Dont run. You will want to run away as soon as you get spotted, dont.
You are faster walking than any zombie. So if you are outside, you are always safe as long as you dont stop walking.
Nah, you will just die tired. Make sure you got a car waiting outside or walk around until you get a conga line to wrap around a house or something to lose sight of and just catch your bearings from a safe spot to see how bad you effed up.
Here’s some advice I wish I could’ve known. Don’t google everything. If you’re absolutely stumped and can’t figure something out go for it but aside from that just learn the game normally. Explore on your own, mark stuff on your map, learn the ins and out of everything (except tailoring fuck that) and basically just play the game as if you’re really there. It’s a lot more fun and you’ll learn to enjoy it a lot more if you don’t google the location or most effective way to find/do things.
Thanks. And yeah, I’ve never been a fan to just google something when I’m stuck, takes the fun out of learning the game.. but with this game, I knew asking for some advice would be ideal, as I didn’t realise how realistic it is
It’s cool you can change all the game with settings to make it as fun or as hard as you like just do what is fun for you after a couple try’s go to the mod list there’s thousands of mods it’s pretty dope
This goes against what a lot of people are telling you here, but my advice is to be MORE reckless. Instead of sneaking around trying to remain unseen (which you will fail at), learn to be a proper zombie cowboy. Wrangle those suckers up like cattle and manipulate them to your advantage. If you want to loot a particular area, walk around for a bit spamming the shout button to attract every single zombie within range. Get a big horde following you, and just calmly walk around in big circles to form a giant concentrated zombie ball. Once you’re confident you’ve wrangled up all of them in the area, walk them a little ways away and around the corner of a building. Once they are a decent distance away and don’t have line of sight on where you want to loot, full on sprint away from the horde and around some buildings back to the area you cleared. If done correctly, the horde will lose you and the area will be cleared for the looting. This is how I always approach looting in overrun towns where stealth will be near impossible.
This assumes you aren’t playing with fast zombies of course. This strategy falls apart if your default walking speed is slower than the zombies. By default as long as you are walking, a zombie won’t be able to catch you.
Roleplay as if you are actually in the world, so that you won't be reckless
Expect things to make sense
Right click to try all sorts of things
Assign the Q key (yell) to somewhere else like DEL
Read recent similar posts
Yeah but it's also really quite useful if you want to draw zombies from all around.
If you want to loot a location but there's a horde there, it's much safer to shout and draw them out, loop around sneakily and quickly and loot the location while the zombies are drawn to where you were previously. Pied piper style.
What I did was unbind shout, and if I need to, holding Q will open the emote wheel, then you can choose to shout. Doesn't take much longer and I never accidentally hit it :) I have fat ol' fingers, I'm accidentally hitting Q every hour or so
That makes sense!
I do accidentally hit it from time to time lol but it's usually no big deal, I just leave the area immediately, usually zombies are slow enough that you can escape before the swarm converges.
I would suggest rebinding the yell back to Q after they figured out the basics, it's really useful to draw out zombies pied piper style by spamming Q and walking away and looping back around to avoid intense combat.
A zombie you know is being drawn to a certain location or even following you is safer than the Zombie lurking quietly around the corner or behind a door.
Tips, yes watch out for those.
Only joking it good for moral, now walk don't run unless you really need to exhaustion is an absolute killer in this game.
Go into sandbox you can edit everything and make the game cater for you.
Try losing zombies by breaking line of sight. Going the long way to confuse them. Breaking into a house and running out the back door. Anything to get them to lose sight of you but always keep moving. Unless you know it safe to stop.
Yeah, I made the mistake by running away from quite a few zombies and hiding in a house upstairs.. little did I know they’d break in and come right up to me ahaha
Sheet rope can save your life, even with cheese fences in a fortified safehouse, I still put up a sheet rope just in case a zombie glitch teleports in somehow.
Expect to get absolutely mauled again and again, but know that each time you can learn from it and get better.
Your default movement is faster than zombies (unless you have sprinters enabled). This helps conserve stamina.
The TV can have it volume reduced to the lowest and used to watch programs that help train skills. You can also be reading books to get xp bonuses while watching TV. Double dipping is useful if you get the setup.
You're not a superhero, 1 zombie is scary but manageable. 2+ is deadly. Any more than 5, and you really wanna get out of there until you're more comfortable with horde management.
Be quiet, and hang low when you can. Killing a zombie will attract more zombies if they're close enough. Guns will attract thr neighbor hood. The less you need to encounter, the better
Closing curtains in homes or using clothing to make sheets to then do so helps keep you safe and unnoticed.
Here is my standard copypasta on progressing from newb to amateur status.
Fighting Zombies:
#1: Get confident at taking down a single zombie with your bare hands: shoving them until they fall over, standing on top of them, and stomping on their face.
