Having trouble fighting zombies? Try knocking zombies down—either with kicks, Ram/Tackle (Agility tree) or Grapple (Agility tree, again)—then hitting them repeatedly on the head with your weapon so they cannot get up.

You can detonate red barrels by throwing your melee weapon at them (the weapon-throw skill is in the Power tree). This will not destroy your melee weapon—you can go pick it up after. Throwing stars and firearms sufficiently detonate red barrels, though.

At high levels, killing virals quickly becomes easy: Tackle/Ram → head stomp skill; slip behind them, use Takedown; vault over one, use Drop Attack on the other etc.

Dying Light 1 does not have crossplay. A PC player cannot play with a console player; a PlayStation player cannot play with an Xbox player. At most, on PC, Steam players and Epic Games players can play with one another.

In your online settings (pause and press C), there's a "zombie invasion" setting. This is vaguely named. These are night hunter invasions—the night hunter is a fast, player-controlled zombie. If you have "zombie invasions" enabled, someone can navigate to Be the Zombie in the main menu, join your session and fight you.

If you were invaded, but you do not want to fight, you can pause and press "drop-out" (then please remember to press C and disable "zombie invasions"). No reload will occur for you—every other player will simply disappear from your session.

If you want to fight a night-hunter, if you can, ensure you have the following equipped: a UV flashlight, a grappling hook (Survivor level 12+), UV flares ("Zaid's flares" are a variant that last longer). UV light interrupts/prevents the night hunter's Pounce move (Pounce insta-kills you if successful). The game will give you a few UV flares and medkits every time you die during an invasion.

You can evade the night-hunter's Tackle move by pressing jump while looking at it, but you must:

(A) not be falling
(B) not be above/below the night hunter while being really close to it
(C) must be looking directly at the night hunter.

If any of these 3 conditions are not fulfilled, the Tackle will be guaranteed. Feel free to dodge then just mash jump during your dodge animation.

Weapon durability does not decrease during an invasion.

You do not lose EXP if you die during an invasion. You get Survivor EXP at the end of an invasion.

Weapon damage against the night hunter (max HP: 150) is normalized—it depends on weapon type and how many humans there are in the session.

Even a random 20-damage plank from a dumpster will do 60 damage in a 1v1, 48 damage in a 2v1, and so on.

Guns, rifles and shotguns tend to be weak against the night hunter. Prioritize melee weapons, bows and crossbows.

I recommend having a one-handed weapon—ideally, a "Premium Oriental Khopesh" (second-longest 1H range) or "Flesh Ripper" (longest 1H range; requires DLC)—and any heavy two-handed (sledgehammer, pickaxe, big axe etc). Heavy 2H weapons do twice the damage of 1H weapons, and it's often possible to get a heavy-2H swing after you evade a night-hunter Tackle.

The long recovery time of heavy-2H weapons can be cancelled by using hook anywhere.

Heavy-2H throws indeed oneshot the hunter in 1v1. If a night hunter misses a Ground Pound, or you interrupt its Pounce from above, the recovery time may be long enough for you to quickly kill it with Tackle/Ram (30 dmg in 1v1) → 1H weapon throw (166 total dmg in 1v1).