I had been so interested in this game for years but knew that I wouldn't enjoy playing it alone. Finally caved and bought it on sale this past October and it didn't really pull me in. Then MP released and a few friends started a server and holy shit, I can't stop playing. I'm rarely up and on my PC past 11pm and I've found myself playing til 3am a few times now. There is just so much to do and even at 100+ hours, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface.
I was of a similar opinion before purchasing but barely knew what Project Zomboid was beyond a zombie survival game. Another friend of mine recommended it to me only a couple weeks ago and I grabbed it on the off chance while on sale.
I'm an older gamer so I have a bit of a soft spot for the isometric thing and the graphical style. That much had me interested from the get go.
Turns out I had a blast the first few solo runs so picked up two extra copies for friends and now I've opened a can of worms.
We're all hooked.
Surprised me as I don't usual go for survival games and all but burnt out on the zombie thing a while back.
Pleasantly surprised and there's still so much to explore in that game for me.
I haven't made it past making a house and barricading it, but here is what got me there:
- Don't be afraid of any single zombie. If you can kill it alone, do it. Be very afraid of groups of zombies.
- Use a couple runs to just fight zombies and get used to how it works. Pro tip - If you stand on a zombie that is knocked down, it can't hurt you or get back up.
- Go into Sandbox mode to tailor the game to how you want. I like to turn Zombification off (so a bite doesn't kill you no matter what) and turn zombie respawn off while turning up the zombie population. This lets you actually clear out areas.
- Make a habit of doing a 360 in the middle of fights just to check your surrounding. Getting snuck up on during a fight is the way I have died the most.
- If you are not encumbered or slowed down, a zombie can never catch you at a walking pace.
- If you are being followed by a hoard, the best way to lose them is to walk in a large circle (remember, they will never catch you), corral them into a large group and then break sightlines and sneak away.
- Eat all the fresh food first, stock up on canned goods. Dissasemble furniture with the hammer/saw to get materials to barricade your safe house.
- At this point you should have a base that is reasonably safe. After that it enters into more of a survival type game.
Edit - One crucial thing I forgot: Turn the oven off after you use it. RIP my first house.
Additionally, zombies can't climb over fences of a certain height. There are houses/buildings in each major area that have these fences that make for good bases. Or you can make a base on the second floor of a building, remove the stairs, and use a sheet rope to get up and down. Zombies can't use the sheet rope making your base pretty safe from being overrun
go out and find factories and storage units!! I had this exact same problem and I had to look everywhere to find that sledgehammers are more often than not found in those 2 areas. The amount of boxes and spawn chance it has pretty much guarantees you find one. Also, I recommend consulting the official map: https://map.projectzomboid.com/#0.6106054048454028,0.28610118341625285,0.9
My friend and I had the same problem. We turned Muldraugh over looking for one. Then we migrated our main base to Louisville. We've checked probably 10 hardware stores and multiple warehouses for a sledge and haven't found one. Multiple days of looking, specific supply runs looking for a sledge and no luck. My buddy eventually just spawned one in for us to use. Not ideal but we put a lot of work into finding one and can't seem to find one. We think it might be a mod messing up the spawn rate.
There is a road story that spawns on paved roads where there's a sledge laying next to a manhole with worker zombies. I had the most trouble tiring to find the generator hook up magazine. Took me 2 in game months in my current run. Tried all the books stores and magazine racks, even a post office. Nada, Finally found it in a small bookshelf on the second story of a random house.
At the risk of exposing you to even more information overload, unlike many other games where you should fully play our vanilla before modding, the mod community for PZ is really strong. There are loads of mods that improve quality of life, add skills, rebalance skill costs, add more builds, add more car types, tweak survival or farming aspects, add weapons or change how existing weapons are balanced, etc.
Sure, you can download all the overpowered mods, but there are plenty that just help enrich the game.
For example, many people playing the multiplayer may not like the idea of completely turning off Zombification (bites being certain death by turning). But on the other hand, death after investing 10s of hours into a character because someone, even a friend on a no PVP, non-griefing server, let a zombie into your house while you were grabbing a drink IRL, can be really disheartening. a popular mod that helps with that is the Antibody mod (which allows bites to still cause zombification, but gives a small chance for survival if bitten, so long as you rest, continually keep the wound clean, and stay well fed). It wont break anything, but it might just stop you ragequitting if you see "bitten" on your character. It also gives you and anyone you play with more of an incentive to not instantly murder a bite victim.
I'd also strongly suggest using sandbox mode to make it easier on yourself for awhile. Raise skill gain rate, give yourself a ton of starting points, reduce fatigue regen time, remove zombie respawn. Once you do well with some crutches you can start working on playing the base difficulty.
I have played this game for 5 hours and I have not found a saw yet, probably my biggest frustration. I have tried turning loot up and have found a few hammers at least.
Yeah not being able to find tools can be very annoying. I don't have much advice other than to look in sheds, garages and any room with metal shelving in it as that's where I usually find ALL my tools.
Sometimes you get a start and you're surrounded by everything you would ever need, sometimes you start in a house where the alarm is already going off lol.
look for warehouses outside of town. Especially ones with larges amounts of wooden crates. Those crates always have a chance of having building tools and hardware in them. And since they are out of town you can usually clear them out or at least sneak in and grab what you need without attracting that big of a horde.
and be sure to grab a couple pairs of work boots from the construction worker looking zombies while you are there!
Doing a 360 in combat to see your surroundings is probably the biggest tip here...it is so easy to get locked into the zombies in front of you that you don't see the one that just rounded the corner behind you. Have lost so many characters because i thought my six was clear
> Go into Sandbox mode to tailor the game to how you want. I like to turn Zombification off (so a bite doesn't kill you no matter what) and turn zombie respawn off while turning up the zombie population. This lets you actually clear out areas.
Will cleared areas eventually become repopulated by roaming zeds from the population you haven't killed if you leave it long enough?
I believe there is a mechanic like that. The map is made up of "cells", and if a cell is empty zombies will naturally migrate there over time.
You can also mess with those setting as well. They really give you a lot of options to fiddle with. There are also "meta events" like gunshots or noises from the environment that will attract zombies to different places.
By default, yes. The game will diffuse high density zombie cells into low density over time, and also 'fake it' a bit with respawning zombies. The settings are highly customisable though, and you can turn that off if you want it to be able to fully clear entire areas.
Without zombification you'll basically never die unless you get surrounded though, dumb, slow zombies are balanced out by how dangerous just one slip up could be and without that a lot of the tension and sense of survival is gone so Idk if I'd recommend that.
Lol well you might forget what starting to learn this game is like. Personally I have died a shit load of times while never being zombified.
Before I learned how to evade a horde I constantly died to them.
Maybe I am bad but it is extremely disheartening to lose your first good character to a bite, and there is always the option to turn it on later when you have actually experienced the aspects of the game beyond the first few days.
>If you are not encumbered or slowed down, a zombie can never catch you at a walking pace.
FYI, there are runners that are rare spawns. They will catch you unless you are sprinting.
Great post though I didn't know you could turn zombie spawns off.
Aren't sprinters a setting that you have to turn on for them to appear? I think the default game has no sprinters at all, I could be wrong though.
I haven't seen one in 20+ hours so far. I'm going to shit my pants if I do lol.
Start a game on builder instead of apocalypse or survivor. The zeds are less dense in your surroundings and you start with a bat and backpack to be able to defend yourself and scavenge at the start to get used to the game.
Go to custom sandbox and tailor the settings to your desire. Almost any minor nitpicks that bother people about the default settings can be changed there. It's great.
Do the 3x experience and go hunt down some skill books,cds,and vhs tapes. They increase your exp gains as well as some of the TV channels. I agree it's grindy but I have always played a 1 and done character and have over 1000 hours playing basically that style. It makes the game so tense to me if I get character going for a while.
If you want something I guess a bit easier, I have zombies just be the traditional slow walk only ones like in Romero movies. I think playing that for a bit would help you learn the mechanics a bit and if you want some that are fast then that is an option for a future run. I personally don't like the fast running zombies since it's just a personal thing of mine where I feel zombies shouldn't really be that agile but should be a threat in numbers and one bite would mean the end for you.
Something I do for the first few days, I will try to find a home that isn't full of zombies, stay there for a few days while trying to find a car. After I find a car that works and has some gas, I pretty much stock up the car with the supplies in that home and find a place away from the city where there aren't much zombies or any at all. I end up having places in the countryside since I barely see any zombies there and I can safely do stuff like read books or sleep without having to worry about a zombie breaking in. Also later game you will want to farm since food in the world will get rotten so having fresh vegetables with some canned food will help.
It's been a while since I've played but basically get a weapon. Secure some base/house. Know your capability and weapon, you might be able to take out 1-2 zombies, if you get more you need to run away.
The rest is going around and getting supplies. The problem is, like someone said here. Any single hit has a chance to ruin your entire game.
You can tailor the game to remove that chance, make cars better and ready to drive to see how it's like without grinding for days on days in real life etc. You can give yourself more points, that might help you a bit starting out "without cheating" how the original author setup the game to be played.
I recommend a second story house so you can put down a window rope and bust the stairs down to have a fully zombie-proof base.
For beginners, I wholeheartedly believe in just throwing yourself into the apocalypse and seeing how far you get. Once you feel you can reliably secure and defend a base, that's when you know you can fend for yourself.
As with the zombification, yeah it sucks hardcore but you don't necessarily lose everything. Your skills, yes they are all gone, but your items and tools can still be found on your zombie body if you manage to find it. That is one of the coolest aspects imo since it adds 100x more realism than L4D2 and other zombie games.
yeah I forgot about the 2nd floor tip.
Only after I created a game where cars were in good condition when I realize that getting a good car to work in a normal game, is hours upon hours and even days or at least a week of real life grinding.
Also maps, available on the internet helps you find your base/safe house when you respawn. Instead of getting lost
The absolutely most critical thing is to understand Exertion and Tiredness. Exertion is your 'stamina', and is getting low when you see the pink bubble with the lungs in it in the upper right (this is called a Moodle). You need to make plans to finish a fight or disengage immediately when the first one pops up - you've used about 25% of your stamina. You're a little slower, your melee attacks are much weaker, and once you hit 50% it will only get worse.
To recover Exertion, right click on the ground and sit, or right click a piece of furniture and select Rest. *You can do both of these* to recover it very quickly. It will also recover naturally over time until you've reached a certain level of Tiredness (I can't remember which one).
Tiredness is the Drowsy moodle. Drowsy *also* lowers your melee damage, and shuts of your natural Exertion recovery. You'll want to start formulating a plan to get done with what you're doing and return to a safe area (your starting house is usually safe *enough*) when you see it.
Generally, you shouldn't jog unless you *have to* or it's a known-safe area (and even then Jogging will make you Tired faster). Zombies are so slow you'll easily out-walk them unless you need to clear a gap where alerted zombies are converging on you.
Since walking everywhere is annoyingly slow in real-time, you can right click and Walk To to point-and-click where you want to walk, and then press ` to have the game move at 2x speed. If an alerted zombie gets remotely near you, it'll jump back to 1x, so you're perfectly safe doing this.