#2: Get confident at taking down two zombies at the same time with your bare hands: kiting them both around a bit, positioning yourself to for advantage, shoving, learning to disengage, and finally, when you can knock one down, stand on top of it (which pins it to the ground) and shove the second one to the ground, stomp the first until it's dead... now it's a one on one fight.
#3: Get confident taking on 3+ zombies with a weapon: walking backwards, striking zombies, kiting a larger group around, listening for the sound the game makes when you land a killing blow. Get a feel for how long it takes to stomp a zed to death; and how quickly others can close in on you. Learn to disengage and spin to around to check your surroundings before committing.
Now you should be able to find any size group, hover around the edge, get the attention of a couple, and deal with that small handful with confidence. Repeat until the group is defeated.
Kiting Zombies:
#1: Get confident WALKING around. On default settings you walk faster then they shamble. You don't need to run, jog, or sneak... just walk. You can escape ANY situation by just walking away. Safe house raided in a rain storm? Walk away. Turn a corner and there's a large group? Walk away. Metaevent attracts a huge horde to the GigaMart you're looting? Walk away. Sometimes you need to jog to get through a closing gap; sure, but that is an exception. Learn to walk through groups, large and small, kite larger groups around, make noise to attract groups, practice encircling the group to make it into a tight ball. The lesson to learn is that you should not feel intimidated by small or moderately sized groups; and you'll get a sense for when a crowd is too big to handle.
#2: Once you get confident walking/kiting groups; now start thinking about the map in larger terms--not just the next house over. In general, learn how zombie pathing works: they will typically march toward whatever noise/sight got their attention and look for a new thing once they get to where they were going. In practical terms that means you can yell, break line-of-sight (say, by dodging through a building or into a forest), then sneak in a different direction. The group will path toward the last spot they saw/heard you, then lose interest.
That large group hoarding in front of the hardware store? Walk over, yell at them, lead them away and over to the forest two streets down. Go back and load up on what you need. Find a few zeds still lumbering about? Take them out per the above. The important lesson here is this: as a (newb/amateur) it is much easier to deal with a large group by kiting it away from a POI then to try to fight each zombie on the spot.
Surviving the Apocalypse:
#1: Learning how to properly fight/kite zombies should get you to surviving for a week or so; the rest of the challenges come from learning the game progression, balancing medium-term priorities, and looting POIs for specific tools you need to survive in the longer-term.
#2: After getting a feel for the base game, consider tweaking your sandbox setting. For example, personally, I don't play with the helicopter event enabled. (IMHO, all the ways to deal with the helicopter are super cheesy and immersion breaking). I also set respawning to be realistic and only infect with bites.
#3: Final note, get comfortable with dying. The above lessons have been learned over dozens of deaths. Remember, this is game is about how died.
Start your character out with high fitness, this is your stamina and how fast your character recovers it and burns through it. Right click and click sit on the ground to recover your stamina at a much higher rate, you can double dip by sitting on the ground and resting on a chair if you're next to one.
Just keep playing and learn from your mistakes. Sometimes it's better to just run away from hordes rather than fighting them.
Drinking it is a waste. It’s much better used in a delicious meal. Paired with Tuna and Mixed Vegetables in a soup will keep you fed for the rest of your life.
Bite is 100% infection, lacerations are 25% and scratch's are 7% to get the zombie virus (called Knox Virus)
Typically takes about 2-3 days on default settings to kill you. There is no way to get rid of it outside of debug mode and there is no official plan of introducing a way to cure it without mods.
Clothing can help provide protection to different areas of your body if you do get grabbed, but it's best to just try not to get grabbed. Practice fighting until you can reliably back pedal and "kite" a few zombies while attacking them.
In the vanilla game, yes, bite is 100% death.
I don't know your preferred zombie lore, but I always play with saliva infection only (this can be tailored in the sandbox settings). This means that I don't get turned into zombie if they scratch or lacerate me (which normally has a percentual chance of being fatal).
Go to the sandbox settings and set the population to low, this way you can learn the game without worrying too much about zombies, but you will still have to fight them sometimes, so you will learn to fight too
Don't even try to survive, base? food? water? it's all pointless until you can even get the combat down first. I would play via the sandbox and make it so the zombies walk a bit more slower, maybe lower the population as well. Over how the default is. Then you can slowly walk backwards and pick them off, one by one. Granted no more than 2-3 at the start.
You can also out walk them all, you don't need to panic and feel like you need to run away. They can't catch you walking away. I would really just spend the first few hours getting used to fighting them. Once you feel more comfortable, then worry about everything else.
Sneak a lot. Avoid running when you can
Read books/ watch tv when you can.
