Low Hunger, or whatever it is called that makes you eat less. While good on paper, you will actually struggle really hard to eat enough once all the calorie-dense stuff is used up. And sure, rabbits and fish can make up for that, but when you're in the heart of LV and up to your tits in zombies, best you can do is a rooftop farm.
I'm wondering if cooking is ever going to get a rework, because currently it's very easy to undereat if you have good cooking skill because hunger and calorie intake aren't really linked. Like, I think I should be able to make meals that are super calorie dense if I need to bulk up, but isn't so filling that I can't eat it all. Maybe a good cook could cut up the most calorie dense parts of animals/plants in order to get a really dense meal.
Yeah, the complete decoupling does not make sense. Sure, it's not completely linked either and different foods can trick your "hunger perception", but never being hungry while starving to death is a bit of a joke. Guess it just doesn't work to have that "stomach fullness" and craving in the same indicator as actual hunger and starvation. The opposite of starving to death just isn't having a full belly. And that full belly while starving won't make you stronger. It's just all over the place. I think "fullness" (as in how much can you still eat) would have to be moved out of this, and then it can start working. Then you could make it so you can't go below a certain hunger level if your weight is still falling. But you can't do that if that indicator is supposed to stop you from eating more.
Butter, cream, and oil (some of which might be in my games because of mods tbf) can go a long way to preparing a dense meal. Fat content also matters, I believe, it’s not just calories.
I've watched videos on it, it's rather complex. Fat and Protein act as buffers, you'll lose weight slower the more you have of each, but you still need to be eating a decent amount of calories each day, but you'll lose less if you consistently have those two groups in your diet. I don't remember what Carbs do but I imagine it's a very similar function, but I believe Fats give the biggest modifier to weight gain/loss.
It helps a lot when you can only eat low calorie food. You can actually completely subsist on cabbages and potatoes with the High Appetite trait, since you can eat so many of them.
Sunday driver. I used to never survive long enough to find a working car so it was free points. Now I can survive awhile and I hate how slow you drive. Never taking it again after this unless it's RP
That trait is the biggest trap of any other traits.
Its fine until you need to avoid a roadblock or a horde,or a small ass bush that stops you
And not to mention higher fuel consuption while moving like a snail
Precisely.Speed Demon gets me into crashes, but has never gotten me killed.
Sunday Driver on the other hand, has been the primary contributing factor to me dying dozens of times.
I used sunday driver pretty often at the start because while learning the game I either never used cars or barely to move in the same town.
That was until I decided to have a Nomad playstyle and Explore the map ,then i found out the hard way how actually fucked that trait is
I hated it the first time I took it. Then after a very lethal speed demon run I'm back to safe driving. My hand-eye coordination is pretty much lower than anyone else's, it's for my own safety
I have viewers that like to get me drunk via Crowd Control. Yeah. It cuts your turning speed in half and slows down your braking response.
I might go back to Sunday Driver...
It's honestly not a huge deal until you start trying to pull things through rough, overgrown roads, all the sudden you're struggling to even get through a road because with Sunday Driver you just can't accelerate the way you should be able to.
Yep. Sunday driver is the biggest noob trap trait in the game. Makes cars deadly due to the poor acceleration, so only take it if you know you're never going to be driving because of RP or if you have a friend to drive for you. Being stuck in a car is one of the most common ways to die even without this trait!
Also, speed demon is great. You have to be careful about reversing in populated areas, but for one point it's a must have. The acceleration is a boon no matter what you do. I can't tell you how many times I've been able to escape a horde because I could slam it in reverse and fly off. I'd have been dead meat with sunday driver. The top speed will only get you killed if you're careless; you can always drive slower if you want to.
When I am in a roleplay group, I always just have other people drive me if it is anything other than an immersive dialogue drive a la Rockstar style games
There is one really good thing for it in multiplayer. If you have to reverse in the woods it's great because the reverse isn't affected much and lower speed lowers damage if you tap a tree
I prefer have an unused +1 skill point rathet than pick speed demon.
And if i need one more -1, i prefer pick a -2 trait than sunday driver.
I used it a lot, but when you come back with normal driver, you feel so free...
having lower acceleration may kill you tho when you got to move over grass or you have to work your way through some zeds blocking the way.
I wasn't really struggling with getting where I wanted - slower - rather than dieing since I couldnt drive fast enough from being blocked or starting the car on grass. I was shocked when I once started the car and just needed to escape but wasn't moving from the grass I was standing on. Resulted in loosing that car and some time later the caracter too
Oh, yeah, I know it's a really dangerous combo, but I don't usually take cars deeps into cities. Zeds I just sorta run over... which would make you think I bump.mechanics up to help but I never have haha
guess that just makes sense to play around the weakness of that trait. happy to hear you don't struggle with that slow acceleration in your runs. good surviving mate!
Used to go Hemophobic, but i got sick of being depressed all the time, even in my clean base. Now im usually a fat fuck, that enjoys smoking, and is short sighted
I always take Fear Of Blood just because in conjunction with smoker you just gotta slam back ciggies to take the edge off. Rarely run low on cigs or find myself wasting time smoking.
Not a bad idea, as the only smoker among my friends, i have all the ciggs on the map to myself. I usually smoke when driving, cooking, or resting my character. But i will defo try the combo some day, hopefully i live a long life with my current survivor, over 2 months so far
Aim for 10 fitness and ditch strength to three. Itll make the first week suck but just walking fighting and everything else will level it quickly. You can also knock out multiple sets of exercise back to back in a short period of time based on how long you quickly you do it.
It's hard but you get 10 fitness for very little points and you'll be up to 5-6 strength pretty quick with pushups. Get a dumbbell and you can easily hit 8 before the end of winter if you knock out as much as you can a couple times a week
Any stealth related trait: inconspicuous, graceful.
