Essentially all Survivor mode does is increase health and damage of Zombies in general, it also requires your character to consume Food and Sleep often. This being said, let's begin.
I'd like to prompt by saying I've already completed TSL: Union City five or six times at this point, and I've developed flawless strategy to aid with survival, ending the game with maximal ammo, food, and healing supplies. Only refer to this if you're struggling, if you're looking to play the game as you'd like, so be it.
Character Creation:
STATS
Strength: Is CRUCIAL throughout the entire game. Melee weapons are really all you're going to be using unless you become bored of them and decide to use guns. Should end the game with about 13 or 14.
Endurance: Not as important as Strength, but nevertheless, it's a must. Should end the game with about 10 to 12.
Precision: I never raise it any higher than 10 due to gun skills already increasing accuracy.
Intellect: Pointless, no higher than 6 or 7. Skills already govern everything this does.
Luck: Pointless, Searching already governs Lucky Finds, and Critical Hits are useless due to common powerful melee weapons already being able to 1 hit zombies. No higher than the original amount (5).
SKILLS:
I only raise skills that are important, which are the following:
Blades: Do NOT put any points into Blunt. The reason for this is because at the 50% Achievement mark, you unlock the BattleAxe, which is the best melee weapon in the game. Other Blade based weapons will easily hold until then. You're more than likely to find a Shovel (25 Damage) or a Heavy melee weapon prior to the BattleAxe if not another Blade weapon. Trust me, you will.
Long Guns OR Automatics: Special Weapons and Pistols are 100% useless. Even in Survivor, Ammo and good weapons are plentiful, Pistols are weak and useless and there are only two or three Special Weapons in the game which are entirely useless. You'll either end up using Thor, Xm8, or the M249 SAW by the finale, so don't bother with other gun skills.
Security: When you reach your second partner in the gun shop and he asks you to find his Gun and Bolt. When you go to retrieve it, inside one of the rooms is a safe that requires 35 Security, this is the highest you'll ever need your Security to be, you'll find more than enough NightWatchmen (Book)'s to be able to pick any lock after that. I guarantee it.
Searching: What I like to do is round off my other important skills to the nearest 5 or 10, and if there's any points less, I put them into Searching. This is relatively important if you wish to find good weaponry such as (Spec Ops) or (Military) guns for your Partner. And if you're super lucky, you'll find an SV-SMG. I usually have about 55 points into Searching by level 14.
First-Aid and Survival: These two aren't too important but every other level I put about 2 points into each. Nice to have if you have this game lags on your computer a little bit, so when hordes come out of the ceiling you have a significantly better chance of survival.
Any skills not mentioned are useless and I don't advise wasting points on them.
STRATEGY:
Hordes: When Hordes of zombies come out of the ceiling, the bast tactic is to get your partner in front of you (Gun only) and when a zombie approaches him, strike it down and back up so you don't get hit. Simply repeat, if he happens to get downed just hit G and follow the same routine, it's foolproof unless you encounter the glitch where you cannot revive (rare glitch).
Food and Healing Supplies: Do not hesitate to take any of these. Take them all, you will need the food specifically. I usually complete the game while only using 1 Bandage or Medpack since Beds aren't THAT spread out and you Level up relatively quickly until the end of the game.
That's pretty much it, not much of a guide but really if you're looking to make an optimized killing machine, this is the way to do it.
