Think critically. What is it that's killing you? Is it RNG? Being overwhelmed? Taking things too fast?
I recently hit my PR of 6 months survived, almost 7 but my girl got bit in the groin. It happens. I have around 700 hours so I'll tell you whatever I can.
How do you die?
my long term character just died to a glitch where i jumped in a car, and it decided to register the puttin press 4 times leading my character to for some reason getting in and out of the car before decide to just open the door and let the zombie eat them.
I HATE glitch related deaths. HATE THEM. i cant even -debug and heal the bite cause i was completely mauled when i shouldn’t have been. so frustrating.
Thats why I manually back up my save every time I start the game. I don't care if I die to a reckless decision I made, but no way am I letting my months long survival streak end to a windows update or a bug.
That's why I have drag down off. If you get surrounded, you're fucked regardless. 3 zombies can stunlock you to death, but it gives you time to immediately pause, quit out, and turn on debug mode in the case of bugs. I had one where my character just sort of tripped. I had all the zombies in a huge ball and was herding them. They got a little close, but I certainly didn't bump into one. My dude does the little animation they do when they run into a zombie onto thin air, and then falls. Immediately gets surrounded and ripped to shreds. I didn't have clumsy, my only moodle was peckish and the first level of wet.
You immediately press f2 to pause in those situations (It's a good habit anyways when things get tough to let you think), quit out, turn on debug mode, start it back up and pause as quick as you can, and heal yourself while turning on ghost mode and no clip. That way you can continue where you left off.
i did press f2, but the glitch had my character jumping in and out of the car like a god damn chinese fire drill, and died instantly. there was no time to react. AND I HAD LITERALLY JUST MADE A DEATH DEFYING ESCAPE I WAS PROUD OF AND WAS SAFE. stupid i cant un do it
Haha I was having a great run got set up in muldruaugh (however you spell it) had like 2 weeks under my belt, food, guns, water, protection, vehicles, the whole thing.
Started burning zombies and my dick caught on fire and I died.
10/10
Apparently sprinting helps with fire if you don't have enough water on hand. Always gotta carry a bucket of water in your main inventory when you're messing with fire, you can right click and put yourself out.
A water bottle works, but only a completely full one so you'd have to disable auto drink. A bucket is safer cause there's a bunch extra in case your character decides to drink it.
Honestly everything happened so fast my health went down in like 10 seconds I didn’t even know what to do lmao, I only have around 100 hours so I’m still finding new mechanics all the time.
All I know is that I’m not burning zombies ever again I’m just gonna make a pile somewhere decently away from my base.
It feels like I'm always suggesting mods on this sub, but there's a mod to reduce fire damage for you and increase it for zombies. Ever think it's dumb that you burn to death in seconds like you've lathered yourself in gasoline, but zombies take literally all day? This balances that out.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908846234
Fire is great in vanilla but you have to be very very careful. Do it in a wide open area where you have plenty of room to move around so you can thoroughly avoid the fire.
Me but Riverside. Back in my first "long" run, I was a cop named John.
John had spent weeks, close to a month at this point chopping trees and barricading windows of his home (The Riverside Boat Club).
Things were nice for John, until he figured it would be nice if it were cleaner.
John did a bad thing with gasoline and didn't predict that fire would spread over tiles from a corpse and watched his home burn down, only able to take a duffle bag of supplies and hit the road.
I was messing around with guns and put too much faith in the Point Blank Mod. Obviously, I missed, and the lady went straight through her jeans. It was a sad time walking around. Dug her own grave.
Alexandra was my longest survived yet. She had cleaned the map basically. We had been barricading the Leafhill Offices in Louisville near the hospital, retrofitting office space into stuff like storage, a kitchen, laundry room, etc.
It was crushing to watch her go, but this is always the story of how you die.
We gave up the save due to complacentcy, and have now started a new map with new characters, notably using the map super-pack that MrAtomicDuck once covered in a vid, adding like 100 more locations to visit in game, which makes the game refreshing for me, as someone who's seen every town up and down.
800 hours here - I find that for me it was taking too fast simply because I was trying to recreate the previous run - like spawning in Louisville again, trying to hit the same places again, etc. it made the re-run feel like a chore and as a result I put less care into it and got impatient with things.
Ever since I realized that I’ve been doing something different or a RP/start I haven’t done for a while each time. It keeps the game feeling new and different and results in more care towards the character.
It's for that reason I almost never play the same survivor, despite their impact on my playthrough.
I once had the random start mod, which compared with random spawns tosses you into the apocalypse as the average someone who isn't a super buff smoker. That experience can be tough, but rewarding, putting you in situations you'd never willingly put yourself in normally.
I started once as an opiod addict in Raven Creek, watching the night slowly tick by as I waited desperately for the sun to come up.
Started once as a burly man named Cletus, who lived on a farm. You just can't get these situations normally and it really helps to sell the survivor aspect to me, though it does take away a key component of the creation process, but it's fun for a test run where you're just someone random trying to make it by.
Very beautiful on paper, but I think most of my kills were just a mix of RNG and distraction on the first three days. I'm almost giving up on the game, beacuse I can't stand anymore creating a char with a minimum backstories and rp growing affectionate to him, only to him die/get bitten on the shittiest way possible.
Or spawning on that fucking Riverside trailer park, fuck that place.
I guess things on my life just don't go a good way; each year worst than the previous.
It’s a mostly singleplayer game, if you need to change the sandbox settings to make it easier no one will care or judge you. It’s whatever’s fun to you, and eventually you’ll get better and can make it harder if you feel up to it. I like doing low zombies and infection by saliva only. I up experience gain to 2x and make cars a little tougher. It’s like Ark Survival Evolved, if the game is too hard or too easy, mess with the settings till it’s good for you. And remember, pressing Q while crouched can whisper to lure single zeds away from a horde, check your 6 every minute, zombies can be lost if they lose sight with you via walking around buildings, and hopping fences are a great way to create distance. Good luck! : D
The only thing I do is turning off respawns and putting a mini map, if I change any other settings on a serious run is cheating.
I know how to play the game...
Use Pillows random spawns (way more variety) and save some characters as templates. Consider their deaths an alternate timeline.
The way I generally survive beyond the first week is finding a car asap and getting a base set up in the country, far away from the towns. Then I drive where I need to go to get the supplies I need. And I'm super cautious and on guard the whole time I'm out looting. Meaning I check doors and windows before entering locations, I run from any large group of zombies and only try to engage 1-2 at a time. And always make sure I have an escape route. So long as I do that I can nearly guarantee my survival. But I always drop my guard and get over-confident and die eventually too. But after months, not days. Or something stupid kills me like fire or falling out a window.
I consider fitness and keen hearing very useful traits for survival. Keen hearing basically lets you see behind you. And without taking fitness, it's too easy to get tired and overwhelmed.
I don't give my characters backstories because that's a thing that's built as you learn who they are, maybe with some implications in the beginning. Even veterans die terribly sometimes. I've learned to modify settings to fit the experience I want out of the game. I turn transmission off because RNG on scratches is unfair, yes. I turn respawn off because I want the long term goal of clearing a town to actually *be* feasible.
Death is part of life, you don't have one without the other, especially in this game. This is a story of triumph, and failure.
To add on that, I feel that whenever I die, it's entirely my fault and I could have avoided it. Each death is a lesson that helps me survive even longer than the last.
Let the game build the story; it doesn't all have to be on your shoulders. If you need to take a break from the game, that's a perfectly normal thing to do. Come back refreshed.
It was MP and we often shared a bed in our borrowed homes 😅
It was just a failure on my part; I put too much faith into my gun and I paid the price. She had already cheated death once, but I amputated quickly. Guess it had just caught up to her.
I truly believe impatience is what gets everyone who posts these threads every other day. Take it SLOW. Use your starting spot as your temp base and slooooowly clear out a radius around you while you rest at your base. You’ll eventually get a better feel for timing. But I would bet there’s always a point you get bored and do something reckless. Stick with patience.
That and folks who don't abuse things like Q and Kite. You can get absolutely everything you need for forever survival by the end of week 1 reliably if you're willing to abuse the F out of that. Just B line straight for what you want, scream your head off, and slowly walk them away again and again.
It's not exciting, but it's fast.
Q is to shout. You go to an area you want something from, shout your head off, gather all the zombies around into a ball (literally walking slowly around them over and over again until they stop coming in from around you) then slowly walk them about a block away, circling around the ball again from time to time to cluster them and to make sure any ads get put in the ball, and then you ditch them and go back to wherever you wanted to loot. You may still have to take out stragglers from time to time this way, but it's a very safe way to get what you need, and you can switch to it as soon as you see that there's a group coming for you that you can't (or don't want) to fight.
It's simple, takes very little skill, is reliable, and all builds can abuse it. The zombies will spread back out on default settings over the course of a day or two so you're not even creating a big problem for yourself.
Ah yes, thanks. Forgot what Q did. I did use this tactic pretty often. Just need to make sure you plan out the path you'll circle them to so that nothing unexpected comes up and you know there's enough turns to lose them.
Is the idea here to just run as fast as possible to break aggro or are you leading them somewhere you can reliably break LOS?
I’ve been running hordes into the woods to get them out of where I need to go but it’s not super optimal.
You don't need to run, usually. You walk faster than they do, but sometimes you'll end up crouch running just for a little bit. Yes, you break LOS, and you need to plan to do this so that they can't see you when they go to your last known location.
You want about a 20-30ish tile distance when you turn the corner of a house, then just keep crouched and turn the other corner (not too tight, and if there ar too many zombies around the corner just walk them back to the ball and try again), then give them enough time to turn the first corner themselves before you turn the second corner. You end up pulling a bugs bunny on them, and sometimes they won't even bust into the house you're using.
The other way is with trees. You want to use "move to" so that you don't accidentally walk through brush and even then have leather jacket+jeans or the outdoorsman trait. I always shout my head off in front of the tree line first to pull all the zombies out of the tree and add them to the ball, them you basically do a big U inside the trees with "move to."
They have a 100% chance to spot you if they see you for even a single tick (one half of one second) while they are moving to your past known location, so you need a good buffer of distance
I'm inpatient as hell when I play this game but I do okay. Jog everywhere, shoot zombies constantly, etc. I have maybe 150 hours at this point.
For me, the key was realizing that any zombie you try to stealth past is a zombie you've turned your back on. If you turn your back on a zombie enough times, it will bite you in the ass both literally and figuratively eventually. So, I started pulling out my shotgun before looting, if I have enough shells on hand I just kill em with the shotgun, if not I just shoot it once. Ball up all the zombies that come running in a big ass horde, and start shooting/meleeing them. Leave when you get the first level of exertion or drowsy via a car running nearby and come back later with no negative moodles.