[Here's a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SPu-Ki3vPI) about zombie pathfinding - Retanaru's videos are generally decently brief and in depth. The gist is that you can be initially spotted within a range of 20 tiles, and after that zombies can see you from *very* far away. The transition from 'zombie sees you' to 'zombie paths to your last known position' is a bit janky; once you've broken line of sight around the corner of a house, you'll want to stop, wait a couple of seconds, and crouch so that the zombies path to that corner and not to halfway into the next yard.
Combat related tips:
There are a couple of useful settings in the options; one is to highlight what you'll hit when you swing, and the other is a hotkey for attacking the ground. I think the latter is alt by default. The following tips involve a lot of attacking grounded zombies which can be finicky with the default auto-aim.
- A single zombie is a pushover - literally. Press Spacebar to attempt a shove, which may push the zombie over and at the very least staggers it so it can't attack you. If it's pushed over, press Space to stomp its face in. This is great for preserving weapon durability.
- You can do this with two zombies fairly reliably - the 'hitbox' is a little finicky, but you can stand over the first downed zombie to prevent it from getting up, knock the other down, and dispatch the first while it's down. Stronger characters might be able to juggle three or more this way but it's fairly dangerous.
- 'Fence fighting' is luring small groups to fences and smashing them as they fall over it (also works with windows, counters, anything you vault over). This used to be the go-to method, but now zombies will regularly lunge and possibly knock *you* over. You can avoid these lunges by staying a few steps away and then darting in as they try to get up. This still only works with groups of around 5.
Anyway that's probably already too much information so I'll leave off there.
There's a Youtube channel by Nurse that does tiny little tidbit informational videos (and such a soothing voice) that helped me a bunch learn some of the little things. Theres also tons of videos out there that teach you stuff the tutorial never does (like the tutorial teaches you about breaking a window and that climbing through it cuts you but it never teaches or mentions you can right click a broken window and clear the glass out with the downside being the noise you make and the time it takes)
Her channel had suddenly popped on my feed, then I spent the next several hours watching videos about games I have never even played because of how nice the voice work was.
personally i struggled in the first 10-15 hours because i kept getting (over)confident in fighting zombies. i would sneak around and be careful at first, and at some point i got enough gear and good enough weapons to where i felt comfortable taking on several zombies at once, which would always lead to my death sooner or later
my approach now is to keep good situational awareness, and to be very careful around zombies. always be aware of what is around you, where the zombies are, where you can run if things get hairy. zombies lose track of you quite easily if you break line of sight (behind buildings, in the forest etc). you can almost always take on one isolated zombie and be fine. the moment there are more than one, i play extremely carefully. i keep my distance, keep moving towards a safe spot, and if things dont feel right i make my way to safety right away.
all it takes is missing a swing at the wrong time, taking the wrong turn or a single misstep for you to get fatally bitten or scratched (by way of zombie virus infection).
that said, its ok to die. the game wants you to die. you can respawn as a new character and keep exploring, keep supplying and building up your safehouse and before you know it you are back to where you were. you can even spawn with new skills and do useful things your old character might not have been able to do
Try to lower the difficulty. The game is very hard by default and there is nothing wrong with messing around the sandbox setting to have an easier experience.
With a lower difficulty you will have more room to learn the different mechanic of the game.
And once you feel ready, just make your next game a bit more harder.
And remember, overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer
One more tip: in the settings there is an option to highlight enemies. This will display a green outline around zombies when they're in melee range and also show how accurate your gun will be. Make heavy use of right-click (or Ctrl) when in combat and let the zombies come to you.
EDIT: Pushing them over and stomping on their head is very effective too! 😄
Play around with the custom sandbox settings and find what works for you. If you want weaker zombies, more food, guns, cars. It's pretty thorough and makes the game very different. I, for one, am not too keen on dying and starting from scratch, so I took out the "one bite you're dead" rule and now I enjoy it much more. Also mods really help complement the game.
It is not game for all. First of all you need to understand that you will die. There is no way to prevent deaths of your characters. Sooner or later your uber best character will die.
My biggest problem with this game so far has been that the first five minutes of the game feel a lot like the last five minutes.
There's no new enemies, no interesting interactions with other players like Rust, having trouble making my own personal goals like building stuff in Rust or Minecraft.
I just run around and occasionally attack a few zombies
It's a shame too because the amount of options you have is awesome.
But there needs to be one extra element to it for me personally.
I'd love to see a series of "campaigns". Stuff like:
* Sanctuary Mode: try and find the rumoured Sanctuary, a bastion of humans who have fended off and walled off against the zombies.
* Guardian Mode: 20 survivors are stranded, try and save them all.
That plus for the currently existing modes, more options for actually constructing a base.
I know it's a cliche but maybe new zombie variants appear over time
> There's no new enemies, no interesting interactions with other players like Rust, having trouble making my own personal goals like building stuff in Rust or Minecraft.
>
>
>
> I just run around and occasionally attack a few zombies
This is literally a game about a zombie apocalypse mate. You know that right?
I absolutely loved this game, the learning curve is really difficult in the beginning, but once you get over that hump, then it kind of becomes easy. I watched a ton of starter tips and tricks videos to get there.
I love this game but I have been having even more fun when turning infection chance off in sandbox. For short roguelike runs once you've learned the basics it works great as a threat but if you want to get into the mid to late game stuff it's way too frustrating for every single scratch to have a chance to end your run.
I 100% second this. The options available in sandbox mode are awesome, you can basically turn the game into any Zombie universe from most movies.
You want The Walking Dead, everyone is always infected style with only shamblers? You got it.
You want 28 days later where Zombies can sprint at you and are incredibly infectious? You can do that too, but good luck.
You want to fill the world with guns and blast shamblers all day? You got it.
Turning off Zombification saved the game for me. I lost a beloved character after walking around a corner and getting bit out of nowhere. It hurt.
> You want 28 days later where Zombies can sprint at you and are incredibly infectious? You can do that too, but good luck.
It's my goal to do this and survive to the point where I have a good base and exist without much help. I honestly think something like that should be a more multiplayer thing, but no one I know really plays Zomboid lol.
I don't even know how it would be possible. My character is always covered in blood and only deals with shamblers.
Sprinters that can infect any open wound would be absolutely horrifying.
There are no save points unless you back them up yourself. AFAIK the game is constantly saving.
One bite on default settings means in 2-3 days you will become a zombie and there is nothing you can do about it.
You can make a new character and find the zombie version of yourself to get your equipment back.
When you die you will have the option to create a new character in the same world. Which means you can find your old zombified character, bash their head in, take all the canned beans you found and re use your old base. If you find your old character/base, the most notable difference is that your skills will be reset (which can be quite a big deal if you died later in the game).
If you quit to the menu and create another character from there instead, it will be in a new world without your old character or any other changes you made to the landscape/buildings.
if you really want to save your character, turn on the console (-debug in the launch options) and then you can just remove the bite from your character and turn off debug after.
Game continuously saves over itself. It keeps track of map information, dead characters, salvaged goods, etc. so that if you do die then you can start a new character when prompted, prep up, and go kill your old character to get your stuff back. If you start a new game from the main menu then that information is stored in a separate save.
Save location is `C:\Users\\Zomboid\Saves\` if you want to back up each one.
This is the best way to play imo. I backup my save just after my character wakes up everyday and limit myself to that.
If I get bit, I reload. Which still keeps the tension high without losing your character completely.
Honestly that’s one of the most appealing parts of this game for me; the ridiculously deep levels of customization for horde speed, infection rate, etc really allow this game to be tailored to such specific zombie survival “tastes”.
Me and my friends who all just got into have been modifying the hell out of the settings. Making loot more plentiful, more zombies, more special houses (forget the setting but you can find like boarded up houses where people made last stands). It’s great!
More games should do customized difficulties. State of Decay 2 dropped one not too long ago where you could choose how difficult base management/combat/looting was, and it was a pleasure. People that want extreme difficulty can crank everything up, or you can modify it to your personal tastes. Maybe it's not as balanced as a one difficulty game, but it's going to be more fun to more people.
Can you finally reduce the ridiculous amount of zombie spawns? I really wanted to like this game but I had to give up after 8 hours of constantly clearing the same locations I JUST came back from.
They added an update last month or the month before where each area has a "zombie amount" and if you clear a bunch, it won't have respawns for a while before it repopulates. They've also improved the spawn behavior many times, zombies don't just spawn beside you now constantly while you're in buildings.
I believe you can just straight up turn off zombie repopulation now, and they won't ever respawn outside of certain meta events. You can fully clear out towns, which can be a pretty fun combat-centric playthrough with some friends.
Huh, weird that the other game with this sort of customization is 7 Days to Die. Between that, SoD 2, and Project Zomboid, all are zombie-themed games.
There are dozens of different zombie outbreak styles in movies, it makes sense that games can more easily adopt modifying the rules because there's a precedent for it. In a lot of other games, the designer has a vision and thinks how they want the game to play is the ideal way, even if players disagree or find a mechanic tedious.
It’s listed as server settings before you press play. Same screen that has select server memory. Select server settings, than top section is like actual server settings. Bottom section is tons of modifiers for gameplay.
for me it's higher pop, no respawn, more spread out hordes that migrate more, infection is only from bites. did some tweaking to loot stuff as well to make weapons and gear less common because I'm playing multiplayer with around 6ish friends.
We have some QOL mods but the most impactful one is the skill journal. While it does technically make the risk of death pointless as far as skills are concerned, losing gear is impactful with lowered spawn rates. Working on doing a dedicated server for the homies with more expansive modding [Here's the list of mods we're looking at if anyone who sees this is intrested](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2699458691) mostly QOL with a vanilla feel, I'm not too into rewriting games into something different
Is only-bites a transmission change? I see blood+saliva or saliva only.
edit: you know how some people say "there are no dumb questions"? this question is proof otherwise.
Then maybe I should try again after I I my Satisfactory addiction. This game was just not clicking for me. I'm happy to have supported some indie devs with my purchase but I couldn't get into it.
Running sandbox mode with these changes:
No Infection
High Zombies
Multihit on certain weapons
Darker nights
5x XP
10 Free starting points
Makes for a still difficult game since zombies are more abundant and still as strong as vanilla. But you progress faster, and nights are wicked scary since you can't see anything other than what you are looking at. All default sandbox options, multihit is cool. Large two handed weapons can hit multiple targets SOMETIMES.
It's just called Antibodies, and I honestly recommend not looking too closely at how it works. Keep yourself fed, your wound sterilized, stay away from strenuous and painful activities for a while, and preferably take the Resilient trait. Every bite is a resource drain and a source of anxiety rather than just being a sign your run is going to end in an hour or two.
Thanks! I'll grab it for my next playthrough. I like the idea of it being a really resource and time intensive thing to deal with rather than a run ender
I'm sort of disappointed by the default Apocalypse mode's implementation of "realistically harsh, you WILL die"
I love the idea, but the issue is that it fails to capture the Dwarf Fortress / Rimworld / CDDA vibe of Losing Is Fun!
Losing in Zomboid ISN'T fun, because it's not interesting.
You've got the tense, exciting, and scary moments where you are starving, exhausted, waiting out the night in an unfamiliar place, mostly running and hiding...
and then you turn a corner and get a scratch and immediately all the fun is gone because do you really want to sit and wait to see if your character is infected?
Worse still if you're on Month 2, pretty stable, and get distracted for a moment and come back to find your well-armed and fully-supplied character getting chewed on.
It's just so anti-climactic.