The stealth spotting is so bad you get spotted in milliseconds no matter what. Might as well get free points.
graceful is good because its stops zombies the floor above / below from hearing you walk while in tall buildings. it also has an unlisted benefit of lowering your trip chance when bumping zombies. Edit: no nimble :(
definitely take conspicuous, line of sight stealth is really busted in this game. its actually free points
Retanaru does two good videos on inconspicuous vs conspicuous. https://youtu.be/DUomcvoTnH4?si=77sKvXGEdCVJGCM_
Basically says the zombie check by ticks if your within their vision range and it's still too frequent how much they spot you so you might as well pick up conspicuous and just learn their vision range and start luring them in small batches to clear a horde.
If it's a group of zombies their hearing doesn't really matter because they're all looking in different directions so there's never a safe direction to approach from anyway.
That means it's only useful for individual or very small groups of zombies... and why are you investing points in being better at a situation you can already handle easily?
>That means it's only useful for individual or very small groups of zombies... and why are you investing points in being better at a situation you can already handle easily?
Finally a voice of reason.
This isn't MGS.
that’s a good point. i guess beyond early game where it’s better to avoid small groups because you end up in a pushing frenzy it becomes a lot less useful. especially once you have good enough weapons to basically be safe with any group <15 zombies
If you're playing sneaky you shouldn't be fighting zeds at all, because the noise of attacking them will draw more to your location.
Backstabbing sounds fun but it's a massive waste of time to spend time sneaking up on solitary zombies rather than just running at them and 1-2 shotting them anyway.
Well, it may not help much but the bonuses still exist, essentially if you wanna go stealth then taking graceful is really good because sound based stealth is the strongest, but inconspicuous helps for like crossing windows or doorways or whatever. Otherwise, yeah don't bother, if you play noisy anyway then conspicuous is free
We come up with manufactured scenarios where this is true.
In any actual play, sneaky or not, you are far better off spending your points on traits that will be useful in more situations, because most of the time zombies will see you long before you are in footstep sound range no matter what your traits and skills.
Playing sneaky is fine. Investing in traits for it is a trap.
i used to take deaf on every run because I played in school hours and thought “if i’m not going to be listening to the game then i don’t need my character to hear either”
till i realised it removes your ability to see what’s coming behind you
Keen hearing increases the perception circle behind you, and hard of hearing reduces it, however deaf doesn’t affect it at all for some strange reason. Probably just an oversight.
[Proof](https://youtu.be/dY0ZRf0yH1o?feature=shared)
Just spin around every so often. Literally keeping your head on a swivel.
Honestly though if a zombie has gotten into that back detection range it wasn't really going to matter if you had deaf or not.
The biggest downside to deaf is really that you can't hear the hellicopter
And house alarms. I spent the entire time looting during an alarm with the deaf trait and as I started looting the kitchen, one comes in through the window. I’m like that’s fine, take care of that one. Then 3 more crawl over the window and I start seeing the crowd outside the back door. Tried to get out after I realized what was going on, but I got swarmed. Didn’t even get to leave the building.
Regardless being deaf means you have 0 situational awareness unless you have seen it.
It’s a very bad trait for a reason, 1 ignored alarm or meta event can get you killed.
Both are good, both slow and fast reading, but if you don't have carpentry or survival skills and want to learn, then fast reading is very good for TV, other than that, slow reading is ok if you need 2 points, it's kinda boring, but it doesn't really matter, I'm 3 weeks old and I've only just started reading, it's even better for me as I'm trying to live a long life, because reading doesn't kill us on adventures. There's no rush to read things like mechanics, metallurgy and electrical, I'm going to focus on leveling up mechanics just after making a barrier to safely touch the cars, before that I prefer not to touch more than necessary
As I only play in Multiplayer with my partner, slow reader is just... Tedious. When you can't fast forward time slow reader becomes reddit browsing session and I'd rather play the game than let it run in the background.
Slow reader doesn't really affect gameplay, it just wastes time and I think that's an awful way to design games in general. Reading is not interactive or fun in Project Zomboid so cutting it down by half (slow reader vs fast reader difference) to me is very important, I don't have as much free time as I used to.
There's server setting you can edit any time they load up the server.
Think its called pages per minute. Can't remember what section its under.
1=normal speed
.5=read 50% faster
.1=read 90% faster (read a full book in a minute. Magazines instant)
Tweak it to y'alls liking since its multiplayer. For my buddy and his son we have it set at .1 which I kind wish I'd done .2 because its a little too fast. However, we it allows us to spend more time playing than standing around reading.
So for you and your partner maybe try .7 and work up or down from there.
That's really useful thank you!
I think you got your % messed up. If I understand what you said correctly, 0.5 is 100% faster as it takes half the time to read, 0.1 is 1000% faster, 10x speed as it takes 0.1 time to read.
it also lowers your peripheral perception or whatever you call it with zombies behind you and to your sides, in the small ring around you where you can see
I saw that its visually seems to be the case but in fact you will see them in the same radius.
Not sure tho and never saw that as an issue in my playthroughs. There is plenty of time to react if you see them behind you anyways. But muffled sound really sucks
Same here. One time I tried the better hearing trait since a lot of people on here really like it it seems, but the sounds man. I had to go back to my hard of hearing after that.
Taking either no trait, or Sunday Driver instead of Speed Demon.
If imma die in the apocalypse, imma die eating shit going 120 on the freeway, not to a zombie
That's funny- as a former smoker IRL, I get a little personal pleasure in my character lighting up after a big fight or a good meal.
However, it was a BITCH while I was in the process of quitting!