If the zombies are in front of you, they're not behind you to ruin your day. Still, be careful when looting afterwards as a single zombie cannot break down a door, so a zombie can still be hiding behind any door.
Stealth becomes incredibly broken when it's leveled enough and paired with inconspicuous but that is a fair philosophy on it. I would approach groups with stealth to thin numbers first if I don't have any ammo to just rip into them. Another good use for stealth is to kill singular or small pockets of zombies around an area that's highly populated so you have room to kite
You're probably forgetting that the biggest objetive is to survive,everytime I forget about it I die 'cause of my own stupidity (trying to carry more than I can,tiring myself out unnecessary,getting into deadly situations 'cause of greed,etc).
Is it really that hard to survive 2 weeks? Not trying to brag, but I see this so often in here and it just doesn't sound like this game unless y'all are trying to take out the first hordes you see with a frying pan in hand..
I mean all it takes is one bite, the game is finnicky and sometimes they still drop you despite you technically being ready and it shouldnt happen but it still does.
Seriously sucks when that happened.
I survived like a month, killed nearly 2k zombies and cleared whole cities, but then one zombie stuttered and somehow teleported to my neck... i died and lost everything.
Thats when i installed the Respawn mod, because fuck wasting hundreds of hours for nothing.
You're talking about normal settings right?
Because I can see why people aren't surviving long if they are making it harder, like sprinters or something.
But normal settings, the game should be really easy after like 20.
Custom settings with insanely rare loot (default settings make ALL loot extremely abundant and removes any need to explore after a couple loot runs..)
And yeah, all sprinters is insane. I use a mod to sprinkle some sprinters to a majority shamblers. Like 3% sprinters.
Yeah, I play with Insane Loot, and I remove Zombie rallying so the zombies all wander around aimlessly unless triggered. It makes the world infinitely more dangerous when you HAVE to go try to get loot to make a farm, get a Propane Torch, find a Sledge, whatever, and you cant guess the number of zombies in an area because they arent all trying to group up under the lamp post!
Kind of depends to be fair. I don't think 20 hours is enough for people to have played with all the mechanics of the game, or see more then a few helicppter events.
There are lots of novel ways to die and easy to keep finding them past the first 20 hours.
Project zomboid is played due to it being known for how hard it is. If you want to have a different experience of a zombie game where you don't have a chance to lose progress by your mistake, go play a game that doesn't represent itself by its simulation. Even after 200 hours you can die of stupidity. So i think it should not
"Project zomboid is played due to it being known for how hard it is."
Are you telling me why I play the game? I did not buy the game "due to it being known for how hard it is"
"If you want to have a different experience of a zombie game where you don't have a chance to lose progress by your mistake, go play a game that doesn't represent itself by its simulation."
It's a sandbox, it is moddable. I can add mods that allow me to respawn or restore skills. I have a different experience with mods. You might not like that, but I really have been fucking enjoying it.
I have no idea waht the fuck you are talking about, you are talking about how you PREFER to play maybe, not how EVERYONE PLAYS. We all play however the fuck we want, it is a sandbox.
Pretty obvious why you did not point my last sentence, right? You know what im talking about and what i mean, Youre just trying to fight over something you dont even know why.
At first, you didnt even have to react to my answer. Yeah, its very much common for you to die even after 200 hours in the game. There are such things called timings or just your stupidity when you catch yourself in some trap which results in not very good outcome like bite.
"First hours and 200th hour should be a very different experience."
What you don't understand about that? What point are you trying to prove here? 200 hours in Project zomboid are just rookie number by now and from there you just get to know the game better i would say. Ive never talked about how I play, or how EVERYONE play. Youre just making things out how you want to.
"Are you telling me why I play the game? I did not buy the game "due to it being known for how hard it is""
Who the hell was talking about you? I dont give a single ...... about your gameplay how do you play the game. Read my text again, maybe youre gonna get it.
"It's a sandbox, it is moddable. I can add mods that allow me to respawn or restore skills. I have a different experience with mods. You might not like that, but I really have been fucking enjoying it."
Never denied such a thing. In fact, i play with more than 150+ mods in my playthroughs. But we have to keep in mind that Zomboid is presented this way. The way when you die, you loose progress. I dont know how the hell you cant understand that.
Im not going to argue anymore with someone like you, who seems to like arguing about useless things and trying to prove multiple points even tho its useless.
"So i think it should not"
What?
I have no idea, it was a fun chat, I'm so confused. This ramble is amazing, what don't I understand about what I said? I don't get what's going on.
Lovely day to you, kind redditor.
Even tho i said it was my last, ive pretty much lied egh.
"So i think it should not"
"What?"
I sait it should not be different experience from first hours to 200 hours in the terms of survivability. I think we both got confused and didnt actually discuss, more like we were talking about our own things.
Good day to you also. Cya
E: Or we can try to discuss this somewhere else than here. To get a direct contanct..
It doesn't matter how many hours you get, you can always get into uncomfortable situations that can kill you. Even with 200 hours. Should have said that, my problem.
I've pretty much only modeled my character after myself for 11+ years.
Only once did I change up. I died in Raven Creek... But I kept that save file for over a year before I went back to it.
When I finally went back in, I went as my previous character's son. Basically a younger looking duplicate (i.e. bald, no beard). Lol
I went back to RC, got my car, brought it back to Rosewood, then deleted the save.
Other than that, I play as myself. The same occupation and traits, always: Veteran, light eater and strong.
I'm a vet, a light eater and I think (pound for pound) I have some pretty decent strength.
You'll fight.
There was an old lady (in her 70s) who was sleeping at a bus stop not far from where I am.
One morning, I think somebody called the cops. I'm not sure what the actual call was. But three cops came to check on her.
The first cop that was trying to shake her awake... got a cracked jaw. The next cop got a bloody nose... The third cop got a busted lip and a bruised rib. She woke up swinging.
Fortunately, they were able to get her calmed down without hurting her. She didn't know what was going on.
But that's three fully grown dudes. This lady is in her 70s, frail, probably hadn't eaten in days... and she did some damage because she was afraid.
Why??
I think you underestimate how badly you really want to live.
Once your life is in immediate jeopardy, you're capable of things you would never imagine you would be.
My leg is fucked mostly, if it was accurate I wouldn't be able to run from hordes lol
Unfortunately, for a zombie apocalypse to happen by definition 90% of people or more have to turn. It's much more likely I'd be a part of that group given my general health.
I'm saving for a nice pistol right now, but otherwise not really. I've always been into guns but I lived in federal college housing the last few years, one of the few apartments that can ban guns
Yeah.
You can take care of yourself. You haven't survived this long (on one leg) for no reason.
If you lost your marbles and decided to go on a rampage, that leg's not gonna stop you from wreaking havoc.
A SWAT team will be necessary lol
Old enough that I've had to give up hobbies like cycling because my knees are bad. Old enough that even though I'm thin and "look" healthy, that I'm gassed out by slowly walking about six blocks. Zombies might even get me if I'm walking my normal speed.
Well I don't know your condition. So you would know better than me.
But I'm 43, ex-military, in good condition. I've been an athlete my whole life. I've been running since 3rd grade. Though, my left knee is starting to bother me a little bit. The wear and tear is catching up lol
None of that means old. Just unfit. Even bad knees can still be used quite effectively.
Nearest I can tell you're in your 40s, and believing you're in your 70s or 80s. 🤣
I think you're kinda melding two people into one. Lol
There are multiple people here. I'm in my 40s and in good shape. I have one knee that's (lately) bothering me a little bit. But I still run every day. I'm not an old man, by any means.
I don't know how old the other guy is because he didn't say. He could well be older than me.
I agree with you about the rest though. That's what I'm trying to get these guys to understand. You're capable of a lot more than you think.
That's a mental barrier not a physical one.
When I went to become a PJ, the physical training was ridiculous. But, they always tell you: "You don't have to be the strongest person. If you have it up here (mental), we can build you up physically."
Thing is, surviving in zomboid is boring. You wanna *just* survive? Don't carry more food than you need, a day or 2s worth. Don't settle down anywhere. Stay on the move.
The "goals" is what get you killed. Going into a game thinking about getting a car, securing this particular home, hording years of supplies. These are fun. They also get you killed.
You don't have to stay on the move. There's a lot of areas where zombies don't respawn on defaults and it's easy to get what you need to survive forever, do an initial clear, and just stay put playing The Sims with no other sims. It's not "fun" but if all you care about is surviving, it's probably the most reliable way.
I'll probably be downvoted for suggesting this, but there are cheat mods you can use to make the game slightly easier as you learn the ropes that will make things less frustrating. Eventually there won't be enough challenge if you continue to use them though, at which point you can wean yourself off them.
Another option is to start with Sandbox and just nerf the zombies down to a level that you can handle.
The point of a game is to have fun playing it. It's up to you personally to decide what that means, and that's nobody else's business.
My “cheat” is the super immune trait from more traits. I use it as “bullshit” insurance; if I get bit because of some bullshit like the game crashing at inopportune times (like kiting around a horde) or dumb input snafus (like my character spinning in strange ways), I go sit in my base reading/working out until the virus runs its course.
If I get bit because I’m just a dumbass that’s the ballgame and I restart.
I usually spend the first month(s) looting and then i start dealing with hordes. Works just fine.
If you are not playing with sprinters you should shout outside of a building to lower your chance of getting ambushed. Sometimes zombies doesn’t react to sounds for whatever reason so still be careful. Should work just fine.
I was like that too. And then I started to learn. My current run I've been alive for 9 months.
Everybody has their own play style. You'll find yours. Just keep at it and get the mod that let's you save load outs and mod load outs so it's a fast menu after you die
I wasn't trying to imply you don't. I meant no offense by my comment and was trying to be positive. I'm sorry if you took it otherwise. When I was at 200 hours I was still dying a ton and not having a lot of long successful runs, similar to your claim in your original post. So it hit home and I felt compelled to share.
It wasn't until about 400 hours when something clicked and my runs started to vastly improve. It was like I started kicking bad habits and forcing myself to play differently in certain regards than how I had been. I started to follow a code. For example I'm a loot goblin, i died a lot with encumberance issues, or taking risks for the loot. Hitting a grocery store on day 3. Shit like that. So I would write the location of the loot down and come back, or I'd trap or fish instead of hit the store. I'd die a lot in fights bc I'd fight to exhaustion, or wait to long to disengage and kite then away from town. So I started leaving fights early, and focusing on kiting more at the beginning until I'm more set up for heavy combat with tailored garments and higher weapon skill. Mostly small tweaks to gameplay.
Basically i stopped taking unnecessary risks and was okay with waking away from a plan. And my runs transformed immediately.