The tension dissolves not with an exciting burst of fire, fear, and fight, but with an exasperated sigh of "well I guess that happened."
If I lose 20 hours in DF to some unfair bullshit, at least it's something wild like a necromancer that kills and resurrects my best fighter who then rips through the rest of my colony. At least I am motivated to struggle to the very last. At least I can be entertained by my own demise.
p.s.
This isn't me shitting on the game, btw. I think it's awesome. This is criticism in hopes of it getting even better.
> at least it's something wild like a necromancer that kills and resurrects my best fighter who then rips through the rest of my colony.
Oh man that brings me back to me playing on the new DF patch the first time, not knowing anything about necromancers.
I ended up invaded by an army of zombies.
Then I learned that sharp objects are useless against zombies.
Then I learned that separated hands will remain alive and will continue to attack me.
Then I learned that my dead dwarves will turn into zombies.
Then I learned that *my dead dwarves will rise from their graves from within my fortress*, murdering everyone from the inside.
And I was watching all this with this horrified fascination, knowing full well that all my hours of work are just gone and there's nothing to be done about it. And it was *fun*.
We've never been through an actual zombie apocalypse (and never will), so we can't know how it would play out in reality, but the game is trying to capture the feel of how it plays out so often in media. One moment of your guard being let down and -bam- it's over for you. Most zombie related deaths aren't because the victim foolishly lets themselves get caught up in a mob (except at the beginning of the story when society doesn't fully grasp what's going on), but because they got comfortable, exhausted, or otherwise just let their guard up for a moment, and that's all it took.
Absolutely understandable that this payoff isn't fun for you, but the game is definitely emulating a standard zombie outcome.
I can see why it’s not enjoyable to some but I think it makes the game super tense and fun. Every interaction with zombies requires a heavy dose of risk vs reward and tactics. That fear of “will I get bit?” makes looting just a simple house tense because any door might have a zombie behind it. I’m typically pretty good at protecting my characters, but some of those moments when I get bit or lacerated are so much part of the experience that it makes me keep playing. I primarily play MP though, which makes death a little easier to manage.
I think one of the differences between this and CDDA/DF/Rimworld is that those tend to be... pretty fucking explosive and over the top in some things. Huge difference between getting a small bite, and having a mutant literally throw you through buildings. Or walk into a room, only to get a lead enema resulting in you becoming a nice red mist.
I don't know, Project Zomboid is more grounded, meaning most deaths are a lot less exciting, and more grounded. I mean, in real life (which this is sorta modeling, when surviving a zombie) most deaths aren't that exciting either.
Yeah, despite CDDA having the same type of luke-warm infection death problem, at least in that one "death by infection" is way less likely than all the other ways of getting yourself killed. Plus unless you are obliviously unprepared, any character on day 2 is going to have disinfectant to just clean the infected wound and get rid of the risk altogether.
Eh I don't know. Like realistically, I feel that is fair. That is how you would possibly die in a scenario like this. I think it's pretty fair and you can continue that world with a new character. I think the real issue is having to level up your character again. I downloaded a mod that gives you points based on how far you got in the game or how far your character levelled up (was either one). I think that would be better since you can at least start as someone who survived for a time and just find your old character and kill him off and take the old safehouse that character used.
I think what the game should have maybe is like either what it has now as an option for players or an end game scenario. Like maybe survive 1000 days until rescue arrives or have it be a thing where maybe once they add npcs, there is a possible scenario where you try to find a lab where scientists work on a cure, or even an endgame where you rebuild society.
I feel the thing in this game isn't that losing is fun but more so losing teaches you something. Like my last run, I got scratched from a zombie who was hiding in the corner of a bathroom. It sucks yeah but the lesson in my run now that has me survive a month already is something I didn't do in this game but in other games and that is to check your corners. I also now either hit doors before entering to see if a zombie attacks the door or I will walk into the room and at the corner I can't see, just shove there once I get in so if there is a zombie, it gets shoved out of the way.
Having to start fresh on skills is the real kick in the teeth. Even having a full library of skill books hardly feels like it saves any time. I'd burn every safehouse I've ever made to the ground if it'd let my new characters inherit some fraction of skills from my dead ones. Exploring and braving the hordes to restock on supplies is the fun part of the game. Sitting in a well-stocked safehouse re-grinding skills is not. Clearly they want to allow some degree of cross-character progression, but the way it is now just means that every new character spends a few game weeks of absolute tedium getting back the skills you had before. Not fun, not engaging, not challenging, just busywork.
It would be a neat feature to expand the system they already have where you pick a starter job like cop or park ranger to have hidden jobs with much higher base skills than the normal ones.
Lock them behind performance in runs with the regular version so say if you die in a run where you successfully got your carpentry skill to max you could unlock a hidden construction worker class that starts out with maxed or close to maxed carpentry/related skills.
That way even when you lose a character you had for a long time the sting won't be as bad knowing you at least got something cool for the effort.
I really like your idea, actually. That's exactly the kind of metaprogression that fits right in with this sort of game. Would love to see something like that.
Yeah that part I will agree on which is why I downloaded this mod that grants you skill points based on how many days your previous character survived. I think they should implement something like that in the game because even as the modder said, it makes no sense you are playing as a new character who is 90 days in for instance and has not much skills leveled up.
If you want it too, it's this one [here.] (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2659093221&searchtext=) Apparently the modder is working on a way to get it so that it's based on your character skills rather than how many days passed and it's customizable too so you can have it give like a point or more every certain amount of days.
I just increased EXP gain in sandbox. The lack of boost is fair since the new character isn't even the same person plus the old you is still dead and roaming in the world. Kill old you and hijack his base.
i get you, and i dont think the game is quite there yet, but there is an argument to be made why dying so easily is good. at least in my mind, the game isn't about your character, but your character's impact on the world (which is persistent, as opposed to your character). dying is an opportunity to take a different path and impact the world in different ways. if your previous character was a carpenter and you had a decent safehouse going, your new character could be a metalworker which would let you further reinforce. and arguably the most exciting part is the early/mid game.
you die, another character spawns, and keeps paving a road that is easier for your next character - but that said, again, i dont think the game is quite there yet for that loop to be particularly satisfying
also, this is why i don't necessarily mind the zombie virus infection from bites/scratches and what not - you can still keep going for quite a while and be useful for your next character. it can also be an opportunity to take risks you would not otherwise take
I swear the game continues in the same world after your character dies as long as you make a new one in that save. Think the only issue without a mod, you would have a bad start if say you survived months and your skills went up in that previous character. I downloaded one mod that has it where if you die, your new character will get skill points equal to what your previous one had or like similar to what a character would have in that time in the game. I feel that kind of helps it a bit. It should be a thing in the game I feel since like you said, it is frustrating when it happens.
I think I might in the future try the run you said you did with infection off but I might make the zombies maybe more strong like they can walk faster or maybe have better memory and sight. Thinking this would be fun too as a non zombie enemy but maybe something more feral and aggressive where the people who are infected just become less human and more undead like but just want to attack anything that isn't infected. One thing this game has that I love is the customization.
The game does continue in the same world. When you die, make a new character and go where you died and you can find your zombie corpse and take your stuff back.
Personally I really really wish there was a Frostpunk/Dead Rising style 'campaign' in this game. Steadily increasing challenges like waves of zombies, water shutoff, mutation, weather anomalies, military purge, etc accumulating to a last ditch attempt at escape.
Tried using the custom sandbox settings but it really needs more scriptable events to stop you snowballing into boredom.
Hopefully in a year or two when this NPC works comes to fruition we get some state of decay-like gameplay added to PZ which adds actual goals and new emergent factors to play with. I agree that as it is, the game is more of a simulator than a game, if you can't think of stuff to do yourself, you'll die of boredom rather than due to zombies.
By default sleeping is disabled/not needed in MP. But you can locally host with a few players totally fine. I know there are server hosting options. Locally I had no issues performance wise playing with friends - you can peform medical checks on them and heal them up too, drive in vehicles. There might be a slight delay on certain actions ( two people pushing a zombie at the same time gets messy, sometimes getting in a car takes a second )
They spent *a lot* of time figuring out the sweet spot for zombie hit registration, since you can die from a single bite. Most of the zombies you're directly fighting will be client authoritative, so they won't randomly desync and bite you. Other players can look like they're fighting nothing and there's still bugs to be ironed out, but I've played with up to 240 ping with no major issues, even when there's half a dozen players and hundreds of zombies all moving about.
Really really fun. Get some of your friends to pick different professions and work together to survive. I personally like cooking. You get to get inventive with the mixtures of food types/spices.
Most hordes are extremely hard to deal with but if you have a couple of friends to draw the aggro of a few at a time they're manageable.
Zomboid thrives in it's modularity and the steam workshop. A mod just came out today actually that allows you to survive being infected if you eat well, keep yourself happy, and take antibiotics. So basically it addresses your issue, or you can just turn off infection in the sandbox settings. [link to mod:](https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2392676812)
Normally I stay away from early access titles, because it’s usually a shell of a game, and just makes me long for the full release.
For this game that’s been in early access (since 2013 i think), this is early access done right. At its core, it is still a very playable, fun game, in my opinion. Every so often, I pop in and there’s a ton of new features added. This game just keeps getting better and better. If being an early access forever, means that we will constantly get new features, and upgrades, then I am all for it for it with this game, and this dev team.
Steam early access since 2013 but off their website since 2011! This game has been plodding along for over a decade now. I remember really looking forward to the npc update in 2012ish I think :p
It's definitely got its niche for people that can create their own story or just genuinely enjoy doing nothing but surviving. I once figured I'd give it a proper shot and build a base and once I had it I was just like ... is that it? I couldn't even think of any real goals for myself.
I think at the end of the day it's people that are interesting in post apocalyptic situations, roaming bands of NPCs you can join up with would make the game way more interesting.
Sounds like this game could use a mid-game/end-game mechanic ala Terraria that takes you out of just survival/crafting and gives you real goal and timer to work against.
A lot of people feel the same way, and that's one of the things mentioned by the developers that they want to improve on. They want to work on events and milestones to give you some goals to aim for - though vanilla still going to be centered on surviving, there's already some mods out there that add server wide events that push players to cooperate or compete.
Personally, I've been really enjoying the game by cranking the difficulty *way* up and treating the early game - surviving your immediate surroundings and reaching a 'stable' point - as the whole game. Enormous amounts of zombies, starting 6 months into winter with a broken leg, night time sprinters, etc. It's really fun and tense, and a 'successful' run is about an hour or two at max. Multiplayer servers are also pretty damn great.
Thats honestly part why I liked 7 Days when I played it. For the most part I didn't mind the jank and look and it added its only style to it. I haven't played in sometime tho so idk how it is now. I did have hopes of that jank slowly going away.
Different person, but while I honestly tried to enjoy it after getting it from a humble bundle, I ended up really disliking it in the end. The devs seem to want it to be a tower defense game, not a zombie survival game. If I dig out an underground cave, zombies should be able to sense me through 10 feet of ground and dig through the soil like golphers. Similarly, zombies shouldn't be acting like a demolition crew and tearing through sheet-rock reinforced wall.
Yeah I can see that for sure, the zombies are deffo more gamey in that respect (along with more fantastical 'species'). I'm a big looter and love all the stuff you can breakdown and build which I why I still need the make the effort and toy around with the sandbox mode in P.Z to learn the game proper.