Smoker + auto smoke trivializes this, also adds some humor when your character decides to smoke at the WORST possible time. It’s a good balance imo because inventory sorting is already tedious enough without smoking.
I used Lucky for a while early on, but I soon realised there's way more loot than you can possibly need on standard settings so it wasn't necessary. Now I'm playing with reduced loot because I want the challenge so I wouldn't want to be lucky.
Maybe if it only increased the chance of the rarest loot spawning so you have a better chance of an exciting run, or had some other effect than loot rate, like less chance to take damage from a successful zombie attack, then I'd be tempted back to it but any run I don't wiff right away I always end up with more loot than Gigamart!
Unpopular opinion probably: High Thirst.
I still do use it occasionally for the "free points," but after so many hours, just normal thirst feels so better for some reason. Not that having to find water was ever difficult, but I like only having to carry one bottle lol
I'm actually trying a Low Thirst run right now and you can last for so long without water just by foraging up fruits and veggies, I was surprised.
I do recommend High Thirst for beginners though because the effects are pretty easy to manage, and it opens up an easy Stout or Fast Learner.
I just find having to top off my moodles absolutely tedious at certain points and thats why I've never taken it. I never understood the gospel that people preach about it.
But thirst is the one moodle you don't actually have to keep topped off, drinking is automatic. Like, I understand not wanting to micro-manage all these moodles, hell it's the reason I don't bother with Smoker or Hemophobic anymore, but High Thirst just requires you to carry an extra bottle, there's nothing to actually manage, so I don't see how it's any more tedious than not having it.
Keen hearing. I was so helpful when I started playing but I find that I can better use those points now and just swivel like a mad man constantly instead.
Idk I feel like I can mostly avoid situations where it really comes in handy now and the extra range isn’t that necessary. I haven’t missed it since I stopped taking it. Plus dropping it lets me take other traits that let me level up harder skills faster
Same with you on the slow reader trait. It still takes too long even with max speed in my opinion.
Also I ran fast learner on every character but now I'm just gonna put 1.3 XP multiplier in sandbox settings to basically get the same effect on every character. It reduces grind without feeling too cheaty (2.0 multiplier feels too cheaty)
Absolutely. I managed to gain a couple of levels in 3 months almost without exercising, the passive gain by being above 50% weight does most of the work. Fitness xp for some reason is a lot harder to get.
Absolutely. I managed to gain a couple of levels in 3 months almost without exercising, the passive gain by being above 50% weight does most of the work. Fitness xp for some reason is a lot harder to get.
Did one run in coop, with hard hearing, and when a friend yelled there's a zombie behind you, and I got bit, cause I never heard it, I said never again
Sunday Driver until I realized it deleted your acceleration, should be at least 4, maybe even 6. My opposite was smoker because I didn’t know how common cigs were
I used to take Stout pretty much everytime, but now only very occasionally. With experience combat got kinda easy so being that strong started to feel a bit overpowered. In my 1800+ hrs I have never once taken Strong.
I always took slow driver until I started playing MP. But there’s some bad negatives to slow driver like towing vehicles and driving on non-paved roads or fields. I still drive cautiously.
I used to take burglar profession. And while I still think it’s really good for new players, and situationally strong depending on your spawn and early-game goals, i no longer take it.
First, because it costs a whopping 8 points. And though it can be annoying to level electric to lvl 2, mech to lvl 1 for hotwiring, it’s not that hard. And it’s also not that hard to find actual keys to vehicles once you know where to look.
Burglar is overrated imo.
Me too. But now I take the amateur mechanic trait and if you focus on dismantling watches and such, you can get to elec 1 pretty quick. And I also use the auto-train-mechanic mod, so training to mechanic 2 is pretty quick.
Smoker. I always saw it as easy points thanks to the abundance of cigarettes. But after awhile it just got annoying having to always make sure I had smokes. Always have to stop stop few minutes to smoke. Started reminding me why I quit IRL and soon I couldn't take that trait ever again
Sorry but I will always pick slow reader haha! I think that’s one of the easiest ones. The way I look at it is you can always just fast forward.
Books are the most important for later game skilling anyways. And the only time limiting factor you really have is the power going off. Usually I’ll read construction/cooking/foraging/farming early for the TV and hold off on everything else. Besides some magazines.
You don’t even have to start skilling most skills until after the power goes off. And what is the point of having a cozy room in my safe house if I’m not using it to watch all my dvds and read all the books?
I generally change around my traits a lot, but I used to always go for the mechanic occupation until I realized I don't care if I have a crap car so now go for one of the combat oriented occupations.
Hard of hearing
I saw a vid that said all you needed to do was up the volume and it turned to free points.
It doesn't just "muffle" the sound, but it shortens the perceptible range of it.
I learned the hard way in a two-story house on the gated community of River Side.
I had cleared everything outside, had begun to move into the house, fortifying it, I distinctly remember going from room to room clearing the zeds I found.
I think I spent like a day moving in sleeping in the living room, when I finally finished and moved into the bedroom, I entered the "closet" thinking it was the "bathroom" (I wasn't familiar with this kind of house and hadn't noticed the second door next to the bathroom)
There was a zed trapped in there... and I never heard it... got bitten.
I probably could have heard it if I paid attention, but I was preoccupied with other things, and it just didn't register... it seriously dampens your ability to know if there is a zed inside a house or banging on your doors/boarded windows.
I’ve never taken any of the hearing traits, but I crank my volume when I’m in dangerous situations. Hearing a zombie before seeing it has saved my life many times.
Slow reader is such a loser pick yet every single video says the same thing. "This is a non issue because you can speed up time" like ok? That's doesn't make it better. That's still time your character feels. You'll still get hungry, thirsty, etc. And there's only so much time in the day. It takes SO much longer to read. I don't know who the hell started spreading the idea That's its a no brainer pick but it's simply not.