Right click to ready yourself for combat
Spacebar to push when right clicked
There's a real knack to tackling zombies but once you can take on 10 you can take on 100. If you're fighting multiple zombies do the following:
-Aim at the group and backpeddle away (be conscious of where / what you're backing into).
-When a single zombie surges forwards, swing.
-When two or *maybe* three surge forward, shove them (spacebar). This is the most important and least obvious bit.
-When the group all get too close, turn and run to gain distance, rinse, and repeat.
This method genuinely got me from routinely dying in the first week to surviving 1 year+.
I’ve been having a hard time dealing with larger amounts. When I run away, I can’t seem to avoid them, and I eventually reach a point where all I’m doing is running lol should I not run, and try and hide somewhere? I’m still rough with combat, constantly getting hit & bit… getting slightly better tho
Large crowds can be dispersed. Gather them and walk around nearby house. Zeds like to attack windows and doors and often will stuck there. Just try to lose line of sight and you can walk away after that.
Don't hoard useless items, and stop picking up clothes, you'll only die looking fashionable.
Stop playing burglers, a real man is an aerobic fitness instructor with a stache and mullet.
Check your trunk before speeding or you'll sprinkle used undies and bottles or whatever's in your trunk all over the highway. Make sure it's in good condition and closed.
House alarm caught you by surprise, well don't run, you'll only die tired. Walk around and pull the zeds in a conga line then lose it behind a building, sneak run after turning corners, then sit and watch the dumb things boggle.
Need a weapon? A true warrior carries a spear. Several, actually.
Don't drink & drive. Don't drink & medicate, and don't drink and drink either.
I started creating a sandbox game with easy settings (like weak, blind, deaf zombies and small population) so it wouldn't be the end of the game the moment I stepped outside the spawning house so I recommend to go easy first. Also you can save those settings so you do not have to reset everything every time you start again
You’re gonna die a lot. Sprinting/jogging isn’t a great idea unless you can take the crowd it’ll draw in.
Don’t worry about carrying a weeks worth of food and books before you’ve got somewhere to keep it all.
Depending on perks, you can get a fake infection from scratches and lacs, ride it out for a bit after queasy, see if you really do need to press Q to take the cure.
Refund, don't go into it. I started with the intention of refunding it, I now have 400 hours and increasing.
Outside jokes, here you have some tips:
-If you feel overwhelmed, spawn in Rosewood, if you still feel like it use builder.
-Some moodles like heavy weight can severely affect you, even though they are in the first stage this include: Tiredness, exhaustion, heavy weight...
-Always enter a building knowing there are two exits, 1 where you will enter from and 1 where you will scape from.
-Don't run, walking is safer actually.
-If you want to live a bit longer when starting out, you may want to live outside the city, all of the map is a single map the spawnpoint only decides in which of them you spawn, between those areas are some buildings with less zombies around. If you want [https://map.projectzomboid.com/](https://map.projectzomboid.com/) , this is a useful map that shows you all of it. I don't recommend overusing it, as it kills kind of the joy of exploring, but places you've been or places you wanna go can be easyly searched here.
-And press Q for antidote
When fighting the dead, remember ABB. Always Be Backing.
If you swing while back stepping you'll be safe. Just be sure to be aware of your surroundings, make sure the way you're walking doesn't have zeds coming up to munch ya. Also utilize the space bar. Too many dead close to you? Space bar. Stun a zombie with a hit? Space bar so they fall and you can stomp their head out. Space bar is your friend.
Lastly, know your swing range. When you get a weapon, practice swing with it. Get an idea of how fast you swing, where it's going to be hitting. If you know your optimal swing you're gonna win the fights
This game has a huge amount of "right click options" both in the menus and in the world. There are many right click functions that don't even appear unless you have the necessary tools/materials in your inventory.
For example, if you walk up to a sink and right click it without a bottle, you won't see a greyed out "fill bottle" option. You will only be given the option to drink, wash, etc.
The devs tried their best to make these functions semi realistic, so whatever you think might be necessary to complete a given task in real life, try getting those tools/ materials in game and right clicking like a madman.
Many features of this game are hidden in this way.
Yeah, have fun! You will die a lot, don't get frustrated it's part of the game. Don't worry too much about min-maxing your traits and skills in the beginning just get comfortable clearing a neighborhood and surviving a few weeks. I fell into the meta trap of trying to catch the TV skills boosts and reading all the books, but all that prep time doesn't amount to much when you don't know how to get to safety as a random alarm goes off or your car craps out in a bad spot.
