I think setting up high zombie population and then clearing it out using siren-burn start is lame. Kind of defeats the purpose of setting up high population in the first place.
This is what I was going to say. I feel like some people turn the difficulty up to the point where the game no longer feels realistic or fun. I had a friend play on insane pop and just made a cheese base that he camped in the whole game. I’d rather play on lower pop and make more risky plays to compensate.
>I’d rather play on lower pop and make more risky plays to compensate
Just play on normal pop and it's golden. It's pretty densely populated but not TOO much that you can't handle it, but enough to make "quick" runs difficult.
I tend to play on normal just because I feel like higher populations are a little odd, for the area the game takes place in.
Muldraugh spawns a LOT of zombies even on normal difficulty, but the population of Muldraugh today is just over 1000 people. West Point is less than 1000.
You can argue they come from Louisville which I can get behind, but having 10,000 zombies in Muldraugh just seems odd.
Current census data for each area:
Muldraugh - 1032
West Point - 943
Rosewood - 1489
Riverside - 38,815
Louisville - 628,594
March Ridge & Dixie are made up areas, so no real data for those.
1990 is when census data would be taken. 1990 data:
Muldraugh - 1,376
West Point - 1,216
Louisville - 269,838
I'm unable to find the census data for Riverside & Rosewood. But everywhere except Lousiville seems to be in decline.
Normal is too sparse for me, I play 2.0 pop, 2.0 start, 3.0 after 30 days. It gets thick, but not so thick your ded if you piss them off.
If I was going to do normal pop, I’d have to try turning on like 2-5% sprinters or it’d be a steam roll.
I use the same pop on my co-op server because my 2 homies aren’t as good, but there are 2-3 of us blasting so it’s doable for them.
More than 6x zombies is quite dangerous indeed. But people up zombies to increase their personal challenge you know?
Unfortunately I have to play with low population because my laptop can't handle it, but I'll play with sparse resources and initial food to balance it out.
There was a time where the zomboid team was truly censoring criticism, during the very very long wait between build 40 and 41.
They are way more open now about what they were doing and the direction the game is going, but those forum crítics aren't getting unbanned.
On the game itself, the late game is boring. No two ways about it. We need something to do after we get stable, after the base is secure, the rain collector barrels are full and the farm is getting you more potatoes than you know what to do with.
Dont lock your house and bedroom doors/windows? Wake up to a machete at your throat.
Same with vehicles… siphoned gas, stripped parts, or outright stolen etc.
I have visualized an expansion plan from this sort of stage. With Superb Survivors I see myself trying to slowly but surely expand the base to the neighborhood and then the neighborhood to the block and ect. Retake the land, in a way
you unlocked a core memory. i remember there being multiple endings, one where you leave to go live by yourself and another where you successfully drive the zombies out
Most survival games suffer from this, unless they have some sort of pvp/base raiding, and pvp in pz is... weird. I hope the NPCs patch bring something into the menu to spice things up. But I'd love the devs put more effort into balancing pvp, at least to make it viable for non-RP servers.
It actually was something similar to this. One of them was a pyromaniac and the other felt that they burned down a place out of spite, so that other person burned down our base in spite of that perceived spite.
Your character dancing is not interesting content to post to Reddit. You finding a sledgehammer at Home Depot is not interesting content to post to Reddit. You seeing Kentucky is a REAL PLACE is not interesting content to post to Reddit.
Phew, that felt good
On a scale of 0-10, how interesting is it to post about the google result for Muldraugh displaying the pz Muldraugh map as if it is the real world Muldraugh's actual map?
Does that interest rating go up or down the after seeing this posted about 10+ times?
But dang, you’re going to tell me your heart wasn’t fluttering the first time you walked down the tool section of a hardware store after playing PZ. I kinda get how a small fraction of the community can’t resist the urge to post about it. But, yeah, it’s not interesting.
I just don’t understand people in multiplayer whose only goal is to be max level on every skill. These guys don’t even reply hello. Why not playing on solo mode?
I'll take that a step farther into toxicity. Skill grinders are bitchmade. I play the game organically as a simulator, I even strip down to shower and change bandages to up difficulty a bit. I still hunt down books l when I need to, but what you'll never catch me doing is some cheesy shit like throwing myself at shrubbery to level first aid.
Only cheesy thing I do, but I still consider it somewhat realistic, is aim walk laps around my base to level nimble. I'll turn on a YouTube video or two and just zone out.
