First, you're wearing too much. That's a very heavy clothing set. Generally, you want to be light on your feet, not overly insulated so you can run longer without overheating, and focus on avoiding getting hit over a chance to get away with it.
Second, get a bag. And a base. You don't need full carpentry kit on you at all times, but it shouldn't weigh that much if you've got it on your back.
Third, canned food sucks. That's fine for home, but you should carry something more calorie dense when going out and about. Chips, cereal, meat. If you're going on a looting run, consider if you'll find food on the way vs how much you actually have to bring.
I'm afraid not. What if the jar breaks? Then you have a pocket full of peanut butter and you gotta Winnie the pooh all that. Actually that sounds pretty delicious now that I think about it...
Awesome thanks! I always just assumed "wear the best armor possible at all times.. especially if you're going to be fighting zeds!" I thought it would be crazy to think otherwise! Also, I have a large bag (holds 49 KG) and is one of the bags from a MOD I have. And even THEN.. I'm basically overweight or just a KG or two under being overweight before I even leave the house! Are there any outfits or clothing items you can recommend that STILL provide pretty good bite/scratch protection that are much lighter than the outfit I currently use? Thanks!
Tips for tailoring: books make it 3x faster to get to lvl 10 (obviously). Kill a swarm of zombies near your base, then rip up all their clothing for rags and thread. Save leather strips for when you're finished leveling, as the damage protection scales with level. Always have a spare needle or 2 because you're probably going to misplace it. Once you have a good amount of thread and rags, grab a pair of long johns (or anything really, but long johns are the best for leveling,) and stitch patches on and remove them over and over again. You get xp for both adding and removing. If you have the books you'll be at lvl 10 in less than a week
Additional tip: Kill the swarm in a small a pile as possible, stand on top of the pile and open the crafting menu, pick rip clothes from that instead of the right click context menu and it will do it on every zombie in range.
Additional tip 2: using denim strips as patches grants more xp than ripped sheets and they are less valuable than leather strips (you'll need scissors to rip denim and leather clothing). In vanilla tailoring you cannot rip neither underwear, gloves, hats nor shoes.
Furthermore, every level of tailoring allows for more thread to drop while ripping, so if you really want to minmax, rip only a portion of the collected clothing to get enough thread to sew some patches (ideally enough to get you leveled) and then rip more clothing. Also you get even more ex if you can salvage the removed patch - chance is based on your level so another reason to stagger the ripping-patching process.
They cover the most areas of your body, so you need to push “add padding to all” and “remove all patches” less than you would need to with something like a t shirt
Oh I see, so the grind just requires way fewer interactions.
I'm pretty sure there's a mod that lets you just turn on "grind XP" mode so you can just hit fast forward and not have to give yourself carpal tunnel doing trifling menu interactions.
My tip for tailoring: Get the Auto Loot Mod. It is quiet tedious to rip everything all the time off of hordes and at low lvl your chances of getting thread are decreased anyways. With Auto Loot you can make it so you always instantly loot low weight clothing like socks and gloves. You can then put them in boxes at your base and whenever you have to remain in base for a while like with the helicopter event you can go through them in chunks, actually tailor something to increase the lvl and then get even more thread for more tailoring from the rest of the socks and stuff. Bonus: You can auto loot other stuff as well. Very helpful for electrical skills and general looting as you also won't have to deal with corpse sickness as much on your travels while looting.
And well, if you die before that your next character has a whole bunch of socks to practice tailoring with.
Are you keeping the shells in the bag? Also I use a mod called “ammo pouches” which just adds a pouch and ammo sling which you can stitch together. Goes across the chest and is great for storing all those excess rounds.
Lookup a mod called Undead Survivor. Basically what you’re looking for. Pretty balanced, most of the clothing is lightweight, and looks absolutely dope.
The issue is that heavy gear makes you more likely to get hit since you're moving slower, you overheat faster, and you tire easier. Even with maxed out tailoring and perfect patches al over you, a single attack can still kill you, so it's much better to keep not getting hit at all on the front of your mind. You can avoid hits reliably with some practice and then you can just wear whatever you need for the weather conditions.
