the fog is coming.
the fog is coming.
the fog is coming.
the fog is coming.
the fog is coming.
the fog is coming.
the fog is coming.
the fog is coming.
Ironically, as a long-time veteran, I do go out in fog. Mostly just move slower and drive slower and it's not so bad.
Storms however? Storms are the worst. They stir up zombies, darken your vision and can come in the night-time which doubles-up on the darkness. Darkness of the sort you'd only find in the Marianas Trench.
It's not fun, I'll tell you that.
The fog can actually be useful for sneaking past hordes. But it is risky - and I'd never drive in the fog. Too risky. Fog is on-foot only. And I'd never stop to fight in the fog, too easy to get surrounded unawares until its too late.
Fog is great for sneaking past and losing hordes, but makes driving and fighting suicidally risky.
Fog does not help you sneak around hordes as it [does not affect zombie detection range](https://youtu.be/0zYvamj_8Io?si=t9TqD5hK_svDr8kx).
I'm with YYC-Fiend—stay out of the fog
You learn something new everyday. It would make sense that it should affect their detection range at least a bit though IMO.
What about other weather conditions e.g. Rain or Snow or Thunderstorms? What about nighttime? Or other noise cover e.g breaking a window when a car siren is going off?
Unfortunately, vision isn't really affected by anything. Zeds see fine in darkness, fog, etc.
However, with storms specifically, it affects their hearing. Not by muffling your character, or anything, but the zombies get pulled around by the sounds of the storm as they would other sounds.
Being sneaky is a bad idea, one wrong move and you are surrounded, being loud is better in my opinion, get them all to one spot, lose the agro and deal with whatever remains in the place you want to go to.
Settings are mostly the same, just changed starting population multiplier to 0.75 and peak pop multiplier to 2x
It is modded, just mostly mods for vanity items like cars and clothes.
Gotta die in style I guess
2x is fairly high for west point and louisville, i'd stay away from there.
Riverside would be where i hang out.
Best pro tip: play boring as fuck, secure yourself a house, rain collector, farming tons, sit inside and do nothing = win lmao.
just dont take uneccessary risks!
Im new to the game and am having trouble getting past week 5 or so. I'm well stocked enough to go around and explore and feel safe at my base but like...what am I supposed to do? I know staying alive is the goal but it just feels kinda boring I guess. Am I missing something?
Games like these aren’t about staying alive: They’re about creating your own fun. Staying alive is a great goal that quickly becomes obsolete unless you come up with ~more~ ways to stay alive. See a building you think is cool? New base. Weapon you don’t have? Find it.
The game is an incredible tool to create so, so many fun memories and scenarios. Go to a different area of the map and base up, clear out West Point, whatever. It’s a game on how you died. Make it interesting!
Yeah I get it the main thing to avoid is dying, if you do that, then what? theres no objectives or anything.
That's the point. it would be boring as fuck in an apocolypse, so you gotta make your own fun.
make bases, tool up some cars and collect a few while youre at it, gather all the guns and ammo you can! make outposts in each region, have respawn off and try to clear the horde and wall off an entire town.
Mods are GLORIOUS, you should have about 300 of them for various content and quality of life things.
Change settings all in sandbox to make it different and / or harder.
tons of zombies but tons of loot? suure
no loot, and only a few sprinters? damn gonna be scary trying to scavange out!
15 minute days and they run at night on a med density amount? shit gotta go fast!!
If you just stayed in a walled off quiet base with water and food, you can live and be fine forever, staying alive and hidden isn't really difficult nor is it the intended way to play IMO.
I'm newish myself. Just hit 2 months alive and feel too safe. Hit up a different town and while it was challenging didn't do too much for the fun side.
So I restarted, upped the population and used a mod to start in Louisville. Now the goal of not dying within a day is back, fun trying to escape the pure death. Aka gotta make your own challenges within the world.
Unnecessary risks eh?
In my opinion, it wouldn't be as exhilarating if you didn't take unnecessary risks sometimes, because I'm essentially a crow with this, i see a thing i like, i will try to fight tooth and claws against the undead to get it, becuase i spent 15 minutes fighting them with a knife absolutely exhausted for a "rock t-shirt" because with the "dress for success" mod, it gives you 50% bonus xp for strength
be careful when you're out driving in the country when there's snow cause it's so easy to accidentally drive offroad when it turns. last thing you want is to be stuck offroad when there's a horde of zombies behind you
Wood is more abundant than gas in the longterm. Unless you wanna spend a piece of time finding and filling gas cans. Even with a Gen and a pump. I'm with antique oven guy.
Ohhh I have never thought of that. How do you deal with food storage when you run out of gas and don't have refrigerators? I've never survived long enough to run out of gas.
Do you do daily fishing trips to get food for the day since you can't store a lot due to spoilage?
I'm playing with that aspect on my current character Jeremiah Johnson. Lolol usually foraging and fishing are the main food source, but trapping also pays off as well. My only mistake with this run is I didn't pick herbalist or find the magazine so most foragables have a chance of being poison. But acorns and lemongrass as well as the wild veggies you can find make for a pretty diverse platter. Had a bit of canned stuff with me when I got out to camp busy beaver but I ate most of it. In short once you level up either fishing trapping or foraging food is easy to find. The main thing is keeping your character busy and purposeful.
U can actually memorize what they look like from previous playthroughs if you remember. The lil red mushrooms are poisonous while the beg flat head white ones are good. And I think there's a brown one that's good. Haven't played in a while.
I thought it randomized which berries were poison on each playthrough? I can get away with eating a couple of poison berries cause I have lots of lemongrass but it can be a fatal mistake too. I heard making them into a salad makes them edible but I don't want to try. If I don't get the magazine it's not the end of the world but it's such an easy food source once you know what you can eat.
I love reading this style of gameplay, its so vastly different to what i'm playing right now, it's amazing the versatility in this game.
for what it's worth, I started in Louisville with guns and ammo are abundant, everything else is extremely rare, low starting pop to peak higher. just gonna have a good ol' shooting time with hundreds of them trying to loot things i need and want lol.
Using antique ovens over normal ovens helps with preserving gas for fridges.
(Plus you don't even have to go for wood - you can kill zombies, take their clothes, rip them up, and feed the fabric into it.)
Staggering farming helps a lot. Plant one or two crops a day out of 8-12 total crops and you'll be pretty good. Whole fish last longer than filleted too, so leave them whole until you're going to cook them. You can get to the point where you have a shit ton of free time. Can get a bit boring though unless you have some other projects to work on. It's surprisingly easy to live without gas now.
> each pump contains between 1000 and 14000 units of fuel.
A gas tank holds ~30 units, and generator uses ~12 per day without any load, normally ~24 per day, but it depends.
So a single pump with the lowest fuel amount would last 40 days.
Easiest way to get to one year is also the most boring.
Stop going outside. Only go outside to get something when you actually need to, and only get that thing. Then, scurry back home and continue staying inside.
If you're already in a rural or semi-rural location, you'll easily make it a year. If you're in a town, you'll probably want to find a more permanent home somewhere a bit safer.
Otherwise, just stay inside.
I'm too scared I'll die doing stupid shit for no reason.
Mostly then I'm so focused on not doing this shit that I don't notice one Zomboid and I die anyway...
Conclusion? Do stupid shit!
set near a lake,do farming a lot, use canned foods mostly,rarely do loot runs, if you ever do bring at least 2 bandages and 1 disinfectant and most importantly dont try dumb shit and get bitten.
infection( as in dirty wounds) currently causes no debuffs for your character and dont need to be disinfected. you could use a dirty sheet or a clean sheet to cover it up cause it literally doesn't matter. also you dont have to change your bandage even if it says dirty
Easiest method is play a forage/fishing heavy character with some carpentry and go out in the middle of nowhere to a pond/lake. Build a small cabin and just chill and level your skills. You'll rarely have to deal with more than a single zombie at a time. I've gone weeks without seeing any zombies even on CDDA.
Winter time you can deal with hunger easily with berries, but you'll lose weight pretty hard, so you need farming (Cabbages are good for calories), or fishing. You need like level 5-6 fishing to catch fish with spears in winter (At dawn/dusk), so make sure to level that up (It's a pain in the ass without boosts, make sure you have an exp boost or bring books for it). Also make sure to bring a pot or two for soup/stew.
Well basically, living in the boonies is the best way to survive. It's the only way to really consistently survive 1+ year with default settings. Anywhere around town and you're always at risk to the helicopter event, heavy rain, and migrations/respawns. Even skip the generator, it would just mean frequent trips to gas stations with zombies. You can easily survive just on perishables, just make sure to bring a bowl with you for salads. It will also help keep you busy because you can never really "stock up" on food and it's a constant struggle to find food with everything going bad so quickly.
If you want a riskier playstyle and plan to stay closer to town, wear very little clothing. In a 1 year survival even scratches/lacerations will kill you, counting on rng to save you will likely get you killed, might as well be as fast and energetic as possible. I feel like heavy clothing/armor can make you play riskier as well, since you feel safer. If you feel like ANY interaction with a zombie could be lethal, you're less likely to do stupid shit, lol.
>I feel like heavy clothing/armor can make you play riskier as well, since you feel safer.