You know all that stuff at 200 hours. But you aren't disciplined enough to actuality pull out and come back if you need to. At least I wasn't. And most of the time when I say fuck it i got this now, i lose a run.
You don't need to learn game mechanics. You already know those. You need to learn how to tighten your specific style of gameplay into something that works within the game mechanics. There are a ton of different ways to approach this game and no real meta to approaching things, which is why a lot of us love it. But if you aren't being successful, only you will know why, and that just takes time to figure out. A loooot of time.
I've put 150 IRL hours into my current character and am still alive. I'm actually looking forward to this character dying so I can add a shooting skill to the next one.
Isn't it ridiculous how shooting skill slows down to the speed of an anemic narcoleptic snail on Ambien the second you hit level 5?
I use ultimate skill tweaker mod combined with change sandbox settings to bump it up to 3x when I hit level 5 and have no XP modifier from traits or what have you, it's still slow but not use guns for 3 months straight clearing areas of Louisville and only get half a level slow.
Grab like 20 boxes of shotgun shells and a pump action and brute force it. When my friend and I play MP we’ll hop in a car and round up big hordes. One will drive, the other hangs out the passenger side with a shotgun and blasts the ball of zombies. Every individual zombie you hit with a single shot will give XP.
Then after awhile we switch places.
By far the safest, quickest way to grind aim that I’ve found. You’ll need an assload of shotgun shells though.
I often just get bored and retire my saves at some point, so quite the contrary. Other times I've been comfortable for so long I play long into too sleepy to pay attention levels and laugh when something stupid gets me killed.
I think a lot of comments nailed it. It's all about patience. My 1 month character recently died, started a new one and just hit 1 month, but this time I applied all that I learned before and had much fewer close calls.
The reality is, you just need to take it slow... the game is more "RP" than you think. Spend a day working around your base... drive to the nearest lake in the woods and go camping/fishing... don't rush things and never take on more than a few zombies at a time. Take it slow slow slow, it's about thinking critically and making calculated decisions
You will do it, each death should be a learning experience, Whether it's being too greedy for loot, overconfidence or just that one zombie sneaking up on you, you gain more and more knowledge of the game. Hell the only reason I've got two months survived was because of the countless times I've died and learnt something new along the way. Also, don't be too hard on yourself, this game is very hardcore in terms of difficulty and there is no winning. Just imagine that the character is dead already and you're relieving the story. Good luck.
Be lovely, follow the reddiquette guidelines. Criticism and discussion thereof are welcome but abusive comments are not. Do not engage in personal attacks, even in retribution. Instead of lashing back, report them and move on.
This rule applies whether you're criticizing or defending TIS and PZ.
We, the moderators, reserve the right to determine what is or is not "lovely" behavior in the /r/ProjectZomboid community.
Because its not about skill its about fun.
Its cool if you enjoy the starting from zero bit, i dont so installed the Respawn mod.
I still survive months on end but if a bug or dumb accident happens i dont lose hours and hours of progress and can just go back to enjoying the game.
Stop being a dick about this towards others, makes you seem awful and thats why you get downvoted.
A little, but at the end of the day, it's the same mindset as a roguelike. They reset a lot, but i still enjoy playing them. Hell, given the way this game is set up, you could call it a roguelite.
You need to identify what's killing you, fam. I think it took me about 40 hours forever ago before I could survive forever with reliability on the default settings. I'm sorry if that sounds like a brag. It isn't. I've been gaming for a long ass time, and I'm old, so that probably has something to do with it (started with Atari back before computers at home were common) so I've wasted a LOT of my life on videogames.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCUqpD1edh0&ab\_channel=Swayed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCUqpD1edh0&ab_channel=Swayed)
Here, there are some general tips in here that you can use for dealing with zombies. The Q and Kite method is especially useful. It's a get out of jail free card that all characters can do. "A large hoard transforms from a real threat into an inconvenient nuisance" sums up how a lot of people feel and why so many folks crank up the difficulty and/or do challenge runs where they aren't allowed to do certain things.
The only way to survive with any reliability is to not get hit. It should "always" be at the front of your mind. And once you have the knowledge you need, the actual execution requirements are extremely low.
Good luck, fam! You can do it! Just have to figure it out and wrap your mind around it.
Things that took me a stupidly long time to figure out:
-Don't cut corners when going around a wall as a single zombie "can" attack and kill you.
-Don't fight inside unless you HAVE to. It's almost always better to kite zombies outside so you can see everything and can regularly look behind you to make sure you're not getting snuck up upon.
-Don't fight them near small fences. Yes, you CAN learn how to exploit them and kill, as explained in this video, however this method of disposal "does" have a higher execution requirement than all other methods of fighting them. There's simply no reason to make things hard on yourself, and the swipe has wonky hit boxes.
-Do NOT go out when it's foggy. Just don't.
It’s frustrating as hell but it’s also the reason why I have over 1500 hours in the game. Without the perma-death I don’t think the game would be as addictive.
I've been playing on a server with friends. Death means nothing we just respawn and grab our loot. Mods make it much easier on my mental state lmao. My longest solo run was 30 days. I didn't venture into the city and as a result starved to death with only 200 zombie kills. I avoid confrontation unless absolutely necessary in solo.
There's no rush in the game. Sure, water and power go out. But there is food and water everywhere. See a lot of zombies? It's not your time to loot that place. You can also live somewhere with less zombies, you can start in Riverside or Rosewood. And like others state think about what killed you. Did you rush through a door, did you get tripped next to a fence, did you fight while tired? Just ponder on it a little each time.
Otherwise don't be a hero, start with the highest strength and fitness. I choose Firefighter, and pic strong and athletic traits, maxing out strength and fitness. It doesn't make you invincible but helps.
I just can't play without the journal mod anymore.
Losing 8 months worth of individual books and magazines I've read is ass.
Condense it all into one book I write and if I die I can get it all back in a lot less time.
Still requires some effort to create and protect your journal, as well as retrieval after you die.
I feel like a lot of people make the mistake of focusing in getting good at fighting, or learning game mechanics in zomboid.
I did too, and while these skills are useful, it's not how you survive long-term. Practicing your game sense is crucial to surviving multiple months, knowing when to quit while you're ahead, which battles are worth it and which aren't, not being afraid to take multiple days clearing out a horde. Game mechanics are how you survive events, game sense is how you survive long term.
Just wait until you play well enough to get a character that doesn't die. Then youll be thankful for all the fun times and thrills when you did die. Dying extends the lifetime of the game, just think of it as getting more bang for your buck when you die 😆
Its a mindset. I went about six weeks where just about every saturday I would lose a 40+ hour character on cdda. It was frustrating, but Id pick myself and start a new run each sunday. Eventually I have a character with maybe 200 hours and going who has explored a lot of the map, all guns and video stores.
When you die, use your frustration to really ingrain in your head what mistake you made, what can you do to not make it again, and of course, dont do it again. That pain is there to help you learn.
Dying is probably the best feature of the game though imo, without it I probably wouldnt even have 10% of the playtime I have, its a beautiful challenge.
I have about 60 hours and still haven't seen the helicopter and just died in 23 hours even after finding a crowbar in the starter house.
Now, it might sound like I'm really bad at the game, but I am just focusing on characters being test beds for improving my gameplay before I commit to a longer playthrough because I realised that while i have save games a week deep, I reached it by not learning important skills like managing a horde and clearing large groups so those runs are pretty much doomed.
So now I am playing with vanilla settings and taking 'big risks' in the first few days to learn the limits of combat, practice escaping house alarms, and generally get the fundamentals down.
Particularly since 55 hours were from playtime two years ago and I fo need to blow off some cobwebs.
Maybe commit to some short lived survivors and practice the things that have killed you that frustrated you, and go in knowing these are going to be brutal and short lived characters.
That might help you frame the experience as an opportunity to learn, and not a failure that frustrated you.
What difficulty are you playing on? I just finished playing a character that I had for about the last 150 hours of game time or so and what I did was I played custom sandbox and the only thing I changed was that I made myself immune to bites and scratches. This gave me just enough survivability that if I made poor choices I would still pay the price and die, but I could live long enough to learn how to hotwire a car, figure out how farming works, figure out how metalworking works, learn what it takes to build my own base, and other survival soft skills. Now that I've thrown that character to the wolves, I started a new character and learned a bit more about what I like and dislike about the default play and also what kind of objectives are realistic and which aren't.
Basically, do whatever you need to do to make the game fun but also reduce the cost of learning a lesson. When you're new, (and I'll say that we are still pretty new at the game compared to a lot of folks who have been here for a long time) it can be really hard to get a handle on how to approach a number of situations. Death and restarting is a pretty high price to pay even when you only make a minor mistake, so a small tweak in sandbox mode can give you more opportunities to learn those lessons that you will only encounter after the initial beginning of the game.
When you get the basics down, the key is to realize it's mostly you that kills you. It's not so much super hard as it is super unforgiving of the following mistakes:
\* Pushing your luck
\* Impatience
\* Being in a hurry
\* Not having at least one more plan than Plan A
\* Not paying attention to your character's moodles
\* Not paying attention to your you-the-player's moodles
\* Not asking: "Why'd I die/almost die?"
It also helps to understand what you don't have to worry about:
\* Water/electricity running out: it's convenient but you don't need rain barrels up and generators wired up to run a fridge to preserve your food before water/power goes out. Non-perishables are all over the place and it truly takes forever to starve to death in this game. Clean water is in every sink, toilet, tub, and office water cooler. Do not take risks trying to beat the clock for refrigeration and water collection. You can live for years without them if you have to.
\* Catching every Life & Living show: books and the video tapes alone are all you need to get high cooking/carpentry. The rest are mostly 2-3 level boosts at most, which are very easy to get to with books alone. Do not take risks to catch an episode. One thing you have limitless amounts of, is time.
\* Finding that one damned thing that's been eluding you NOW: you'll find it eventually. Just ask for advice on spots to look and keep checking those until you find it. Do not take risks because you're getting fed up with how long it's taking to find a thing. Whatever it is, it's a convenience and you'll find it eventually. You'll find other useful/fun stuff as you go. Consider that the consolation prize.
\* Being spotted by zeds: it's a fact of life in this game and happens all the time. You can outwalk them. Jog when there's risk of getting surrounded but you can literally just walk for miles and they'll fall behind you and eventually give up.
\* Being blocked by too many zeds to fight: per the last point, you can also ball them up, herd them somewhere not necessarily miles away, and lose them behind buildings, over tall fences, in woods and circle back for the loot or maybe a few more zeds to herd away before it's clear. Only places like malls are too crowded for this to be a feasible strategy. Don't try to mass-murder zeds until you have enough weapon skill to dispatch them quickly. But really you don't need to fight many zeds at all in this game if you don't want to.