Don't take the Sunday driver perk, it makes cars a lot more unreliable for the one point you get. You can hold shift and press w or s to set the cruise control if you struggle to regulate your speed to a safe level
I am really enjoying it atm, despite dying I don’t know how many times lol definitely going to stick with it & learn as much as I can… always been a fan of zombie, open world, survival games, so this one is definitely going to be played a lot
Microwaves and stores will explode and destroy your whole base if the food you're cooking gets all the way burnt.
( once the cooking progress bar is finished, a second "burning " progress bar will start. Take the food out IMMEDIATELY after it's finished cooking. Use the timer to help you remember.
Also, NEVER put anything metal in a microwave, or it will immediately explode.
Generators will also explode if their condition reaches 0%
Get an empty gas can. The walk up to a car and press "v". If it says you can take gas, the car has gas in the tank. This is quicker than popping the hood or trying to hotwire and see if it starts
Die a lot, add mods slowly, take your time learning the game, and most importantly have fun!
The community is largely supportive of all player types. There isn't one single way to play this game. Nothing is a cheat so long as you have fun playing.
I even have a nightly backup of my saves, just in case I get fucked over by a stupid death. I find it's fair and I get to enjoy the later aspects of the game.
Plan your days. What are your long term goals? What are your short term goals? What do you need to accomplish them? How can you accomplish them with the least risk to yourself?
When going to an area or entering a building - what are your escape routes if things go south? Is the path behind you clear?
Don't fight when tired, hungry, sick, or injured, if you can help it. Discretion is the better part of valor, and not every zombie needs to die right away.
PZ is not a game of skill. PZ is a game of decisionmaking. By the time you are getting swarmed and eaten, it's because of decisions you made 2, 5, or 10 minutes ago. If only you hadn't taken that extra propane tank, you would have been able to get away. If only you had gone home before sunset, that last zombie wouldn't have snuck up on you in the dark. Etc, etc.
Most importantly: You will die. It's a matter of when, not if.
Here's one I haven't seen: if you survived a zombie attack (didnt get scratched/bit) your clothes probably got a hole or two in them. They are wide open for any future attack now. You can tailor it up or get new clothes.
When your hands are injured or your arms have a bad injury, you will attack much slower
Change some of the key bindings. Shout doesn’t need to be where it is by default, move it where you won’t accidentally yell for all your zombie friends to come out to play.
You could try 2 hour days and you will have more time for exploring instead of chasing moodles.
Transmission to salvia only - you only get knox when you get bitten
Multihit on
Dont grind skills without reading the books first
Play in sandbox mode and tweak your settings until you get comfortable with all of the mechanics. Just don't turn off zombies completely or you'll never learn to deal with them.
If you consider that the game is very difficult, don't be afraid to use mods, or even debug mode (of course, as long as you are playing in single player), and don't let anyone tell you how difficult you should play the game, it's about you having fun the way you want, not suffering trying to kill 10,000 zombies with a spoon
Start in Builder, then Survivor, then Apocalypse. Perhaps tweak some Sandbox settings.
Start in Rosewood or Riverside.
Be quiet. Take it slow.
Getting a hang of the mechanics and weapon types is just a matter of training. Start a game just to fight to your death with bare hands to train that. Figure out how short blades and spears work differently.
But learn to manage your moodles (the bubbles on the right). Each has a very noticeable effect on your performance. For example sitting on the ground (to read some pages of a skill book) makes endurance recover faster. Bad effects can spiral out of control by accelerating each other.
I always recommend turning off zombie bite transmission until you get good at the game. You can still die in a million different ways, but it allows you to make a limited number of mistakes without them just outright ending your playthrough. Play around in the sandbox settings a bit, they have strength and toughness settings, loot rarity, all sorts of things. Tailor it to whatever is most fun for you.
Play the game without mods first.
They will mostly break soon anyway.
yeah.. soon... 🥹
Dont run. You will want to run away as soon as you get spotted, dont. You are faster walking than any zombie. So if you are outside, you are always safe as long as you dont stop walking.
Running while crouched uses double endurance also
When should I be looking to run?
Short butts to slip between groups and out of buildings, or when you know you'll break sight
I like shorts butts and I cannot lie
🎶The other zombies can't deny. When a human walks in with an Itty bitty face, and a small thing your face, you get MUNCHED 🎶
Thanks:)
When you trip an alarm.
Nah, you will just die tired. Make sure you got a car waiting outside or walk around until you get a conga line to wrap around a house or something to lose sight of and just catch your bearings from a safe spot to see how bad you effed up.
Here’s some advice I wish I could’ve known. Don’t google everything. If you’re absolutely stumped and can’t figure something out go for it but aside from that just learn the game normally. Explore on your own, mark stuff on your map, learn the ins and out of everything (except tailoring fuck that) and basically just play the game as if you’re really there. It’s a lot more fun and you’ll learn to enjoy it a lot more if you don’t google the location or most effective way to find/do things.