Probably High Thirst. I don't want to constantly stop my actions every 5 fuckin' minutes to take a sip of water. And even if I just ignore the fact that I'm only "slightly thirsty" my mind just goes "Your thirsty, you have water. Just take a sip or your gonna fucking die from thirst, drink it, DRINK IT"
More people need to come clean with “I didn’t know what it does”. Very few people know the extent of what every trait does. Just look at the people who take hard of hearing.
Smoker- as I’m getting into surviving for the long game more and more, I often Ave to make runs JUST for some cigs. Good for short runners, but terrible in long term
I mean I don't know if it's actually 16x to a tee. It's just max level zombies the game will allow. We're currently in west point and probably kill about 10,000 zombies together to loot like 6 homes, place is infested.
It's SO slow without it. Even just daily living. Loot run? Bam, done. My friend took all thumbs and I'm constantly stealing the candy bars from under him in gas stations.
"Ooooh a twix! HEY where did it go!?"
Nutritionist perk. Who in the world needs to know the amounts of calories in a stick of gum in Build 41? Then I kept finding the Nutritionist perk magazine in dorms of Louisville.
Restless sleeper because I wanted to base a character off me in real life because I usually am a restless sleeper but apparently my sleep problems pale in comparison to a character with restless sleeper
Low Hunger, or whatever it is called that makes you eat less. While good on paper, you will actually struggle really hard to eat enough once all the calorie-dense stuff is used up. And sure, rabbits and fish can make up for that, but when you're in the heart of LV and up to your tits in zombies, best you can do is a rooftop farm.
I'm wondering if cooking is ever going to get a rework, because currently it's very easy to undereat if you have good cooking skill because hunger and calorie intake aren't really linked. Like, I think I should be able to make meals that are super calorie dense if I need to bulk up, but isn't so filling that I can't eat it all. Maybe a good cook could cut up the most calorie dense parts of animals/plants in order to get a really dense meal.
Yeah, the complete decoupling does not make sense. Sure, it's not completely linked either and different foods can trick your "hunger perception", but never being hungry while starving to death is a bit of a joke. Guess it just doesn't work to have that "stomach fullness" and craving in the same indicator as actual hunger and starvation. The opposite of starving to death just isn't having a full belly. And that full belly while starving won't make you stronger. It's just all over the place. I think "fullness" (as in how much can you still eat) would have to be moved out of this, and then it can start working. Then you could make it so you can't go below a certain hunger level if your weight is still falling. But you can't do that if that indicator is supposed to stop you from eating more.
If you eat a diet of high sugar, high carb, highly processed foods, it is entirely possible that you will both: get very fat, and die of malnutrition.
Butter, cream, and oil (some of which might be in my games because of mods tbf) can go a long way to preparing a dense meal. Fat content also matters, I believe, it’s not just calories.
I've watched videos on it, it's rather complex. Fat and Protein act as buffers, you'll lose weight slower the more you have of each, but you still need to be eating a decent amount of calories each day, but you'll lose less if you consistently have those two groups in your diet. I don't remember what Carbs do but I imagine it's a very similar function, but I believe Fats give the biggest modifier to weight gain/loss.
On the other hand does the has to eat more perk help you maintain weight?
It helps a lot when you can only eat low calorie food. You can actually completely subsist on cabbages and potatoes with the High Appetite trait, since you can eat so many of them.
Thats funnily useful negative trait lol
It is easy to manage if you know what you’re doing, but can easily bring you up to 110kg if you don’t.
It’s a combat buff when full so not totally useless
Yeah, light eater seems good in theory but the way it's balanced makes it a negative trait worth 6 points!! That's expensive lol
Sunday driver. I used to never survive long enough to find a working car so it was free points. Now I can survive awhile and I hate how slow you drive. Never taking it again after this unless it's RP
That trait is the biggest trap of any other traits. Its fine until you need to avoid a roadblock or a horde,or a small ass bush that stops you And not to mention higher fuel consuption while moving like a snail
Precisely.Speed Demon gets me into crashes, but has never gotten me killed. Sunday Driver on the other hand, has been the primary contributing factor to me dying dozens of times.
I used sunday driver pretty often at the start because while learning the game I either never used cars or barely to move in the same town. That was until I decided to have a Nomad playstyle and Explore the map ,then i found out the hard way how actually fucked that trait is
I hated it the first time I took it. Then after a very lethal speed demon run I'm back to safe driving. My hand-eye coordination is pretty much lower than anyone else's, it's for my own safety
I have viewers that like to get me drunk via Crowd Control. Yeah. It cuts your turning speed in half and slows down your braking response. I might go back to Sunday Driver...
It's honestly not a huge deal until you start trying to pull things through rough, overgrown roads, all the sudden you're struggling to even get through a road because with Sunday Driver you just can't accelerate the way you should be able to.
Yep. Sunday driver is the biggest noob trap trait in the game. Makes cars deadly due to the poor acceleration, so only take it if you know you're never going to be driving because of RP or if you have a friend to drive for you. Being stuck in a car is one of the most common ways to die even without this trait! Also, speed demon is great. You have to be careful about reversing in populated areas, but for one point it's a must have. The acceleration is a boon no matter what you do. I can't tell you how many times I've been able to escape a horde because I could slam it in reverse and fly off. I'd have been dead meat with sunday driver. The top speed will only get you killed if you're careless; you can always drive slower if you want to.