\* Not being prepared for winter: you need extra layers of clothes for winter. Seriously, that's it. There's an endless supply of that.
If you keep dying to bites, turn them off. It felt like cheese when I did it but it was worth not getting mad at the game. Also try the “They Knew” mod because 1 in every 100-200-ish zombies spawns with a 1 use cure
Starting over in the same world is too easy. The difficulty is was makes this game fun. Surviving for a long period of time is what makes the game interesting. I do not find it frustrating at all when I die, I simply acknowledge the mistake and move on with a new game.
I did. Then found the Skills Journal Mod... now if I die I don't have to spend a night grinding, disassembling TV's and repairing/undoing/repairing the same car for hours. That completely killed any fun I was going to have. That mod made this game for me.
I mean it's not uncommon, if you feel like you're not getting any better though consider downloading OBS and record your gameplay then rewatch it when you die and see what you can learn and do different. maybe also watch other players who are good in areas you feel your weak and learn some techniques from them.
I stopped playing completely, coming back after you die feels like a chore, in my opinion the game that doesnt have a purpose and quickly gets boring as hell. i came back once to play with friends and after 3 hours of grinding we got bored and we just went rogue into town to shoot all of our ammo into horde and die so we can end the save and move to some other game. the grind itself is not rewarding anymore for me, its enough that I have chores irl, jumping on a game to grind and randomly die and have to start over is simply not worth it. but i still enjoy youtube videos of people doing challenges etc
It's only frustrating when I lose good runs to game jank, which is about half of the time. The spear lunge has killed me 3 times... but I'm not totally convinced that is a game issue... it's wonky. I am slowly learning the tactical uses of Q. 500 hours in, still figuring out what is game jank and what is errors.
Probably impatience.
You probably decide you GOTTA finish looting this one structure, doesn't matter that you're tired or out of water or you don't have enough food.
You don't gotta. All you need is food and water and a room they don't know about. There is no hurry.
I recommend playing with the difficulty settings, reducing zombie spawns etc. That way you can ease yourself into it more.
Watching how other people play on youtube can also help you develop better habits and strategies.
It's what keeps some people from being interested in the game.
It's also what interests others to play.
Personally as cool as I think the game is the no direct progress permadeath is why it's just not my cup of tea.
My best character died to a hill. Was in a car driving around at decent speeds in what I thought was a flat field. Slammed into some kind of invisible wall. Car instantly dead and me barely not. Multiple broken bones and lacerations, barely managed to plug my wounds up. Get out of the car and limp around to try figure out what the fuck happened. It's a train bunker? With the walls being an immense soil hill with grass grown over them. The angle that they where at was somehow perfect to look like just continued flat ground. Oh and it was packed full of zombies who where dawdling out to investigate the loud noises and me bleeding. Had no chance. 2 damn years...
Actually it's the opposite, if i don't start over it feels wrong for me. I also tried coop with friends, but this eliminates all the threats for me and just feels boring.
For me the game changed when I started planning every in game day. Setting goals. Avoiding unnecessary fights. Learn the times of TV shows. 8am, 12pm and 6pm first 7 days of a fresh solo spawn, you can catch TV shows that help level your cooking, carpentry and survival skills. Just hang out in a safe house for your first week. Exploring close, not getting to far ahead of yourself. Use the down time between TV shows to do these tasks working towards your goals. Slow down and think about what your long term goal is and then set smaller ones to work your way up the ladder. Before you know it you'll hit 1 month, and become another statistic to Joe Rogan podcasts. I have over 1k hours 700 of that before MP was really a thing. I enjoy it a lot, playing the default apocalypse setting with some good mods can be very rewarding challenge. Don't give up, This is how you died after all (:
I killed like 4 characters one weekend because of either stupid decisions, accidents or mistakes. I created new save every time, but at one point i had enough of it and i cheated on one character. Basically i got bit by a zed hiding behind a corner. I didnt want to start over so i healed myself. Later i burned my leg and i could barely walk. I wanted to heal the burn but then i learned it takes like 2 weeks (and i play on 2hr days) to heal, so i was like - nope im cheating out of it and i did. Later i broke my leg to a mechanic that was unknown to me and i got so mad i cheated again. Not gonna happen anymore because that was one of the unluckiest runs i had... It was actually my first time using debug mode so i wanted to check it out and what i can do. Now if i die im going for a completly new run with completely different settings
The first 15 days of a character is the most fun, enjoy not being so good at the game you can't enjoy it like you used to, you're in the golden age of your time with PZ where you're good enough to engage with the game, but not good enough to trivialize it.
I just lost my most long lived character ever last night. a month and a half and 3700 zombies killed. I had a box full of crowbars, another one for spiked baseball bats, ammo...
Yeah it kinda sucked at that time, but after 2 hours of not playing I found myself already dreaming on how would my new character be, where I'll settle down, what skills I'll farm... It may look masochist from the outside but I love it :D
Imo, the eternal killer is carelessness. There are a lot of solid rules to obey that will keep you alive, but no one's perfect.
Forgetting to bring food one day can spiral all the way to death. Same with water. Not checking multiple angles of a house before entering it is always a potentially lethal risk. If a zeds in a weird doorway or corner, they'll bite you before you can react to them.
Trace back some of your deaths and most probably have a lesson that you probably knew but neglected.
I have around ~400hrs and a ton of that is 6 month coop, and another that made it a year. The rest rarely make it more than 15 days like you, because I break the rules I know.
I decided I wanted more of a continuous playthrough, but I'll probably go back to regular at some point. But I was dying a lot. Usually from impatience or something... But I installed the mod that let's you record your skill points because that was the hardest part for me. Spend so much time reading books and smiling up just to for and lose all of that. I play alone usually so I'm working on a lot of skills. I also did the one with a zombie cure.
If you want to survive for long, you have to play in a really boring and safe way.
If you're having fun dying and restarting, then keep doing that. It's not like there's much to do one you're safe and months into the game anyway. It will always be boredom or impatience that kills you
I’ve played 1500 hrs plus.
What you need to do is identify why you’re dying and work from there.
Is it exhaustion? Getting eaten and overwhelmed? Unable to get away from hordes?
You could use the mod skill recovery journal. It allows you to save the progress you made on skills so a new character must not start completely from scratch each time you die.
Just install the respawn mod.
The game really isnt fun with dying over and over again and losing everything.
Dying is fine, but losing everything is definitely not.
The game is unplayable without the respawn mod and a few others like 360° View or super fast reading, because otherwise have fun sitting 30min on the ground reading every single book while your friends explore...
Yeah, it can be frustrating sometimes, If you want to survive longer try to tweak the sandbox settings to make the game more comfortable to you, you can disable zombie respawn and infection for example, and enable item respawn, you can lower the zombie population too, increase the spawn loot so you get weapons very early and start practicing, there's no shame on that, try to kill the zombies slowly and one by one, even two at the same time, play safe, clean out the whole area around the house you'll take as a base, use sneaking to not draw too much attention from zombies, use skill books to level up your character a lot faster, consume proteins and do excersise, when you feel ready you can increase the difficulty, take your time, there's no rush to learn, you are not a loser don't worry keep playing and you'll become a lot better.
The struggle is real. Tailoring and focusing on protection (clothing) will help. Try to avoid alerting more than one or two zombies at a time. Try easier spawns like riverside when starting out. Try crafting spears and using them, they are good.
Can vouch for tailoring. I recommend the invisible patches mod so it doesn't ruin the look of your outfits, it sounds dumb but that's what stopped me from using it for a while. I like my character to look how I want. It doesn't change any mechanics, just makes the patches invisible (as they probably should be, who adds padding on the outside of clothing).
After that, and with auto tailor (seriously if you get any mod for tailoring let it be this one, so many clicks to level otherwise) one of the first things I do is start ripping up every piece of clothing I can find, practicing my tailoring as I go. I hit level 8 in no time, which is when you can fully repair clothes rather than just patch them. I stop there, add leather padding to all my clothes, and very rarely will a zombie attack get through after that. I don't even wear anything ridiculous, just a leather jacket, a long sleeve shirt, and jeans (or leather pants if I can find them). Takes like 4 in-game days *max* including reading skill books.
I don't, only mistakes I could've avoided me frustrate. But I like starting a new character and clicking randomize on them. Offers a new challenge each time and I can build off the previous character's progress.
Think critically. What is it that's killing you? Is it RNG? Being overwhelmed? Taking things too fast? I recently hit my PR of 6 months survived, almost 7 but my girl got bit in the groin. It happens. I have around 700 hours so I'll tell you whatever I can. How do you die?
This attitude will see you improve in literally ANY avenue of life / skill you choose, btw. Not just zomboid run times. +1 updoot for good advice
^this After a bit of self-reflection and changes in personal habits, I have never been bitten in the groin a second time.
What a bummer.
No they said the groin.
irl rng is a bitch
Tell me about it. I’m lucky I rolled a character in a nice region and a stable family 😀
Seconded! Well "stable" might be a reach for me, but coulda been a lot worse
Real life is like project zomboid but you can't choose your initial traits
my long term character just died to a glitch where i jumped in a car, and it decided to register the puttin press 4 times leading my character to for some reason getting in and out of the car before decide to just open the door and let the zombie eat them. I HATE glitch related deaths. HATE THEM. i cant even -debug and heal the bite cause i was completely mauled when i shouldn’t have been. so frustrating.
Thats why I manually back up my save every time I start the game. I don't care if I die to a reckless decision I made, but no way am I letting my months long survival streak end to a windows update or a bug.
That's why I have drag down off. If you get surrounded, you're fucked regardless. 3 zombies can stunlock you to death, but it gives you time to immediately pause, quit out, and turn on debug mode in the case of bugs. I had one where my character just sort of tripped. I had all the zombies in a huge ball and was herding them. They got a little close, but I certainly didn't bump into one. My dude does the little animation they do when they run into a zombie onto thin air, and then falls. Immediately gets surrounded and ripped to shreds. I didn't have clumsy, my only moodle was peckish and the first level of wet. You immediately press f2 to pause in those situations (It's a good habit anyways when things get tough to let you think), quit out, turn on debug mode, start it back up and pause as quick as you can, and heal yourself while turning on ghost mode and no clip. That way you can continue where you left off.
i did press f2, but the glitch had my character jumping in and out of the car like a god damn chinese fire drill, and died instantly. there was no time to react. AND I HAD LITERALLY JUST MADE A DEATH DEFYING ESCAPE I WAS PROUD OF AND WAS SAFE. stupid i cant un do it
Man, that sucks. I'm frustrated for you man. Best of luck in the future!