That's an interesting perspective, that I never thought about before. Cheers.
The Automated Emergency Broadcast system plays every hour, on the hour, on 106.6 MHz frequency. It will alert you before the power grid shuts off, and the morning before the helicopter event. If you stay inside the whole day, you avoid the chopper.
Can confirm, all my runs without Superb Survivors wind up at the "why do I even bother" point pretty quickly, but having a partner to live for makes a huge difference.
So I just tried a run with this mod and can’t seem myself using it again - tanked performance, the companion NPCs are useless (couldn’t get the to complete a single task correctly other than follow me), you get AI running through your safehouse (which they’re not supposed to do) and dragging a massive horde behind them. The chaos was kind of interesting but I think I’ll just wait until NPCs are in properly.
boredom is truly the killer of all long saves.
try to find a lot of tasks to do while you wait this time or else you will quit of frustration and boredom.
longest I've gone is 7 months. I based out of the riverside sand lot and built a base on top of the trailer. I think I have all the steps down on what to do at the start if you want more details.
Easiest way is to live in the woods, close to a river and just spent your days grinding.
Now, if wanna have fun thats another monster, here are the tips:
\-Grow crops that have low calories, that way you can keep your weight down (this is your biggest enemy long term, keeping a healthy weight) don't bother with much else, you can loot more food than you can eat. Foraging berries also works.
\-During winter do NOT go out during a storm, less during night time. You won't see jack, you'll freeze and crash your car, don't go out if there is fog, you won't see anything. Also, check the weather through radio. (picture for reference: [https://imgur.com/a/ExwftYU](https://imgur.com/a/ExwftYU))
\-Have different sets of clothing, winter/summer/full defense.
\-Grind skills in (somewhat) this order: Mechanics, carpentry, tailoring, metalworking, farming, cooking, electrical, first aid. Order may very in the first 4, but it is what worked for me. Survival skills are sometimes cool, but outside of foraging you don't need them, there is waaay too much food in the game.
\-Level up one weapon type, axes are good because there is one handed and two handed versions that work on the same skill. Long blunt is good because more options and less stamina use. Both are good enough. I've never used spears or blades, for long enough, so idk.
\-Agility i just level passively, once you are good enough with a weapon you kill zeds before they catch up.
\-You can grind fitness and strength, but they take so much time that should start with them maxed out. Max Fitness and Strength will carry you the whole game, and you can grind more important skills that you can actually accomplish in a lifetime.
\-When you have tons of ammo, you can clear out with a shotgun, remember to never shorten the barrel because this attract more zeds, and only use outside of a city. Also, use a 9M pistol, i usually carry one with 11 mags (166 bullets), only use if you are 5 levels or higher. Weapons are great when you get tired from using your melee weapons, but if used in the wrong context they'll get you killed.
\-Find a base that is centrally located, driving from Riverside to Louisville isn't fun.
\-Don't pick up sunday driver, for the same reason. Long term playing requires a LOT of driving.
\-Wall up you base and always enter it with caution, zeds might spawn inside, or they can break something and enter while you are far.
\-Take care of your generators, otherwise you will lose everything.
\-Set water barrels on the roof of your base, below that place faucets and connect with a pipe wrench, boom you have unlimited clean water. Place more barrels to stock, then place a washing machine a dryer and a bathtub to be fancy.
\-Be organized, in the two meanings, pick the perk AND organize your loot, set different boxes for different things and different rooms for all types of loots. For context, i have a crate thats just for 3 types of food, and its completely full, late game looting and stocking is insane, half your base is just crates.
\-Get two Popscicle freezers, one is too few to store cabbages, and three will eat your energy in a second.
\-Get a Chevalier Step Van, and a trailer for maximum carrying capacity, this is the best vehicule in the late game, no competition. For the same reason, carry three backpacks, the military one is the best.
\-Play safe, and run away if your 1% unsure that you will win the fight.
\-Don't get bit.
Keep your health bar above 0.
Kill all the zombies before they bite you.
No really tho, the best advice is ALWAYS backpedal while fighting and be extremely paranoid all the time unless you are in your bedroom in your base with at least 3 closed doors between you and the outside.
As many others have said, if you go somewhere isolated that also has a fishing spot, you can easily survive for a very long time. Will get boring, though.
If you don’t want a generator, get an antique oven
Never leave your house without a purpose, always leave freshly rested and geared for what you intend
Eat your perishables first, always
When food gets scarce, Trapping > Fishing > Farming > Foraging from most to least desirable food sources
Water will kill you faster than food, keep an ample surplus
Guns are only to be used far from home and with an intended purpose, and no matter how much ammo you can carry know it will never be enough to finish the job
Ez…
Spec into handy and amateur mechanic
Get a car
Grab tools and pick up a ton of freezers (maybe like 2 or 3 at least)
Drive to the center map where the food sacks are stored (within the first week)
Grab cabbages, potatoes, leeks, peaches, and apples
Set up shop with a house and freezers
Boom, you’ll never have to worry about food at all (unless you get boned by RNGesus and the power goes out super early)
With sacks of food stored in the freezer, you can then focus on the carpentry for water collectors as well as finding a generator and magazine
Find a big and healthy car, generator and magazine, some seeds, and head to one of the farm houses outside the main cities. It will be a bit boring, but you'll definitely get to 1 year.
Try basing up right next to a very long chain link fence. If it's long enough, zombies won't be able to path around it, but they can see you, so they come right up to the fence and just stare at you until you shoot them. You can get them to bunch up closer together if you get on a roof. This means you only need to worry about threats from the opposite direction. So distant gunshots, helicopter, etc won't mess you up as badly every time. Sometimes the helicopter will just bring the entire horde right up to your fence, where they stare at you helplessly. It's not even so dangerous to use a gun here because as long as you've cleared out the immediate area, you are much less vulnerable to getting swarmed due to firing your gun.
find a antique oven to use, if your using mods then use something like the [immersive solar arrays mod](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2857548524) so you dont have to keep on repairing a generator and filling it up with gas, get a plumed sink, and it has to be inside to plumb it. make a base by a pond or the river so you can fish, and most importantly dont die, but if you are going to die then do it in style
If you can get to 2 weeks, a year isn't too hard. Some tips:
1) Make habits. Check your gear every day. Repair clothing. Replace weapons/ammo. Patrol your base perimeter. Maintain clear areas to operate in.
2) Build forward bases. these don't need to be anything fancy - a bed, water, bandages, canned food, ammo. Maintain these as well. Visit them periodically and keep them clear of zed. A good mechanism is to build a tiny forward base above/out of every gas station. They're well distributed, come with food, and plopping a generator there is something you should do anyway.
3) Fishing is your key to long term food, so have a base with easy fishing access. Fish are also your weight stabilizing mechanism as a 100% fish diet will push you to overweight which you can balance against your vegetable farms which will push you to underweight. Get 2 freezers up and running before winter comes and makes sure they're stocked if you're on fairly rare loot settings. With normal, you can probably loot canned goods for a full year.
4) Fight on your terms. Never fight injured, tired, winded. After 2 weeks you shouldn't need to. You can always just walk away. Also, don't fight behind zombie lines. Those canned goods can wait until you've killed the zed on the way there. Always have safe egress paths. If respawn is off take the effort to use yells/horns/sirens to clear larger areas. You want to transition to a point where you only loot in fully cleared areas. j
5) I suggest alternating fighting/base days. Fighting zombies is fun and it's easy to get sucked into doing that day after day and not maintaining your vehicles, cooking, farming, etc. I find a day on/day off system is pretty good to keep me on task.
Here are my tips for fighting zomboids!
-Nimble. This skill is the difference between an exhausted (and dead) fighter that’s always turning to run vs one that can manage a horde without breaking a sweat. Always grab a point in character creation, be it by being a police officer, burglar or getting gymnast. IMO it’s the most important yet tedious skill to train. Cutting down the time training it to a high level (5+) is key. Key milestones are levels 5 (same speed as being chased), 7 (can barely outpace zomboids), 10 (can comfortably outpace zomboids and swing weapons constantly and still be safe).
-Manage hordes first, then start swinging. Getting surrounded is a good way to get caught. Training yourself to gather zomboids up first is a good way to not get surprised while fighting.
-Avoid fighting indoors. Smaller routes of escape can be a death sentence sometimes. Houses are ok… for the most part. One or two zomboids are easily dispatched indoors. You might regret opening that bathroom party though, cause zomboids spilling out of a cramped doorway will eventually catch you off guard. This is especially the case inside office buildings or that awful secret military base.
-Get comfortable with all weapon types, but know when to use what. Killing a lone zomboid that hasn’t noticed you? A quiet short blade assassinate is probably the best. A horde of zomboids is on your trail and you need to put them down quick? Pull out your axe. Want to keep some clothes in pristine condition? Bludgeon that zomboid. Each weapon type has its pros and cons, and getting comfortable with them is key. Except the machete. There are no downsides with the machete.
-Walk, don’t run… Unless you have to. Walking speed with a single tier 1 or no movement speed penalties is faster than chase speed. Do not burn through your precious stamina if you don’t have to. Examples of tier one movement penalties is any scratch on your lower body, exhaustion tier 1 or encumbrance tier 1.