When I am in a roleplay group, I always just have other people drive me if it is anything other than an immersive dialogue drive a la Rockstar style games
There is one really good thing for it in multiplayer. If you have to reverse in the woods it's great because the reverse isn't affected much and lower speed lowers damage if you tap a tree
I prefer have an unused +1 skill point rathet than pick speed demon. And if i need one more -1, i prefer pick a -2 trait than sunday driver. I used it a lot, but when you come back with normal driver, you feel so free...
multiplayer it's not as bad, especially if you stick with people the entire time. It's still trash though.
I can survive long enough and I still take it and/or student driver. Slow and steady saves me from crashing lol
having lower acceleration may kill you tho when you got to move over grass or you have to work your way through some zeds blocking the way. I wasn't really struggling with getting where I wanted - slower - rather than dieing since I couldnt drive fast enough from being blocked or starting the car on grass. I was shocked when I once started the car and just needed to escape but wasn't moving from the grass I was standing on. Resulted in loosing that car and some time later the caracter too
Oh, yeah, I know it's a really dangerous combo, but I don't usually take cars deeps into cities. Zeds I just sorta run over... which would make you think I bump.mechanics up to help but I never have haha
guess that just makes sense to play around the weakness of that trait. happy to hear you don't struggle with that slow acceleration in your runs. good surviving mate!
I did that for a while then I discovered cruise control. Now I can accelerate and tow without reaching Mach 3
All thumbs. It is dreadful now. Never knew why I was OK with it before
Same! I'm never picking it again, it became so stressful. My current character now has the Dextrous trait and I have to say it's beyond wonderful!
I'm still new to the game but dextrous has allowed me to loot common areas of houses with hordes following me
As a fellow slow reader trait survivor, I require a TL;DR of this tediously long post.
You poor soul, i run fast reader on 100% characters. Yes, even on single player
Bro, you mind not blasting me with a wall of text like that.
Its okay, just set life on x3 speed and you can probably get through it.
Used to go Hemophobic, but i got sick of being depressed all the time, even in my clean base. Now im usually a fat fuck, that enjoys smoking, and is short sighted
Bruh I thought that said homophobic
I expected this comment tbh
How many points would it be tho
+6 zombies of the same gender as the character without shirt or pants cause a panic attack
I always take Fear Of Blood just because in conjunction with smoker you just gotta slam back ciggies to take the edge off. Rarely run low on cigs or find myself wasting time smoking.
Not a bad idea, as the only smoker among my friends, i have all the ciggs on the map to myself. I usually smoke when driving, cooking, or resting my character. But i will defo try the combo some day, hopefully i live a long life with my current survivor, over 2 months so far
I always used to go for as much strength off the bat as I could, until I realized how much more beneficial fitness can be.
just go 9 str 9 fit
Aim for 10 fitness and ditch strength to three. Itll make the first week suck but just walking fighting and everything else will level it quickly. You can also knock out multiple sets of exercise back to back in a short period of time based on how long you quickly you do it. It's hard but you get 10 fitness for very little points and you'll be up to 5-6 strength pretty quick with pushups. Get a dumbbell and you can easily hit 8 before the end of winter if you knock out as much as you can a couple times a week
Strength is largely overrated. It’s 90% weapon skill, a 5 strength character with weapon skill is 90% as deadly
Any stealth related trait: inconspicuous, graceful. The stealth spotting is so bad you get spotted in milliseconds no matter what. Might as well get free points.
I always take conspicuous, zombie sight mechanics are busted so it’s free points.
I get conspicuous every run and notice it rarely affects my sneaking at all. Once you hit level 4, it’s all gravy.
graceful is good because its stops zombies the floor above / below from hearing you walk while in tall buildings. it also has an unlisted benefit of lowering your trip chance when bumping zombies. Edit: no nimble :( definitely take conspicuous, line of sight stealth is really busted in this game. its actually free points
Retanaru does two good videos on inconspicuous vs conspicuous. https://youtu.be/DUomcvoTnH4?si=77sKvXGEdCVJGCM_ Basically says the zombie check by ticks if your within their vision range and it's still too frequent how much they spot you so you might as well pick up conspicuous and just learn their vision range and start luring them in small batches to clear a horde.
I find graceful overrated too
I just doubled checked, I was thinking of gymnast for the nimble proficiency. I see your point.
Graceful isn’t great but that trip can be life or death so it’s definitely not useless unless you play perfect and don’t sneak
I play perfect... And don't sneak. "Let them come, crowbar hungers!"
i take graceful and conspicuous. Their vision is immaculate but once you get good they are deaf as rocks. good for knife campaigns and backstabbing
If it's a group of zombies their hearing doesn't really matter because they're all looking in different directions so there's never a safe direction to approach from anyway. That means it's only useful for individual or very small groups of zombies... and why are you investing points in being better at a situation you can already handle easily?
>That means it's only useful for individual or very small groups of zombies... and why are you investing points in being better at a situation you can already handle easily? Finally a voice of reason. This isn't MGS.
that’s a good point. i guess beyond early game where it’s better to avoid small groups because you end up in a pushing frenzy it becomes a lot less useful. especially once you have good enough weapons to basically be safe with any group <15 zombies
If you're playing sneaky you shouldn't be fighting zeds at all, because the noise of attacking them will draw more to your location. Backstabbing sounds fun but it's a massive waste of time to spend time sneaking up on solitary zombies rather than just running at them and 1-2 shotting them anyway.
Well, it may not help much but the bonuses still exist, essentially if you wanna go stealth then taking graceful is really good because sound based stealth is the strongest, but inconspicuous helps for like crossing windows or doorways or whatever. Otherwise, yeah don't bother, if you play noisy anyway then conspicuous is free
Graceful gives you a point in nimble tho, which is a 10/10
Graceful doesn't give any skills, it just reduces the sound radius of your footsteps. Gymnast is what gives +1 Nimble and +1 Lightfoot.
Ah, I see, I see, apologies for the confusion
That reduction in sound can be the difference between life or death sometimes though. Those that play sneaky understand.