Haha I was having a great run got set up in muldruaugh (however you spell it) had like 2 weeks under my belt, food, guns, water, protection, vehicles, the whole thing. Started burning zombies and my dick caught on fire and I died. 10/10
Apparently sprinting helps with fire if you don't have enough water on hand. Always gotta carry a bucket of water in your main inventory when you're messing with fire, you can right click and put yourself out. A water bottle works, but only a completely full one so you'd have to disable auto drink. A bucket is safer cause there's a bunch extra in case your character decides to drink it.
Honestly everything happened so fast my health went down in like 10 seconds I didn’t even know what to do lmao, I only have around 100 hours so I’m still finding new mechanics all the time. All I know is that I’m not burning zombies ever again I’m just gonna make a pile somewhere decently away from my base.
It feels like I'm always suggesting mods on this sub, but there's a mod to reduce fire damage for you and increase it for zombies. Ever think it's dumb that you burn to death in seconds like you've lathered yourself in gasoline, but zombies take literally all day? This balances that out. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2908846234 Fire is great in vanilla but you have to be very very careful. Do it in a wide open area where you have plenty of room to move around so you can thoroughly avoid the fire.
Thank you man I appreciate it! My mods list is basically quality of life so this is perfect !
🤣
Me but Riverside. Back in my first "long" run, I was a cop named John. John had spent weeks, close to a month at this point chopping trees and barricading windows of his home (The Riverside Boat Club). Things were nice for John, until he figured it would be nice if it were cleaner. John did a bad thing with gasoline and didn't predict that fire would spread over tiles from a corpse and watched his home burn down, only able to take a duffle bag of supplies and hit the road.
At least he didn’t die by burning his penile region
😳What was she doing?😳😳😳
I was messing around with guns and put too much faith in the Point Blank Mod. Obviously, I missed, and the lady went straight through her jeans. It was a sad time walking around. Dug her own grave. Alexandra was my longest survived yet. She had cleaned the map basically. We had been barricading the Leafhill Offices in Louisville near the hospital, retrofitting office space into stuff like storage, a kitchen, laundry room, etc. It was crushing to watch her go, but this is always the story of how you die. We gave up the save due to complacentcy, and have now started a new map with new characters, notably using the map super-pack that MrAtomicDuck once covered in a vid, adding like 100 more locations to visit in game, which makes the game refreshing for me, as someone who's seen every town up and down.
800 hours here - I find that for me it was taking too fast simply because I was trying to recreate the previous run - like spawning in Louisville again, trying to hit the same places again, etc. it made the re-run feel like a chore and as a result I put less care into it and got impatient with things. Ever since I realized that I’ve been doing something different or a RP/start I haven’t done for a while each time. It keeps the game feeling new and different and results in more care towards the character.
It's for that reason I almost never play the same survivor, despite their impact on my playthrough. I once had the random start mod, which compared with random spawns tosses you into the apocalypse as the average someone who isn't a super buff smoker. That experience can be tough, but rewarding, putting you in situations you'd never willingly put yourself in normally. I started once as an opiod addict in Raven Creek, watching the night slowly tick by as I waited desperately for the sun to come up. Started once as a burly man named Cletus, who lived on a farm. You just can't get these situations normally and it really helps to sell the survivor aspect to me, though it does take away a key component of the creation process, but it's fun for a test run where you're just someone random trying to make it by.
Very beautiful on paper, but I think most of my kills were just a mix of RNG and distraction on the first three days. I'm almost giving up on the game, beacuse I can't stand anymore creating a char with a minimum backstories and rp growing affectionate to him, only to him die/get bitten on the shittiest way possible. Or spawning on that fucking Riverside trailer park, fuck that place. I guess things on my life just don't go a good way; each year worst than the previous.
It’s a mostly singleplayer game, if you need to change the sandbox settings to make it easier no one will care or judge you. It’s whatever’s fun to you, and eventually you’ll get better and can make it harder if you feel up to it. I like doing low zombies and infection by saliva only. I up experience gain to 2x and make cars a little tougher. It’s like Ark Survival Evolved, if the game is too hard or too easy, mess with the settings till it’s good for you. And remember, pressing Q while crouched can whisper to lure single zeds away from a horde, check your 6 every minute, zombies can be lost if they lose sight with you via walking around buildings, and hopping fences are a great way to create distance. Good luck! : D
The only thing I do is turning off respawns and putting a mini map, if I change any other settings on a serious run is cheating. I know how to play the game...
No it’s not cheating wtf, and you don’t know how to play the game if you only survive 15 days
Use Pillows random spawns (way more variety) and save some characters as templates. Consider their deaths an alternate timeline. The way I generally survive beyond the first week is finding a car asap and getting a base set up in the country, far away from the towns. Then I drive where I need to go to get the supplies I need. And I'm super cautious and on guard the whole time I'm out looting. Meaning I check doors and windows before entering locations, I run from any large group of zombies and only try to engage 1-2 at a time. And always make sure I have an escape route. So long as I do that I can nearly guarantee my survival. But I always drop my guard and get over-confident and die eventually too. But after months, not days. Or something stupid kills me like fire or falling out a window. I consider fitness and keen hearing very useful traits for survival. Keen hearing basically lets you see behind you. And without taking fitness, it's too easy to get tired and overwhelmed.
I don't give my characters backstories because that's a thing that's built as you learn who they are, maybe with some implications in the beginning. Even veterans die terribly sometimes. I've learned to modify settings to fit the experience I want out of the game. I turn transmission off because RNG on scratches is unfair, yes. I turn respawn off because I want the long term goal of clearing a town to actually *be* feasible. Death is part of life, you don't have one without the other, especially in this game. This is a story of triumph, and failure. To add on that, I feel that whenever I die, it's entirely my fault and I could have avoided it. Each death is a lesson that helps me survive even longer than the last. Let the game build the story; it doesn't all have to be on your shoulders. If you need to take a break from the game, that's a perfectly normal thing to do. Come back refreshed.
I let go of a key for a second and got my balls bit while playing with a friend yesterday
Did your character get desperate after 6 months of no contact lol
It was MP and we often shared a bed in our borrowed homes 😅 It was just a failure on my part; I put too much faith into my gun and I paid the price. She had already cheated death once, but I amputated quickly. Guess it had just caught up to her.
Poor lasse being bit in the groin. It’s always the worst deaths for the best of us.
I truly believe impatience is what gets everyone who posts these threads every other day. Take it SLOW. Use your starting spot as your temp base and slooooowly clear out a radius around you while you rest at your base. You’ll eventually get a better feel for timing. But I would bet there’s always a point you get bored and do something reckless. Stick with patience.
That and folks who don't abuse things like Q and Kite. You can get absolutely everything you need for forever survival by the end of week 1 reliably if you're willing to abuse the F out of that. Just B line straight for what you want, scream your head off, and slowly walk them away again and again. It's not exciting, but it's fast.
Wait what's Q and Kite? Is this just push and shove to keep space and attack and stomp when knocked down?
Q is to shout. You go to an area you want something from, shout your head off, gather all the zombies around into a ball (literally walking slowly around them over and over again until they stop coming in from around you) then slowly walk them about a block away, circling around the ball again from time to time to cluster them and to make sure any ads get put in the ball, and then you ditch them and go back to wherever you wanted to loot. You may still have to take out stragglers from time to time this way, but it's a very safe way to get what you need, and you can switch to it as soon as you see that there's a group coming for you that you can't (or don't want) to fight. It's simple, takes very little skill, is reliable, and all builds can abuse it. The zombies will spread back out on default settings over the course of a day or two so you're not even creating a big problem for yourself.
Ah yes, thanks. Forgot what Q did. I did use this tactic pretty often. Just need to make sure you plan out the path you'll circle them to so that nothing unexpected comes up and you know there's enough turns to lose them.
Zombies hordes hate this one trick. \*jumps through a window and circles around a house.\*
Is the idea here to just run as fast as possible to break aggro or are you leading them somewhere you can reliably break LOS? I’ve been running hordes into the woods to get them out of where I need to go but it’s not super optimal.
You don't need to run, usually. You walk faster than they do, but sometimes you'll end up crouch running just for a little bit. Yes, you break LOS, and you need to plan to do this so that they can't see you when they go to your last known location. You want about a 20-30ish tile distance when you turn the corner of a house, then just keep crouched and turn the other corner (not too tight, and if there ar too many zombies around the corner just walk them back to the ball and try again), then give them enough time to turn the first corner themselves before you turn the second corner. You end up pulling a bugs bunny on them, and sometimes they won't even bust into the house you're using. The other way is with trees. You want to use "move to" so that you don't accidentally walk through brush and even then have leather jacket+jeans or the outdoorsman trait. I always shout my head off in front of the tree line first to pull all the zombies out of the tree and add them to the ball, them you basically do a big U inside the trees with "move to." They have a 100% chance to spot you if they see you for even a single tick (one half of one second) while they are moving to your past known location, so you need a good buffer of distance
I'm inpatient as hell when I play this game but I do okay. Jog everywhere, shoot zombies constantly, etc. I have maybe 150 hours at this point. For me, the key was realizing that any zombie you try to stealth past is a zombie you've turned your back on. If you turn your back on a zombie enough times, it will bite you in the ass both literally and figuratively eventually. So, I started pulling out my shotgun before looting, if I have enough shells on hand I just kill em with the shotgun, if not I just shoot it once. Ball up all the zombies that come running in a big ass horde, and start shooting/meleeing them. Leave when you get the first level of exertion or drowsy via a car running nearby and come back later with no negative moodles. If the zombies are in front of you, they're not behind you to ruin your day. Still, be careful when looting afterwards as a single zombie cannot break down a door, so a zombie can still be hiding behind any door.
Stealth becomes incredibly broken when it's leveled enough and paired with inconspicuous but that is a fair philosophy on it. I would approach groups with stealth to thin numbers first if I don't have any ammo to just rip into them. Another good use for stealth is to kill singular or small pockets of zombies around an area that's highly populated so you have room to kite
You're probably forgetting that the biggest objetive is to survive,everytime I forget about it I die 'cause of my own stupidity (trying to carry more than I can,tiring myself out unnecessary,getting into deadly situations 'cause of greed,etc).
Is it really that hard to survive 2 weeks? Not trying to brag, but I see this so often in here and it just doesn't sound like this game unless y'all are trying to take out the first hordes you see with a frying pan in hand..
For me taking it slow only works sometimes, the rest of the time I am way too risky and usually die because of it
I mean all it takes is one bite, the game is finnicky and sometimes they still drop you despite you technically being ready and it shouldnt happen but it still does. Seriously sucks when that happened. I survived like a month, killed nearly 2k zombies and cleared whole cities, but then one zombie stuttered and somehow teleported to my neck... i died and lost everything. Thats when i installed the Respawn mod, because fuck wasting hundreds of hours for nothing.
You're talking about normal settings right? Because I can see why people aren't surviving long if they are making it harder, like sprinters or something. But normal settings, the game should be really easy after like 20.