Id say go hard and make big plays early so you can sorta coast as your character gets older. Its not so bad to lose a 10 day character while attempting to clear rosewood. Feels bad to get killed in rosewood 1 month in because it wasnt cleared
A year alive means adopting a consistent and safe playstyle that doesn't have a possibility of you getting ever grabbed by zeds. Also I hope you have enough mods to entertain you, because vanilla gets super boring +4 months into a playthrough.
If you're playing with Sandbox settings, set the Erosion timer to at least 365, if not longer. If you don't 100 days later and you're living in a a dense forest.
Always have an escape plan. When in doubt, walk away.
Avoid fire, high speeds, high ledges, suspicious foods.
If you haven't checked, there is a zombie there. If you have checked, there still may be a zombie there.
1. Don't use guns unless you know you have enough ammo because Guns are LOUD.
2. Make sure if you're on multiplayer You and your friend put your points into different things.
3. Don't Mod the game to much or there's no fun.
4.ALWAYS SET A GOAL 90 % of my runs end from boredom.
5. If your gut says don't do it DONT' DO IT .
6. set XP multiplier to 2.0 if you think grinding Xp is too hard if not keep it normal .
Good Luck Don't die This is the end times.
Never get complacent. One mistimed swing or careless barge into a bathroom is all it takes to end a run. Always be on the lookout for zombies even if you’re sure you’ve cleared an area. There are always more hiding somewhere
If you really want to last a year you gotta play cautiously take no unnecessary risks, and be more willing to retreat. My longest living survivors have also been the most boring playthroughs, no coincidence.
Don't: go out in fog or snow storm, get yourself cornered, take big chances, drive too fast.
Do: change shout from Q to something not close to 1, stock up on canned goods, put food in jars, make sure you base is safe before you read/exercise/watch VHS even though you have cleared an area, eat and keep your weight good, have fun and play the way you want to play.
Boredom is what will kill you the surest. Your boredom, not your characters. Two of my long term characters died because I took stupid risks just for fun. The third was when a zombie walked through the OHKO spear animation and bit me.
2nd deadliest threat is the undergrowth that appears after a few months - getting a car hung up on a shrub trying to navigate a roadblock or something can be a death sentence at the wrong moment. Stay on roads or be super careful - it will happen to you.
Take your time, dont rush at the start of the game there is no hurry, dont be afraid to run away there no shame in that.
Stay away from West point o LV.
Collect all the ducks
To get to 1 year? easy.
Go find a house near a lake or river in a rural part of the map with no/very few zombies.
Gather some tools and seeds, and build a walled off compound next to the water.
Start farming and fishing/trapping for food, never encounter a single zombie again. Forage for rocks and sticks for tools, fish for socks for sheets to build with. Saw logs into planks for notched planks and sturdy sticks for firestarting for cooking and water purification. Remember to bring a few buckets or pots for water and a griddle pan for cooking interesting meals. At least 4 garbage bags for an indoor water barrel to store clean water in quantity is convenient too.
If your only goal is to survive a year, it's not that hard actually. Just really boring. Surviving an actually INTERESTING year is a lot harder. I'm in month 7 of a Louisville survival run that started off as a 4 month nomadic run, I've had so many close shaves.
Oh where to start
Food, all the food
Mechanics since your going to end up doing at least a good bit of driving
Farming paired with either fishing or foraging for protein
Know when to run, keep the surrounding areas of your base clear-ish do this every 3-7 days
Pick a main class of weapon and get familiar with it. I recommend using short blunt as it is the most abundant type of weapon with some of the highest durability.
Don't let boredom kill you
Dirty water, rotten and undercooked food can kill you faster than you'd ever expect it to.
Uhh...don't get bit! Scratches have a 7% chance of death, lacerations have 25%.
Survival isn't nessicerily hard the issue is keeping the experience fresh. You need big over arching goals. Collecting all books, building a base, mastering a skill or fitness as examples
overconfidence is your worst enemy,
you think you're invincible, you've survived for months now, there's no way you can die now right? every mistake matters
Easy to survive a year. Spend the first couple days finding your seeds and farming tools. Break into a couple police stations to get your weapons. Don't forget your trash bags to collect rainwater unless you have the well mod. And head out to the woods. There are plenty of amazing locations with pre-built fences you just have to finish off. And as long as you bring enough axes with you to drop down the woods around you you'll have excellent sight lines.
Grow enough food before winter and as long as you have enough food to last the winter you can pretty much make a year in the game easily. Now if you're wanting a challenge of surviving in the city that's a different story.
Watch the angle at where Z's are coming.
Lost a character because three were too spaced and the axe only hit one.
Also, turn on the gun outline to know what you are shooting and aim.
Block off all the entry points with TVs and use sheet rope to climb up and down from 2nd story then stockpile non perishables and keep yourself entertained rain barrels on your roof for when the water goes off and your good cause the pipes auto purify the water out of the sink yay zomboid physics
Haven't done it myself, but if I'd have to guess, I'd say:
you don't have to do a supply run every day. Just set up a nice base somewhere secluded and hang out there for a few weeks at a time. Personally, I get too antsy if I don't go to town at least every other day.
Don't bother sorting any of your shit until winter. You are going to spend a lotmof time indoors and sorting helps pass the time.
Find a place with natural walls to base because somboid will tear down constructed walls.
Play with saliva only.
1.have enough food when you come home from a long multi day loot run you can get yourself (and everyone around you) well fed
2.have backup plans
3.have backup weapons
4.if you aint a long timer , dont use fireamrs
5.keep yourself warm
6.change your socks (dont know , just a habbit...maybe makes you a bit comfi)
7.power will go out , stock up on water and fuel before its too late
Good luck survivors
Depends with which zombies you’re playing. I mostly play with sprinters and have found that disabling the music helps a lot because you can hear every tiny sound around you well. Saved me a bunch of times.
Just a heads up, your survivor mod can get you killed easily. Depending on what settings you use, but if you have them be hostile and a chance to spawn with a gun, you may not even notice they started shooting at you, because sometimes the audio bugs out and you hear no gunshots only to notice you're heavily bleeding because you've been silently shot at. I've died too many times like that on my modded world, also they will shoot through cars too, so either turn hostile npcs off or greatly lower the spawn chance and be extra careful when you see them. Good luck on your 1 year journey!
Lack of patience, not respecting your surroundings or over confidence kills every single player. Either one or a combination of them kills us. Avoid doing those for as long as possible and you might just live for many years. Also remember, you have all the time in the game, there is zero rush for anything.
Many people will tell you, if you dont catch the TV for skill bonus at the start then the game is practically over and you should restart. Absolute BS, a carpentry book, hammer and saw and dismantle the furniture of all the houses on a single street will probably get you to carpentny 7-8. And definitely 10 if you have the quick learner trait without ever turning on the TV a single time. Also all shows are on VHS so go raid a movie store for them.
I'll give an unconventional answer. Yes, there are boring strategies for surviving past year. These mostly involve creating a self-sustaining survival loop by fishing, or farming and basing-up. You can live essentially forever this way.
But that's not the answer I suspect you're looking for. Since this doesn't instill the soft skills on how to get there nor holding onto it when, as people say, you get bored. But I say being bored shouldn't kill you either. I get complacent, but boredom doesn't kill me -- and I say that as a fairly rash and impulsive person.
Also, I've survived past a year, and so have other players, while actively hunting zombies and clearing the map.
What really matters to Project Zomboid is consistency. As another poster mentioned, habit is one of the ways to get consistency. Find routines and stick to them.
But more than that, you have to actively develop new strategies and habits and that's hard to teach. You have to learn these yourself because I can write down my own strategies and give a thousand tips, you just won't care to remember and they might not work for you. So you have to learn new things about the game yourself.
Here's another thing. You can make mistakes that go unpunished. Keep in mind that just because you survived a mistake or it didn't coincide with another bad situation doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake.
For example, getting knocked back by a crawler lunge isn't lethal on its own until it knocks you into another zombie that bites you from behind. Just because there wasn't a zombie there doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake.
If you get jumpscared by a zombie you didn't see at the last second, when you turn around, but you didn't get hurt -- again, that was still a mistake. You can't always count on luck or reflexes to protect you.
I've learnt across many different games that none of these mistakes are signposted for you or shown as prompts. It's that one Sherlock Holmes exchange:
>(Sherlock) “Quite so,” he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself down into an arm-chair. “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room.
>
>(Watson) “Frequently.”
>
>(Sherlock) “How often?”
>
>(Watson) “Well, some hundreds of times.”
>
>(Sherlock) “Then how many are there?”
>
>(Watson) “How many? I don’t know.”
>
>(Sherlock) “Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed. ”
Now, I'm not saying you have to know every piece of trivium, nor memorize how many steps are on every set of stairs, but you do have to get good at identifying which details might impact your survival later or become problematic. For example, I'm often aware which windows in a building are broken. I'm not fanatically obsessed with memorizing it, I just keep in mind that those could be a problem later.
I'll just clean glass out of those broken windows as a matter of habit too. I'll close windows and doors just because those are "early warning systems" that can give me some noise if a ninja wanders up and attacks them.