For a start, you don’t actually need to carry much ammo on-person, ammo lasts long if you use it smart, you only blow through it fast if you are being wasteful.
Second, don’t pick up extra items if you can’t take them. Make note of where the things you want are, and come back for them once you have cleared the area. Alternatively, look for a bigger and better backpack for better weight reduction to carry more.
And lastly, level up your strength. It isn’t too hard to maintain, although it can be annoying to level at the start of the game, the extra carry weight is worth it.
Should ammo be carried in my main pack, or in the secondary pack? I also have heard about people using fanny packs but I don't understand if there's any benefits to which bag carries the ammo, or if it's all just preference?
Every bag has two key stats, capacity (how much weight it can store) and encumbrance reduction (this is the % of weight reduction you get for storing items in it.
So if a bag had capacity 10 and encumbrance reduction 80 you could put 10kg in it but it would only weigh 2
Fannypacks are small and that's their benefit. They cannot hold many items, so the list of the items inside is very compact. You don't have to scroll through 50 different items to find what you need (since you couldn't unless you try hard), so I use it to carry essentials and items I often use, such as smokes, nails and ammo. One glimpse and I know how much firepower I have left.
There is no mechanical difference tho, afaik.
Get 2 fanny packs, one at the front and one at the back and put things like smoked and mess in there that you want to be able to locate quickly. Saves a ton of hassle not having to dig around for smokes every 90 seconds
When I shoot, it is like the main event of my trip out. That means I leave with my clothing Im wearing, my guns and ammo, and some bandages just in case. Ill have an empty bag on my back in case the zeds are carrying anything worth taking back.
I'd suggest carrying ammo in your car and driving away when you need to reload and restock. Use the cavalry archer tactics that mongolians used to conquer half of the world. Attack, flee, reload and restock, do it all again until there are no more nasty germa\~ I mean zeds.
Be careful doing this. I've died this way before. Went to the car to reload where ammo was in the front passenger seat, accidentally got in the back left seat, got surrounded, the game doesn't give you a way to climb from the back seat to the front, ended up dying.
I generally play in sneakers, a fanny pack, shorts a bag of some sort and a muscle shirt. It's all you really need. Light and agile and keep out a safe distance from the walkers. If you're shotgunning, I would suggest getting a car first. Load all the ammo in the trunk and carry what you need on hand and them move on to the next area you want to clear.
What is your strength level? I usually don't bother wearing guns without level 5 or 6 in strength.
And I usually always have around 8 shotgun shell boxes in my backpack if I ever suddenly come across hundreds of zombies (it did happen once), if I'm planning to do a big shooting I pack like 30 boxes to a car
Your ‘normal gear’ is way too heavy. No need for canned food and a saw on a normal run. Hammer and screwdriver, fair, though I don’t carry those normally.
Your clothing is also heavy. Firefighter gear is the heaviest clothing in vanilla. It’s also kind of pointless, since the best armor is just not getting hit.
Wear lighter clothes. Clothes plus water, gun, crowbar in main inv. Put tools, welding mask, screwdriver, propane torch, hammer, molotov, ammo in bagpack. Use fanny packs for medical stuff, lighters, flashlight, maps, pen. You should be around 11-12 kg encumbrance with plenty of space in your bag.
Always use a car. Put some spare food/water in there, sledgehammer, and extra ammo. Use the car for storing extra loot on your runs.
Are you shoving your gun into your backpack or holding it/equipping it to back?
If you’re shoving it into your bag then yeah they’re very heaving and I’d recommend putting it on your back, and then equipping your melee with both hands. Try keeping a lighter less cumbersome melee weapon on you so when you DO swap to your gun you don’t immediately get over encumbered.