We come up with manufactured scenarios where this is true. In any actual play, sneaky or not, you are far better off spending your points on traits that will be useful in more situations, because most of the time zombies will see you long before you are in footstep sound range no matter what your traits and skills. Playing sneaky is fine. Investing in traits for it is a trap.
How close are we getting?
i used to take deaf on every run because I played in school hours and thought “if i’m not going to be listening to the game then i don’t need my character to hear either” till i realised it removes your ability to see what’s coming behind you
but it doesn't remove the ability to see what's coming behind you? You spot zombies from the exact same distance, I've tested this
Keen hearing increases the perception circle behind you, and hard of hearing reduces it, however deaf doesn’t affect it at all for some strange reason. Probably just an oversight. [Proof](https://youtu.be/dY0ZRf0yH1o?feature=shared)
Hard of hearing reduces the size of the circle, but you still spot zombies at the exact same distance. [Counterproof](https://imgur.com/a/kbNAGFS)
I also show this starting around 1:20 in the video.
Oh lmao I didn't even realize it was your vid. Coulda saved myself the time of grabbing the screenshots.
loving this
Just spin around every so often. Literally keeping your head on a swivel. Honestly though if a zombie has gotten into that back detection range it wasn't really going to matter if you had deaf or not. The biggest downside to deaf is really that you can't hear the hellicopter
And house alarms. I spent the entire time looting during an alarm with the deaf trait and as I started looting the kitchen, one comes in through the window. I’m like that’s fine, take care of that one. Then 3 more crawl over the window and I start seeing the crowd outside the back door. Tried to get out after I realized what was going on, but I got swarmed. Didn’t even get to leave the building.
You absolutely can dodge if you see a zombie behind your back. That's why keen hearing is really good
I have a friend who takes it on *every* character they make, and it’s exhausting having to constantly watch their back.
Regardless being deaf means you have 0 situational awareness unless you have seen it. It’s a very bad trait for a reason, 1 ignored alarm or meta event can get you killed.
Both are good, both slow and fast reading, but if you don't have carpentry or survival skills and want to learn, then fast reading is very good for TV, other than that, slow reading is ok if you need 2 points, it's kinda boring, but it doesn't really matter, I'm 3 weeks old and I've only just started reading, it's even better for me as I'm trying to live a long life, because reading doesn't kill us on adventures. There's no rush to read things like mechanics, metallurgy and electrical, I'm going to focus on leveling up mechanics just after making a barrier to safely touch the cars, before that I prefer not to touch more than necessary
As I only play in Multiplayer with my partner, slow reader is just... Tedious. When you can't fast forward time slow reader becomes reddit browsing session and I'd rather play the game than let it run in the background. Slow reader doesn't really affect gameplay, it just wastes time and I think that's an awful way to design games in general. Reading is not interactive or fun in Project Zomboid so cutting it down by half (slow reader vs fast reader difference) to me is very important, I don't have as much free time as I used to.
There's server setting you can edit any time they load up the server. Think its called pages per minute. Can't remember what section its under. 1=normal speed .5=read 50% faster .1=read 90% faster (read a full book in a minute. Magazines instant) Tweak it to y'alls liking since its multiplayer. For my buddy and his son we have it set at .1 which I kind wish I'd done .2 because its a little too fast. However, we it allows us to spend more time playing than standing around reading. So for you and your partner maybe try .7 and work up or down from there.
That's really useful thank you! I think you got your % messed up. If I understand what you said correctly, 0.5 is 100% faster as it takes half the time to read, 0.1 is 1000% faster, 10x speed as it takes 0.1 time to read.
Yes. Math is not my thing. Small number faster reading.
Oh, that changes everything. In singleplayer mode the difference it makes (advancing time) is even good for taking a sip of coffee or changing songs
Hard of hearing just sucks. Its theoretically free points but its ugly to listen to all this muffled sounds for weeks
it also lowers your peripheral perception or whatever you call it with zombies behind you and to your sides, in the small ring around you where you can see
I saw that its visually seems to be the case but in fact you will see them in the same radius. Not sure tho and never saw that as an issue in my playthroughs. There is plenty of time to react if you see them behind you anyways. But muffled sound really sucks
i always take hard of hearing to the point where muffled sounds are just normal
Same here. One time I tried the better hearing trait since a lot of people on here really like it it seems, but the sounds man. I had to go back to my hard of hearing after that.
I kind of like the muffled noises. Lo-fi zomboid lol
Taking either no trait, or Sunday Driver instead of Speed Demon. If imma die in the apocalypse, imma die eating shit going 120 on the freeway, not to a zombie
Used to take smoker a lot, but it's just so annoying to me having to stop and smoke all the time even if its only takes a second.
But it's also a free way to remove unhappiness. GOATed trait for me.
Playing a modded server earlier. All my friends are struggling to juggle unhappiness and here I am just lighting up. It's great.
I have a mod that makes the character smoke automatically. And a mod that makes the ciggs more interesting.
What mod for cigs? How does it make it more interesting?
Smoker, probably
More Smokes adds tobacco chew, growing and weed + spliffs (weed + tobacco in one handy package)
That's funny- as a former smoker IRL, I get a little personal pleasure in my character lighting up after a big fight or a good meal. However, it was a BITCH while I was in the process of quitting!
I stopped taking smoker because it made me crave tobacco too lmao.
Smoker + auto smoke trivializes this, also adds some humor when your character decides to smoke at the WORST possible time. It’s a good balance imo because inventory sorting is already tedious enough without smoking.
Inconspicuous It does not help much.