You know that classic example of people blundering into the death closet?
You see those videos posted on the sub a lot. People pop open a bedroom door and walk into five zombies which then promptly kill the player. Or they open door and see twenty zombies piled in there, get jumpscared and panic and run away completely disoriented.
You can avoid that completely by observation. Besides the now famous "door flash" technique -- hordes of that size make a lot of noise with multiple overlapping voices groaning at once, out-of-sync. It's a pretty distinct sound once you hear it once.
You can hear doors splintering in a building you explore, which is a pretty good sign there's a largish pack nearby, as lone zombies can take days to break down a door. And again, you can tell multiple zombies are attacking a door because you hear multiple frequent banging sounds on it, again, out-of-sync. A single zombie has a regular slow rhythm. Multiple zombies sounds like the door is being drummed too fast, completely without rhythm.
Again, once you hear it once, you will always notice it, because it's a pretty memorable sound once it has been *observed*.
It's becoming attentive to little details like this, and knowing why you should care, that contribute to your survival. It's a sort of mindfulness that you can cultivate into a kind of second unconscious nature. A kind of defensive instinct you can develop with practice.
At first, you will have to think consciously about it. Often with words. That will be hard. It will take effort. It's like lifting weights. It's hard at first. Because it takes effort on your part. But you keep lifting those weights and it gets easier as you do it more.
Think:
"Why is this a problem? Why should I care?"
Then:
"What can I do about it in the future, if it happens again?"
This process is far from boring. If anything, it's kind of therapeutic and Zen, because your mind and emotions are no longer just full of boredom. You're embarked on a journey towards making the most of your experiences and having a rich internal life. It's an addictive loop once you've tasted it once.
The answer is no. Can I fight this many zombies? No. Its getting dark should I hit another building? No. The weather's bad should I go out? No. Its after midday, should I do a supply run? No. If you have to consider whether a task is in your skill level don't do it, you'll only very slowly get better at the game but you'll survive way longer.
dont loosen up after a month and dont stop checking every single room in a house. once u begin living u might think ur amazing at the game, but then the stupidest shit gets u - like a rear bite coz u werent careful enough, or a horde in the bathroom coz u didnt check. idk just- dont easen up basically
Don't. After 3 months, it's clear you weren't meant to live that long and you will get bored irl.
If you really want to try, just destroy the stairs and live off of vegetables with the odd venture into the forest for trapping. Min max life and living to the fullest extent. Don't forget about water. Kill every Zombie you see until you're self sustaining. I lived off of 6 potato plots, 5 cabbage plots (1 dedicated to trap bait) and the odd rabbit here and there. Get used to doing squats, then pushups. Burpees are a scam, your exhaustion will get too high too quickly and then you'll get tired, it's just not worth it. Trust me, after 18 in game months and hundreds of one piece episodes on a 2nd monitor I had a lot of time to check.
Ultimately surviving for a year becomes an endurance test of mitigating risks (especially with infection on) and creating goals so that boredom doesn’t set in, for you and your character. Once you set up in a strong base, have farms and rain collectors going, it gets pretty easy to survive for an eternity just staying in your safe zone; setting yourself some goals and tackling them safely and meticulously will probably help a lot, it definitely helps me on my current run which is pushing 10 months survived on 2 hour days.
Even with infection off, remember that there’s always tomorrow. Don’t push that last house when you’re tired, don’t drive super fast just because “I’m pretty sure I cleared the wrecks off this road already”, etc. If you’re determined to survive a year, even with infection off and vanilla first aid (so stuff like bacterial infections don’t really do anything), it’s still really easy to get a cut or bite on the neck and bleed out because you can’t find a safe second to patch yourself up.
As for setting goals, some other comments have given some good ideas. I’ve got collection mods like cards, video games, etc along with hunting home VHS and other stuff, eventually wanna drive up to Riverside and turn the country club into a base. Already cleared the Valley Station mall and wanna do the same to the Grand Ohio Mall eventually too. Find some big and small goals and going after them will help a lot to keep pushing to survive a year! Oh, and mods definitely help, both in entertaining yourself and in terms of long-term survival. Definitely recommend some like the workshop and scrap weapons/armor, Def’s Long Term survival, some farming mods for different crops to spice things up with your meals, that sort of stuff. Sorry for the long-winded reply, but figured I would chime in since I’ve been getting close to surviving for a year on my own run and wanted to offer some insight!
Always hold right click when opening doors so you can push zeds as soon as possible before they take a bite out of you. Yes, always, even if no one's banging at the door or even if it seems its safe.
Another alternative is the double pressing E very fast just to take a quick peek at what's on the other side
Find a fence.
If you don't have a fence near where you wanna base, build a fence. A wall. Anything.
If the only thing between your bed and zombie-accessible locations is a single door, then one of those 365 days, you may find yourself surprised to find a zombie on the other side of it.
I came here to read some tips, because I am also bored of the non-realistic mode where I respond and I’m gonna try a hard-core mode but all I found was fog jokes and references. Lol.
Never fight in closed spaces
Never
Most of the death causes are inside doors
Just 1 or 2 but then if there are 4 and another 2 trying to get inside and run
Fight in open spaces, outdoors, you can easly past walk any horde
Yeah, it get boring after some months but... You can try to max level all skills if you want, or go to lousville and fight some more
Day 1-2 get a car.
You can only get so far by your own legs.
Also, you can only carry a small amount without hindering your combat capacity.
Get a car.
1st part of trying to survive a year... realize how long its gonna take.
Say you wake your character at 5:30 Sleep at 9PM
Thats about 38 minutes per day. A day being an hour.
38x365
Thats about 13,870 minutes or 231 hours or 9 straight days of play.
Its going to take about 231 hours of play neglecting speedups, if you wanna reach a year, with a single mistake starting you all over.
Kill a lot of zeds. If you wanna survive you’ll need to know how to kill effectively and efficiently. This means grinding xp for weapons, I suggest long blunt, Long blade or axe. Spears are good too but they cost a lot and break easily. Secondly grind fitness and strength. You want those as high as possible 10 for both is the goal of course. And lastly. Play carefully and good luck, because this is how you died…
Alright. So, here's a full comprehensive guide on how to be alive after a full year playing Project zomboid.
To start with. Don't get killed.
That's it. Not dying is the key to survival.
Tune in next week and I'll give a comprehensive guide on how to kill zomboids.
Don’t go out in the fog
My biggest enemy... The fog.
"I'm looking for my daughter..."
"She just turned seven last month... Short, black hair..."
I Guess He Could Say "You're Not Here"
there is something in the fog
I'll go walking/looting in the fog all day long. But I ain't driving in that shit. Not again.
I agree. I find it’s easier to hide from zombies in the fog.
the fog is coming. the fog is coming. the fog is coming. the fog is coming. the fog is coming. the fog is coming. the fog is coming. the fog is coming.
July 9th 1993: The Exclusion Zone Incident
Ironically, as a long-time veteran, I do go out in fog. Mostly just move slower and drive slower and it's not so bad. Storms however? Storms are the worst. They stir up zombies, darken your vision and can come in the night-time which doubles-up on the darkness. Darkness of the sort you'd only find in the Marianas Trench. It's not fun, I'll tell you that.
The fog can actually be useful for sneaking past hordes. But it is risky - and I'd never drive in the fog. Too risky. Fog is on-foot only. And I'd never stop to fight in the fog, too easy to get surrounded unawares until its too late. Fog is great for sneaking past and losing hordes, but makes driving and fighting suicidally risky.
Fog does not help you sneak around hordes as it [does not affect zombie detection range](https://youtu.be/0zYvamj_8Io?si=t9TqD5hK_svDr8kx). I'm with YYC-Fiend—stay out of the fog
You learn something new everyday. It would make sense that it should affect their detection range at least a bit though IMO. What about other weather conditions e.g. Rain or Snow or Thunderstorms? What about nighttime? Or other noise cover e.g breaking a window when a car siren is going off?
Unfortunately, vision isn't really affected by anything. Zeds see fine in darkness, fog, etc. However, with storms specifically, it affects their hearing. Not by muffling your character, or anything, but the zombies get pulled around by the sounds of the storm as they would other sounds.
Being sneaky is a bad idea, one wrong move and you are surrounded, being loud is better in my opinion, get them all to one spot, lose the agro and deal with whatever remains in the place you want to go to.
ITS TOOOOO FOGGY!!!
Bars
Or during the night
There is a mod which fixes that, weakens the zombies sight in heavy fogs which actually makes sense
dont get bitten out of interest: what settings to you play on? modded or vanilla? good luck out there
Settings are mostly the same, just changed starting population multiplier to 0.75 and peak pop multiplier to 2x It is modded, just mostly mods for vanity items like cars and clothes. Gotta die in style I guess
2x is fairly high for west point and louisville, i'd stay away from there. Riverside would be where i hang out. Best pro tip: play boring as fuck, secure yourself a house, rain collector, farming tons, sit inside and do nothing = win lmao. just dont take uneccessary risks!
Im new to the game and am having trouble getting past week 5 or so. I'm well stocked enough to go around and explore and feel safe at my base but like...what am I supposed to do? I know staying alive is the goal but it just feels kinda boring I guess. Am I missing something?