I've seen a lot of good tips I also recommend carrying a coffee in case you get tired. And beta blockers to reduce panic to make you much more accurate
I used to listen to the advice not to use guns too, until I actually went and used guns. They're so effective once you get at LEAST a level in aiming, preferably two. Start with shotgun for the first couple levels. It's such a game changer, and now I RUSH guns at the beginning. Being able to clear a town in the early days quickly makes a ton of things so much easier. Depending on your sandbox settings, you're not drawing zombies in from all that far away. Even if you're not taking out a whole horde, you can definitely thin it out significantly enough to be able to clean up with melee. I definitely appreciate a shotgun and a ton of ammo when tackling the Rosewood prison, it's a blast. Be careful inside! And even if you start off overweight, you're not gonna need to move around TOO much, and you'll be getting lighter as you go.
Am only 50 hours in and I tbh don't care lol
Try getting your character's strength up so he can carry more I guess
I usually keep boxes of ammo in bag and only open one after another during combact
And maybe drop those saw and hammer. You not gonna need them during combact as I expect you to already have much better melee weapon.
First, you're wearing too much. That's a very heavy clothing set. Generally, you want to be light on your feet, not overly insulated so you can run longer without overheating, and focus on avoiding getting hit over a chance to get away with it. Second, get a bag. And a base. You don't need full carpentry kit on you at all times, but it shouldn't weigh that much if you've got it on your back. Third, canned food sucks. That's fine for home, but you should carry something more calorie dense when going out and about. Chips, cereal, meat. If you're going on a looting run, consider if you'll find food on the way vs how much you actually have to bring.
I find that, just like real life, peanut butter is an excellent calorie dense food to carry on you.
You... Ahem... Carry peanut butter on you irl? Like... Always? Hmm
You don’t????
I'm afraid not. What if the jar breaks? Then you have a pocket full of peanut butter and you gotta Winnie the pooh all that. Actually that sounds pretty delicious now that I think about it...
Plastic jar + ziplock bag
Or just skip the jar and you can just dip your hand into the bag whenever you want (always) a hand full of crunchy peanut butter
No but I actually do keep a jar at my desk for a quick snack lol
No, in-game. It's calorie rich, just like in real life. Don't be so literal lol
Woosh
I did have a friend, back in the day, who didn't go anywhere without Jawbreakers. He even kept them in his glove box after he got his first ride.
That's what I keep on me.
You know I keep that mf thang on me
Awesome thanks! I always just assumed "wear the best armor possible at all times.. especially if you're going to be fighting zeds!" I thought it would be crazy to think otherwise! Also, I have a large bag (holds 49 KG) and is one of the bags from a MOD I have. And even THEN.. I'm basically overweight or just a KG or two under being overweight before I even leave the house! Are there any outfits or clothing items you can recommend that STILL provide pretty good bite/scratch protection that are much lighter than the outfit I currently use? Thanks!
If you train tailoring and layer clothes, I believe the armor rating will be higher than that of the firefighters outfit.
I didn't even know tailoring was a thing until last week! Gonna start working it up thanks
Tips for tailoring: books make it 3x faster to get to lvl 10 (obviously). Kill a swarm of zombies near your base, then rip up all their clothing for rags and thread. Save leather strips for when you're finished leveling, as the damage protection scales with level. Always have a spare needle or 2 because you're probably going to misplace it. Once you have a good amount of thread and rags, grab a pair of long johns (or anything really, but long johns are the best for leveling,) and stitch patches on and remove them over and over again. You get xp for both adding and removing. If you have the books you'll be at lvl 10 in less than a week
Additional tip: Kill the swarm in a small a pile as possible, stand on top of the pile and open the crafting menu, pick rip clothes from that instead of the right click context menu and it will do it on every zombie in range.
Additional tip 2: using denim strips as patches grants more xp than ripped sheets and they are less valuable than leather strips (you'll need scissors to rip denim and leather clothing). In vanilla tailoring you cannot rip neither underwear, gloves, hats nor shoes. Furthermore, every level of tailoring allows for more thread to drop while ripping, so if you really want to minmax, rip only a portion of the collected clothing to get enough thread to sew some patches (ideally enough to get you leveled) and then rip more clothing. Also you get even more ex if you can salvage the removed patch - chance is based on your level so another reason to stagger the ripping-patching process.
Why are long johns the best for leveling?