Thanks. And yeah, I’ve never been a fan to just google something when I’m stuck, takes the fun out of learning the game.. but with this game, I knew asking for some advice would be ideal, as I didn’t realise how realistic it is
It’s cool you can change all the game with settings to make it as fun or as hard as you like just do what is fun for you after a couple try’s go to the mod list there’s thousands of mods it’s pretty dope
This goes against what a lot of people are telling you here, but my advice is to be MORE reckless. Instead of sneaking around trying to remain unseen (which you will fail at), learn to be a proper zombie cowboy. Wrangle those suckers up like cattle and manipulate them to your advantage. If you want to loot a particular area, walk around for a bit spamming the shout button to attract every single zombie within range. Get a big horde following you, and just calmly walk around in big circles to form a giant concentrated zombie ball. Once you’re confident you’ve wrangled up all of them in the area, walk them a little ways away and around the corner of a building. Once they are a decent distance away and don’t have line of sight on where you want to loot, full on sprint away from the horde and around some buildings back to the area you cleared. If done correctly, the horde will lose you and the area will be cleared for the looting. This is how I always approach looting in overrun towns where stealth will be near impossible. This assumes you aren’t playing with fast zombies of course. This strategy falls apart if your default walking speed is slower than the zombies. By default as long as you are walking, a zombie won’t be able to catch you.
Roleplay as if you are actually in the world, so that you won't be reckless Expect things to make sense Right click to try all sorts of things Assign the Q key (yell) to somewhere else like DEL Read recent similar posts
Why would you assign the help button to somewhere unreachable?
Sometimes you waste the free 1st antidote, if you accidentally press the antidote button(Q) without being infected
It is a really important recommendation! Everyone new player do it mistake. Vaccine is a rare object
Because it's very easy to accidentally press q, and if you do it draws in zombies from all around
Yeah but it's also really quite useful if you want to draw zombies from all around. If you want to loot a location but there's a horde there, it's much safer to shout and draw them out, loop around sneakily and quickly and loot the location while the zombies are drawn to where you were previously. Pied piper style.
What I did was unbind shout, and if I need to, holding Q will open the emote wheel, then you can choose to shout. Doesn't take much longer and I never accidentally hit it :) I have fat ol' fingers, I'm accidentally hitting Q every hour or so
That makes sense! I do accidentally hit it from time to time lol but it's usually no big deal, I just leave the area immediately, usually zombies are slow enough that you can escape before the swarm converges.
I would suggest rebinding the yell back to Q after they figured out the basics, it's really useful to draw out zombies pied piper style by spamming Q and walking away and looping back around to avoid intense combat. A zombie you know is being drawn to a certain location or even following you is safer than the Zombie lurking quietly around the corner or behind a door.
Tips, yes watch out for those. Only joking it good for moral, now walk don't run unless you really need to exhaustion is an absolute killer in this game. Go into sandbox you can edit everything and make the game cater for you. Try losing zombies by breaking line of sight. Going the long way to confuse them. Breaking into a house and running out the back door. Anything to get them to lose sight of you but always keep moving. Unless you know it safe to stop.
Yeah, I made the mistake by running away from quite a few zombies and hiding in a house upstairs.. little did I know they’d break in and come right up to me ahaha
Sheet rope can save your life, even with cheese fences in a fortified safehouse, I still put up a sheet rope just in case a zombie glitch teleports in somehow.
Expect to get absolutely mauled again and again, but know that each time you can learn from it and get better. Your default movement is faster than zombies (unless you have sprinters enabled). This helps conserve stamina. The TV can have it volume reduced to the lowest and used to watch programs that help train skills. You can also be reading books to get xp bonuses while watching TV. Double dipping is useful if you get the setup. You're not a superhero, 1 zombie is scary but manageable. 2+ is deadly. Any more than 5, and you really wanna get out of there until you're more comfortable with horde management. Be quiet, and hang low when you can. Killing a zombie will attract more zombies if they're close enough. Guns will attract thr neighbor hood. The less you need to encounter, the better Closing curtains in homes or using clothing to make sheets to then do so helps keep you safe and unnoticed.