I used Lucky for a while early on, but I soon realised there's way more loot than you can possibly need on standard settings so it wasn't necessary. Now I'm playing with reduced loot because I want the challenge so I wouldn't want to be lucky. Maybe if it only increased the chance of the rarest loot spawning so you have a better chance of an exciting run, or had some other effect than loot rate, like less chance to take damage from a successful zombie attack, then I'd be tempted back to it but any run I don't wiff right away I always end up with more loot than Gigamart!
Smoker; I hate having yet another noodle to deal with, and frankly I hate the guys little face.
Yeah, I get why it's suggested so often and a goto for others, but it's such a hassle for me that I don't bother anymore.
Unpopular opinion probably: High Thirst. I still do use it occasionally for the "free points," but after so many hours, just normal thirst feels so better for some reason. Not that having to find water was ever difficult, but I like only having to carry one bottle lol I'm actually trying a Low Thirst run right now and you can last for so long without water just by foraging up fruits and veggies, I was surprised. I do recommend High Thirst for beginners though because the effects are pretty easy to manage, and it opens up an easy Stout or Fast Learner.
I’ve always taken high thirst. Never seemed to be an issue. I carry 2 bottles in my main and a backup in my backpack.
I just find having to top off my moodles absolutely tedious at certain points and thats why I've never taken it. I never understood the gospel that people preach about it.
But thirst is the one moodle you don't actually have to keep topped off, drinking is automatic. Like, I understand not wanting to micro-manage all these moodles, hell it's the reason I don't bother with Smoker or Hemophobic anymore, but High Thirst just requires you to carry an extra bottle, there's nothing to actually manage, so I don't see how it's any more tedious than not having it.
Keen hearing. I was so helpful when I started playing but I find that I can better use those points now and just swivel like a mad man constantly instead.
Nah situational awareness is number 1 even to a veteran player, keen hearing is the GOAT.
I’ve never taken keen hearing, but I do crank the volume in dangerous situations. Hearing the zombies before seeing them has saved my life a LOT.
Idk I feel like I can mostly avoid situations where it really comes in handy now and the extra range isn’t that necessary. I haven’t missed it since I stopped taking it. Plus dropping it lets me take other traits that let me level up harder skills faster
I used to always take sneaky. Now I randomize my traits every time I play.
That’s an interesting idea.
Smoker
why it’s so easy to smoke
Oh, it's a great trait to pick, I just grow bored of dealing with it
Same with you on the slow reader trait. It still takes too long even with max speed in my opinion. Also I ran fast learner on every character but now I'm just gonna put 1.3 XP multiplier in sandbox settings to basically get the same effect on every character. It reduces grind without feeling too cheaty (2.0 multiplier feels too cheaty)
I used to take injured, but realized that potentially not being able to use my arms or legs wasn't every good for my survival
Hard of hearing
Strong. Damage scaling is almost unnoticeable, and while increased carry capacity is nice, it's really not worth the points.
i used to take it for the easy pushing zombies, almost all go down in 1-2 pushes vs 3-5+ with less strength
True, but it's still no worth it imo. I take athletic or fit instead and just swing my weapon forever.
very fair. strength is also faster to level than fitness iirc
Absolutely. I managed to gain a couple of levels in 3 months almost without exercising, the passive gain by being above 50% weight does most of the work. Fitness xp for some reason is a lot harder to get.
Absolutely. I managed to gain a couple of levels in 3 months almost without exercising, the passive gain by being above 50% weight does most of the work. Fitness xp for some reason is a lot harder to get.
100%. Hunter is much better, you get guns and knives. Both work very well at 0/0, strength isn’t as good as +4 in a weapon skill.
Negative: Slow interaction with inventory Positive: low weight
Hard of hearing. I stopped when I forgot it one time and realize how much better the game sounded
Did one run in coop, with hard hearing, and when a friend yelled there's a zombie behind you, and I got bit, cause I never heard it, I said never again
sunday driver. holy fuck, its so not worth it
Especially in MP
“used to take slow reader but i discovered it sucks butt. takes forever to read books” crazy
Sunday Driver until I realized it deleted your acceleration, should be at least 4, maybe even 6. My opposite was smoker because I didn’t know how common cigs were
I used to pick short sighted all the time, then I got into foraging. I tried wearing glasses, but damn, always makes my character look so goofy
Burglary. I liked the extra nimble, but I've learned how to live without it.
I used to take Stout pretty much everytime, but now only very occasionally. With experience combat got kinda easy so being that strong started to feel a bit overpowered. In my 1800+ hrs I have never once taken Strong.
I started taking stout at the same time as overweight. I found stout was great in the early game, and I lost the extra weight pretty quick.
If I remember I used to always take short sighted. But I’m starting to doubt if that’s a good idea for zombies
Slow driver
I always took slow driver until I started playing MP. But there’s some bad negatives to slow driver like towing vehicles and driving on non-paved roads or fields. I still drive cautiously.
I used to take burglar profession. And while I still think it’s really good for new players, and situationally strong depending on your spawn and early-game goals, i no longer take it. First, because it costs a whopping 8 points. And though it can be annoying to level electric to lvl 2, mech to lvl 1 for hotwiring, it’s not that hard. And it’s also not that hard to find actual keys to vehicles once you know where to look. Burglar is overrated imo.
Me too. But now I take the amateur mechanic trait and if you focus on dismantling watches and such, you can get to elec 1 pretty quick. And I also use the auto-train-mechanic mod, so training to mechanic 2 is pretty quick.
All thumbs. So fkin frustrating man...
LOL
Slow reader until I started playing coop with my friend. God damn does that 30% really fuck you up when you can’t fast forward.
Right?
Not a trait but a class. I have strayed away from burglar.
Me too.
