With weapon upgrading vital to surviving Dead Island 2, you always want to keep track of your options. While every upgrade is worth using, some are better than others, regardless of playstyle. To help you track which is which, you’ll find our handy list of the best mods and perks in Dead Island 2.
Best Weapon Mods in Dead Island 2
Check out our mod locations guide for help getting your hands on these.
Superior Melee Liquidator Mod
Very few zombies throughout Hell-A are resistant to caustic damage. Due to this glaring vulnerability, a majority of the time, you will want a weapon that implements it. Applying this mod to a fast weapon, like a stabbing Headhunter-type knife, the caustic buildup will be almost instant. Achieving full caustic buildup leads to the melting status effect, which will rapidly drain zombie health with a grisly visual effect.
Superior Melee Electrocutor Mod
Dead Island 2 is set around Los Angeles, which means plenty of citizens own pools. The sheer amount of water found around many zones in the game is ripe for coupling with shock damage. While other elemental types might be more damaging, shock is the only one that spreads easily around a whole group.
Superior Ranged Cremator Mod
Fire is one of the deadliest elements to use against the zombie hordes in Dead Island 2, but the buildup isn’t all that quick. For that reason, this mod works much better on a gun you can use at a decent range. There are certainly full-auto guns available, but it’s best on something like a pistol that hits hard and doesn’t potentially waste precious ammo.
Superior Ranged Punctuator Mod
In a similar case as caustic damage, there aren’t any zombies that can resist the bleeding status effect. Though this same mod exists on melee and ranged (as they all do), there are more benefits to putting it onto a gun instead. The most important of these reasons is the damage boost a weapon with this mod receives. Equip this one into a nice rifle like Peggy, and it will last you for the rest of the game.
Superior Ranged Liquidator Mod
Caustic damage is so effective we think it should be put on every weapon. To that end, you should absolutely mod a melee weapon and a gun. We chose to put this mod onto a Machine Pistol, and it was instantly the right choice. You can always find a free Rare one in the Tower safe area in the Venice Beach zone, and it does respawn. That high fire rate guarantees almost instant melting effect application, which is exactly what you want.
Best Weapon Perks in Dead Island 2
Check out our perk locations guide for help getting your hands on these.
Leech
There’s just about nothing more critical in Dead Island 2 than maintaining health. Players can carry five medkits, but in the wrong situation, they go very quickly. This makes it almost required to have multiple ways to heal when venturing out of the safe areas. Therefore, every applicable melee weapon you own should get this Leech perk. You can’t pass up the chance to heal by just doing damage. Needless to say, this perk synergizes extremely well when playing as Ryan, who regenerates health when maiming zombies.
Vampire
Vampire is definitely lesser than the Leech perk, but by no means less effective. Though Leech is unbeatable due to healing on damage, there will still be no shortage of zombies to kill. 90% of the zombies you will face are weak Shamblers and Walkers. If you couple both perks on a strong enough weapon, keeping your health up won’t be an issue. Just like with Leech, this perk is especially good with Ryan if he’s the slayer you’ve chosen.
Ferocious
Fury mode is the best way to take down almost every special infected type. Usually, you can’t get too close to a Crusher, but Fury makes that a non-issue. While attacking while in Fury mode will heal you, there’s every reason to use this perk. It’s tough to get overwhelmed, but if you can build up Fury as fast as possible, you can overcome any situation.
Relentless
Although you can equip Relentless with melee weapons, there’s no reason to do that. Seeing as the whole benefit of the mod is that doing critical damage raises overall damage, use guns. The Mutator special infected are the worst and have a massive weak spot for critical hits, so this makes short work of them. On top of that, any tougher foe with lots of health will provide a huge damage boost.
Slaughter
You get Slaughter rather early in the game, which is an amazing gift. The common and uncommon weapons you get stuck with through the first few zones break very easily. Getting to augment their durability while also raising limb damage will certainly help you survive many encounters while you hunt out better loot. This perk might get slightly outclassed later, but it is perfect for your first 10 levels.
Static Charge
Static Charge is one of the few perks that can only be equipped to a weapon that already has the appropriate mod installed. In this instance, pair this terrific perk up with the Superior Melee Electrocutor Mod, and the zombies won’t have a chance. While it’s important how well electricity attacks pair with water to spread the status effect, this one spreads it no matter where you are.
With any luck, you will find the same success that we did, though these are indeed the best mods and perks in Dead Island 2. For more of our wide Dead Island 2 guide coverage, take a look at the links below.
