Dead Island 2: Best Weapons & Upgrades

It's finally time! Dead Island 2 has been a LONG time coming, but it finally releases on Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S today (April 21st), so why spend more time fiddling around trying to find the best weapons and upgrades?

Here, we'll provide a few starter tips for getting to grips with Dead Island 2's combat, including some of the best weapon types and upgrades for different combat scenarios. Let's dig into that rotten zombie flesh, shall we?

Dead Island 2 Best Weapons

Different zombie types and combat scenarios in Dead Island 2 definitely have their better-suited weapon choices, but we noticed a few key patterns emerge during our hands-on time with the game.

Early on in the main story, we recommend using a heavier melee weapon of your choice. At the start, you'll see plenty of slow zombies lingering around the neighbourhoods of Bel-Air, and taking huge swipes at them with something like a massive pickaxe felt like the best route forward. You don't have to worry about enemy speed much in the first few hours, and using a weapon like this means you can crush multiple zombies in one go.

However, later on in the game you'll be best served using a melee weapon that allows for a bit more agility. We repaired and re-used our trusty Officer's Sword for hours and hours as it provided a nice balance between speed and power. It's always worth upgrading these and adding mods as well, which we'll come onto in a moment.

Dead Island 2 Best Guns

You likely won't interact with firearms much during the first half of the game-or-so, but they do come in handy during the latter stages of your adventure.

Having said that, their use cases usually revolve around keeping your distance from strong enemies, so strangely, we recommend avoiding things like shotguns for the most part. Stick to ranged firearms (like rifles and the ever-satisfying nail gun) and you should be good to go when you need to keep your distance from the infected.

Dead Island 2 Best Weapon Upgrades

Dead Island 2's weapon upgrade system is definitely worth messing with, and how far you go at workbenches usually comes down to the amount of resources you've gathered.

First off, you'll notice the 'level match' icon in our screengrabs, and that can come in really useful if you have the means to use it. Basically, if you find early game weapons you like but they become a bit weak, you can simply use resources to match them to your current player level and voila, they become much more usable. If you have the resources, this is definitely worth routinely doing to your favourite weapons.

Dead Island 2 Best Weapon Mods

The mod system is a lot of fun in Dead Island 2, and it's also super useful! It basically allows you to apply elemental mods to most weapons in the game - creating other areas of affect damage beyond your first hits and shots. You'll find more blueprints for mods as you're introduced to new workbench locations throughout the main story.

Because Dead Island 2 throws tons of weapons your way, it's probably worth applying different elemental mods to different weapons, and making sure you have one of each type in your inventory at any given time. Different enemies are more resistant to certain elements, so the most useful mod really does depend on what zombie type heads your way (we loved using electricity when we could, even if it did cause some self-inflicted damage at times).

Those are just some of our general weapon tips for how to best navigate Dead Island 2's zombie-infested levels and environments. Level match your most-used weapons, always have multiple elemental mods on hand and stick to long range firearms, and you'll be pretty much good to go in Dead Island 2!

We hope you're enjoying Dead Island 2's gameplay and that this guide helps you along the way!