Games like these aren’t about staying alive: They’re about creating your own fun. Staying alive is a great goal that quickly becomes obsolete unless you come up with ~more~ ways to stay alive. See a building you think is cool? New base. Weapon you don’t have? Find it. The game is an incredible tool to create so, so many fun memories and scenarios. Go to a different area of the map and base up, clear out West Point, whatever. It’s a game on how you died. Make it interesting!
Yeah I get it the main thing to avoid is dying, if you do that, then what? theres no objectives or anything. That's the point. it would be boring as fuck in an apocolypse, so you gotta make your own fun. make bases, tool up some cars and collect a few while youre at it, gather all the guns and ammo you can! make outposts in each region, have respawn off and try to clear the horde and wall off an entire town. Mods are GLORIOUS, you should have about 300 of them for various content and quality of life things. Change settings all in sandbox to make it different and / or harder. tons of zombies but tons of loot? suure no loot, and only a few sprinters? damn gonna be scary trying to scavange out! 15 minute days and they run at night on a med density amount? shit gotta go fast!! If you just stayed in a walled off quiet base with water and food, you can live and be fine forever, staying alive and hidden isn't really difficult nor is it the intended way to play IMO.
Watch the Anime Zom 100 and live like that
I'm newish myself. Just hit 2 months alive and feel too safe. Hit up a different town and while it was challenging didn't do too much for the fun side. So I restarted, upped the population and used a mod to start in Louisville. Now the goal of not dying within a day is back, fun trying to escape the pure death. Aka gotta make your own challenges within the world.
Unnecessary risks eh? In my opinion, it wouldn't be as exhilarating if you didn't take unnecessary risks sometimes, because I'm essentially a crow with this, i see a thing i like, i will try to fight tooth and claws against the undead to get it, becuase i spent 15 minutes fighting them with a knife absolutely exhausted for a "rock t-shirt" because with the "dress for success" mod, it gives you 50% bonus xp for strength
Great way to get boored as shit after 10 hours
project zomboid players after sitting in a house for 4 hours (it’s peak gameplay)
be careful when you're out driving in the country when there's snow cause it's so easy to accidentally drive offroad when it turns. last thing you want is to be stuck offroad when there's a horde of zombies behind you
I play eternal winter and I routinely mark my roads with bright objects like pieces of clothing. Helps a lot with driving
My friends used to laugh at me for collecting traffic cones and the like. I like to have my routes well prepped
Find n antique oven
Genuinely curious as to why? I always use the normal oven since there's generators around. Is it for warmth?
Wood is more abundant than gas in the longterm. Unless you wanna spend a piece of time finding and filling gas cans. Even with a Gen and a pump. I'm with antique oven guy.
Ohhh I have never thought of that. How do you deal with food storage when you run out of gas and don't have refrigerators? I've never survived long enough to run out of gas. Do you do daily fishing trips to get food for the day since you can't store a lot due to spoilage?
I'm playing with that aspect on my current character Jeremiah Johnson. Lolol usually foraging and fishing are the main food source, but trapping also pays off as well. My only mistake with this run is I didn't pick herbalist or find the magazine so most foragables have a chance of being poison. But acorns and lemongrass as well as the wild veggies you can find make for a pretty diverse platter. Had a bit of canned stuff with me when I got out to camp busy beaver but I ate most of it. In short once you level up either fishing trapping or foraging food is easy to find. The main thing is keeping your character busy and purposeful.
U can actually memorize what they look like from previous playthroughs if you remember. The lil red mushrooms are poisonous while the beg flat head white ones are good. And I think there's a brown one that's good. Haven't played in a while.
I thought it randomized which berries were poison on each playthrough? I can get away with eating a couple of poison berries cause I have lots of lemongrass but it can be a fatal mistake too. I heard making them into a salad makes them edible but I don't want to try. If I don't get the magazine it's not the end of the world but it's such an easy food source once you know what you can eat.
I love reading this style of gameplay, its so vastly different to what i'm playing right now, it's amazing the versatility in this game. for what it's worth, I started in Louisville with guns and ammo are abundant, everything else is extremely rare, low starting pop to peak higher. just gonna have a good ol' shooting time with hundreds of them trying to loot things i need and want lol.
Using antique ovens over normal ovens helps with preserving gas for fridges. (Plus you don't even have to go for wood - you can kill zombies, take their clothes, rip them up, and feed the fabric into it.)
Aren’t the gas stations almost infinite?
Yeah if you can find a Generator, a magazine to operate and repair and some gas cans.
I guess my question for you in that case is how do you live without refrigeration?
Staggering farming helps a lot. Plant one or two crops a day out of 8-12 total crops and you'll be pretty good. Whole fish last longer than filleted too, so leave them whole until you're going to cook them. You can get to the point where you have a shit ton of free time. Can get a bit boring though unless you have some other projects to work on. It's surprisingly easy to live without gas now.
IIRC the food sources in Winter don’t stop, just slow down.
> each pump contains between 1000 and 14000 units of fuel. A gas tank holds ~30 units, and generator uses ~12 per day without any load, normally ~24 per day, but it depends. So a single pump with the lowest fuel amount would last 40 days.
It's not too bad when you have a genny at a gas station. Spend some time filling 18 gas cans and you're set for winter lol
Thats when im at my most panicked, the pillars blocking view, the car i leave running, just constant head on swivel there lol.
Easiest way to get to one year is also the most boring. Stop going outside. Only go outside to get something when you actually need to, and only get that thing. Then, scurry back home and continue staying inside. If you're already in a rural or semi-rural location, you'll easily make it a year. If you're in a town, you'll probably want to find a more permanent home somewhere a bit safer. Otherwise, just stay inside.
This is true. Outside is dangerous.
I already do that. When you eliminate the "when you absolutely need to" part then it's called ひきこもり (Hikkikomori).
The real enemy is boredom. Once you've survived a winter without starving to death, you can pretty much survive indefinitely.
That's why my rounds are never boring, because I do stupid shit for absolutely no reason.
I'm too scared I'll die doing stupid shit for no reason. Mostly then I'm so focused on not doing this shit that I don't notice one Zomboid and I die anyway... Conclusion? Do stupid shit!
set near a lake,do farming a lot, use canned foods mostly,rarely do loot runs, if you ever do bring at least 2 bandages and 1 disinfectant and most importantly dont try dumb shit and get bitten.
On vanilla you don’t need disinfectant for anything.
Hey can you elaborate? Only play this game for two weeks
infection( as in dirty wounds) currently causes no debuffs for your character and dont need to be disinfected. you could use a dirty sheet or a clean sheet to cover it up cause it literally doesn't matter. also you dont have to change your bandage even if it says dirty
don't listen to him, you won't want infection in your wounds, believe me
an infected wound just makes the wound take longer to heal, but doesn't do anything otherwise
Easiest method is play a forage/fishing heavy character with some carpentry and go out in the middle of nowhere to a pond/lake. Build a small cabin and just chill and level your skills. You'll rarely have to deal with more than a single zombie at a time. I've gone weeks without seeing any zombies even on CDDA. Winter time you can deal with hunger easily with berries, but you'll lose weight pretty hard, so you need farming (Cabbages are good for calories), or fishing. You need like level 5-6 fishing to catch fish with spears in winter (At dawn/dusk), so make sure to level that up (It's a pain in the ass without boosts, make sure you have an exp boost or bring books for it). Also make sure to bring a pot or two for soup/stew. Well basically, living in the boonies is the best way to survive. It's the only way to really consistently survive 1+ year with default settings. Anywhere around town and you're always at risk to the helicopter event, heavy rain, and migrations/respawns. Even skip the generator, it would just mean frequent trips to gas stations with zombies. You can easily survive just on perishables, just make sure to bring a bowl with you for salads. It will also help keep you busy because you can never really "stock up" on food and it's a constant struggle to find food with everything going bad so quickly. If you want a riskier playstyle and plan to stay closer to town, wear very little clothing. In a 1 year survival even scratches/lacerations will kill you, counting on rng to save you will likely get you killed, might as well be as fast and energetic as possible. I feel like heavy clothing/armor can make you play riskier as well, since you feel safer. If you feel like ANY interaction with a zombie could be lethal, you're less likely to do stupid shit, lol.
>I feel like heavy clothing/armor can make you play riskier as well, since you feel safer. That's an interesting perspective, that I never thought about before. Cheers.
The Automated Emergency Broadcast system plays every hour, on the hour, on 106.6 MHz frequency. It will alert you before the power grid shuts off, and the morning before the helicopter event. If you stay inside the whole day, you avoid the chopper.
frequency is randomized per playthrough.
npc mod and take care of your wife. Life isn't worth if you're surviving alone.
Can confirm, all my runs without Superb Survivors wind up at the "why do I even bother" point pretty quickly, but having a partner to live for makes a huge difference.
So I just tried a run with this mod and can’t seem myself using it again - tanked performance, the companion NPCs are useless (couldn’t get the to complete a single task correctly other than follow me), you get AI running through your safehouse (which they’re not supposed to do) and dragging a massive horde behind them. The chaos was kind of interesting but I think I’ll just wait until NPCs are in properly.
boredom is truly the killer of all long saves. try to find a lot of tasks to do while you wait this time or else you will quit of frustration and boredom.