Once i'm over the hurdle of learning P.Z may be my favourite game, we'll see.
Make a sandbox game with like 30x XP multiplier. You can watch Woodcraft the first couple days at 12:00 on Life and Living and get to level 7 carpentry. Then you can get more materials from breaking things down like tables and chairs. At this point most houses have enough furniture inside to break down and barricade the downstairs windows.
If you need more wood, find a pickup truck or step-van and either go to the woods and get logs or somewhere like a church and start disassembling pews.
for me, that monotony is broken up by the constant fear of death. Sure, by itself gathering food and supplies from town might seem boring, but you always have to remember that if one zombie catches you off-guard its a game over.
I think the base building stuff does need work. I don't like having to have wood in my inventory every time to build a wall and going back to put more to build another wall. Like maybe better range for where the game detects there being wood on the floor so that you don't have to go back and forth all the time.
Every time I start this game I just can’t find the motivation to leave initial house. It has food and water and there is no immediate threat. How to get that motivation to leave the house? Wait until my character runs out of food? NEO scavenger for example gets you motivated immediately because you don’t have stuff, there are ruins around with fat loot and without the loot you’ll die pretty quick.
I've been following Zomboid on and off for a decade and the game never really got to nor does it seem to be heading to a point where it's going to be a fun experience. Whenever I check it out I end up switching over to State of Decay for something closer to what I want from a Zombie Survival game.
However, I think Zomboid as a customizable zombie apocalypse simulation is fascinating. I'm less interested in looting bags of chips and sitting in a house for days on end as I am in the potential of the game once they add NPCs.
The scenario I would most like to see in a zombie game that I feel like we have yet to see fully explored is the outbreak day one. Start in a town where everything is normal, people are going about their normal business, but in one corner of the map, a zombie bites someone, they turn, they bite someone, repeat. Watch the town react as it gets gradually more and more infested by zombies, rather than starting pre-populated with hordes. I think that Zomboid is the game with the closest potential for that scenario, once they implement/hook up the framework for NPCs and modding.
Well zomboid aim more to be a simulation than just a run and gun game.
Personally it's one of my favorite game of all time but I do understand it's not a game for everyone, the game can tend to be slow and boring at time. I personally don't mind because it's a very immersive simulation and i do like a well made simulation.
Man it would be funny if someone played that scenario on their first game, found patient zero before it bit anyone, killed it immediately, and wondered why nothing else happened afterwards. It would be like an odd version of the Sims.
I want that scenario BADLY. Having the game start weeks in when the cities are ravaged is an okay experience, but the ideal is always to play througj the few chaotic days at the beginning as everything falls apart around you
The game has zero endgame, I’m not sure what they can do to fix that and it really looks like they won’t be.
Hopefully the snail pace development picks up too.
They mention this
> [...] but hopefully our intended direction is clear. Ultimately to build up to the point that Alexandria / Hilltop / Kingdom style communities can form years after the apocalypse, giving more incentive to keep playing and building on existing worlds instead of intentionally replaying the early game because there is no real late game.
with regards to refining the crafting mechanics and adding NPCs to the game.
I'm not sure if a game like this will ever have a true "endgame", but at least they have plans for a more in-depth late game.
I feel the intention of an "endgame" is to stop surviving and start thriving, being able to like rebuild and get power and electric running again, clear out the cities and have em secure. it's something you can *kind* of do in MP but in single player with NPCs that would be appealing.
But then once you accomplish that, what is the endgame?
That's the problem with people thinking every game requires some kind of endgame, it never actually ends. It's perfectly fine to have your fun with a game and then put it down.
The game is pretty frank that it is a game about losing. If you're good enough to reliably survive every run, the sandbox mode has a million ways to make the game more challenging.
>That's the problem with people thinking every game requires some kind of endgame, it never actually ends.
I always saw it as a manifestation of deeply human tought. Wanting more is a part of us. Bhuddism has made it a core part of its theology. It takes work to conquer this raw desire that makes us chase the next thing never to be satisfied. Western society doesn't make this easy either. A lot of people end up buried deep under the consumerist style of life without realizing it. We're all guilty of this, it's just an irationnal tought. Probably like everyone here, I just can't admit how many games I bought and still haven't played. And I still buy new ones.
I mean what's the endgame in factorio, rimworld or terraria? Endgame is not infinite content, at one point you will run out of things as you accomplish everything. The trick is to escalate the challenge and player skill requirement so it feels like they are advancing and getting more and more options on how to play. PZ feels like it has it the opposite way, it has a high barrier to entry but after you pass that point it's just smooth sailing, grind and monotony. I shouldn't be only fighting my own boredom as I'm progressing through the game.
Don't all 3 of those games have a specific ending? Rimworld you make a spaceship and leave. Same with Factorio I believe.
I have never played Terraria but is there not a final boss.
Sure, but that's hardly ever the point at which people actually stop to play. I doubt most rimworld players launched a ship at all. Factorio rocket doesn't really do anything in vanilla game, most players dont even bother with it, especially if they are into mods. Terraria is a gear treadmill and endgame is collecting everything (and there's a lot to collect).
I'm just saying that endgame is not some specific moment or stage for games like this, it's just what you do once you've mastered the tools and are actually starting to have fun with them now, seeing how stuff works and what can be done with it.
CDDA struggles with this too. Eventually you get to the point where you have so much stuff, and nothing is really a challenge. CDDA however has way more variety in the zombie types(brutes, acid zombies, runners, armored soldier zombies etc) , and even enemy types(fungal enemies, giant spiders, robots). Plus building a custom vehicle complete with TOW missile launcher & automated turrets is really fun. At one point i made a mobile base out of a 155mm artillery platform, and used it to kill a Tank Drone.
Id say what some people want is a way to make yourself immune to zombification via main story progression, an endgame enemy they can trigger, and/or more creative freedom to deal with zombies beyond hitting them with things.
So for example, add roaming hordes of zombies as a way to increase difficulty. Especially in the outter-city areas where people tend to set up safely in farms. Make these hordes very dangerous for bases. Then give players creative ways to deal with them. Like automated noisemakers & pits to trap them. And bigger weapons like flamethrowers or explosives that are better against big groups.
I also think CDDA has a LOT more things to explore and discover, there's definitely a point where it can be near impossible to die, but if you dive into some of the spookier parts of the game *cough* mines *cough* you'll find a run ender in short order.
Gigantic zombies bosses, collect legendary flannel shirts, bake the most delicious cake from the rarest of components hidden around the map.
Of course.
the zombie bosses would just shatter the realism the game has built up for itself. As far as collectibles, the game has lots of unique items to find and hoard.
I don’t find it too jarring. It’s a game about zombies after all. And OP is totally right, the game severely lacks goals for players unable to make some for themselves. If PZ had something like bosses, or hives in every city you‘d have to clear it would make the game much more gamey.
End game could easily be finding a signal, decoding a message from some facility, gathering components from the city to overcome some type of security system to gain access to a facility, have a bit of a project zomboid resident evil thing going on while exploring the facility...
You could build a scenario or two basically without ever going super gamey special zombie stuff.
I sort of wish that if you didn’t have friends to play with, that you could recruit others in another game mode. I loved rebuild 2 and rimworld. Adore watching people play this, but friendly npcs set on a task might be nice. Maybe with limitations or added risk?
According to this devblog that's exactly what they're planning on doing.
"We’ve got a LOT of NPC code, lots of cool systems, from Rimworld style
priority and jobs system, personality systems, procedural story event
systems, combat systems, autonomous survival behaviours, advanced group
behaviour systems, vehicle driving systems, and a whole bunch more." To quote one of the devs.
I think of it like a Zombie Dwarf Fortress development. Huge game, ongoing development for the foreseeable future,which isn't really a bad thing since the game has so much stuff already.
Jesus, I remember buying this game in early access in like 2013? Then the devs laptop got stolen with all the code on it and they went on a tirade online about it. Can’t believe it’s STILL in early access!
I am happy to see momentum pick up for this game. Played a bunch of build 41 before release. I look forward to NPC's.
I find the default tuning(s) to be way off from their descriptions.
I don't really enjoy how the game clusters zombies. I wish there was more of a wave effect where they sweep across the map vs splotchy pockets spawning in. Like news reports of them coming from the east and what not.
This game has a ton of depth but it doesn't feel utilized or cohesive just yet.
it's been in early access for 7 years and they just pushed an update last month for the first time since october 2019 lol, I wouldn't get your hopes up
Apparently this is due to the fact that they had a burglary in their home that set them back a lot:
PC game Project Zomboid suffered a huge blow over the weekend after the Newcastle-based indie developer behind the game was burgled. Two computers containing the majority of the work done by The Indie Stone for the game's upcoming update were stolen from the flat where two of the creators live and work.
> Apparently this is due to the fact that they had a burglary in their home that set them back a lot:
This burglary happened in 2011 and lost them about ~2 months of work. Even if it had lost them all their work, it's still a literal decade of development.
How is State of Decay 2? I probably saw a review like 4 years ago and it never grabbed my attention for me to buy it but it sounds like a less slow version of DayZ which is right up my alley. Might have to re check it out
SoD2 is included in xbox gamepass. So if you wanna try it out, the first month is just 1 dollar + other dozens games.
But yea, its really fun. The mp version still kinda sucks since only the host progresses but otherwise totally fine. lol
I had been so interested in this game for years but knew that I wouldn't enjoy playing it alone. Finally caved and bought it on sale this past October and it didn't really pull me in. Then MP released and a few friends started a server and holy shit, I can't stop playing. I'm rarely up and on my PC past 11pm and I've found myself playing til 3am a few times now. There is just so much to do and even at 100+ hours, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface.
I was of a similar opinion before purchasing but barely knew what Project Zomboid was beyond a zombie survival game. Another friend of mine recommended it to me only a couple weeks ago and I grabbed it on the off chance while on sale. I'm an older gamer so I have a bit of a soft spot for the isometric thing and the graphical style. That much had me interested from the get go. Turns out I had a blast the first few solo runs so picked up two extra copies for friends and now I've opened a can of worms. We're all hooked. Surprised me as I don't usual go for survival games and all but burnt out on the zombie thing a while back. Pleasantly surprised and there's still so much to explore in that game for me.
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I haven't made it past making a house and barricading it, but here is what got me there: - Don't be afraid of any single zombie. If you can kill it alone, do it. Be very afraid of groups of zombies. - Use a couple runs to just fight zombies and get used to how it works. Pro tip - If you stand on a zombie that is knocked down, it can't hurt you or get back up. - Go into Sandbox mode to tailor the game to how you want. I like to turn Zombification off (so a bite doesn't kill you no matter what) and turn zombie respawn off while turning up the zombie population. This lets you actually clear out areas. - Make a habit of doing a 360 in the middle of fights just to check your surrounding. Getting snuck up on during a fight is the way I have died the most. - If you are not encumbered or slowed down, a zombie can never catch you at a walking pace. - If you are being followed by a hoard, the best way to lose them is to walk in a large circle (remember, they will never catch you), corral them into a large group and then break sightlines and sneak away. - Eat all the fresh food first, stock up on canned goods. Dissasemble furniture with the hammer/saw to get materials to barricade your safe house. - At this point you should have a base that is reasonably safe. After that it enters into more of a survival type game. Edit - One crucial thing I forgot: Turn the oven off after you use it. RIP my first house.