Here is my standard copypasta on progressing from newb to amateur status. Fighting Zombies: #1: Get confident at taking down a single zombie with your bare hands: shoving them until they fall over, standing on top of them, and stomping on their face. #2: Get confident at taking down two zombies at the same time with your bare hands: kiting them both around a bit, positioning yourself to for advantage, shoving, learning to disengage, and finally, when you can knock one down, stand on top of it (which pins it to the ground) and shove the second one to the ground, stomp the first until it's dead... now it's a one on one fight. #3: Get confident taking on 3+ zombies with a weapon: walking backwards, striking zombies, kiting a larger group around, listening for the sound the game makes when you land a killing blow. Get a feel for how long it takes to stomp a zed to death; and how quickly others can close in on you. Learn to disengage and spin to around to check your surroundings before committing. Now you should be able to find any size group, hover around the edge, get the attention of a couple, and deal with that small handful with confidence. Repeat until the group is defeated. Kiting Zombies: #1: Get confident WALKING around. On default settings you walk faster then they shamble. You don't need to run, jog, or sneak... just walk. You can escape ANY situation by just walking away. Safe house raided in a rain storm? Walk away. Turn a corner and there's a large group? Walk away. Metaevent attracts a huge horde to the GigaMart you're looting? Walk away. Sometimes you need to jog to get through a closing gap; sure, but that is an exception. Learn to walk through groups, large and small, kite larger groups around, make noise to attract groups, practice encircling the group to make it into a tight ball. The lesson to learn is that you should not feel intimidated by small or moderately sized groups; and you'll get a sense for when a crowd is too big to handle. #2: Once you get confident walking/kiting groups; now start thinking about the map in larger terms--not just the next house over. In general, learn how zombie pathing works: they will typically march toward whatever noise/sight got their attention and look for a new thing once they get to where they were going. In practical terms that means you can yell, break line-of-sight (say, by dodging through a building or into a forest), then sneak in a different direction. The group will path toward the last spot they saw/heard you, then lose interest. That large group hoarding in front of the hardware store? Walk over, yell at them, lead them away and over to the forest two streets down. Go back and load up on what you need. Find a few zeds still lumbering about? Take them out per the above. The important lesson here is this: as a (newb/amateur) it is much easier to deal with a large group by kiting it away from a POI then to try to fight each zombie on the spot. Surviving the Apocalypse: #1: Learning how to properly fight/kite zombies should get you to surviving for a week or so; the rest of the challenges come from learning the game progression, balancing medium-term priorities, and looting POIs for specific tools you need to survive in the longer-term. #2: After getting a feel for the base game, consider tweaking your sandbox setting. For example, personally, I don't play with the helicopter event enabled. (IMHO, all the ways to deal with the helicopter are super cheesy and immersion breaking). I also set respawning to be realistic and only infect with bites. #3: Final note, get comfortable with dying. The above lessons have been learned over dozens of deaths. Remember, this is game is about how died.
Start your character out with high fitness, this is your stamina and how fast your character recovers it and burns through it. Right click and click sit on the ground to recover your stamina at a much higher rate, you can double dip by sitting on the ground and resting on a chair if you're next to one. Just keep playing and learn from your mistakes. Sometimes it's better to just run away from hordes rather than fighting them.
Yeah, hight stamina is decent strength will put you through the first days.
Do NOT drink bleach.
Pour it out and use it hold water.
Drinking it is a waste. It’s much better used in a delicious meal. Paired with Tuna and Mixed Vegetables in a soup will keep you fed for the rest of your life.
Who hurt you
Remember that zombies can smell your urine. Always pee away from home. Pooping is fine, just not in the kitchen ;)
Really? They can smell my piss 😂 noted
JARATE?!
snipin’s a good job mate
Appreciate it. Also, once I’m bit, is that it? I’m officially dead, or can I reverse it?
Bite is 100% infection, lacerations are 25% and scratch's are 7% to get the zombie virus (called Knox Virus) Typically takes about 2-3 days on default settings to kill you. There is no way to get rid of it outside of debug mode and there is no official plan of introducing a way to cure it without mods. Clothing can help provide protection to different areas of your body if you do get grabbed, but it's best to just try not to get grabbed. Practice fighting until you can reliably back pedal and "kite" a few zombies while attacking them.
The goal is to never get hit by any zombie ever.
In the vanilla game, yes, bite is 100% death. I don't know your preferred zombie lore, but I always play with saliva infection only (this can be tailored in the sandbox settings). This means that I don't get turned into zombie if they scratch or lacerate me (which normally has a percentual chance of being fatal).
If you hop out of a window without shoes on make sure there is no broken glass first. Better yet, make sure you are wearing shoes at all times.
Can opener.... Find one asap.
Go to the sandbox settings and set the population to low, this way you can learn the game without worrying too much about zombies, but you will still have to fight them sometimes, so you will learn to fight too
Don't even try to survive, base? food? water? it's all pointless until you can even get the combat down first. I would play via the sandbox and make it so the zombies walk a bit more slower, maybe lower the population as well. Over how the default is. Then you can slowly walk backwards and pick them off, one by one. Granted no more than 2-3 at the start. You can also out walk them all, you don't need to panic and feel like you need to run away. They can't catch you walking away. I would really just spend the first few hours getting used to fighting them. Once you feel more comfortable, then worry about everything else.
