - this includes throwing the weapon.
Knowing which melee weapon you’re wielding and what to do with it means you’ll get critical hit damage far more often in Dead Island 2. All this is incredibly easy to do, with Bulldozer weapons perhaps having the easiest time on common zombies.
Ranged weapons also have profile types that have requirements for critical hit damage.
- Demolition: Shots against vulnerable zombies will always crit.
- Rapid Fire: The more shots you land in a row, the higher your accuracy. After a short duration of repeated hits, all shots will be critical strikes.
- Tactical: Defensive actions (Dodge/Block) increase your reload speed and also ensures all shots will be critical strikes.
- Sharpshooter: Exploiting weak points on a zombie guarantees critical hits. Hit them in the heads and limbs to ensure maximum damage.
For ranged weapons in Dead Island 2, my favorite is Sharpshooter against common zombies. Breaking their limbs off with rifle shots means the damage is a crit, and you can easily defeat those foes.
No matter what zombies you face off against in Dead Island 2, this knowledge will make destroying them significantly easier. You can find our review of the latest zombie-slaying adventure here.