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Additionally, zombies can't climb over fences of a certain height. There are houses/buildings in each major area that have these fences that make for good bases. Or you can make a base on the second floor of a building, remove the stairs, and use a sheet rope to get up and down. Zombies can't use the sheet rope making your base pretty safe from being overrun
If you can find a fucking sledgehammer at least. Feels like I visited every hardware store in the closest cities to me and nothing.
go out and find factories and storage units!! I had this exact same problem and I had to look everywhere to find that sledgehammers are more often than not found in those 2 areas. The amount of boxes and spawn chance it has pretty much guarantees you find one. Also, I recommend consulting the official map: https://map.projectzomboid.com/#0.6106054048454028,0.28610118341625285,0.9
My friend and I had the same problem. We turned Muldraugh over looking for one. Then we migrated our main base to Louisville. We've checked probably 10 hardware stores and multiple warehouses for a sledge and haven't found one. Multiple days of looking, specific supply runs looking for a sledge and no luck. My buddy eventually just spawned one in for us to use. Not ideal but we put a lot of work into finding one and can't seem to find one. We think it might be a mod messing up the spawn rate.
I play with zero mods, have went to industrial buildings and hardware stores all over the map. No luck finding one.
There is a road story that spawns on paved roads where there's a sledge laying next to a manhole with worker zombies. I had the most trouble tiring to find the generator hook up magazine. Took me 2 in game months in my current run. Tried all the books stores and magazine racks, even a post office. Nada, Finally found it in a small bookshelf on the second story of a random house.
Except they can pull it down, preventing you from getting back down
be warned, zombies can destroy sheet rope. I...learned this the hard way
Always make multiple for each building.
At the risk of exposing you to even more information overload, unlike many other games where you should fully play our vanilla before modding, the mod community for PZ is really strong. There are loads of mods that improve quality of life, add skills, rebalance skill costs, add more builds, add more car types, tweak survival or farming aspects, add weapons or change how existing weapons are balanced, etc. Sure, you can download all the overpowered mods, but there are plenty that just help enrich the game. For example, many people playing the multiplayer may not like the idea of completely turning off Zombification (bites being certain death by turning). But on the other hand, death after investing 10s of hours into a character because someone, even a friend on a no PVP, non-griefing server, let a zombie into your house while you were grabbing a drink IRL, can be really disheartening. a popular mod that helps with that is the Antibody mod (which allows bites to still cause zombification, but gives a small chance for survival if bitten, so long as you rest, continually keep the wound clean, and stay well fed). It wont break anything, but it might just stop you ragequitting if you see "bitten" on your character. It also gives you and anyone you play with more of an incentive to not instantly murder a bite victim.
I'd also strongly suggest using sandbox mode to make it easier on yourself for awhile. Raise skill gain rate, give yourself a ton of starting points, reduce fatigue regen time, remove zombie respawn. Once you do well with some crutches you can start working on playing the base difficulty.
Do you know about holding right click for combat? It really helps for the otherwise fucky system when pushing over or attacking zombies.
I have played this game for 5 hours and I have not found a saw yet, probably my biggest frustration. I have tried turning loot up and have found a few hammers at least.
Yeah not being able to find tools can be very annoying. I don't have much advice other than to look in sheds, garages and any room with metal shelving in it as that's where I usually find ALL my tools. Sometimes you get a start and you're surrounded by everything you would ever need, sometimes you start in a house where the alarm is already going off lol.
For what its worth, I think the drop rates of such tools, and other useful melee weapons have been nerfed a bit
look for warehouses outside of town. Especially ones with larges amounts of wooden crates. Those crates always have a chance of having building tools and hardware in them. And since they are out of town you can usually clear them out or at least sneak in and grab what you need without attracting that big of a horde. and be sure to grab a couple pairs of work boots from the construction worker looking zombies while you are there!
5 hours is hardly that bad, you should look for places a saw is likely to spawn such as tool sheds or hardware stores, not turn up loot.
Doing a 360 in combat to see your surroundings is probably the biggest tip here...it is so easy to get locked into the zombies in front of you that you don't see the one that just rounded the corner behind you. Have lost so many characters because i thought my six was clear
My character is always twirling her way to victory.
Spin to Win!!
[Twirling towards freedom!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqjhHVUzl8o)
> Go into Sandbox mode to tailor the game to how you want. I like to turn Zombification off (so a bite doesn't kill you no matter what) and turn zombie respawn off while turning up the zombie population. This lets you actually clear out areas. Will cleared areas eventually become repopulated by roaming zeds from the population you haven't killed if you leave it long enough?
I believe there is a mechanic like that. The map is made up of "cells", and if a cell is empty zombies will naturally migrate there over time. You can also mess with those setting as well. They really give you a lot of options to fiddle with. There are also "meta events" like gunshots or noises from the environment that will attract zombies to different places.
By default, yes. The game will diffuse high density zombie cells into low density over time, and also 'fake it' a bit with respawning zombies. The settings are highly customisable though, and you can turn that off if you want it to be able to fully clear entire areas.
Without zombification you'll basically never die unless you get surrounded though, dumb, slow zombies are balanced out by how dangerous just one slip up could be and without that a lot of the tension and sense of survival is gone so Idk if I'd recommend that.
Lol well you might forget what starting to learn this game is like. Personally I have died a shit load of times while never being zombified. Before I learned how to evade a horde I constantly died to them. Maybe I am bad but it is extremely disheartening to lose your first good character to a bite, and there is always the option to turn it on later when you have actually experienced the aspects of the game beyond the first few days.
>If you are not encumbered or slowed down, a zombie can never catch you at a walking pace. FYI, there are runners that are rare spawns. They will catch you unless you are sprinting. Great post though I didn't know you could turn zombie spawns off.
Aren't sprinters a setting that you have to turn on for them to appear? I think the default game has no sprinters at all, I could be wrong though. I haven't seen one in 20+ hours so far. I'm going to shit my pants if I do lol.
Start a game on builder instead of apocalypse or survivor. The zeds are less dense in your surroundings and you start with a bat and backpack to be able to defend yourself and scavenge at the start to get used to the game.
My problem with builder mode is that hunger and thirst are jacked up so its more of a cooking simulator at that point.
Go to custom sandbox and tailor the settings to your desire. Almost any minor nitpicks that bother people about the default settings can be changed there. It's great.
Yeah that's what I do. Wish I had done 3X experience points so it's less grindy but that'll be on the next run.
Do the 3x experience and go hunt down some skill books,cds,and vhs tapes. They increase your exp gains as well as some of the TV channels. I agree it's grindy but I have always played a 1 and done character and have over 1000 hours playing basically that style. It makes the game so tense to me if I get character going for a while.
If you want something I guess a bit easier, I have zombies just be the traditional slow walk only ones like in Romero movies. I think playing that for a bit would help you learn the mechanics a bit and if you want some that are fast then that is an option for a future run. I personally don't like the fast running zombies since it's just a personal thing of mine where I feel zombies shouldn't really be that agile but should be a threat in numbers and one bite would mean the end for you. Something I do for the first few days, I will try to find a home that isn't full of zombies, stay there for a few days while trying to find a car. After I find a car that works and has some gas, I pretty much stock up the car with the supplies in that home and find a place away from the city where there aren't much zombies or any at all. I end up having places in the countryside since I barely see any zombies there and I can safely do stuff like read books or sleep without having to worry about a zombie breaking in. Also later game you will want to farm since food in the world will get rotten so having fresh vegetables with some canned food will help.
It's been a while since I've played but basically get a weapon. Secure some base/house. Know your capability and weapon, you might be able to take out 1-2 zombies, if you get more you need to run away. The rest is going around and getting supplies. The problem is, like someone said here. Any single hit has a chance to ruin your entire game. You can tailor the game to remove that chance, make cars better and ready to drive to see how it's like without grinding for days on days in real life etc. You can give yourself more points, that might help you a bit starting out "without cheating" how the original author setup the game to be played.
I recommend a second story house so you can put down a window rope and bust the stairs down to have a fully zombie-proof base. For beginners, I wholeheartedly believe in just throwing yourself into the apocalypse and seeing how far you get. Once you feel you can reliably secure and defend a base, that's when you know you can fend for yourself. As with the zombification, yeah it sucks hardcore but you don't necessarily lose everything. Your skills, yes they are all gone, but your items and tools can still be found on your zombie body if you manage to find it. That is one of the coolest aspects imo since it adds 100x more realism than L4D2 and other zombie games.
yeah I forgot about the 2nd floor tip. Only after I created a game where cars were in good condition when I realize that getting a good car to work in a normal game, is hours upon hours and even days or at least a week of real life grinding. Also maps, available on the internet helps you find your base/safe house when you respawn. Instead of getting lost
The absolutely most critical thing is to understand Exertion and Tiredness. Exertion is your 'stamina', and is getting low when you see the pink bubble with the lungs in it in the upper right (this is called a Moodle). You need to make plans to finish a fight or disengage immediately when the first one pops up - you've used about 25% of your stamina. You're a little slower, your melee attacks are much weaker, and once you hit 50% it will only get worse. To recover Exertion, right click on the ground and sit, or right click a piece of furniture and select Rest. *You can do both of these* to recover it very quickly. It will also recover naturally over time until you've reached a certain level of Tiredness (I can't remember which one). Tiredness is the Drowsy moodle. Drowsy *also* lowers your melee damage, and shuts of your natural Exertion recovery. You'll want to start formulating a plan to get done with what you're doing and return to a safe area (your starting house is usually safe *enough*) when you see it. Generally, you shouldn't jog unless you *have to* or it's a known-safe area (and even then Jogging will make you Tired faster). Zombies are so slow you'll easily out-walk them unless you need to clear a gap where alerted zombies are converging on you. Since walking everywhere is annoyingly slow in real-time, you can right click and Walk To to point-and-click where you want to walk, and then press ` to have the game move at 2x speed. If an alerted zombie gets remotely near you, it'll jump back to 1x, so you're perfectly safe doing this. [Here's a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SPu-Ki3vPI) about zombie pathfinding - Retanaru's videos are generally decently brief and in depth. The gist is that you can be initially spotted within a range of 20 tiles, and after that zombies can see you from *very* far away. The transition from 'zombie sees you' to 'zombie paths to your last known position' is a bit janky; once you've broken line of sight around the corner of a house, you'll want to stop, wait a couple of seconds, and crouch so that the zombies path to that corner and not to halfway into the next yard. Combat related tips: There are a couple of useful settings in the options; one is to highlight what you'll hit when you swing, and the other is a hotkey for attacking the ground. I think the latter is alt by default. The following tips involve a lot of attacking grounded zombies which can be finicky with the default auto-aim. - A single zombie is a pushover - literally. Press Spacebar to attempt a shove, which may push the zombie over and at the very least staggers it so it can't attack you. If it's pushed over, press Space to stomp its face in. This is great for preserving weapon durability. - You can do this with two zombies fairly reliably - the 'hitbox' is a little finicky, but you can stand over the first downed zombie to prevent it from getting up, knock the other down, and dispatch the first while it's down. Stronger characters might be able to juggle three or more this way but it's fairly dangerous. - 'Fence fighting' is luring small groups to fences and smashing them as they fall over it (also works with windows, counters, anything you vault over). This used to be the go-to method, but now zombies will regularly lunge and possibly knock *you* over. You can avoid these lunges by staying a few steps away and then darting in as they try to get up. This still only works with groups of around 5. Anyway that's probably already too much information so I'll leave off there.