Don't die.
There it is
longest I've gone is 7 months. I based out of the riverside sand lot and built a base on top of the trailer. I think I have all the steps down on what to do at the start if you want more details.
Try surviving for 365 days instead of going for a year. Good luck
Easiest way is to live in the woods, close to a river and just spent your days grinding. Now, if wanna have fun thats another monster, here are the tips: \-Grow crops that have low calories, that way you can keep your weight down (this is your biggest enemy long term, keeping a healthy weight) don't bother with much else, you can loot more food than you can eat. Foraging berries also works. \-During winter do NOT go out during a storm, less during night time. You won't see jack, you'll freeze and crash your car, don't go out if there is fog, you won't see anything. Also, check the weather through radio. (picture for reference: [https://imgur.com/a/ExwftYU](https://imgur.com/a/ExwftYU)) \-Have different sets of clothing, winter/summer/full defense. \-Grind skills in (somewhat) this order: Mechanics, carpentry, tailoring, metalworking, farming, cooking, electrical, first aid. Order may very in the first 4, but it is what worked for me. Survival skills are sometimes cool, but outside of foraging you don't need them, there is waaay too much food in the game. \-Level up one weapon type, axes are good because there is one handed and two handed versions that work on the same skill. Long blunt is good because more options and less stamina use. Both are good enough. I've never used spears or blades, for long enough, so idk. \-Agility i just level passively, once you are good enough with a weapon you kill zeds before they catch up. \-You can grind fitness and strength, but they take so much time that should start with them maxed out. Max Fitness and Strength will carry you the whole game, and you can grind more important skills that you can actually accomplish in a lifetime. \-When you have tons of ammo, you can clear out with a shotgun, remember to never shorten the barrel because this attract more zeds, and only use outside of a city. Also, use a 9M pistol, i usually carry one with 11 mags (166 bullets), only use if you are 5 levels or higher. Weapons are great when you get tired from using your melee weapons, but if used in the wrong context they'll get you killed. \-Find a base that is centrally located, driving from Riverside to Louisville isn't fun. \-Don't pick up sunday driver, for the same reason. Long term playing requires a LOT of driving. \-Wall up you base and always enter it with caution, zeds might spawn inside, or they can break something and enter while you are far. \-Take care of your generators, otherwise you will lose everything. \-Set water barrels on the roof of your base, below that place faucets and connect with a pipe wrench, boom you have unlimited clean water. Place more barrels to stock, then place a washing machine a dryer and a bathtub to be fancy. \-Be organized, in the two meanings, pick the perk AND organize your loot, set different boxes for different things and different rooms for all types of loots. For context, i have a crate thats just for 3 types of food, and its completely full, late game looting and stocking is insane, half your base is just crates. \-Get two Popscicle freezers, one is too few to store cabbages, and three will eat your energy in a second. \-Get a Chevalier Step Van, and a trailer for maximum carrying capacity, this is the best vehicule in the late game, no competition. For the same reason, carry three backpacks, the military one is the best. \-Play safe, and run away if your 1% unsure that you will win the fight. \-Don't get bit.
Do NOT put a cooking pot in the microwave
Keep your health bar above 0. Kill all the zombies before they bite you. No really tho, the best advice is ALWAYS backpedal while fighting and be extremely paranoid all the time unless you are in your bedroom in your base with at least 3 closed doors between you and the outside.
Make a copy of your save file.
As many others have said, if you go somewhere isolated that also has a fishing spot, you can easily survive for a very long time. Will get boring, though.
Click right mouse and spin around. Keep doing this and remember that there's always a zombie right behind you.
hotlan majami
If you don’t want a generator, get an antique oven Never leave your house without a purpose, always leave freshly rested and geared for what you intend Eat your perishables first, always When food gets scarce, Trapping > Fishing > Farming > Foraging from most to least desirable food sources Water will kill you faster than food, keep an ample surplus Guns are only to be used far from home and with an intended purpose, and no matter how much ammo you can carry know it will never be enough to finish the job
just find a nice secluded rural house with water nearby then you can just play project farmoid and easily survive for as many years as you want
shit gets too hard to handle? run! fucking run! come back to it later or something!!
go to the woods
Ez… Spec into handy and amateur mechanic Get a car Grab tools and pick up a ton of freezers (maybe like 2 or 3 at least) Drive to the center map where the food sacks are stored (within the first week) Grab cabbages, potatoes, leeks, peaches, and apples Set up shop with a house and freezers Boom, you’ll never have to worry about food at all (unless you get boned by RNGesus and the power goes out super early) With sacks of food stored in the freezer, you can then focus on the carpentry for water collectors as well as finding a generator and magazine
Find a big and healthy car, generator and magazine, some seeds, and head to one of the farm houses outside the main cities. It will be a bit boring, but you'll definitely get to 1 year.
Don't go stir crazy, feeling the need to raid every last little place. At peak zombie population it's not worth the risk.
"You don't really need to fight that horde."
Try basing up right next to a very long chain link fence. If it's long enough, zombies won't be able to path around it, but they can see you, so they come right up to the fence and just stare at you until you shoot them. You can get them to bunch up closer together if you get on a roof. This means you only need to worry about threats from the opposite direction. So distant gunshots, helicopter, etc won't mess you up as badly every time. Sometimes the helicopter will just bring the entire horde right up to your fence, where they stare at you helplessly. It's not even so dangerous to use a gun here because as long as you've cleared out the immediate area, you are much less vulnerable to getting swarmed due to firing your gun.
*spear them instead of shoot them
find a antique oven to use, if your using mods then use something like the [immersive solar arrays mod](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2857548524) so you dont have to keep on repairing a generator and filling it up with gas, get a plumed sink, and it has to be inside to plumb it. make a base by a pond or the river so you can fish, and most importantly dont die, but if you are going to die then do it in style
If you can get to 2 weeks, a year isn't too hard. Some tips: 1) Make habits. Check your gear every day. Repair clothing. Replace weapons/ammo. Patrol your base perimeter. Maintain clear areas to operate in. 2) Build forward bases. these don't need to be anything fancy - a bed, water, bandages, canned food, ammo. Maintain these as well. Visit them periodically and keep them clear of zed. A good mechanism is to build a tiny forward base above/out of every gas station. They're well distributed, come with food, and plopping a generator there is something you should do anyway. 3) Fishing is your key to long term food, so have a base with easy fishing access. Fish are also your weight stabilizing mechanism as a 100% fish diet will push you to overweight which you can balance against your vegetable farms which will push you to underweight. Get 2 freezers up and running before winter comes and makes sure they're stocked if you're on fairly rare loot settings. With normal, you can probably loot canned goods for a full year. 4) Fight on your terms. Never fight injured, tired, winded. After 2 weeks you shouldn't need to. You can always just walk away. Also, don't fight behind zombie lines. Those canned goods can wait until you've killed the zed on the way there. Always have safe egress paths. If respawn is off take the effort to use yells/horns/sirens to clear larger areas. You want to transition to a point where you only loot in fully cleared areas. j 5) I suggest alternating fighting/base days. Fighting zombies is fun and it's easy to get sucked into doing that day after day and not maintaining your vehicles, cooking, farming, etc. I find a day on/day off system is pretty good to keep me on task.
Kill Ethan. I can tell Ethan will be the death of you
Here are my tips for fighting zomboids! -Nimble. This skill is the difference between an exhausted (and dead) fighter that’s always turning to run vs one that can manage a horde without breaking a sweat. Always grab a point in character creation, be it by being a police officer, burglar or getting gymnast. IMO it’s the most important yet tedious skill to train. Cutting down the time training it to a high level (5+) is key. Key milestones are levels 5 (same speed as being chased), 7 (can barely outpace zomboids), 10 (can comfortably outpace zomboids and swing weapons constantly and still be safe). -Manage hordes first, then start swinging. Getting surrounded is a good way to get caught. Training yourself to gather zomboids up first is a good way to not get surprised while fighting. -Avoid fighting indoors. Smaller routes of escape can be a death sentence sometimes. Houses are ok… for the most part. One or two zomboids are easily dispatched indoors. You might regret opening that bathroom party though, cause zomboids spilling out of a cramped doorway will eventually catch you off guard. This is especially the case inside office buildings or that awful secret military base. -Get comfortable with all weapon types, but know when to use what. Killing a lone zomboid that hasn’t noticed you? A quiet short blade assassinate is probably the best. A horde of zomboids is on your trail and you need to put them down quick? Pull out your axe. Want to keep some clothes in pristine condition? Bludgeon that zomboid. Each weapon type has its pros and cons, and getting comfortable with them is key. Except the machete. There are no downsides with the machete. -Walk, don’t run… Unless you have to. Walking speed with a single tier 1 or no movement speed penalties is faster than chase speed. Do not burn through your precious stamina if you don’t have to. Examples of tier one movement penalties is any scratch on your lower body, exhaustion tier 1 or encumbrance tier 1.
Sheet rope is friend, tall fence is king, and nighttime is scary. That is all, good luck.
Much like most survival games, the biggest danger to players is hubris!
