Enclaves are groups of survivors outside the player's community that take refuge in various buildings, often empty houses or potential home sites. Some enclaves are unique, featuring named characters with their own stories, while others are generic survivor groups that spawn randomly.
Players can interact with enclaves by helping them in missions, trading resources, and sometimes even recruiting members into their own community. However, not all enclaves are friendly. Hostile Enclaves exist as well, and they will attack the player on sight, making them a dangerous threat in the world.
Interacting with Enclaves[]
Supply Locker[]
- Main article: Supply Locker
Each enclave has their own supply locker, similar to the ones at the player's home site and outposts. In State of Decay, most if not all enclave's lockers have 3 types of "common" ammo (for example, .22 cal, 9mm and .45 Cal) ammo, with 28 rounds for each type, and consumable items (like Snack or Coffee).
Each enclave can have one or more resources that are "abundant" (displayed at the upper left corner of the screen, similar to resources in a searchable building). It seems to reflect the variety and amount of items they can have in their locker (for example, enclaves with good ammo supply can have ammo in higher numbers).
In the DLC Breakdown, enclaves' supply seems much more limited. It is not uncommon for their supply lockers to be completely empty. However, enclaves with good supply of items still spawn, presumably at lower probability.
In State of Decay 2 supply lockers are mostly absent from enclaves the exception being ones holed up in homesites. The enclaves trade menu is now accessed by talking to an enclave member and selecting trade with enclave, provided you aren't on bad terms with the group.
The items in enclaves' supply locker refreshes once a real-time day.
Gaining Trust and Recruiting[]
How friendly the enclaves are to the player's community is represented by their Trust level. The higher Trust, the less Influence is required to take items from their supply locker (at maximum Trust, the cost is usually similar to taking from the player's own supply locker). Enclave Trust is gained by:
- Hunting Freaks or clearing Infestations with them
- Finding their missing survivors when a "Scavenger?" mission pops up.
Letting these missions expire usually results in loss of trust. In some cases, the survivor(s) in distress might even die, reducing trust even more
Shortly after maximum trust level is reached (the player receives a "You rock!" note), Lily will forward a radio message from the enclave, saying they wish to join the player's community, and a Friendly Survivor mission will trigger. Recruiting is only applicable to randomly spawned enclaves, not those who are part of the storyline (see enclave types below)
Enclave types[]
Named story enclaves[]
Certain enclaves are part of the State of Decay storyline that have characters essential to some missions. The inhabitants seem to be immortal, cannot be killed by zombies and cannot be recruited (with exceptions of Jess Cohen and Jackson Hollis of the enclave The Law).
Desperate Survivors[]
Enclaves labeled Desperate Survivors are created as part of a game missions at fixed locations and have random survivors. The inhabitants seem to be immortal, cannot be killed by zombies and cannot be recruited.
Expelled Member[]
Enclaves labeled Expelled Member are one-man Enclaves created when a member of the player's community is expelled by the decisions made that are part of Morale missions or the Mercy Shot mission. Once the survivor is successfully expelled (dependent on the Leadership skill), the player will be notified in their journal about this Enclave after some time even if the player has not discovered them. The log always indicates that the Enclave has a lot of Food supplies, though no such events are present to support this information.
Since this Enclave only has one member, the member's Trust level with the player before being expelled correlates with the Enclave's Trust level. So if the player were to expel a friend member, the Expelled Member Enclave of that friend will be at max Trust with the player's community.
Its Supply Locker seems to always have the same items across any Expelled Member Enclaves that may appear. The only available mission involved with this Enclave seems to be to go on a training run with the expelled survivor, which will increase the Enclave's and its member's Trust level upon completion.
The Enclave spawns at a random location within the same area as the player's base. The singular inhabitant cannot be recruited and may be killed by zombies. This Enclave will eventually collapse without the player's interaction after a while, typically around a real day and a half. To prevent this, the player may continue doing the Combat Training mission with them that will pop up periodically.
Random Enclaves[]
These enclaves spawn at of random locations and have random survivors. The inhabitants can be killed by zombies and can be recruited.
Temporary Enclaves (SoD 2)[]
In State of Decay 2 temporary enclaves are formed due to the game generating survivor activity missions, these enclaves disband at the end of the mission when the player has the option to recruit the survivors or refuse to recruit them. These enclaves cannot be made allied enclaves and thus offer no max standing bonus.
Notes[]
- There is a limited number of "slots" for survivor enclaves. Once these slots are filled, enclaves will stop interacting with the player, meaning no new missions will appear. This can cause issues when triggering certain storyline missions, such as Desperate Survivors (from the later Wilkerson Missions and Army Missions), potentially "maxing out" enclave slots. When this happens, no new enclaves will appear, and existing enclaves will not generate new missions.
- In State of Decay 2, to fix this, the player must visit an enclave and select "Threaten this Enclave", which will cause them to disband, freeing up a slot and allowing new mission opportunities to appear.
- In State of Decay 2 there is a max number of enclaves that show up on the maps legend, while enclaves can form after that from survivors personal quest lines and other specific missions they may not ever get a map icon and thus can be hard to locate again.