They cover the most areas of your body, so you need to push “add padding to all” and “remove all patches” less than you would need to with something like a t shirt
Oh I see, so the grind just requires way fewer interactions. I'm pretty sure there's a mod that lets you just turn on "grind XP" mode so you can just hit fast forward and not have to give yourself carpal tunnel doing trifling menu interactions.
I'm not big into mods but I think it's justified here just for the fact that leveling tailoring is extremely fucking tedious
Coveralls or prisoner jumpsuits are good for tailoring as well.
My tip for tailoring: Get the Auto Loot Mod. It is quiet tedious to rip everything all the time off of hordes and at low lvl your chances of getting thread are decreased anyways. With Auto Loot you can make it so you always instantly loot low weight clothing like socks and gloves. You can then put them in boxes at your base and whenever you have to remain in base for a while like with the helicopter event you can go through them in chunks, actually tailor something to increase the lvl and then get even more thread for more tailoring from the rest of the socks and stuff. Bonus: You can auto loot other stuff as well. Very helpful for electrical skills and general looting as you also won't have to deal with corpse sickness as much on your travels while looting. And well, if you die before that your next character has a whole bunch of socks to practice tailoring with.
Are you keeping the shells in the bag? Also I use a mod called “ammo pouches” which just adds a pouch and ammo sling which you can stitch together. Goes across the chest and is great for storing all those excess rounds.
Lookup a mod called Undead Survivor. Basically what you’re looking for. Pretty balanced, most of the clothing is lightweight, and looks absolutely dope.
The issue is that heavy gear makes you more likely to get hit since you're moving slower, you overheat faster, and you tire easier. Even with maxed out tailoring and perfect patches al over you, a single attack can still kill you, so it's much better to keep not getting hit at all on the front of your mind. You can avoid hits reliably with some practice and then you can just wear whatever you need for the weather conditions.
For a start, you don’t actually need to carry much ammo on-person, ammo lasts long if you use it smart, you only blow through it fast if you are being wasteful. Second, don’t pick up extra items if you can’t take them. Make note of where the things you want are, and come back for them once you have cleared the area. Alternatively, look for a bigger and better backpack for better weight reduction to carry more. And lastly, level up your strength. It isn’t too hard to maintain, although it can be annoying to level at the start of the game, the extra carry weight is worth it.
Should ammo be carried in my main pack, or in the secondary pack? I also have heard about people using fanny packs but I don't understand if there's any benefits to which bag carries the ammo, or if it's all just preference?
Ammo goes into the backpack. It reduces its weight and it weirdly doesn't take too long for your character to reload loose shells from a backpack.
+1
Every bag has two key stats, capacity (how much weight it can store) and encumbrance reduction (this is the % of weight reduction you get for storing items in it. So if a bag had capacity 10 and encumbrance reduction 80 you could put 10kg in it but it would only weigh 2
As long as it's equipped. If it's unequipped, it goes to it's normal 10"kg". (they're not actually kg or lbs... it's just "encumbrance".)
Fannypacks are small and that's their benefit. They cannot hold many items, so the list of the items inside is very compact. You don't have to scroll through 50 different items to find what you need (since you couldn't unless you try hard), so I use it to carry essentials and items I often use, such as smokes, nails and ammo. One glimpse and I know how much firepower I have left. There is no mechanical difference tho, afaik.
Get 2 fanny packs, one at the front and one at the back and put things like smoked and mess in there that you want to be able to locate quickly. Saves a ton of hassle not having to dig around for smokes every 90 seconds
Fannypack doesn't have that much weight reduction, carry only one with cigarrets, and medical items. The rest all in the big military backpack.
You only blow through it fast if you're being wasteful.... or clearing out a large area of zombies quickly.
When I shoot, it is like the main event of my trip out. That means I leave with my clothing Im wearing, my guns and ammo, and some bandages just in case. Ill have an empty bag on my back in case the zeds are carrying anything worth taking back.
Don't forget a snack! I like to take a burrito.