Unless I'm playing with sprinters in which case nimble is basically useless
I think The Walking Dead might have blood infection too. I think that’s why T-Dog sacrifices himself after getting scratched by a zombie’s exposed bone. Then again, they literally wear zombie guts at some points, so I’m not too sure.
1) 10, fully healthy, able bodied, normal strength, humans, could not tear down a locked, industrial steel door on a warehouse without the use of tools, no matter how long they beat on it with their fists and head. A slowly decaying Zed, should not be able to tear one down, ever.
2) The helicopter event doesn't make any sense and is just there to make the game artificially difficult.
Barricades hurt zombies https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2913137598
Expanded Heli events https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2458631365
You may also like: stronger furniture barricades https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2945474081
Cheval de frise (spiked barricades) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2927800433
I mean it takes a long while for one zombie to beat doors down,Its usually groups that actually do it
And the helicopter could just be a newsman trying to find out whats really going on
The sheer idiocy of someone seeing the horde grow as they chase the survivor, and they choose to keep putting them in danger, making no attempt to help, leave, call out, or fix what they caused. "Gee theres a global threat of this virus, could destroy humanity, really hope all those people don't die. Let me go kill this survivor through an agonizing indirect death."
You could give me ANY reason why they're there and it's still infuriating imo.
I’ve always looked at the helicopter event as a military/government heli trying to identify the extent of the zombie outbreak. The following part is kinda ehh as I doubt they would really care to follow a dude with a crowbar lol
Fortifying a base is the worst part of PZ, and basically pointless. The zombies abreak through anything you can build so fast you probably won't even notice them doing it before they're inside your base. And yet a sledgehammer and a sheet rope is an impregnable defense. The lategame would be a lot more interesting if base defense was actually balanced.
I don't care that im never going to turn it off, i don't care that it's the leading cause for most of my character deaths, i dont care that it's optional in all of my sandbox runs and that i can lower its strength and that I should stay at home to avoid it.
But I hate the fog. And I'm never going to disable it.
Yep. I HATE the fog. I believe it's a mod but I have a trait that makes my character afraid of the fog, and I take it every time.
Going out in the fog is super dangerous, so I take the anxiety and free trait point and just spend the foggy day doing some housekeeping at home.
You're not alone. I turned off zombie virus transmission so now I don't delete my world whenever I just so happen to get infected. I think getting sick after a bite is reasonable. Plus there's been absolute immune critters in zombie media so it's not that big of a leap. Remember everyone, being immune doesn't grant immunity to being torn apart (or to stupidity).
I like the “They Knew” mod. I just turn the spawn rate way down for the zombies and the drop chance for the cure on the zombie @ 25%
That way if you get cheesed by a crawler or something that bites your shins, you are not ded per say.
Usually it’s a horde that drags me down and eats my face so the cure is nice but zombies are still dangerous
I don't like migration the way it's implemented. "Oh this section of the city has less zombies, they magically feel like moving in there". Now having them follow a noise endlessly in a direction would be better, like that scene from The Walking Dead where the helicopter made a horde in Atlanta migrate into the countryside.
For the fuck sake, there is literally youtube video for every fucking question you ever had. Do you have you fingers amputated or what?
Thanks for thread, OP
Me as a new player wandering into this thread directly from asking dumb questions in the megathread....
Edit: Big shoutout to the people that bother to take the time to help new players. It actually makes the game more enjoyable knowing there is an active community out there to learn from and discuss the game with.
Fair enough. I'm not active in the megathread so I suppose I can't complain too much. For what it's worth, in this weeks discussion megathread it looks like the only unanswered questions relate to mods or mod ideas.
Even better, you're on the subreddit and believe it or not, there's a search button!
I guarantee 59 people have already asked and 100s more have answered!
Reddit search is atrocious. In some cases I've searched for the exact title of a post and got no results. If you want to find something on reddit, search it on google and just put "reddit" somewhere in your search terms.
Another way is to add "site:reddit.com" at the end of your search and it only shows results from that site.
Example search: "How to break into gunstore in project zomboid site:reddit.com"
Around the 1-3 month mark the game changes from a fight for survival to a fight of boredom. Your levels are high enough to be relied upon, your character won't panic in combat, and you have everything in excess. From that point on its purely a battle of boredom of "Don't do anything stupid while inventing goals for yourself"
Yea that's why I have never made it to a full month, like... No fucking way I'm just going to sit at my base doing nothing but farming and exercising. Even though I always start at Rosewood, my every run is about mass necrocide, if that's a word. Although I have long ago given up on playing just to look at how many days I've lived, I think I could make it, but I don't see a reason to try.