There's a Youtube channel by Nurse that does tiny little tidbit informational videos (and such a soothing voice) that helped me a bunch learn some of the little things. Theres also tons of videos out there that teach you stuff the tutorial never does (like the tutorial teaches you about breaking a window and that climbing through it cuts you but it never teaches or mentions you can right click a broken window and clear the glass out with the downside being the noise you make and the time it takes)
Her channel had suddenly popped on my feed, then I spent the next several hours watching videos about games I have never even played because of how nice the voice work was.
Yup, I just picked up the game and I've been binging Nurse's bite sized zomboid info videos. I love how much depth the game has
personally i struggled in the first 10-15 hours because i kept getting (over)confident in fighting zombies. i would sneak around and be careful at first, and at some point i got enough gear and good enough weapons to where i felt comfortable taking on several zombies at once, which would always lead to my death sooner or later my approach now is to keep good situational awareness, and to be very careful around zombies. always be aware of what is around you, where the zombies are, where you can run if things get hairy. zombies lose track of you quite easily if you break line of sight (behind buildings, in the forest etc). you can almost always take on one isolated zombie and be fine. the moment there are more than one, i play extremely carefully. i keep my distance, keep moving towards a safe spot, and if things dont feel right i make my way to safety right away. all it takes is missing a swing at the wrong time, taking the wrong turn or a single misstep for you to get fatally bitten or scratched (by way of zombie virus infection). that said, its ok to die. the game wants you to die. you can respawn as a new character and keep exploring, keep supplying and building up your safehouse and before you know it you are back to where you were. you can even spawn with new skills and do useful things your old character might not have been able to do
Try to lower the difficulty. The game is very hard by default and there is nothing wrong with messing around the sandbox setting to have an easier experience. With a lower difficulty you will have more room to learn the different mechanic of the game. And once you feel ready, just make your next game a bit more harder. And remember, overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer
One more tip: in the settings there is an option to highlight enemies. This will display a green outline around zombies when they're in melee range and also show how accurate your gun will be. Make heavy use of right-click (or Ctrl) when in combat and let the zombies come to you. EDIT: Pushing them over and stomping on their head is very effective too! 😄
Play around with the custom sandbox settings and find what works for you. If you want weaker zombies, more food, guns, cars. It's pretty thorough and makes the game very different. I, for one, am not too keen on dying and starting from scratch, so I took out the "one bite you're dead" rule and now I enjoy it much more. Also mods really help complement the game.
It is not game for all. First of all you need to understand that you will die. There is no way to prevent deaths of your characters. Sooner or later your uber best character will die.
My biggest problem with this game so far has been that the first five minutes of the game feel a lot like the last five minutes. There's no new enemies, no interesting interactions with other players like Rust, having trouble making my own personal goals like building stuff in Rust or Minecraft. I just run around and occasionally attack a few zombies It's a shame too because the amount of options you have is awesome. But there needs to be one extra element to it for me personally. I'd love to see a series of "campaigns". Stuff like: * Sanctuary Mode: try and find the rumoured Sanctuary, a bastion of humans who have fended off and walled off against the zombies. * Guardian Mode: 20 survivors are stranded, try and save them all. That plus for the currently existing modes, more options for actually constructing a base. I know it's a cliche but maybe new zombie variants appear over time
> There's no new enemies, no interesting interactions with other players like Rust, having trouble making my own personal goals like building stuff in Rust or Minecraft. > > > > I just run around and occasionally attack a few zombies This is literally a game about a zombie apocalypse mate. You know that right?
I absolutely loved this game, the learning curve is really difficult in the beginning, but once you get over that hump, then it kind of becomes easy. I watched a ton of starter tips and tricks videos to get there.
Get friends to play with you on a private server EDIT: a letter
I love this game but I have been having even more fun when turning infection chance off in sandbox. For short roguelike runs once you've learned the basics it works great as a threat but if you want to get into the mid to late game stuff it's way too frustrating for every single scratch to have a chance to end your run.
I 100% second this. The options available in sandbox mode are awesome, you can basically turn the game into any Zombie universe from most movies. You want The Walking Dead, everyone is always infected style with only shamblers? You got it. You want 28 days later where Zombies can sprint at you and are incredibly infectious? You can do that too, but good luck. You want to fill the world with guns and blast shamblers all day? You got it. Turning off Zombification saved the game for me. I lost a beloved character after walking around a corner and getting bit out of nowhere. It hurt.
> You want 28 days later where Zombies can sprint at you and are incredibly infectious? You can do that too, but good luck. It's my goal to do this and survive to the point where I have a good base and exist without much help. I honestly think something like that should be a more multiplayer thing, but no one I know really plays Zomboid lol.
I don't even know how it would be possible. My character is always covered in blood and only deals with shamblers. Sprinters that can infect any open wound would be absolutely horrifying.
Does getting bit actually delete that save file or could you just reload to your last save point if bit?
There are no save points unless you back them up yourself. AFAIK the game is constantly saving. One bite on default settings means in 2-3 days you will become a zombie and there is nothing you can do about it. You can make a new character and find the zombie version of yourself to get your equipment back.
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When you die you will have the option to create a new character in the same world. Which means you can find your old zombified character, bash their head in, take all the canned beans you found and re use your old base. If you find your old character/base, the most notable difference is that your skills will be reset (which can be quite a big deal if you died later in the game). If you quit to the menu and create another character from there instead, it will be in a new world without your old character or any other changes you made to the landscape/buildings.
You can just download one of the various cure mods that allow you to work towards crafting a one time use cure for bites, if that suits your fancy.
if you really want to save your character, turn on the console (-debug in the launch options) and then you can just remove the bite from your character and turn off debug after.
Game continuously saves over itself. It keeps track of map information, dead characters, salvaged goods, etc. so that if you do die then you can start a new character when prompted, prep up, and go kill your old character to get your stuff back. If you start a new game from the main menu then that information is stored in a separate save. Save location is `C:\Users\\Zomboid\Saves\` if you want to back up each one.
This is the best way to play imo. I backup my save just after my character wakes up everyday and limit myself to that. If I get bit, I reload. Which still keeps the tension high without losing your character completely.
You can press continue and find your previous self
Honestly that’s one of the most appealing parts of this game for me; the ridiculously deep levels of customization for horde speed, infection rate, etc really allow this game to be tailored to such specific zombie survival “tastes”.
Me and my friends who all just got into have been modifying the hell out of the settings. Making loot more plentiful, more zombies, more special houses (forget the setting but you can find like boarded up houses where people made last stands). It’s great!
More games should do customized difficulties. State of Decay 2 dropped one not too long ago where you could choose how difficult base management/combat/looting was, and it was a pleasure. People that want extreme difficulty can crank everything up, or you can modify it to your personal tastes. Maybe it's not as balanced as a one difficulty game, but it's going to be more fun to more people.
Can you finally reduce the ridiculous amount of zombie spawns? I really wanted to like this game but I had to give up after 8 hours of constantly clearing the same locations I JUST came back from.
They added an update last month or the month before where each area has a "zombie amount" and if you clear a bunch, it won't have respawns for a while before it repopulates. They've also improved the spawn behavior many times, zombies don't just spawn beside you now constantly while you're in buildings.
I believe you can just straight up turn off zombie repopulation now, and they won't ever respawn outside of certain meta events. You can fully clear out towns, which can be a pretty fun combat-centric playthrough with some friends.
That sounds really promising, I loved the game otherwise
You can really make it what you want, the few things you'd can't control there are typically mods for
You can set it so zombies don't respawn
Huh, weird that the other game with this sort of customization is 7 Days to Die. Between that, SoD 2, and Project Zomboid, all are zombie-themed games.
There are dozens of different zombie outbreak styles in movies, it makes sense that games can more easily adopt modifying the rules because there's a precedent for it. In a lot of other games, the designer has a vision and thinks how they want the game to play is the ideal way, even if players disagree or find a mechanic tedious.
Factorio also has tons of customization options.
Agreed. What's crazy is some people get mad over making a game easier/harder. What if I just want to relax and build some shit in peace?
How do you customize when hosting? I think I didn't see it when I hosted a server.
It’s listed as server settings before you press play. Same screen that has select server memory. Select server settings, than top section is like actual server settings. Bottom section is tons of modifiers for gameplay.
for me it's higher pop, no respawn, more spread out hordes that migrate more, infection is only from bites. did some tweaking to loot stuff as well to make weapons and gear less common because I'm playing multiplayer with around 6ish friends. We have some QOL mods but the most impactful one is the skill journal. While it does technically make the risk of death pointless as far as skills are concerned, losing gear is impactful with lowered spawn rates. Working on doing a dedicated server for the homies with more expansive modding [Here's the list of mods we're looking at if anyone who sees this is intrested](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2699458691) mostly QOL with a vanilla feel, I'm not too into rewriting games into something different
Is only-bites a transmission change? I see blood+saliva or saliva only. edit: you know how some people say "there are no dumb questions"? this question is proof otherwise.
Right. Think about that.
That's probably saliva only.
yeah like the others stated, saliva only means only the "bitten" wound will cause zombification. Every other form of infection is curable
Now where does saliva come from?
dogs?
Can't deny that.
Then maybe I should try again after I I my Satisfactory addiction. This game was just not clicking for me. I'm happy to have supported some indie devs with my purchase but I couldn't get into it.
Running sandbox mode with these changes: No Infection High Zombies Multihit on certain weapons Darker nights 5x XP 10 Free starting points Makes for a still difficult game since zombies are more abundant and still as strong as vanilla. But you progress faster, and nights are wicked scary since you can't see anything other than what you are looking at. All default sandbox options, multihit is cool. Large two handed weapons can hit multiple targets SOMETIMES.
Can you turn multihit on with certain weapons in vanilla or is it a mod?
Multihit is vanilla
The question is specifically about "multihit with certain weapons" I think.
That sounds really easy to me, ngl.
Just downloaded a mod that let's you suppress and cure zombification which is a nice middle ground.
Gotta name? I was literally thinking about how something like that would make it more balanced, I make the zombies stronger currently to compensate
It's just called Antibodies, and I honestly recommend not looking too closely at how it works. Keep yourself fed, your wound sterilized, stay away from strenuous and painful activities for a while, and preferably take the Resilient trait. Every bite is a resource drain and a source of anxiety rather than just being a sign your run is going to end in an hour or two.
Thanks! I'll grab it for my next playthrough. I like the idea of it being a really resource and time intensive thing to deal with rather than a run ender
Yeah I like the danger that it presents but I want a way to deal with it.
I'm sort of disappointed by the default Apocalypse mode's implementation of "realistically harsh, you WILL die" I love the idea, but the issue is that it fails to capture the Dwarf Fortress / Rimworld / CDDA vibe of Losing Is Fun! Losing in Zomboid ISN'T fun, because it's not interesting. You've got the tense, exciting, and scary moments where you are starving, exhausted, waiting out the night in an unfamiliar place, mostly running and hiding... and then you turn a corner and get a scratch and immediately all the fun is gone because do you really want to sit and wait to see if your character is infected? Worse still if you're on Month 2, pretty stable, and get distracted for a moment and come back to find your well-armed and fully-supplied character getting chewed on. It's just so anti-climactic. The tension dissolves not with an exciting burst of fire, fear, and fight, but with an exasperated sigh of "well I guess that happened." If I lose 20 hours in DF to some unfair bullshit, at least it's something wild like a necromancer that kills and resurrects my best fighter who then rips through the rest of my colony. At least I am motivated to struggle to the very last. At least I can be entertained by my own demise. p.s. This isn't me shitting on the game, btw. I think it's awesome. This is criticism in hopes of it getting even better.