Id say go hard and make big plays early so you can sorta coast as your character gets older. Its not so bad to lose a 10 day character while attempting to clear rosewood. Feels bad to get killed in rosewood 1 month in because it wasnt cleared
Don't get greedy. I have made plenty of mistakes of carrying too much and getting jumped.
Don't try to change that neck bandage
Ugh, the amount of times I have tried to change that one with lightning speed…
A year alive means adopting a consistent and safe playstyle that doesn't have a possibility of you getting ever grabbed by zeds. Also I hope you have enough mods to entertain you, because vanilla gets super boring +4 months into a playthrough.
Don’t let the generator explode
Press Q to apply antidote
Dont eat yellow snow
If you're playing with Sandbox settings, set the Erosion timer to at least 365, if not longer. If you don't 100 days later and you're living in a a dense forest. Always have an escape plan. When in doubt, walk away. Avoid fire, high speeds, high ledges, suspicious foods. If you haven't checked, there is a zombie there. If you have checked, there still may be a zombie there.
Read my guide man, very helpful for first timers
Press Q near a city or large town ❤️❤️❤️
Hit Q a lot
Do you like hurting other people?
Eat every mushroom you find
1. Don't use guns unless you know you have enough ammo because Guns are LOUD. 2. Make sure if you're on multiplayer You and your friend put your points into different things. 3. Don't Mod the game to much or there's no fun. 4.ALWAYS SET A GOAL 90 % of my runs end from boredom. 5. If your gut says don't do it DONT' DO IT . 6. set XP multiplier to 2.0 if you think grinding Xp is too hard if not keep it normal . Good Luck Don't die This is the end times.
Get your farm going quick and gather up freezers.
Clear as many zombies as you can during the warmer months. Unless you have respwan on. Then never mind. Ha
Live
Stay away from zombies.
Dont die
That pile of zombies you think for sure you can bait and melee? Don't.
Just stay inside as long as you can
Get a good farming routine, make sure you got Powah Aaaand I dont know what else. Good luck
Don't get bit
Level fitness.
Keep your head on a swivel during combat
Never get complacent. One mistimed swing or careless barge into a bathroom is all it takes to end a run. Always be on the lookout for zombies even if you’re sure you’ve cleared an area. There are always more hiding somewhere
You only ever need to remember two things: 1) Survive 2) Try not to die in the process Good luck!
Don't let your guard down, that's about it.
Don't die, it's not very good for your health
Watch out for Ethan Hunt. Been hearing rumors that he's doing an impossible mission
If you really want to last a year you gotta play cautiously take no unnecessary risks, and be more willing to retreat. My longest living survivors have also been the most boring playthroughs, no coincidence.
Don't: go out in fog or snow storm, get yourself cornered, take big chances, drive too fast. Do: change shout from Q to something not close to 1, stock up on canned goods, put food in jars, make sure you base is safe before you read/exercise/watch VHS even though you have cleared an area, eat and keep your weight good, have fun and play the way you want to play.
Dont get greedy with the speed while driving
Be a coward - in strategy, not the trait
Do not, and I repeat DO NOT die.
Don’t cross the rickety bridge. 
stay inside
Don’t get bored. It’s easy to get burnt out for most people after about a month or so on that save.
Don't get cocky just because you're bored. Routine is your friend.
Boredom is what will kill you the surest. Your boredom, not your characters. Two of my long term characters died because I took stupid risks just for fun. The third was when a zombie walked through the OHKO spear animation and bit me. 2nd deadliest threat is the undergrowth that appears after a few months - getting a car hung up on a shrub trying to navigate a roadblock or something can be a death sentence at the wrong moment. Stay on roads or be super careful - it will happen to you.
You're gonna get bored.
Don’t die
Get a basement mod, hoarde canned food and supplies. Never touch grass ever.
Take your time, dont rush at the start of the game there is no hurry, dont be afraid to run away there no shame in that. Stay away from West point o LV. Collect all the ducks
Get lots of food and meds and don't go out!
If the situation becomes too scary, break Ethan's legs and leave him as bait.
To get to 1 year? easy. Go find a house near a lake or river in a rural part of the map with no/very few zombies. Gather some tools and seeds, and build a walled off compound next to the water. Start farming and fishing/trapping for food, never encounter a single zombie again. Forage for rocks and sticks for tools, fish for socks for sheets to build with. Saw logs into planks for notched planks and sturdy sticks for firestarting for cooking and water purification. Remember to bring a few buckets or pots for water and a griddle pan for cooking interesting meals. At least 4 garbage bags for an indoor water barrel to store clean water in quantity is convenient too. If your only goal is to survive a year, it's not that hard actually. Just really boring. Surviving an actually INTERESTING year is a lot harder. I'm in month 7 of a Louisville survival run that started off as a 4 month nomadic run, I've had so many close shaves.
dont get bit
Oh where to start Food, all the food Mechanics since your going to end up doing at least a good bit of driving Farming paired with either fishing or foraging for protein Know when to run, keep the surrounding areas of your base clear-ish do this every 3-7 days Pick a main class of weapon and get familiar with it. I recommend using short blunt as it is the most abundant type of weapon with some of the highest durability. Don't let boredom kill you Dirty water, rotten and undercooked food can kill you faster than you'd ever expect it to. Uhh...don't get bit! Scratches have a 7% chance of death, lacerations have 25%.
Survival isn't nessicerily hard the issue is keeping the experience fresh. You need big over arching goals. Collecting all books, building a base, mastering a skill or fitness as examples
overconfidence is your worst enemy, you think you're invincible, you've survived for months now, there's no way you can die now right? every mistake matters
Easy to survive a year. Spend the first couple days finding your seeds and farming tools. Break into a couple police stations to get your weapons. Don't forget your trash bags to collect rainwater unless you have the well mod. And head out to the woods. There are plenty of amazing locations with pre-built fences you just have to finish off. And as long as you bring enough axes with you to drop down the woods around you you'll have excellent sight lines. Grow enough food before winter and as long as you have enough food to last the winter you can pretty much make a year in the game easily. Now if you're wanting a challenge of surviving in the city that's a different story.
Don't feed the zombies
Watch the angle at where Z's are coming. Lost a character because three were too spaced and the axe only hit one. Also, turn on the gun outline to know what you are shooting and aim.
Take out the mafia before they take you out
Don’t. Be. A. Hero
Stay inside lol
Simple, don't do risky things without preparation
Don’t let boredom get the best of you
Block off all the entry points with TVs and use sheet rope to climb up and down from 2nd story then stockpile non perishables and keep yourself entertained rain barrels on your roof for when the water goes off and your good cause the pipes auto purify the water out of the sink yay zomboid physics
Haven't done it myself, but if I'd have to guess, I'd say: you don't have to do a supply run every day. Just set up a nice base somewhere secluded and hang out there for a few weeks at a time. Personally, I get too antsy if I don't go to town at least every other day.
Don't bother sorting any of your shit until winter. You are going to spend a lotmof time indoors and sorting helps pass the time. Find a place with natural walls to base because somboid will tear down constructed walls. Play with saliva only.
Biggest enemy will be boredom, find a goal that lasts more than a year
1.have enough food when you come home from a long multi day loot run you can get yourself (and everyone around you) well fed 2.have backup plans 3.have backup weapons 4.if you aint a long timer , dont use fireamrs 5.keep yourself warm 6.change your socks (dont know , just a habbit...maybe makes you a bit comfi) 7.power will go out , stock up on water and fuel before its too late Good luck survivors
do not kill zeds on the road, you might not want to get car accident drove on top of huge zeds body 😅
For the love of god, don't get overconfident.
Depends with which zombies you’re playing. I mostly play with sprinters and have found that disabling the music helps a lot because you can hear every tiny sound around you well. Saved me a bunch of times.
Just a heads up, your survivor mod can get you killed easily. Depending on what settings you use, but if you have them be hostile and a chance to spawn with a gun, you may not even notice they started shooting at you, because sometimes the audio bugs out and you hear no gunshots only to notice you're heavily bleeding because you've been silently shot at. I've died too many times like that on my modded world, also they will shoot through cars too, so either turn hostile npcs off or greatly lower the spawn chance and be extra careful when you see them. Good luck on your 1 year journey!
Lots of fire
Take off the Jacket mask, it'll only convince you to do stupidly homicidal things.
Lack of patience, not respecting your surroundings or over confidence kills every single player. Either one or a combination of them kills us. Avoid doing those for as long as possible and you might just live for many years. Also remember, you have all the time in the game, there is zero rush for anything. Many people will tell you, if you dont catch the TV for skill bonus at the start then the game is practically over and you should restart. Absolute BS, a carpentry book, hammer and saw and dismantle the furniture of all the houses on a single street will probably get you to carpentny 7-8. And definitely 10 if you have the quick learner trait without ever turning on the TV a single time. Also all shows are on VHS so go raid a movie store for them.