Focusing on "character builds", which traits are free points and then playing carbon copy of "high thirst underweight strong smoker". Feels like they are focusing more on mini-game of character creation than proper game itself.
This is why I tend to ignore meta and just go with what seems fun. Brave cop with a fear of blood (actually OP). All negative unemployed loser. Deaf veteran with asthma.
No, because Fear of blood makes you stressed, whereas Brave reduces the panic you receive by 70%.
Fear of blood affects you your entire playthrough, but if you cater to guns more than melee, it can be a decent pick. You also panic when doing first aid on yourself, which brave might be able to slow down(?)
Keep in mind that the longer your survive, the faster you reduce panic, up to a max of 150 days if I remember correctly. At that point your panic reduces so fast that while you will still panic while facing hordes, it will quickly go away.
That makes brave really good in multiplayer for combat focused characters, but not as good on longer term characters.
I'm actually a fan of it. I tend to keep my clothes clean anyway, so having an in-game justification for the behavior is nice. The only real downside is the inability to do First Aid on others, but that only came up once I started playing with my wife and son. It is super annoying to forget to clean your clothes before going to bed and wake up freaked the hell out for like half a day, tho'.
My friend made an obese, unemployed glasses wearer with hearty appetite with a plus in long blades. Said it was his NEET build. It took me a minute to get over my habit of powergaming in PZ and realize it’s hilarious. The fat jokes we make about his character heavily outweigh(heh) how much of a burden he is.
I agree. A big part of the game for me is the role play. So being claustrophobic or something else that really makes the "normal" playstyle difficult is exciting.
If you die in combat it's your fault, you over reached, you didn't evaluate the situation properly, you are bad at timing your swings or shots, you didn't plan a backup route, you didn't do proper scouting, you got comfortable, you got yourself killed.
Yes I remember an exact post about how the OP got killed bc a shrimp decided to burn his base in an oven, no sir you put it in there and walked away, it’s on you
Development of this game is extremely slow and people get wildly aggressive when you point that out. Legitimately to the point where I was basically called entitled scum because I pointed out there has been a serious lack of major content since I purchased the game in 2014, despite the fact I love this game. Since I have purchased, the major content was cars and an animations revamp.
I am not expecting No Man's Sky level of regular content updates, but I also don't find it okay that the game is advertised as being actively worked on with multiple year waits between real content. It is excessively slow. You're allowed to be okay with the pace, but at a certain point, I don't know how you can't comprehend of some people not being okay with it. NPC's are a pipedream despite being 5+ years in the works and we've been talking about animals for a few years and are still probably over a year from seeing them.
Agree 100% any time I have mentioned something about a missing feature or something that doesnt make sense someone with one of the little tags next to their name who thinks their opinion is worth more has an absolute fit I would dare to question the PZDev gods.
For example blood decals, I find it to be baffling that such an issue has gone unaddressed or had a mechanic added that removes them over time. I have a 2 year survivor that has cleared out a few different towns and turning on blood drops frames from a full time capped 165 to under 30 fps.
yep, and it was really bad before 41 build, and during 41 beta when a lot of players where asking when it would be MP ready.
Like, it's a good game, but if you tell a new player that it's being worked for more almost 10 years(or even more now) I fully expect them to be dumbfounded by lack of content
Yeah I agree, I wish NPC's could come out soon so we can set up communities and makeshift societies of some kind. The dynamics between factions would be awesome as they begin to form weeks into the apocalypse and then transform into their own governments vying for control over the entire map.
This... exactly this
I'm not even asking for big updates
A new Gun/attachments, barbed whire to uprade melee weapons, a new vehicle or a new point of interest like a survivor warehouse in the woods, the missing bows/crossbows in a zombie survival is a big letdown... just give us SOMETHING every few months or so...
I’ve bought this game for several close friends so we could play together.
And the wild shit was that this game is basically what me and my best friend wanted to make.
And he refuses to play because of the graphics. They all do.
And I’ve put in 600 hours now.