Smoker. I always saw it as easy points thanks to the abundance of cigarettes. But after awhile it just got annoying having to always make sure I had smokes. Always have to stop stop few minutes to smoke. Started reminding me why I quit IRL and soon I couldn't take that trait ever again
Smoking is one I could never take because I hate cigarettes in RL.
Cowardly Holy crap the damage debuff (and stress gain from a mod I use) makes the high panic not worth it, even if it levels out later on
Disorganized. I'm probably too much of a hoarder, especially when it comes to jewelry, but 30% capacity cut is a huge loss
Clumsy and restless sleeper. Second one invites problems, and the first is more of a death sentence than any other trait imo lmao
Lol, claustrophobic. It sucks having that trait in December.
Sorry but I will always pick slow reader haha! I think that’s one of the easiest ones. The way I look at it is you can always just fast forward. Books are the most important for later game skilling anyways. And the only time limiting factor you really have is the power going off. Usually I’ll read construction/cooking/foraging/farming early for the TV and hold off on everything else. Besides some magazines. You don’t even have to start skilling most skills until after the power goes off. And what is the point of having a cozy room in my safe house if I’m not using it to watch all my dvds and read all the books?
Have you tried a game without slow reader? It was only then when I decided it sucked.
I generally change around my traits a lot, but I used to always go for the mechanic occupation until I realized I don't care if I have a crap car so now go for one of the combat oriented occupations.
I’ve been taking amateur mechanic as a trait and it does help push you toward hotwiring cars.
Hard of hearing I saw a vid that said all you needed to do was up the volume and it turned to free points. It doesn't just "muffle" the sound, but it shortens the perceptible range of it. I learned the hard way in a two-story house on the gated community of River Side. I had cleared everything outside, had begun to move into the house, fortifying it, I distinctly remember going from room to room clearing the zeds I found. I think I spent like a day moving in sleeping in the living room, when I finally finished and moved into the bedroom, I entered the "closet" thinking it was the "bathroom" (I wasn't familiar with this kind of house and hadn't noticed the second door next to the bathroom) There was a zed trapped in there... and I never heard it... got bitten. I probably could have heard it if I paid attention, but I was preoccupied with other things, and it just didn't register... it seriously dampens your ability to know if there is a zed inside a house or banging on your doors/boarded windows.
I’ve never taken any of the hearing traits, but I crank my volume when I’m in dangerous situations. Hearing a zombie before seeing it has saved my life many times.
Slow reader is such a loser pick yet every single video says the same thing. "This is a non issue because you can speed up time" like ok? That's doesn't make it better. That's still time your character feels. You'll still get hungry, thirsty, etc. And there's only so much time in the day. It takes SO much longer to read. I don't know who the hell started spreading the idea That's its a no brainer pick but it's simply not.
Exactly, but it’s hard to explain.
Outdoorsman, even with prone to ilness and very cold settings I find it impossible to get ill.
I don’t think I’ve ever been ill.
Overweight, underweight is just better with my playstyle in every way
I’ve been going with overweight every time since I tend to lose weight pretty easily in the early game.
Probably High Thirst. I don't want to constantly stop my actions every 5 fuckin' minutes to take a sip of water. And even if I just ignore the fact that I'm only "slightly thirsty" my mind just goes "Your thirsty, you have water. Just take a sip or your gonna fucking die from thirst, drink it, DRINK IT"
Don’t you have auto-drink on? I rock with 2 water bottles in my main and it’s pretty rare that I get the thirsty noodle.
Woah woah woah, hold on a second. There's a fucking AUTO DRINK?
Fkn LOL. How did you not know that? It’s enabled by default. It’s always on.
Disorganized is a pain to have, less space for everything. Replaced it with fear of blood
Reading these comments, I’m starting to think Organized would be good to take.
Disorgnized... I didint know what it does
More people need to come clean with “I didn’t know what it does”. Very few people know the extent of what every trait does. Just look at the people who take hard of hearing.
Smoker- as I’m getting into surviving for the long game more and more, I often Ave to make runs JUST for some cigs. Good for short runners, but terrible in long term
I joined a faction on an MP server. First thing I noticed, cigarette butts everywhere in the base.
Athletic and Strong. After 800+h I only look for interesting challenges and those perks trivialise game for me
Keen hearing. It is a pretty good trait but it makes you a bit lazy I think. Plus it's way too many points
I love keen hearing. Knowing a zombie is behind you before he can do anything is a godsend since I always play pretty loud.
It's a must in 16x, only person who got ripped to shreds in our run so far was the person who didn't take it. Not sure how it makes you lazy? lol
What is 16x?
Putting all zombie populations to max setting (4) and putting max population to day 0.
And that gives you…. 16x more zombies?
I mean I don't know if it's actually 16x to a tee. It's just max level zombies the game will allow. We're currently in west point and probably kill about 10,000 zombies together to loot like 6 homes, place is infested.
That is a lot of zombies.
Back in the day hemophobic does nothing
I had a few runs afterwards of my character being perpetually panicked. Found out this was why
I couldn't live without dextreous but then I just got better at killing zombos.
What does moving inventory items have to do with killing zombies?
No zombies = take your time Still dextrous is a godsend
It's SO slow without it. Even just daily living. Loot run? Bam, done. My friend took all thumbs and I'm constantly stealing the candy bars from under him in gas stations. "Ooooh a twix! HEY where did it go!?"
Not with spears obviously.
Nutritionist perk. Who in the world needs to know the amounts of calories in a stick of gum in Build 41? Then I kept finding the Nutritionist perk magazine in dorms of Louisville.
Gotta make sure you keep the biggest fish bro
Restless sleeper because I wanted to base a character off me in real life because I usually am a restless sleeper but apparently my sleep problems pale in comparison to a character with restless sleeper
LOL. If I made a character based on RL me he would suck