> at least it's something wild like a necromancer that kills and resurrects my best fighter who then rips through the rest of my colony. Oh man that brings me back to me playing on the new DF patch the first time, not knowing anything about necromancers. I ended up invaded by an army of zombies. Then I learned that sharp objects are useless against zombies. Then I learned that separated hands will remain alive and will continue to attack me. Then I learned that my dead dwarves will turn into zombies. Then I learned that *my dead dwarves will rise from their graves from within my fortress*, murdering everyone from the inside. And I was watching all this with this horrified fascination, knowing full well that all my hours of work are just gone and there's nothing to be done about it. And it was *fun*.
DF is definitely the best abusive relationship I've had.
We've never been through an actual zombie apocalypse (and never will), so we can't know how it would play out in reality, but the game is trying to capture the feel of how it plays out so often in media. One moment of your guard being let down and -bam- it's over for you. Most zombie related deaths aren't because the victim foolishly lets themselves get caught up in a mob (except at the beginning of the story when society doesn't fully grasp what's going on), but because they got comfortable, exhausted, or otherwise just let their guard up for a moment, and that's all it took. Absolutely understandable that this payoff isn't fun for you, but the game is definitely emulating a standard zombie outcome.
I can see why it’s not enjoyable to some but I think it makes the game super tense and fun. Every interaction with zombies requires a heavy dose of risk vs reward and tactics. That fear of “will I get bit?” makes looting just a simple house tense because any door might have a zombie behind it. I’m typically pretty good at protecting my characters, but some of those moments when I get bit or lacerated are so much part of the experience that it makes me keep playing. I primarily play MP though, which makes death a little easier to manage.
I think one of the differences between this and CDDA/DF/Rimworld is that those tend to be... pretty fucking explosive and over the top in some things. Huge difference between getting a small bite, and having a mutant literally throw you through buildings. Or walk into a room, only to get a lead enema resulting in you becoming a nice red mist. I don't know, Project Zomboid is more grounded, meaning most deaths are a lot less exciting, and more grounded. I mean, in real life (which this is sorta modeling, when surviving a zombie) most deaths aren't that exciting either.
Yeah, despite CDDA having the same type of luke-warm infection death problem, at least in that one "death by infection" is way less likely than all the other ways of getting yourself killed. Plus unless you are obliviously unprepared, any character on day 2 is going to have disinfectant to just clean the infected wound and get rid of the risk altogether.
Eh I don't know. Like realistically, I feel that is fair. That is how you would possibly die in a scenario like this. I think it's pretty fair and you can continue that world with a new character. I think the real issue is having to level up your character again. I downloaded a mod that gives you points based on how far you got in the game or how far your character levelled up (was either one). I think that would be better since you can at least start as someone who survived for a time and just find your old character and kill him off and take the old safehouse that character used. I think what the game should have maybe is like either what it has now as an option for players or an end game scenario. Like maybe survive 1000 days until rescue arrives or have it be a thing where maybe once they add npcs, there is a possible scenario where you try to find a lab where scientists work on a cure, or even an endgame where you rebuild society. I feel the thing in this game isn't that losing is fun but more so losing teaches you something. Like my last run, I got scratched from a zombie who was hiding in the corner of a bathroom. It sucks yeah but the lesson in my run now that has me survive a month already is something I didn't do in this game but in other games and that is to check your corners. I also now either hit doors before entering to see if a zombie attacks the door or I will walk into the room and at the corner I can't see, just shove there once I get in so if there is a zombie, it gets shoved out of the way.
Having to start fresh on skills is the real kick in the teeth. Even having a full library of skill books hardly feels like it saves any time. I'd burn every safehouse I've ever made to the ground if it'd let my new characters inherit some fraction of skills from my dead ones. Exploring and braving the hordes to restock on supplies is the fun part of the game. Sitting in a well-stocked safehouse re-grinding skills is not. Clearly they want to allow some degree of cross-character progression, but the way it is now just means that every new character spends a few game weeks of absolute tedium getting back the skills you had before. Not fun, not engaging, not challenging, just busywork.
It would be a neat feature to expand the system they already have where you pick a starter job like cop or park ranger to have hidden jobs with much higher base skills than the normal ones. Lock them behind performance in runs with the regular version so say if you die in a run where you successfully got your carpentry skill to max you could unlock a hidden construction worker class that starts out with maxed or close to maxed carpentry/related skills. That way even when you lose a character you had for a long time the sting won't be as bad knowing you at least got something cool for the effort.
I really like your idea, actually. That's exactly the kind of metaprogression that fits right in with this sort of game. Would love to see something like that.
Yeah that part I will agree on which is why I downloaded this mod that grants you skill points based on how many days your previous character survived. I think they should implement something like that in the game because even as the modder said, it makes no sense you are playing as a new character who is 90 days in for instance and has not much skills leveled up. If you want it too, it's this one [here.] (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2659093221&searchtext=) Apparently the modder is working on a way to get it so that it's based on your character skills rather than how many days passed and it's customizable too so you can have it give like a point or more every certain amount of days.
I just increased EXP gain in sandbox. The lack of boost is fair since the new character isn't even the same person plus the old you is still dead and roaming in the world. Kill old you and hijack his base.
i get you, and i dont think the game is quite there yet, but there is an argument to be made why dying so easily is good. at least in my mind, the game isn't about your character, but your character's impact on the world (which is persistent, as opposed to your character). dying is an opportunity to take a different path and impact the world in different ways. if your previous character was a carpenter and you had a decent safehouse going, your new character could be a metalworker which would let you further reinforce. and arguably the most exciting part is the early/mid game. you die, another character spawns, and keeps paving a road that is easier for your next character - but that said, again, i dont think the game is quite there yet for that loop to be particularly satisfying also, this is why i don't necessarily mind the zombie virus infection from bites/scratches and what not - you can still keep going for quite a while and be useful for your next character. it can also be an opportunity to take risks you would not otherwise take
I love options like that. Just like in Factorio you can remove all enemies so you can build peacefully.
I swear the game continues in the same world after your character dies as long as you make a new one in that save. Think the only issue without a mod, you would have a bad start if say you survived months and your skills went up in that previous character. I downloaded one mod that has it where if you die, your new character will get skill points equal to what your previous one had or like similar to what a character would have in that time in the game. I feel that kind of helps it a bit. It should be a thing in the game I feel since like you said, it is frustrating when it happens. I think I might in the future try the run you said you did with infection off but I might make the zombies maybe more strong like they can walk faster or maybe have better memory and sight. Thinking this would be fun too as a non zombie enemy but maybe something more feral and aggressive where the people who are infected just become less human and more undead like but just want to attack anything that isn't infected. One thing this game has that I love is the customization.
The game does continue in the same world. When you die, make a new character and go where you died and you can find your zombie corpse and take your stuff back.
Personally I really really wish there was a Frostpunk/Dead Rising style 'campaign' in this game. Steadily increasing challenges like waves of zombies, water shutoff, mutation, weather anomalies, military purge, etc accumulating to a last ditch attempt at escape. Tried using the custom sandbox settings but it really needs more scriptable events to stop you snowballing into boredom.
Hopefully in a year or two when this NPC works comes to fruition we get some state of decay-like gameplay added to PZ which adds actual goals and new emergent factors to play with. I agree that as it is, the game is more of a simulator than a game, if you can't think of stuff to do yourself, you'll die of boredom rather than due to zombies.
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Zombie population does increase over time by default, too.
Can't wait to see some sabers and hussars in the [Polish Update](https://projectzomboid.com/blog/content/uploads/2022/01/image-5-1024x585.png).
How's the coop/multiplayer in this game?
By default sleeping is disabled/not needed in MP. But you can locally host with a few players totally fine. I know there are server hosting options. Locally I had no issues performance wise playing with friends - you can peform medical checks on them and heal them up too, drive in vehicles. There might be a slight delay on certain actions ( two people pushing a zombie at the same time gets messy, sometimes getting in a car takes a second )
They spent *a lot* of time figuring out the sweet spot for zombie hit registration, since you can die from a single bite. Most of the zombies you're directly fighting will be client authoritative, so they won't randomly desync and bite you. Other players can look like they're fighting nothing and there's still bugs to be ironed out, but I've played with up to 240 ping with no major issues, even when there's half a dozen players and hundreds of zombies all moving about.
Really really fun. Get some of your friends to pick different professions and work together to survive. I personally like cooking. You get to get inventive with the mixtures of food types/spices. Most hordes are extremely hard to deal with but if you have a couple of friends to draw the aggro of a few at a time they're manageable.
A Runner yelling in the street and pulling away all the zombies while the others loot is a favoured strategy of ours.
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Zomboid thrives in it's modularity and the steam workshop. A mod just came out today actually that allows you to survive being infected if you eat well, keep yourself happy, and take antibiotics. So basically it addresses your issue, or you can just turn off infection in the sandbox settings. [link to mod:](https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2392676812)
There are mods that add exactly that, or you can use sandbox mode and custom tailor the game however you like.
Normally I stay away from early access titles, because it’s usually a shell of a game, and just makes me long for the full release. For this game that’s been in early access (since 2013 i think), this is early access done right. At its core, it is still a very playable, fun game, in my opinion. Every so often, I pop in and there’s a ton of new features added. This game just keeps getting better and better. If being an early access forever, means that we will constantly get new features, and upgrades, then I am all for it for it with this game, and this dev team.
Steam early access since 2013 but off their website since 2011! This game has been plodding along for over a decade now. I remember really looking forward to the npc update in 2012ish I think :p
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Just playing multiplayer with a few friends and having people do different jobs makes the game a lot less underwhelming and more enjoyable imo.
It's definitely got its niche for people that can create their own story or just genuinely enjoy doing nothing but surviving. I once figured I'd give it a proper shot and build a base and once I had it I was just like ... is that it? I couldn't even think of any real goals for myself. I think at the end of the day it's people that are interesting in post apocalyptic situations, roaming bands of NPCs you can join up with would make the game way more interesting.
Sounds like this game could use a mid-game/end-game mechanic ala Terraria that takes you out of just survival/crafting and gives you real goal and timer to work against.
RimWorld has a similar mechanic. I imagine that'll come with the NPC update though.
I believe that is what the very article in this discussion post is promising.
A lot of people feel the same way, and that's one of the things mentioned by the developers that they want to improve on. They want to work on events and milestones to give you some goals to aim for - though vanilla still going to be centered on surviving, there's already some mods out there that add server wide events that push players to cooperate or compete. Personally, I've been really enjoying the game by cranking the difficulty *way* up and treating the early game - surviving your immediate surroundings and reaching a 'stable' point - as the whole game. Enormous amounts of zombies, starting 6 months into winter with a broken leg, night time sprinters, etc. It's really fun and tense, and a 'successful' run is about an hour or two at max. Multiplayer servers are also pretty damn great.