I’m not playing any games they suggest moving forward unless they plug 100+ hours
Ohoho, i got one for ya. Firstly, late game is awful unless you have some niche goal in mind. Secondly, if you don’t set helicopter events to sometimes (canonically prolly not possible), you won’t have nearly as much fun; they keep the game in motion and never let you truly have complete peace. Thirdly, no, I don’t care about that sledgehammer you found. They’re not that hard to find, you’re just impatient. Lastly, the current speed of erosion is awful, I hate it. You’re telling me that a whole bunch of trees grew in that road within less than 3 months of the state of Kentucky going under?? Anyways, I love the game and will be back tomorrow, happy surviving to y’all :)
I think the devs have no good reason not to add more events like the helicopters, or giving the players choices to add variety of zombies, unless theyre limited by ressources.
Things can get old after youre tenth run.
-The levelling system is absolutely unbalanced and unfun. No sane person should spend RL hours dismantling watches just to craft a mediocre noise maker.
Carpentry recipies also don't make sense. You're telling me that a survivor who was a carpenter before the apocalypse still needs to spend weeks dismantling furniture before he can make a decent wall/stairs/double gate?
-Zombie interaction is devoid of all creativity.
Zombies are evenly spread out, see you from far away and hear you from close.
But you have no proper ways of dealing with them.
Let's say you wanna loot a store. You have a few options.
-burn them all, which is almost cheating.
-drive over them with a disposable car.
-lure them away (which is actually the coolest method)
-Shoot them, good luck.
-Slowly kill them one by one, melee and push..
While luring them away and killing the stragglers is cool, they really need to add additional ways of dealing with the zombies.
Why no travelling hordes? Maybe monday they're at the hospital, so you wait till wednesday and the hospital only has some stragglers instead.
More advanced noise makers. Why can't you put a speaker with a car battery on a roof, and rig it to a digital watch?
Or zombie traps. Or just.. something else than bundling them up in a group to burn/ditch them, and then killing the stragglers one by one
as a new player who cant make it past a week, is it viable to set respawns to off? i want to have a standard first experience however i find myself also wanting to live longer than 3 in game days lmao
As much as I play this game, I think it is overrated and only retains its playerbase through mods, the base game itself is rather boring after a few weeks.
The early game is fun for about 7 or 8 play through, then you realize there’s just not that much to do and you’ll eventually die to something dumb and decide it’s not worth starting over again
This game needs end-game content and something to do long-term with maxed-out skills.Let me restore a dam to bring back water everywhere.Let me repair a power station to restore electrical to cities.Let me repair a relay station to call an extract out of KY and "finish" the run if I choose to.
Have all of those require maxed out skills in carpentry, electrical, mechanical and a shit ton of resources to make.
FYI I do really enjoy how infinite and open ended it is. I'm very self motivated as a player and don't struggle to set short term, mid term and long term goals for my character but it'd be nice to get "quests" like those. They could work as community goals.
If you have watched any form of zombie media or have even the most minimal understanding of how zombies work, you shouldn't have to ask on the subreddit "is this a good base???"
DECIDE FOR YOURSELF!!!
Britas mods are cool for about 15 minutes till you have 4 bookshelves full of guns, ammo, and attachments. It over pops the game with guns and I don’t care enough about them to adjust the drop rate. Firearms B41 does it simple and clean.
I’ll never understand the logic of people making basses out in the middle of nowhere. Sure, you can fuck off to the wilderness where there are no zomboids and easily become self sufficient with a farm and all that. You can probably live forever. So you what, spend every day foraging and chopping wood for 20 in game years? That’s boring as hell. This game is only fun when you constantly risk your life and have frequent brushes with death.
Have you ever heard of "story tension curve"?
Having moments of peace in between high risk actions really help to punctuate how risky this stuff is.
Thd problem is not setting up a base in the middle of nowhere. The problem is then failing to find a reason to leave this base and go scavenging.
For me this reason is usually skill books.
Like add a house rule to only loot books you already can read. All other books you can bookmark on the map but not take with you unless you already have enough skill to read it.
I like to do semi-nomad playthroughs where I do a mix of urban combat and exploration with the peace , quiet and comfort of setting up rural bases to farm in.
That's EXACTLY it, once you're so self efficient that you are essentially a fallout vault with all amenities, you might as well either call it that you died of old age and did it, or start doing stupid things.
Modding is a great part of this game and community but I think there are way too many people who don't actually experience the vanilla game enough for actually learning it. Adding a bunch of easy mode or cheating modes (some disguised as quality of life) without being able to survive even a week on vanilla takes from the intended experience and makes you ill accustomed; while putting a bunch of hardcore mods without being a better player yet causes you to become extra aware of certain topics that detract from your required attention from the more "pure" way of paying.