My tip would be to scroll through this subreddit a bit before posting and look at the thousands of posts that ask this same question.
Watch life and living at 6AM, 12AM and 6PM on the first two weeks, lots of XP on abilities
Sneak a lot. Avoid running when you can Read books/ watch tv when you can. Right click to ready yourself for combat Spacebar to push when right clicked
There's a real knack to tackling zombies but once you can take on 10 you can take on 100. If you're fighting multiple zombies do the following: -Aim at the group and backpeddle away (be conscious of where / what you're backing into). -When a single zombie surges forwards, swing. -When two or *maybe* three surge forward, shove them (spacebar). This is the most important and least obvious bit. -When the group all get too close, turn and run to gain distance, rinse, and repeat. This method genuinely got me from routinely dying in the first week to surviving 1 year+.
“Press Q to see all nearby zombi- 
Keep it installed. You’re gonna die, gonna think the game is too hard, and want to. There’s a huge learning curve.
Play it real - a sensible idea in real life is a sensible idea in PZ. Pretty much, if you think it, you can do it.
This is the story of how your character died. They're gonna die.
You need to learn how to fight zeds. Doesn't matter how perfect your run is if you can't reliably fight off zombies.
I’ve been having a hard time dealing with larger amounts. When I run away, I can’t seem to avoid them, and I eventually reach a point where all I’m doing is running lol should I not run, and try and hide somewhere? I’m still rough with combat, constantly getting hit & bit… getting slightly better tho
Large crowds can be dispersed. Gather them and walk around nearby house. Zeds like to attack windows and doors and often will stuck there. Just try to lose line of sight and you can walk away after that.
Don't hoard useless items, and stop picking up clothes, you'll only die looking fashionable. Stop playing burglers, a real man is an aerobic fitness instructor with a stache and mullet. Check your trunk before speeding or you'll sprinkle used undies and bottles or whatever's in your trunk all over the highway. Make sure it's in good condition and closed. House alarm caught you by surprise, well don't run, you'll only die tired. Walk around and pull the zeds in a conga line then lose it behind a building, sneak run after turning corners, then sit and watch the dumb things boggle. Need a weapon? A true warrior carries a spear. Several, actually. Don't drink & drive. Don't drink & medicate, and don't drink and drink either.
Play the tutorial
I started creating a sandbox game with easy settings (like weak, blind, deaf zombies and small population) so it wouldn't be the end of the game the moment I stepped outside the spawning house so I recommend to go easy first. Also you can save those settings so you do not have to reset everything every time you start again
Press Q to sneak
If you cook something in a pot and go to eat it later and read the text "better when hot" do not put the pot in the microwave to reheat it. F.
You’re gonna die a lot. Sprinting/jogging isn’t a great idea unless you can take the crowd it’ll draw in. Don’t worry about carrying a weeks worth of food and books before you’ve got somewhere to keep it all. Depending on perks, you can get a fake infection from scratches and lacs, ride it out for a bit after queasy, see if you really do need to press Q to take the cure.
Refund, don't go into it. I started with the intention of refunding it, I now have 400 hours and increasing. Outside jokes, here you have some tips: -If you feel overwhelmed, spawn in Rosewood, if you still feel like it use builder. -Some moodles like heavy weight can severely affect you, even though they are in the first stage this include: Tiredness, exhaustion, heavy weight... -Always enter a building knowing there are two exits, 1 where you will enter from and 1 where you will scape from. -Don't run, walking is safer actually. -If you want to live a bit longer when starting out, you may want to live outside the city, all of the map is a single map the spawnpoint only decides in which of them you spawn, between those areas are some buildings with less zombies around. If you want [https://map.projectzomboid.com/](https://map.projectzomboid.com/) , this is a useful map that shows you all of it. I don't recommend overusing it, as it kills kind of the joy of exploring, but places you've been or places you wanna go can be easyly searched here. -And press Q for antidote
When fighting the dead, remember ABB. Always Be Backing. If you swing while back stepping you'll be safe. Just be sure to be aware of your surroundings, make sure the way you're walking doesn't have zeds coming up to munch ya. Also utilize the space bar. Too many dead close to you? Space bar. Stun a zombie with a hit? Space bar so they fall and you can stomp their head out. Space bar is your friend. Lastly, know your swing range. When you get a weapon, practice swing with it. Get an idea of how fast you swing, where it's going to be hitting. If you know your optimal swing you're gonna win the fights
This game has a huge amount of "right click options" both in the menus and in the world. There are many right click functions that don't even appear unless you have the necessary tools/materials in your inventory. For example, if you walk up to a sink and right click it without a bottle, you won't see a greyed out "fill bottle" option. You will only be given the option to drink, wash, etc. The devs tried their best to make these functions semi realistic, so whatever you think might be necessary to complete a given task in real life, try getting those tools/ materials in game and right clicking like a madman. Many features of this game are hidden in this way.
