Which is when I say, "lol no, it's time for me to go." I leg it to the nearest allied base on plague addled legs and get to the top of the building. I'm trying to hold everything at bay with head shots - I've almost finished round 1 of this fight (there are multiple rounds, and your progress does not save if you fail at all you must start from scratch) when two things happen - I run out of all molotovs and grenades on both characters and the last round of spawned adds appear: two screamers, a horde, two bloaters. Adds are coming in from everywhere, I'm on deaths door as my plague sickness is so high that I can barely swing a weapon.
![state of decay 3 heartland state of decay 3 heartland](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_hYozlYXPk8/maxresdefault.jpg)
It's ridiculous, but expected, so I continue. If the screamer gets a scream off, it spawns additional plague adds and bloaters. Each additional time you hurt it, a minimum of another horde, one bloater, and one screamer. and it's on! Every time you hurt this thing, it summons a minimum of one blood plague horde. I have max stamina boosters, max heals, sniper cover, morale boost, health boost and max size bags that are filled with bullets, grenades and molotovs. I take in my two best people with nine "plague busters" each (a special bio weapon you have to use on these things to start being able to damage them at all). What do I mean? Here's what I just experienced ***minor spoilers*** There's a mission you eventually do that makes doing plague hearts feel like a lol-fest. Unfortunately, the game is just too punishing. When Heartland was released as a story-driven DLC, I felt that at last we were returning to story driven gaming as well as a nostalgic recreation of the maps from the original game. Short version, SOD2 was more of the same from a grinding perspective, with none of the reward for advancing story. SOD2 added much improved graphics, long overdue but questionable multiplayer functionality and completely gutted the storyline elements that actually added any depth to the original game. LONG VERSION: I put over a 1000 hours into SOD1 and it's DLC addons, I enjoyed it immensely. Enjoyed by masochists and programmed by sadists. Maybe I could have farmed more and gotten better guns but with bloaters spawning inside my base right beside my people I don't understand how they could have possibly survived. It was out of nowhere and gave me no time to prepare. I was the sole survivor in a game mode all about relationships and companions. After that, I kept shooting until it also died but there wasn't much of a point. For 3 minutes I tried to keep him off my last companion while also thinning the rest of the invasion. I don't know what kind of buff blood ferals got but this thing wouldn't die. They were trapped inside of minefield of bloater clouds and while I could get out only one of my other people did. In the base game I lost one person in several playthroughs, and then suddenly two people died and there was nothing I could do.
![state of decay 3 heartland state of decay 3 heartland](https://i.rutab.net/upload/2020/userfiles/20200322152545_1.jpg)
A half dozen of them appeared right beside my companions and obliterated them. I was trying to kill ferals and screamers when suddenly bloaters started spawning inside of my base. Maybe I was still warming up or maybe the game glitched out but it felt like there was suddenly and insane difficulty spike. Once I got overwhelmed and got damaged enough to be injured but other than that I felt like I was flawlessly progressing and actually getting good. I got great weapons and guns and I was quickly sidestepping zombies while popping off heads. It had been a while since I played but I was getting the hang of it again.
![state of decay 3 heartland state of decay 3 heartland](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/stateofdecay/images/8/86/Jurassic_Junction.jpg)
The story line was a great addition and I was slowly building up a base with 3 survivors in addition to my main player. I hadn't played state of decay for months but this dlc got me back into it and it made me want to play the whole game again. I didn't put much time into yet but it was great.
![state of decay 3 heartland state of decay 3 heartland](https://garethelliscouk.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/d9m0tmbxoamu2mt.jpeg)
This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.