You’ll quickly become familiar with the many workbenches in Dead Island 2 as you craft unique weapons. Many players may notice a button prompt at the workbench making them wonder, what is match level? This is alongside other ones like repairing, upgrades, and scrapping as well.
If you don’t plan on scrapping a weapon for parts or upgrading it with perks, you may want to learn how match leveling works. This is where most of your money will likely go as you try to keep your weapons up to par.
What is Match Level in Dead Island 2
Make sure to hit that Crusher with everything you’ve got, otherwise you’ll be heading over to our guide on what happens when you die.
As you get deeper into this zombie slaying game, you’ll continue to level up and get stronger as you go. Especially with new skill cards that buff your character in a variety of ways. Such as maiming zombies for extra damage. However, your weapons will stay at the same item power.
If you continue using weapons with a lower item power stat, they won’t keep up with the tougher zombies you start to encounter. You’ll begin to have a tougher time with both common zombies and Apex Variants that are much tougher. The last thing you want to do is hit a giant Crusher zombie with a toothpick.
You can find a workbench at every safehouse and sometimes randomly in HELL-A.
This is where the match level crafting mechanic comes into play. Whether you have a favorite weapon or just need to keep up with tough enemies, you can upgrade a weapon at the workbench. Instead of upgrading it with perks and mods, you can use match level to raise its level to yours.
The main negative to doing this is that it’s expensive and will certainly drain your money. Unfortunately, the cost continues to rise as the level of weapons you get does as well. But, as our 10 Best Tips and Tricks guide explains, you can make money a few different ways.
Let’s level match this Bo Staff to catch it up to my current level of 25. But it’s going to take a whole $15,338 to do.
Regardless, the match level mechanic will increase the weapon’s item power, but also its stats as well. For example, I raised a Bo Staff from level 24 to 25 and its power increased by 15. While three of the four stats didn’t change, the damage did increase by 51.
Despite needing a lot of money to match level many weapons, it’s definitely a good mechanic for the ones you like. Especially if you don’t want to upgrade a new weapon with mods and perks. Which can be tough if you don’t have the right parts to do it.
While increasing it from 24 to 25 is only a small difference, it can be much more significant with larger level gaps.
But, I wouldn’t grow too attached to items at the beginning of your Dead Island 2 playthrough. You can easily find new ones between looting and completing quests. Plus, you’re going to quickly get higher rarity weapons that have more slots to upgrade. Which overall, improves their strength.
That’s all there is to this short and sweet Dead Island 2 guide on what is match leveling. This is easily how I lose most of my money, especially when I have a legendary weapon I don’t want to get rid of. But, if you’re in that situation too, you can store it at a safehouse until you have the money.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.