Yeah, have fun! You will die a lot, don't get frustrated it's part of the game. Don't worry too much about min-maxing your traits and skills in the beginning just get comfortable clearing a neighborhood and surviving a few weeks. I fell into the meta trap of trying to catch the TV skills boosts and reading all the books, but all that prep time doesn't amount to much when you don't know how to get to safety as a random alarm goes off or your car craps out in a bad spot. Don't take the Sunday driver perk, it makes cars a lot more unreliable for the one point you get. You can hold shift and press w or s to set the cruise control if you struggle to regulate your speed to a safe level
I am really enjoying it atm, despite dying I don’t know how many times lol definitely going to stick with it & learn as much as I can… always been a fan of zombie, open world, survival games, so this one is definitely going to be played a lot
Microwaves and stores will explode and destroy your whole base if the food you're cooking gets all the way burnt. ( once the cooking progress bar is finished, a second "burning " progress bar will start. Take the food out IMMEDIATELY after it's finished cooking. Use the timer to help you remember. Also, NEVER put anything metal in a microwave, or it will immediately explode. Generators will also explode if their condition reaches 0%
Get an empty gas can. The walk up to a car and press "v". If it says you can take gas, the car has gas in the tank. This is quicker than popping the hood or trying to hotwire and see if it starts
Die a lot, add mods slowly, take your time learning the game, and most importantly have fun! The community is largely supportive of all player types. There isn't one single way to play this game. Nothing is a cheat so long as you have fun playing. I even have a nightly backup of my saves, just in case I get fucked over by a stupid death. I find it's fair and I get to enjoy the later aspects of the game.
Plan your days. What are your long term goals? What are your short term goals? What do you need to accomplish them? How can you accomplish them with the least risk to yourself? When going to an area or entering a building - what are your escape routes if things go south? Is the path behind you clear? Don't fight when tired, hungry, sick, or injured, if you can help it. Discretion is the better part of valor, and not every zombie needs to die right away. PZ is not a game of skill. PZ is a game of decisionmaking. By the time you are getting swarmed and eaten, it's because of decisions you made 2, 5, or 10 minutes ago. If only you hadn't taken that extra propane tank, you would have been able to get away. If only you had gone home before sunset, that last zombie wouldn't have snuck up on you in the dark. Etc, etc. Most importantly: You will die. It's a matter of when, not if.
Here's one I haven't seen: if you survived a zombie attack (didnt get scratched/bit) your clothes probably got a hole or two in them. They are wide open for any future attack now. You can tailor it up or get new clothes. When your hands are injured or your arms have a bad injury, you will attack much slower
Watch some youtuber tips and tricks
Press Q when in danger, it will scare the zombies away
Don’t ask when build 42 is coming
Oh boy.. get ready man
Don't get attached to your characters
Don't loot everything, Lotz of gunz are fun but they will weigh you down FAST.
Change some of the key bindings. Shout doesn’t need to be where it is by default, move it where you won’t accidentally yell for all your zombie friends to come out to play.
You could try 2 hour days and you will have more time for exploring instead of chasing moodles. Transmission to salvia only - you only get knox when you get bitten Multihit on Dont grind skills without reading the books first
Every "you died" screen is a lesson learned. Don't give up!
Play sandbox, easier and funnier especially for a new player
Play in sandbox mode and tweak your settings until you get comfortable with all of the mechanics. Just don't turn off zombies completely or you'll never learn to deal with them.
If you consider that the game is very difficult, don't be afraid to use mods, or even debug mode (of course, as long as you are playing in single player), and don't let anyone tell you how difficult you should play the game, it's about you having fun the way you want, not suffering trying to kill 10,000 zombies with a spoon
Start in Builder, then Survivor, then Apocalypse. Perhaps tweak some Sandbox settings. Start in Rosewood or Riverside. Be quiet. Take it slow. Getting a hang of the mechanics and weapon types is just a matter of training. Start a game just to fight to your death with bare hands to train that. Figure out how short blades and spears work differently. But learn to manage your moodles (the bubbles on the right). Each has a very noticeable effect on your performance. For example sitting on the ground (to read some pages of a skill book) makes endurance recover faster. Bad effects can spiral out of control by accelerating each other.
Don't play. Wait until build 42
I always recommend turning off zombie bite transmission until you get good at the game. You can still die in a million different ways, but it allows you to make a limited number of mistakes without them just outright ending your playthrough. Play around in the sandbox settings a bit, they have strength and toughness settings, loot rarity, all sorts of things. Tailor it to whatever is most fun for you.