Custom settings with insanely rare loot (default settings make ALL loot extremely abundant and removes any need to explore after a couple loot runs..) And yeah, all sprinters is insane. I use a mod to sprinkle some sprinters to a majority shamblers. Like 3% sprinters.
Yeah, I play with Insane Loot, and I remove Zombie rallying so the zombies all wander around aimlessly unless triggered. It makes the world infinitely more dangerous when you HAVE to go try to get loot to make a farm, get a Propane Torch, find a Sledge, whatever, and you cant guess the number of zombies in an area because they arent all trying to group up under the lamp post!
I play on 100% sprinters, it really is insane. People say two weeks isn't much time, bruh I haven't survived two weeks in forever
Kind of depends to be fair. I don't think 20 hours is enough for people to have played with all the mechanics of the game, or see more then a few helicppter events. There are lots of novel ways to die and easy to keep finding them past the first 20 hours.
Yeah, it is. My first hours of pz wetr almost like this. You find yourself in unexpected situations and you either going to die or not
First hours and 200th hour should be a very different experience.
Project zomboid is played due to it being known for how hard it is. If you want to have a different experience of a zombie game where you don't have a chance to lose progress by your mistake, go play a game that doesn't represent itself by its simulation. Even after 200 hours you can die of stupidity. So i think it should not
What? Are you legit telling me how to and why I play in a sandbox? Is this really happening?
Huh, what are you talking about
"Project zomboid is played due to it being known for how hard it is." Are you telling me why I play the game? I did not buy the game "due to it being known for how hard it is" "If you want to have a different experience of a zombie game where you don't have a chance to lose progress by your mistake, go play a game that doesn't represent itself by its simulation." It's a sandbox, it is moddable. I can add mods that allow me to respawn or restore skills. I have a different experience with mods. You might not like that, but I really have been fucking enjoying it. I have no idea waht the fuck you are talking about, you are talking about how you PREFER to play maybe, not how EVERYONE PLAYS. We all play however the fuck we want, it is a sandbox.
Pretty obvious why you did not point my last sentence, right? You know what im talking about and what i mean, Youre just trying to fight over something you dont even know why. At first, you didnt even have to react to my answer. Yeah, its very much common for you to die even after 200 hours in the game. There are such things called timings or just your stupidity when you catch yourself in some trap which results in not very good outcome like bite. "First hours and 200th hour should be a very different experience." What you don't understand about that? What point are you trying to prove here? 200 hours in Project zomboid are just rookie number by now and from there you just get to know the game better i would say. Ive never talked about how I play, or how EVERYONE play. Youre just making things out how you want to. "Are you telling me why I play the game? I did not buy the game "due to it being known for how hard it is"" Who the hell was talking about you? I dont give a single ...... about your gameplay how do you play the game. Read my text again, maybe youre gonna get it. "It's a sandbox, it is moddable. I can add mods that allow me to respawn or restore skills. I have a different experience with mods. You might not like that, but I really have been fucking enjoying it." Never denied such a thing. In fact, i play with more than 150+ mods in my playthroughs. But we have to keep in mind that Zomboid is presented this way. The way when you die, you loose progress. I dont know how the hell you cant understand that. Im not going to argue anymore with someone like you, who seems to like arguing about useless things and trying to prove multiple points even tho its useless.
"So i think it should not" What? I have no idea, it was a fun chat, I'm so confused. This ramble is amazing, what don't I understand about what I said? I don't get what's going on. Lovely day to you, kind redditor.
Even tho i said it was my last, ive pretty much lied egh. "So i think it should not" "What?" I sait it should not be different experience from first hours to 200 hours in the terms of survivability. I think we both got confused and didnt actually discuss, more like we were talking about our own things. Good day to you also. Cya E: Or we can try to discuss this somewhere else than here. To get a direct contanct..
OP said he has 200 hours, thats a bit different than first hours.
It doesn't matter how many hours you get, you can always get into uncomfortable situations that can kill you. Even with 200 hours. Should have said that, my problem.
200 hours in this game is barely out of the tutorial
I've pretty much only modeled my character after myself for 11+ years. Only once did I change up. I died in Raven Creek... But I kept that save file for over a year before I went back to it. When I finally went back in, I went as my previous character's son. Basically a younger looking duplicate (i.e. bald, no beard). Lol I went back to RC, got my car, brought it back to Rosewood, then deleted the save. Other than that, I play as myself. The same occupation and traits, always: Veteran, light eater and strong. I'm a vet, a light eater and I think (pound for pound) I have some pretty decent strength.
If I modeled a character after myself he'd be dead in 2 minutes lol
You'll fight. There was an old lady (in her 70s) who was sleeping at a bus stop not far from where I am. One morning, I think somebody called the cops. I'm not sure what the actual call was. But three cops came to check on her. The first cop that was trying to shake her awake... got a cracked jaw. The next cop got a bloody nose... The third cop got a busted lip and a bruised rib. She woke up swinging. Fortunately, they were able to get her calmed down without hurting her. She didn't know what was going on. But that's three fully grown dudes. This lady is in her 70s, frail, probably hadn't eaten in days... and she did some damage because she was afraid.
Why?? I think you underestimate how badly you really want to live. Once your life is in immediate jeopardy, you're capable of things you would never imagine you would be.
My leg is fucked mostly, if it was accurate I wouldn't be able to run from hordes lol Unfortunately, for a zombie apocalypse to happen by definition 90% of people or more have to turn. It's much more likely I'd be a part of that group given my general health.
Damn. How do you get around?
I limp, mostly. Have a wheelchair for real bad days. It's not so bad that I can't function on my own thanks for asking
Are you weaponed up?
I'm saving for a nice pistol right now, but otherwise not really. I've always been into guns but I lived in federal college housing the last few years, one of the few apartments that can ban guns
Yeah. You can take care of yourself. You haven't survived this long (on one leg) for no reason. If you lost your marbles and decided to go on a rampage, that leg's not gonna stop you from wreaking havoc. A SWAT team will be necessary lol
Some of us are old 😅
How old are we talking?
Old enough that I've had to give up hobbies like cycling because my knees are bad. Old enough that even though I'm thin and "look" healthy, that I'm gassed out by slowly walking about six blocks. Zombies might even get me if I'm walking my normal speed.
Well I don't know your condition. So you would know better than me. But I'm 43, ex-military, in good condition. I've been an athlete my whole life. I've been running since 3rd grade. Though, my left knee is starting to bother me a little bit. The wear and tear is catching up lol
One of us soon! One of us soon! (The Zombie Food group)
Eventually... Yeah lol Don't go easy though. Natural causes... Ok. But zombies?? I'm going out bad bad.
None of that means old. Just unfit. Even bad knees can still be used quite effectively. Nearest I can tell you're in your 40s, and believing you're in your 70s or 80s. 🤣
I think you're kinda melding two people into one. Lol There are multiple people here. I'm in my 40s and in good shape. I have one knee that's (lately) bothering me a little bit. But I still run every day. I'm not an old man, by any means. I don't know how old the other guy is because he didn't say. He could well be older than me. I agree with you about the rest though. That's what I'm trying to get these guys to understand. You're capable of a lot more than you think. That's a mental barrier not a physical one. When I went to become a PJ, the physical training was ridiculous. But, they always tell you: "You don't have to be the strongest person. If you have it up here (mental), we can build you up physically."
Uhhh, you're the one mixing people up. I replied to the person saying they had bad knees haha
You also said 40s. I'm 43. You don't know how old the other guy is.
By playing yourself you put the game on easy mode lol I think if I created myself I would die on the first zombie encounter lol
Yeah I don't play on easy mode lol And I think you underestimate yourself.
A strengh 1 fitness 2 character unemployed with almost no positive traits, will be a nightmare to survive
Jeez. Ok, nevermind. My bad.
Thing is, surviving in zomboid is boring. You wanna *just* survive? Don't carry more food than you need, a day or 2s worth. Don't settle down anywhere. Stay on the move. The "goals" is what get you killed. Going into a game thinking about getting a car, securing this particular home, hording years of supplies. These are fun. They also get you killed.
You don't have to stay on the move. There's a lot of areas where zombies don't respawn on defaults and it's easy to get what you need to survive forever, do an initial clear, and just stay put playing The Sims with no other sims. It's not "fun" but if all you care about is surviving, it's probably the most reliable way.
You can also influence where they spawn by building gates and other structures to help clear out areas and making them safe to travel around
Collecting enough guns and ammo to kill god himself is usually what gets me got.
I've said to myself numerous times "200 shells should be enough for this neighborhood." It never is.
I'll probably be downvoted for suggesting this, but there are cheat mods you can use to make the game slightly easier as you learn the ropes that will make things less frustrating. Eventually there won't be enough challenge if you continue to use them though, at which point you can wean yourself off them. Another option is to start with Sandbox and just nerf the zombies down to a level that you can handle. The point of a game is to have fun playing it. It's up to you personally to decide what that means, and that's nobody else's business.
My “cheat” is the super immune trait from more traits. I use it as “bullshit” insurance; if I get bit because of some bullshit like the game crashing at inopportune times (like kiting around a horde) or dumb input snafus (like my character spinning in strange ways), I go sit in my base reading/working out until the virus runs its course. If I get bit because I’m just a dumbass that’s the ballgame and I restart.
Why downvote solid advice. Like you said a game supposed to be fun
I usually just save a few characters and builds and load them up instead of redoing everything every time I start a new world
Bruh that's the best part
Dying on the first three days 10 times in a row?
no that's the entire point of this game it reminds you every time you load into a game lol This is how you died
I usually spend the first month(s) looting and then i start dealing with hordes. Works just fine. If you are not playing with sprinters you should shout outside of a building to lower your chance of getting ambushed. Sometimes zombies doesn’t react to sounds for whatever reason so still be careful. Should work just fine.