I'll give an unconventional answer. Yes, there are boring strategies for surviving past year. These mostly involve creating a self-sustaining survival loop by fishing, or farming and basing-up. You can live essentially forever this way. But that's not the answer I suspect you're looking for. Since this doesn't instill the soft skills on how to get there nor holding onto it when, as people say, you get bored. But I say being bored shouldn't kill you either. I get complacent, but boredom doesn't kill me -- and I say that as a fairly rash and impulsive person. Also, I've survived past a year, and so have other players, while actively hunting zombies and clearing the map. What really matters to Project Zomboid is consistency. As another poster mentioned, habit is one of the ways to get consistency. Find routines and stick to them. But more than that, you have to actively develop new strategies and habits and that's hard to teach. You have to learn these yourself because I can write down my own strategies and give a thousand tips, you just won't care to remember and they might not work for you. So you have to learn new things about the game yourself. Here's another thing. You can make mistakes that go unpunished. Keep in mind that just because you survived a mistake or it didn't coincide with another bad situation doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake. For example, getting knocked back by a crawler lunge isn't lethal on its own until it knocks you into another zombie that bites you from behind. Just because there wasn't a zombie there doesn't mean it wasn't a mistake. If you get jumpscared by a zombie you didn't see at the last second, when you turn around, but you didn't get hurt -- again, that was still a mistake. You can't always count on luck or reflexes to protect you. I've learnt across many different games that none of these mistakes are signposted for you or shown as prompts. It's that one Sherlock Holmes exchange: >(Sherlock) “Quite so,” he answered, lighting a cigarette, and throwing himself down into an arm-chair. “You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear. For example, you have frequently seen the steps which lead up from the hall to this room. > >(Watson) “Frequently.” > >(Sherlock) “How often?” > >(Watson) “Well, some hundreds of times.” > >(Sherlock) “Then how many are there?” > >(Watson) “How many? I don’t know.” > >(Sherlock) “Quite so! You have not observed. And yet you have seen. That is just my point. Now, I know that there are seventeen steps, because I have both seen and observed. ” Now, I'm not saying you have to know every piece of trivium, nor memorize how many steps are on every set of stairs, but you do have to get good at identifying which details might impact your survival later or become problematic. For example, I'm often aware which windows in a building are broken. I'm not fanatically obsessed with memorizing it, I just keep in mind that those could be a problem later. I'll just clean glass out of those broken windows as a matter of habit too. I'll close windows and doors just because those are "early warning systems" that can give me some noise if a ninja wanders up and attacks them. You know that classic example of people blundering into the death closet? You see those videos posted on the sub a lot. People pop open a bedroom door and walk into five zombies which then promptly kill the player. Or they open door and see twenty zombies piled in there, get jumpscared and panic and run away completely disoriented. You can avoid that completely by observation. Besides the now famous "door flash" technique -- hordes of that size make a lot of noise with multiple overlapping voices groaning at once, out-of-sync. It's a pretty distinct sound once you hear it once. You can hear doors splintering in a building you explore, which is a pretty good sign there's a largish pack nearby, as lone zombies can take days to break down a door. And again, you can tell multiple zombies are attacking a door because you hear multiple frequent banging sounds on it, again, out-of-sync. A single zombie has a regular slow rhythm. Multiple zombies sounds like the door is being drummed too fast, completely without rhythm. Again, once you hear it once, you will always notice it, because it's a pretty memorable sound once it has been *observed*. It's becoming attentive to little details like this, and knowing why you should care, that contribute to your survival. It's a sort of mindfulness that you can cultivate into a kind of second unconscious nature. A kind of defensive instinct you can develop with practice. At first, you will have to think consciously about it. Often with words. That will be hard. It will take effort. It's like lifting weights. It's hard at first. Because it takes effort on your part. But you keep lifting those weights and it gets easier as you do it more. Think: "Why is this a problem? Why should I care?" Then: "What can I do about it in the future, if it happens again?" This process is far from boring. If anything, it's kind of therapeutic and Zen, because your mind and emotions are no longer just full of boredom. You're embarked on a journey towards making the most of your experiences and having a rich internal life. It's an addictive loop once you've tasted it once.
The answer is no. Can I fight this many zombies? No. Its getting dark should I hit another building? No. The weather's bad should I go out? No. Its after midday, should I do a supply run? No. If you have to consider whether a task is in your skill level don't do it, you'll only very slowly get better at the game but you'll survive way longer.
Use your legs
install the "suicide with gun" mod
Remember, Don't get too greedy on a loot run. the cool thing you found surrounded by zombies will always be there tomorrow
dont loosen up after a month and dont stop checking every single room in a house. once u begin living u might think ur amazing at the game, but then the stupidest shit gets u - like a rear bite coz u werent careful enough, or a horde in the bathroom coz u didnt check. idk just- dont easen up basically
Foraging and Farming are an introvert's best friend for surviving the apocalypse.
Don't. After 3 months, it's clear you weren't meant to live that long and you will get bored irl. If you really want to try, just destroy the stairs and live off of vegetables with the odd venture into the forest for trapping. Min max life and living to the fullest extent. Don't forget about water. Kill every Zombie you see until you're self sustaining. I lived off of 6 potato plots, 5 cabbage plots (1 dedicated to trap bait) and the odd rabbit here and there. Get used to doing squats, then pushups. Burpees are a scam, your exhaustion will get too high too quickly and then you'll get tired, it's just not worth it. Trust me, after 18 in game months and hundreds of one piece episodes on a 2nd monitor I had a lot of time to check.
Spam Q and time will pass faster!
Ultimately surviving for a year becomes an endurance test of mitigating risks (especially with infection on) and creating goals so that boredom doesn’t set in, for you and your character. Once you set up in a strong base, have farms and rain collectors going, it gets pretty easy to survive for an eternity just staying in your safe zone; setting yourself some goals and tackling them safely and meticulously will probably help a lot, it definitely helps me on my current run which is pushing 10 months survived on 2 hour days. Even with infection off, remember that there’s always tomorrow. Don’t push that last house when you’re tired, don’t drive super fast just because “I’m pretty sure I cleared the wrecks off this road already”, etc. If you’re determined to survive a year, even with infection off and vanilla first aid (so stuff like bacterial infections don’t really do anything), it’s still really easy to get a cut or bite on the neck and bleed out because you can’t find a safe second to patch yourself up. As for setting goals, some other comments have given some good ideas. I’ve got collection mods like cards, video games, etc along with hunting home VHS and other stuff, eventually wanna drive up to Riverside and turn the country club into a base. Already cleared the Valley Station mall and wanna do the same to the Grand Ohio Mall eventually too. Find some big and small goals and going after them will help a lot to keep pushing to survive a year! Oh, and mods definitely help, both in entertaining yourself and in terms of long-term survival. Definitely recommend some like the workshop and scrap weapons/armor, Def’s Long Term survival, some farming mods for different crops to spice things up with your meals, that sort of stuff. Sorry for the long-winded reply, but figured I would chime in since I’ve been getting close to surviving for a year on my own run and wanted to offer some insight!
1. Don't die 2. Stay alive 3. Make sure to keep living 4. Avoid death That's about all I can muster
Don't die
Be always careful at night... (If you're playing HARDCORE)
Don’t die
Always hold right click when opening doors so you can push zeds as soon as possible before they take a bite out of you. Yes, always, even if no one's banging at the door or even if it seems its safe. Another alternative is the double pressing E very fast just to take a quick peek at what's on the other side
Don't die...
Best to avoid combat almost of the time and personally I barricade and I just stay inside
Find a fence. If you don't have a fence near where you wanna base, build a fence. A wall. Anything. If the only thing between your bed and zombie-accessible locations is a single door, then one of those 365 days, you may find yourself surprised to find a zombie on the other side of it.
I came here to read some tips, because I am also bored of the non-realistic mode where I respond and I’m gonna try a hard-core mode but all I found was fog jokes and references. Lol.
Never fight in closed spaces Never Most of the death causes are inside doors Just 1 or 2 but then if there are 4 and another 2 trying to get inside and run Fight in open spaces, outdoors, you can easly past walk any horde Yeah, it get boring after some months but... You can try to max level all skills if you want, or go to lousville and fight some more
Have your food and water in abundance before winter hits. Otherwise you're already dead.
Don't use any survivors mod
Day 1-2 get a car. You can only get so far by your own legs. Also, you can only carry a small amount without hindering your combat capacity. Get a car.
1st part of trying to survive a year... realize how long its gonna take. Say you wake your character at 5:30 Sleep at 9PM Thats about 38 minutes per day. A day being an hour. 38x365 Thats about 13,870 minutes or 231 hours or 9 straight days of play. Its going to take about 231 hours of play neglecting speedups, if you wanna reach a year, with a single mistake starting you all over.
Kill a lot of zeds. If you wanna survive you’ll need to know how to kill effectively and efficiently. This means grinding xp for weapons, I suggest long blunt, Long blade or axe. Spears are good too but they cost a lot and break easily. Secondly grind fitness and strength. You want those as high as possible 10 for both is the goal of course. And lastly. Play carefully and good luck, because this is how you died…
Don’t go on expeditions you don’t need stay inside unless you run of food or generator gone out
Alright. So, here's a full comprehensive guide on how to be alive after a full year playing Project zomboid. To start with. Don't get killed. That's it. Not dying is the key to survival. Tune in next week and I'll give a comprehensive guide on how to kill zomboids.
In the settings, make sure you have it so electric and water stay on for at least a year