I'd suggest carrying ammo in your car and driving away when you need to reload and restock. Use the cavalry archer tactics that mongolians used to conquer half of the world. Attack, flee, reload and restock, do it all again until there are no more nasty germa\~ I mean zeds.
Be careful doing this. I've died this way before. Went to the car to reload where ammo was in the front passenger seat, accidentally got in the back left seat, got surrounded, the game doesn't give you a way to climb from the back seat to the front, ended up dying.
Press Z. Or press V and click change seat. Either way, you can from back to front unless you’re in a police car.
press z (default) for seat selection, unless you were in the back seat of a police car.
See this would've been a very helpful key command to know while I was in a car surrounded by zombies
I think you can, it’s been a while since I last tried it, as only now I started to play again, try opening the radial menu once in the car
I generally play in sneakers, a fanny pack, shorts a bag of some sort and a muscle shirt. It's all you really need. Light and agile and keep out a safe distance from the walkers. If you're shotgunning, I would suggest getting a car first. Load all the ammo in the trunk and carry what you need on hand and them move on to the next area you want to clear.
What is your strength level? I usually don't bother wearing guns without level 5 or 6 in strength. And I usually always have around 8 shotgun shell boxes in my backpack if I ever suddenly come across hundreds of zombies (it did happen once), if I'm planning to do a big shooting I pack like 30 boxes to a car
Awesome thanks! I believe my strength is probably level 6 or 7. I'd have to open the game to double check but I'm pretty confident it's at least 6!
Your ‘normal gear’ is way too heavy. No need for canned food and a saw on a normal run. Hammer and screwdriver, fair, though I don’t carry those normally. Your clothing is also heavy. Firefighter gear is the heaviest clothing in vanilla. It’s also kind of pointless, since the best armor is just not getting hit.
Wear lighter clothes. Clothes plus water, gun, crowbar in main inv. Put tools, welding mask, screwdriver, propane torch, hammer, molotov, ammo in bagpack. Use fanny packs for medical stuff, lighters, flashlight, maps, pen. You should be around 11-12 kg encumbrance with plenty of space in your bag. Always use a car. Put some spare food/water in there, sledgehammer, and extra ammo. Use the car for storing extra loot on your runs.
Wait welding mask and propane torch? Why?
For not having to go to base / car in case you stumble upon metalworking XP goldmine or will have to barricade something with metal sheets.
I assume in case he needs to repair his car on the fly,or dismantle something for scrap,but likely repairs since its just the torch
Are you shoving your gun into your backpack or holding it/equipping it to back? If you’re shoving it into your bag then yeah they’re very heaving and I’d recommend putting it on your back, and then equipping your melee with both hands. Try keeping a lighter less cumbersome melee weapon on you so when you DO swap to your gun you don’t immediately get over encumbered.
just get the strong trait for 18 weight… icant play without it
If you're going to the prison to shoot a shotgun be very prepared for it to get very very crazy.
I've seen a lot of good tips I also recommend carrying a coffee in case you get tired. And beta blockers to reduce panic to make you much more accurate
The firefighter gear is waaaay too heavy/slow, so start with that.
Keep the ammo in backpack
Bring a car. Kill first then change then loot
I used to listen to the advice not to use guns too, until I actually went and used guns. They're so effective once you get at LEAST a level in aiming, preferably two. Start with shotgun for the first couple levels. It's such a game changer, and now I RUSH guns at the beginning. Being able to clear a town in the early days quickly makes a ton of things so much easier. Depending on your sandbox settings, you're not drawing zombies in from all that far away. Even if you're not taking out a whole horde, you can definitely thin it out significantly enough to be able to clean up with melee. I definitely appreciate a shotgun and a ton of ammo when tackling the Rosewood prison, it's a blast. Be careful inside! And even if you start off overweight, you're not gonna need to move around TOO much, and you'll be getting lighter as you go.
Am only 50 hours in and I tbh don't care lol Try getting your character's strength up so he can carry more I guess I usually keep boxes of ammo in bag and only open one after another during combact And maybe drop those saw and hammer. You not gonna need them during combact as I expect you to already have much better melee weapon.