Zapping Electrified Machete

Within the first hour of playing Dead Island 2, you can get your hands on a powerful bladed weapon, which you can easily add a little extra flavour to. Firstly, you need to locate a machete. These aren’t all that uncommon; just keep your eyes peeled. When you’ve got hold of one, you then need to hit a workbench and equip an Electrocutor mod.

The result is an electrified machete capable of hacking off rotten limbs while simultaneously zapping zombies to a crisp. Adding the mod increases the weapon’s base damage and applies shock damage to every enemy you hit.

Walking through the back gardens of Bel-Air and come across an infinity pool? Kick a bunch of unsuspecting Z’s into the water and throw your machete in after them to create an electrified meat soup.

Decimating Sledgehammer

As the world of HELL-A opens up to you and you make your way to Beverly Hills, you should be able to craft a weapon capable of dealing a truly devastating blow.

You’ll need to find a sledgehammer and equip both an Impactor mod and the Empowering perk.

The Impactor mod increases both the damage and force of strikes. Successive hits also disorientate zombies, leaving them open to further attacks. The Empowering Perk grants an increase to critical and heavy attack damage, stacking your damage numbers even higher!

Around this point in the game, you’ll start to encounter Apex Variant zombies that pose more of a threat than your typical walker or runner. They often come with a bigger health bar, so a weapon that can deal large amounts of damage like this sledgehammer is crucial to your survival.

Acid Spraying Machine Gun

A few hours later, you’ll take a trip with a familiar face to go and liberate some guns from a local big game hunter’s home. From this point onwards, firearms become readily available around HELL-A.

We recommend getting your hands on a machine gun and equipping the Liquidator mod and Speedloader perk. Here’s why.

The Liquidator mod increases the damage of your bullets and applies acid damage to each hit. This means, in a pinch, you can quickly hip-spray a crowd of zombies and watch the layers of skin drop off their bones as they continue shambling towards you.

With a gun with such a high rate of fire, it can be easy to quickly empty your clip and be left vulnerable to attack. Luckily, The Speedloader perk grants increased reload speed, so you won’t be without a way to defend yourself for long.

With both of these upgrades equipped, you’ll be turning Zombies into melty swizz cheese in no time.

Spiky & Spicy Knuckle Dusters

After a brief rendezvous with a friend on Venice Beach, you’ll learn how to harvest exotic parts to craft unique perks.

If you happen to come across a pair of Rare Brass Knuckles, you can turn these already brutal weapons into truly barbaric slaying tools with just a few tweaks.

Once you’ve found a pair, locate a workbench, and add the Punctuator mod, the Unstable perk, and the Reinforced perk.

The Reinforced perk increases the force of the brass knuckles, making them even more deadly. The perk also improves durability, which is crucial for weapons like the knuckles, as you’ll often be carrying out several attacks in quick succession.

By adding the Punctuator mod, every time you sock a zombie in the mouth with your spike-covered fists, you’ll cause a build up of the bleed status effect, which, when full, will cause zombies to bleed for a short duration.

The Unstable perk is the wild card; it gives you a small chance of creating an explosion each time you land a critical hit on an enemy. Keep on punching, and you’ll eventually turn a zombie into flying meat chunks.

Fire Breathing Short Shotgun

The final weapon we want to tell you about can be crafted toward the end of the game. By this point, you’ll be a certified badass zombie slayer with plenty of weapons, upgrades, and crafting materials in your inventory. Superior rarity weapons will also be available, which allow you to add up to three separate perks!

So here it is. Combine the Superior Short Shotgun with the Cremator mod and the Hazardous, Russian Roulette, and Vampire perks.

When wielding this fiery shotgun, you’ll need to be up close and personal with the undead. To stop you from being overwhelmed, the Russian Roulette perk grants you a damage boost when your gun’s magazine is low, and Vampire gives you a short burst of health back each time you perform a kill.

The Cremator mod ignites your shotgun’s shells, so they deal fire damage to enemies upon impact. Blast them enough times, and they’ll eventually become ignited and continue to be barbecued until the effect wears off – or they turn to a crisp, of course.

With the Hazardous perk, when a status effect such as ignited is applied to an enemy, a forceful explosion will be triggered that will stagger nearby enemies, leaving them open for attack. This is a great example of the types of synergies between mods and perks players can create in Dead Island 2.

Pairing mods and perks with Skill Cards also allows players to switch up their playstyle and maximise their slaying potential. 

Named and Legendary Weapons

By progressing through the game and completing side quests, you will be able to get hold of beautiful named weapons with more curated combinations of upgrades and our all-powerful legendary weapons that have unique perks, which can’t be found anywhere else.