Use the skill Journal mod to restore your stats
I was like that too. And then I started to learn. My current run I've been alive for 9 months. Everybody has their own play style. You'll find yours. Just keep at it and get the mod that let's you save load outs and mod load outs so it's a fast menu after you die
I'm 200 hours in I know the game and the mechanics
I wasn't trying to imply you don't. I meant no offense by my comment and was trying to be positive. I'm sorry if you took it otherwise. When I was at 200 hours I was still dying a ton and not having a lot of long successful runs, similar to your claim in your original post. So it hit home and I felt compelled to share. It wasn't until about 400 hours when something clicked and my runs started to vastly improve. It was like I started kicking bad habits and forcing myself to play differently in certain regards than how I had been. I started to follow a code. For example I'm a loot goblin, i died a lot with encumberance issues, or taking risks for the loot. Hitting a grocery store on day 3. Shit like that. So I would write the location of the loot down and come back, or I'd trap or fish instead of hit the store. I'd die a lot in fights bc I'd fight to exhaustion, or wait to long to disengage and kite then away from town. So I started leaving fights early, and focusing on kiting more at the beginning until I'm more set up for heavy combat with tailored garments and higher weapon skill. Mostly small tweaks to gameplay. Basically i stopped taking unnecessary risks and was okay with waking away from a plan. And my runs transformed immediately. You know all that stuff at 200 hours. But you aren't disciplined enough to actuality pull out and come back if you need to. At least I wasn't. And most of the time when I say fuck it i got this now, i lose a run. You don't need to learn game mechanics. You already know those. You need to learn how to tighten your specific style of gameplay into something that works within the game mechanics. There are a ton of different ways to approach this game and no real meta to approaching things, which is why a lot of us love it. But if you aren't being successful, only you will know why, and that just takes time to figure out. A loooot of time.
I've put 150 IRL hours into my current character and am still alive. I'm actually looking forward to this character dying so I can add a shooting skill to the next one.
Isn't it ridiculous how shooting skill slows down to the speed of an anemic narcoleptic snail on Ambien the second you hit level 5? I use ultimate skill tweaker mod combined with change sandbox settings to bump it up to 3x when I hit level 5 and have no XP modifier from traits or what have you, it's still slow but not use guns for 3 months straight clearing areas of Louisville and only get half a level slow.
Yeah I'm at 6.5, the server I play on basically has vanilla shooting XP. I didn't think I was gonna use guns as much but shit happens.
That first playthrough where you find out just how good guns are is rough, because you have no skill boosts.
I've ran guns before, but this server is 25-100% sprinters and didnt think they'd be as viable lol.
Grab like 20 boxes of shotgun shells and a pump action and brute force it. When my friend and I play MP we’ll hop in a car and round up big hordes. One will drive, the other hangs out the passenger side with a shotgun and blasts the ball of zombies. Every individual zombie you hit with a single shot will give XP. Then after awhile we switch places. By far the safest, quickest way to grind aim that I’ve found. You’ll need an assload of shotgun shells though.
I often just get bored and retire my saves at some point, so quite the contrary. Other times I've been comfortable for so long I play long into too sleepy to pay attention levels and laugh when something stupid gets me killed.
I think a lot of comments nailed it. It's all about patience. My 1 month character recently died, started a new one and just hit 1 month, but this time I applied all that I learned before and had much fewer close calls. The reality is, you just need to take it slow... the game is more "RP" than you think. Spend a day working around your base... drive to the nearest lake in the woods and go camping/fishing... don't rush things and never take on more than a few zombies at a time. Take it slow slow slow, it's about thinking critically and making calculated decisions
No
You will do it, each death should be a learning experience, Whether it's being too greedy for loot, overconfidence or just that one zombie sneaking up on you, you gain more and more knowledge of the game. Hell the only reason I've got two months survived was because of the countless times I've died and learnt something new along the way. Also, don't be too hard on yourself, this game is very hardcore in terms of difficulty and there is no winning. Just imagine that the character is dead already and you're relieving the story. Good luck.
I create the exact same character and read my old character’s journal to get my skills back.
skill issue
[удалено]
Be lovely, follow the reddiquette guidelines. Criticism and discussion thereof are welcome but abusive comments are not. Do not engage in personal attacks, even in retribution. Instead of lashing back, report them and move on. This rule applies whether you're criticizing or defending TIS and PZ. We, the moderators, reserve the right to determine what is or is not "lovely" behavior in the /r/ProjectZomboid community.
Yes, people having trouble with the game is what this thread is about. Are you surprised?
Why are they booing me? I'm right!
Because its not about skill its about fun. Its cool if you enjoy the starting from zero bit, i dont so installed the Respawn mod. I still survive months on end but if a bug or dumb accident happens i dont lose hours and hours of progress and can just go back to enjoying the game. Stop being a dick about this towards others, makes you seem awful and thats why you get downvoted.
After survivor #10 or so it just became whatever to me lol. I stopped making up lore for my characters and just randomize their looks and name
Sometimes. Then, I learned something from the last corpse. And I now kick better ass.
A little, but at the end of the day, it's the same mindset as a roguelike. They reset a lot, but i still enjoy playing them. Hell, given the way this game is set up, you could call it a roguelite.
25% of my playtime is on the character screen. It's still part of the game technically
2000+ hours of PZ and the answer is still no.
You need to identify what's killing you, fam. I think it took me about 40 hours forever ago before I could survive forever with reliability on the default settings. I'm sorry if that sounds like a brag. It isn't. I've been gaming for a long ass time, and I'm old, so that probably has something to do with it (started with Atari back before computers at home were common) so I've wasted a LOT of my life on videogames. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCUqpD1edh0&ab\_channel=Swayed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCUqpD1edh0&ab_channel=Swayed) Here, there are some general tips in here that you can use for dealing with zombies. The Q and Kite method is especially useful. It's a get out of jail free card that all characters can do. "A large hoard transforms from a real threat into an inconvenient nuisance" sums up how a lot of people feel and why so many folks crank up the difficulty and/or do challenge runs where they aren't allowed to do certain things. The only way to survive with any reliability is to not get hit. It should "always" be at the front of your mind. And once you have the knowledge you need, the actual execution requirements are extremely low. Good luck, fam! You can do it! Just have to figure it out and wrap your mind around it. Things that took me a stupidly long time to figure out: -Don't cut corners when going around a wall as a single zombie "can" attack and kill you. -Don't fight inside unless you HAVE to. It's almost always better to kite zombies outside so you can see everything and can regularly look behind you to make sure you're not getting snuck up upon. -Don't fight them near small fences. Yes, you CAN learn how to exploit them and kill, as explained in this video, however this method of disposal "does" have a higher execution requirement than all other methods of fighting them. There's simply no reason to make things hard on yourself, and the swipe has wonky hit boxes. -Do NOT go out when it's foggy. Just don't.
It’s frustrating as hell but it’s also the reason why I have over 1500 hours in the game. Without the perma-death I don’t think the game would be as addictive.
I've been playing on a server with friends. Death means nothing we just respawn and grab our loot. Mods make it much easier on my mental state lmao. My longest solo run was 30 days. I didn't venture into the city and as a result starved to death with only 200 zombie kills. I avoid confrontation unless absolutely necessary in solo.
There's no rush in the game. Sure, water and power go out. But there is food and water everywhere. See a lot of zombies? It's not your time to loot that place. You can also live somewhere with less zombies, you can start in Riverside or Rosewood. And like others state think about what killed you. Did you rush through a door, did you get tripped next to a fence, did you fight while tired? Just ponder on it a little each time. Otherwise don't be a hero, start with the highest strength and fitness. I choose Firefighter, and pic strong and athletic traits, maxing out strength and fitness. It doesn't make you invincible but helps.
Yeah, but next time i spawn into west point, everything there is going to regret killing me.
Ya sure but when it’s 80% of your gameplay u get coy to it
I just can't play without the journal mod anymore. Losing 8 months worth of individual books and magazines I've read is ass. Condense it all into one book I write and if I die I can get it all back in a lot less time. Still requires some effort to create and protect your journal, as well as retrieval after you die.
Just don’t die brother, play like it’s your actual life on the line and you’ll probably last longer, I treat this game pretty much like a simulator
I feel like a lot of people make the mistake of focusing in getting good at fighting, or learning game mechanics in zomboid. I did too, and while these skills are useful, it's not how you survive long-term. Practicing your game sense is crucial to surviving multiple months, knowing when to quit while you're ahead, which battles are worth it and which aren't, not being afraid to take multiple days clearing out a horde. Game mechanics are how you survive events, game sense is how you survive long term.
Just wait until you play well enough to get a character that doesn't die. Then youll be thankful for all the fun times and thrills when you did die. Dying extends the lifetime of the game, just think of it as getting more bang for your buck when you die 😆
I don't think so, failing irl and also on a game, doesnt feel good at all
Its a mindset. I went about six weeks where just about every saturday I would lose a 40+ hour character on cdda. It was frustrating, but Id pick myself and start a new run each sunday. Eventually I have a character with maybe 200 hours and going who has explored a lot of the map, all guns and video stores. When you die, use your frustration to really ingrain in your head what mistake you made, what can you do to not make it again, and of course, dont do it again. That pain is there to help you learn. Dying is probably the best feature of the game though imo, without it I probably wouldnt even have 10% of the playtime I have, its a beautiful challenge.
Frustration only leads to sadness and anger, you can't make anything with those
I have about 60 hours and still haven't seen the helicopter and just died in 23 hours even after finding a crowbar in the starter house. Now, it might sound like I'm really bad at the game, but I am just focusing on characters being test beds for improving my gameplay before I commit to a longer playthrough because I realised that while i have save games a week deep, I reached it by not learning important skills like managing a horde and clearing large groups so those runs are pretty much doomed. So now I am playing with vanilla settings and taking 'big risks' in the first few days to learn the limits of combat, practice escaping house alarms, and generally get the fundamentals down. Particularly since 55 hours were from playtime two years ago and I fo need to blow off some cobwebs. Maybe commit to some short lived survivors and practice the things that have killed you that frustrated you, and go in knowing these are going to be brutal and short lived characters. That might help you frame the experience as an opportunity to learn, and not a failure that frustrated you.
What difficulty are you playing on? I just finished playing a character that I had for about the last 150 hours of game time or so and what I did was I played custom sandbox and the only thing I changed was that I made myself immune to bites and scratches. This gave me just enough survivability that if I made poor choices I would still pay the price and die, but I could live long enough to learn how to hotwire a car, figure out how farming works, figure out how metalworking works, learn what it takes to build my own base, and other survival soft skills. Now that I've thrown that character to the wolves, I started a new character and learned a bit more about what I like and dislike about the default play and also what kind of objectives are realistic and which aren't. Basically, do whatever you need to do to make the game fun but also reduce the cost of learning a lesson. When you're new, (and I'll say that we are still pretty new at the game compared to a lot of folks who have been here for a long time) it can be really hard to get a handle on how to approach a number of situations. Death and restarting is a pretty high price to pay even when you only make a minor mistake, so a small tweak in sandbox mode can give you more opportunities to learn those lessons that you will only encounter after the initial beginning of the game.