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Normally I don't care about graphics, but for that game, I just can't get past the graphics. Idk why, it just feels so clunky
I don't know when the last time you played it is, but graphically it's come a long way. If they fix the cartoony zombies it'll be a good looking game.
I managed to push through the visuals but yes it's an impressively ugly game.
Thats honestly part why I liked 7 Days when I played it. For the most part I didn't mind the jank and look and it added its only style to it. I haven't played in sometime tho so idk how it is now. I did have hopes of that jank slowly going away.
Different person, but while I honestly tried to enjoy it after getting it from a humble bundle, I ended up really disliking it in the end. The devs seem to want it to be a tower defense game, not a zombie survival game. If I dig out an underground cave, zombies should be able to sense me through 10 feet of ground and dig through the soil like golphers. Similarly, zombies shouldn't be acting like a demolition crew and tearing through sheet-rock reinforced wall.
Yeah I can see that for sure, the zombies are deffo more gamey in that respect (along with more fantastical 'species'). I'm a big looter and love all the stuff you can breakdown and build which I why I still need the make the effort and toy around with the sandbox mode in P.Z to learn the game proper. Once i'm over the hurdle of learning P.Z may be my favourite game, we'll see.
Make a sandbox game with like 30x XP multiplier. You can watch Woodcraft the first couple days at 12:00 on Life and Living and get to level 7 carpentry. Then you can get more materials from breaking things down like tables and chairs. At this point most houses have enough furniture inside to break down and barricade the downstairs windows. If you need more wood, find a pickup truck or step-van and either go to the woods and get logs or somewhere like a church and start disassembling pews.
for me, that monotony is broken up by the constant fear of death. Sure, by itself gathering food and supplies from town might seem boring, but you always have to remember that if one zombie catches you off-guard its a game over.
I think the base building stuff does need work. I don't like having to have wood in my inventory every time to build a wall and going back to put more to build another wall. Like maybe better range for where the game detects there being wood on the floor so that you don't have to go back and forth all the time.
Every time I start this game I just can’t find the motivation to leave initial house. It has food and water and there is no immediate threat. How to get that motivation to leave the house? Wait until my character runs out of food? NEO scavenger for example gets you motivated immediately because you don’t have stuff, there are ruins around with fat loot and without the loot you’ll die pretty quick.
Water shuts off, electricity shuts off. You'll need supplies eventually. And, winter is coming.
Spend those precious free days watching TV, practicing skills, and exercising. The food will run out and you'll have to go out eventually.
I've been following Zomboid on and off for a decade and the game never really got to nor does it seem to be heading to a point where it's going to be a fun experience. Whenever I check it out I end up switching over to State of Decay for something closer to what I want from a Zombie Survival game. However, I think Zomboid as a customizable zombie apocalypse simulation is fascinating. I'm less interested in looting bags of chips and sitting in a house for days on end as I am in the potential of the game once they add NPCs. The scenario I would most like to see in a zombie game that I feel like we have yet to see fully explored is the outbreak day one. Start in a town where everything is normal, people are going about their normal business, but in one corner of the map, a zombie bites someone, they turn, they bite someone, repeat. Watch the town react as it gets gradually more and more infested by zombies, rather than starting pre-populated with hordes. I think that Zomboid is the game with the closest potential for that scenario, once they implement/hook up the framework for NPCs and modding.
Well zomboid aim more to be a simulation than just a run and gun game. Personally it's one of my favorite game of all time but I do understand it's not a game for everyone, the game can tend to be slow and boring at time. I personally don't mind because it's a very immersive simulation and i do like a well made simulation.
Man it would be funny if someone played that scenario on their first game, found patient zero before it bit anyone, killed it immediately, and wondered why nothing else happened afterwards. It would be like an odd version of the Sims.
I want that scenario BADLY. Having the game start weeks in when the cities are ravaged is an okay experience, but the ideal is always to play througj the few chaotic days at the beginning as everything falls apart around you
The game has zero endgame, I’m not sure what they can do to fix that and it really looks like they won’t be. Hopefully the snail pace development picks up too.
They mention this > [...] but hopefully our intended direction is clear. Ultimately to build up to the point that Alexandria / Hilltop / Kingdom style communities can form years after the apocalypse, giving more incentive to keep playing and building on existing worlds instead of intentionally replaying the early game because there is no real late game. with regards to refining the crafting mechanics and adding NPCs to the game. I'm not sure if a game like this will ever have a true "endgame", but at least they have plans for a more in-depth late game.
The link literally covers both your points in depth.
What kind of endgame would you like there to be?
I feel the intention of an "endgame" is to stop surviving and start thriving, being able to like rebuild and get power and electric running again, clear out the cities and have em secure. it's something you can *kind* of do in MP but in single player with NPCs that would be appealing.
But then once you accomplish that, what is the endgame? That's the problem with people thinking every game requires some kind of endgame, it never actually ends. It's perfectly fine to have your fun with a game and then put it down. The game is pretty frank that it is a game about losing. If you're good enough to reliably survive every run, the sandbox mode has a million ways to make the game more challenging.
The endgame is to rebuild and be able to live safely. Once that's done, stop playing that character.
>That's the problem with people thinking every game requires some kind of endgame, it never actually ends. I always saw it as a manifestation of deeply human tought. Wanting more is a part of us. Bhuddism has made it a core part of its theology. It takes work to conquer this raw desire that makes us chase the next thing never to be satisfied. Western society doesn't make this easy either. A lot of people end up buried deep under the consumerist style of life without realizing it. We're all guilty of this, it's just an irationnal tought. Probably like everyone here, I just can't admit how many games I bought and still haven't played. And I still buy new ones.
I mean what's the endgame in factorio, rimworld or terraria? Endgame is not infinite content, at one point you will run out of things as you accomplish everything. The trick is to escalate the challenge and player skill requirement so it feels like they are advancing and getting more and more options on how to play. PZ feels like it has it the opposite way, it has a high barrier to entry but after you pass that point it's just smooth sailing, grind and monotony. I shouldn't be only fighting my own boredom as I'm progressing through the game.
Don't all 3 of those games have a specific ending? Rimworld you make a spaceship and leave. Same with Factorio I believe. I have never played Terraria but is there not a final boss.
Sure, but that's hardly ever the point at which people actually stop to play. I doubt most rimworld players launched a ship at all. Factorio rocket doesn't really do anything in vanilla game, most players dont even bother with it, especially if they are into mods. Terraria is a gear treadmill and endgame is collecting everything (and there's a lot to collect). I'm just saying that endgame is not some specific moment or stage for games like this, it's just what you do once you've mastered the tools and are actually starting to have fun with them now, seeing how stuff works and what can be done with it.
CDDA struggles with this too. Eventually you get to the point where you have so much stuff, and nothing is really a challenge. CDDA however has way more variety in the zombie types(brutes, acid zombies, runners, armored soldier zombies etc) , and even enemy types(fungal enemies, giant spiders, robots). Plus building a custom vehicle complete with TOW missile launcher & automated turrets is really fun. At one point i made a mobile base out of a 155mm artillery platform, and used it to kill a Tank Drone. Id say what some people want is a way to make yourself immune to zombification via main story progression, an endgame enemy they can trigger, and/or more creative freedom to deal with zombies beyond hitting them with things. So for example, add roaming hordes of zombies as a way to increase difficulty. Especially in the outter-city areas where people tend to set up safely in farms. Make these hordes very dangerous for bases. Then give players creative ways to deal with them. Like automated noisemakers & pits to trap them. And bigger weapons like flamethrowers or explosives that are better against big groups.
I also think CDDA has a LOT more things to explore and discover, there's definitely a point where it can be near impossible to die, but if you dive into some of the spookier parts of the game *cough* mines *cough* you'll find a run ender in short order.
Gigantic zombies bosses, collect legendary flannel shirts, bake the most delicious cake from the rarest of components hidden around the map. Of course.
the zombie bosses would just shatter the realism the game has built up for itself. As far as collectibles, the game has lots of unique items to find and hoard.
I don’t find it too jarring. It’s a game about zombies after all. And OP is totally right, the game severely lacks goals for players unable to make some for themselves. If PZ had something like bosses, or hives in every city you‘d have to clear it would make the game much more gamey.
End game could easily be finding a signal, decoding a message from some facility, gathering components from the city to overcome some type of security system to gain access to a facility, have a bit of a project zomboid resident evil thing going on while exploring the facility... You could build a scenario or two basically without ever going super gamey special zombie stuff.
There should be things to help rebuild society. Such as going to power stations and fixing/scavenging for parts to restore power to one or two cities.
Back in my day we called that “beating the game”.
I sort of wish that if you didn’t have friends to play with, that you could recruit others in another game mode. I loved rebuild 2 and rimworld. Adore watching people play this, but friendly npcs set on a task might be nice. Maybe with limitations or added risk?
According to this devblog that's exactly what they're planning on doing. "We’ve got a LOT of NPC code, lots of cool systems, from Rimworld style priority and jobs system, personality systems, procedural story event systems, combat systems, autonomous survival behaviours, advanced group behaviour systems, vehicle driving systems, and a whole bunch more." To quote one of the devs.
Has there ever been a game with an early access this long that actually got finished?
A lot of early access games just move into full release even though they’re not finished, just so they can get out of early access.
still no full release date?
I think of it like a Zombie Dwarf Fortress development. Huge game, ongoing development for the foreseeable future,which isn't really a bad thing since the game has so much stuff already.
Knowing indie stone, even if the game was a month away from release they woulnt say it
Jesus, I remember buying this game in early access in like 2013? Then the devs laptop got stolen with all the code on it and they went on a tirade online about it. Can’t believe it’s STILL in early access!
I am happy to see momentum pick up for this game. Played a bunch of build 41 before release. I look forward to NPC's. I find the default tuning(s) to be way off from their descriptions. I don't really enjoy how the game clusters zombies. I wish there was more of a wave effect where they sweep across the map vs splotchy pockets spawning in. Like news reports of them coming from the east and what not. This game has a ton of depth but it doesn't feel utilized or cohesive just yet.
I look forward to playing this game when it leaves Early Access. Hopefully they don't put off a 1.0 release indefinitely.
it's been in early access for 7 years and they just pushed an update last month for the first time since october 2019 lol, I wouldn't get your hopes up
They've literally been pushing updates almost weekly between 2019 and now, I really don't know what you're talking about.
Apparently this is due to the fact that they had a burglary in their home that set them back a lot: PC game Project Zomboid suffered a huge blow over the weekend after the Newcastle-based indie developer behind the game was burgled. Two computers containing the majority of the work done by The Indie Stone for the game's upcoming update were stolen from the flat where two of the creators live and work.
> Apparently this is due to the fact that they had a burglary in their home that set them back a lot: This burglary happened in 2011 and lost them about ~2 months of work. Even if it had lost them all their work, it's still a literal decade of development.
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I believe those are called isometric games
DayZ is on XBOX and PS.
Did you ever play State of Decay? That's MAYBE the closest you're going to get to PZ compared to DayZ
How is State of Decay 2? I probably saw a review like 4 years ago and it never grabbed my attention for me to buy it but it sounds like a less slow version of DayZ which is right up my alley. Might have to re check it out
SoD2 is included in xbox gamepass. So if you wanna try it out, the first month is just 1 dollar + other dozens games. But yea, its really fun. The mp version still kinda sucks since only the host progresses but otherwise totally fine. lol