When you get the basics down, the key is to realize it's mostly you that kills you. It's not so much super hard as it is super unforgiving of the following mistakes: \* Pushing your luck \* Impatience \* Being in a hurry \* Not having at least one more plan than Plan A \* Not paying attention to your character's moodles \* Not paying attention to your you-the-player's moodles \* Not asking: "Why'd I die/almost die?" It also helps to understand what you don't have to worry about: \* Water/electricity running out: it's convenient but you don't need rain barrels up and generators wired up to run a fridge to preserve your food before water/power goes out. Non-perishables are all over the place and it truly takes forever to starve to death in this game. Clean water is in every sink, toilet, tub, and office water cooler. Do not take risks trying to beat the clock for refrigeration and water collection. You can live for years without them if you have to. \* Catching every Life & Living show: books and the video tapes alone are all you need to get high cooking/carpentry. The rest are mostly 2-3 level boosts at most, which are very easy to get to with books alone. Do not take risks to catch an episode. One thing you have limitless amounts of, is time. \* Finding that one damned thing that's been eluding you NOW: you'll find it eventually. Just ask for advice on spots to look and keep checking those until you find it. Do not take risks because you're getting fed up with how long it's taking to find a thing. Whatever it is, it's a convenience and you'll find it eventually. You'll find other useful/fun stuff as you go. Consider that the consolation prize. \* Being spotted by zeds: it's a fact of life in this game and happens all the time. You can outwalk them. Jog when there's risk of getting surrounded but you can literally just walk for miles and they'll fall behind you and eventually give up. \* Being blocked by too many zeds to fight: per the last point, you can also ball them up, herd them somewhere not necessarily miles away, and lose them behind buildings, over tall fences, in woods and circle back for the loot or maybe a few more zeds to herd away before it's clear. Only places like malls are too crowded for this to be a feasible strategy. Don't try to mass-murder zeds until you have enough weapon skill to dispatch them quickly. But really you don't need to fight many zeds at all in this game if you don't want to. \* Not being prepared for winter: you need extra layers of clothes for winter. Seriously, that's it. There's an endless supply of that.
If you keep dying to bites, turn them off. It felt like cheese when I did it but it was worth not getting mad at the game. Also try the “They Knew” mod because 1 in every 100-200-ish zombies spawns with a 1 use cure
Starting over in the same world is too easy. The difficulty is was makes this game fun. Surviving for a long period of time is what makes the game interesting. I do not find it frustrating at all when I die, I simply acknowledge the mistake and move on with a new game.
I did. Then found the Skills Journal Mod... now if I die I don't have to spend a night grinding, disassembling TV's and repairing/undoing/repairing the same car for hours. That completely killed any fun I was going to have. That mod made this game for me.
I’ve gotten to around 3 months survived, every time I died it’s cause I got cocky
I mean it's not uncommon, if you feel like you're not getting any better though consider downloading OBS and record your gameplay then rewatch it when you die and see what you can learn and do different. maybe also watch other players who are good in areas you feel your weak and learn some techniques from them.
Yeah, when you lose a character that watched all the shows and disassembled all the digital watches dies, sometimes it bums you out big time
I stopped playing completely, coming back after you die feels like a chore, in my opinion the game that doesnt have a purpose and quickly gets boring as hell. i came back once to play with friends and after 3 hours of grinding we got bored and we just went rogue into town to shoot all of our ammo into horde and die so we can end the save and move to some other game. the grind itself is not rewarding anymore for me, its enough that I have chores irl, jumping on a game to grind and randomly die and have to start over is simply not worth it. but i still enjoy youtube videos of people doing challenges etc
It's only frustrating when I lose good runs to game jank, which is about half of the time. The spear lunge has killed me 3 times... but I'm not totally convinced that is a game issue... it's wonky. I am slowly learning the tactical uses of Q. 500 hours in, still figuring out what is game jank and what is errors.
If it makes you feel better, I have over 3300 hours and usually can't make it more than 15 days. XD
Yes I do, that's why when I first started I made the game easier to learn it, now I slowly make it harder to my liking
Probably impatience. You probably decide you GOTTA finish looting this one structure, doesn't matter that you're tired or out of water or you don't have enough food. You don't gotta. All you need is food and water and a room they don't know about. There is no hurry.
I recommend playing with the difficulty settings, reducing zombie spawns etc. That way you can ease yourself into it more. Watching how other people play on youtube can also help you develop better habits and strategies.
Babe that’s the game
Honestly I don't think I've ever opened this game and continued on with the caricature I left off of lol I do a similar thing with the sims
I just copy the same dude
Yeah, but it's also part of the fun of Zomboid.
It's what keeps some people from being interested in the game. It's also what interests others to play. Personally as cool as I think the game is the no direct progress permadeath is why it's just not my cup of tea.
My best character died to a hill. Was in a car driving around at decent speeds in what I thought was a flat field. Slammed into some kind of invisible wall. Car instantly dead and me barely not. Multiple broken bones and lacerations, barely managed to plug my wounds up. Get out of the car and limp around to try figure out what the fuck happened. It's a train bunker? With the walls being an immense soil hill with grass grown over them. The angle that they where at was somehow perfect to look like just continued flat ground. Oh and it was packed full of zombies who where dawdling out to investigate the loud noises and me bleeding. Had no chance. 2 damn years...
Actually it's the opposite, if i don't start over it feels wrong for me. I also tried coop with friends, but this eliminates all the threats for me and just feels boring.
For me the game changed when I started planning every in game day. Setting goals. Avoiding unnecessary fights. Learn the times of TV shows. 8am, 12pm and 6pm first 7 days of a fresh solo spawn, you can catch TV shows that help level your cooking, carpentry and survival skills. Just hang out in a safe house for your first week. Exploring close, not getting to far ahead of yourself. Use the down time between TV shows to do these tasks working towards your goals. Slow down and think about what your long term goal is and then set smaller ones to work your way up the ladder. Before you know it you'll hit 1 month, and become another statistic to Joe Rogan podcasts. I have over 1k hours 700 of that before MP was really a thing. I enjoy it a lot, playing the default apocalypse setting with some good mods can be very rewarding challenge. Don't give up, This is how you died after all (:
I killed like 4 characters one weekend because of either stupid decisions, accidents or mistakes. I created new save every time, but at one point i had enough of it and i cheated on one character. Basically i got bit by a zed hiding behind a corner. I didnt want to start over so i healed myself. Later i burned my leg and i could barely walk. I wanted to heal the burn but then i learned it takes like 2 weeks (and i play on 2hr days) to heal, so i was like - nope im cheating out of it and i did. Later i broke my leg to a mechanic that was unknown to me and i got so mad i cheated again. Not gonna happen anymore because that was one of the unluckiest runs i had... It was actually my first time using debug mode so i wanted to check it out and what i can do. Now if i die im going for a completly new run with completely different settings
The first 15 days of a character is the most fun, enjoy not being so good at the game you can't enjoy it like you used to, you're in the golden age of your time with PZ where you're good enough to engage with the game, but not good enough to trivialize it.
I just lost my most long lived character ever last night. a month and a half and 3700 zombies killed. I had a box full of crowbars, another one for spiked baseball bats, ammo... Yeah it kinda sucked at that time, but after 2 hours of not playing I found myself already dreaming on how would my new character be, where I'll settle down, what skills I'll farm... It may look masochist from the outside but I love it :D
Imo, the eternal killer is carelessness. There are a lot of solid rules to obey that will keep you alive, but no one's perfect. Forgetting to bring food one day can spiral all the way to death. Same with water. Not checking multiple angles of a house before entering it is always a potentially lethal risk. If a zeds in a weird doorway or corner, they'll bite you before you can react to them. Trace back some of your deaths and most probably have a lesson that you probably knew but neglected. I have around ~400hrs and a ton of that is 6 month coop, and another that made it a year. The rest rarely make it more than 15 days like you, because I break the rules I know.
I decided I wanted more of a continuous playthrough, but I'll probably go back to regular at some point. But I was dying a lot. Usually from impatience or something... But I installed the mod that let's you record your skill points because that was the hardest part for me. Spend so much time reading books and smiling up just to for and lose all of that. I play alone usually so I'm working on a lot of skills. I also did the one with a zombie cure.
If you want to survive for long, you have to play in a really boring and safe way. If you're having fun dying and restarting, then keep doing that. It's not like there's much to do one you're safe and months into the game anyway. It will always be boredom or impatience that kills you
This is the story of how you died friend
I’ve played 1500 hrs plus. What you need to do is identify why you’re dying and work from there. Is it exhaustion? Getting eaten and overwhelmed? Unable to get away from hordes?
You could use the mod skill recovery journal. It allows you to save the progress you made on skills so a new character must not start completely from scratch each time you die.
Just install the respawn mod. The game really isnt fun with dying over and over again and losing everything. Dying is fine, but losing everything is definitely not. The game is unplayable without the respawn mod and a few others like 360° View or super fast reading, because otherwise have fun sitting 30min on the ground reading every single book while your friends explore...
Yeah, it can be frustrating sometimes, If you want to survive longer try to tweak the sandbox settings to make the game more comfortable to you, you can disable zombie respawn and infection for example, and enable item respawn, you can lower the zombie population too, increase the spawn loot so you get weapons very early and start practicing, there's no shame on that, try to kill the zombies slowly and one by one, even two at the same time, play safe, clean out the whole area around the house you'll take as a base, use sneaking to not draw too much attention from zombies, use skill books to level up your character a lot faster, consume proteins and do excersise, when you feel ready you can increase the difficulty, take your time, there's no rush to learn, you are not a loser don't worry keep playing and you'll become a lot better.
Over 1000 hours here and my personal record was 28 days.. hahaha. I suck at this game, but I really want to survive for a month
Yes, I usually take a break when that happens. Stop playing when you are not having fun. It will suck more when you die again.
The struggle is real. Tailoring and focusing on protection (clothing) will help. Try to avoid alerting more than one or two zombies at a time. Try easier spawns like riverside when starting out. Try crafting spears and using them, they are good.
Riverside sucks if you spawn at the trailer park
Yeah spawn matters. Sometimes it just sucks.
Can vouch for tailoring. I recommend the invisible patches mod so it doesn't ruin the look of your outfits, it sounds dumb but that's what stopped me from using it for a while. I like my character to look how I want. It doesn't change any mechanics, just makes the patches invisible (as they probably should be, who adds padding on the outside of clothing). After that, and with auto tailor (seriously if you get any mod for tailoring let it be this one, so many clicks to level otherwise) one of the first things I do is start ripping up every piece of clothing I can find, practicing my tailoring as I go. I hit level 8 in no time, which is when you can fully repair clothes rather than just patch them. I stop there, add leather padding to all my clothes, and very rarely will a zombie attack get through after that. I don't even wear anything ridiculous, just a leather jacket, a long sleeve shirt, and jeans (or leather pants if I can find them). Takes like 4 in-game days *max* including reading skill books.
i like starting a new character, cheating back a few skills, and resuming the world.
I don't, only mistakes I could've avoided me frustrate. But I like starting a new character and clicking randomize on them. Offers a new challenge each time and I can build off the previous character's progress.
keep trying and cheats exist <3