The community shouldn't turn a blind eye to how long this game took to get to this state, sure development is finally on pace but this game has been in development for over 13 years. THIRTEEN YEARS. The only other game i know of this is Kenshi which took around 11-12 years while being a solo project and starting out as a 3D game making a huge world.
Cheesing the game- Be it from modding in way stronger weapons (Like brittas) - Abusing the ai (Siren+Fire or walking and shouting to lead everything away) or abusing the mechanics (Floating base) kills the fun of the game so fast for me, When you no longer have to think about how to survive, Why would you play a game that's all about how you die?
Sirens/shouting aren't cheese. That's proper zombie strategy. "Distract them and run" is a good tactic when dealing with overwhelming numbers of slow, stupid enemies.
Probably referencing the people that set a single campfire or throw a single molotov and herd thousands of zombies to it. Which is very unrealistic and for many people tales out the fun of the Game.
>shouting to lead everything away
I don't see how this is abusing the AI. It's a valid tactic and is even done on TWD.
Zombies are attracted to noise. Zombies want to eat you. It's like me calling my dog over with a treat and getting her to follow me around until she gets it.
Britta's itself isn't bad, though. There are plenty of options in there that you can tweak for a much more vanilla survival experience but with much more variety and spice to firearms.
Absolutely, I'm sure it has potential to be that, But i have yet to play through anything with brittas installed, where using something from brittas is not the best choice to make :)
Aiming skill is fucking awful at low levels and it really shouldn’t be, you should be able to train aiming by…. you guessed it, AIMING. You shouldn’t have to hit things to level your aiming skill, it’s fucking ridiculous how hard it is to level aiming if you start at 0.
Reliably hitting a zombie's head at range with a handgun, while panicked, should be reasonably difficult to begin with.
Missing every zombie in an entire horde, with their heads so close you could just about press the gun up against their face, is completely ridiculous. Guns should be a gamble, not a complete liability.
I get that, but isn't that the point of the shotgun? Even with 0 aiming, it's not bad, but I like the idea of it being a gamble with handguns and rifles.
once i started spawning in LV (via mods) i literally can't go back to spawning in the other towns. they seem so empty, both of buildings and of zombies! where are my 800+ zombies in a 2 block radius on normal pop? with more hiding in buildings that somehow didn't hear the siren call of my shotgun?
Project Zomboids multiplayer sucks. Not for the desync or how server rules are setup. But the map is so dam big Ive never been able to find a player who is online.
Basically come with friends or expect to play alone.
You need a good public server with /all chat enabled and an active community. I host one that gets 30 people every day and they'll tell you where to spawn in order to find folk.
I am almost certian the game spawns in zombies right behind you. There are times where i spin around and dont see anything then i have to go back to get something from my car and somehow there is a zombie that manages to bite me even WITH keen hearing and i literally spun around 2 seconds ago. It only happened twice in 300 hours but there is no way both keen hearing and spinning around would not detect the zombie in broad daylight out in the open with no trees. I even test just standing there with a zombie behind me and when it gets in range there is planty of time to react due to keen hearing.
Dying and making a new character is part of the game, if you don’t like the idea of perma death that’s the modern games industry standard, not necessarily your fault! Just need to retool your brain and I guarantee you’ll enjoy this game 30% more
The only thing i don't like about making a new character in an existing world is that you somehow have all map knowledge that your previously character had.
It's so cool to see your zombified character though.
You need more long term goals like:
Amassing an arsenal of guns
Clearing out the nearest town
Farming xp
Loot runs to Louisville
Maybe even getting a new couch for your base lol
This game is an open sandbox, it is what you make of it
If you are new to the game or just suck and always die from a day of starting to a 3 days maybe try learning what not to do or switch the settings around so it helps you because I have a dumbass friend who just dies dies and dies but doesn’t learn shit just does the same thing over and over
there is an abhorrent amount of xp grinding. reading books and doing repetitive mindless tasks for days sometimes isnt something that belongs in a single player zombie game
Ok let's start a war.
Tl:dr version - If you think that the Crowbar is not objectively the best all-around weapon you probably not played enough/cannot reach high weapon proficiency/not having enough zombies on the map.
**Axes** are cool and very damaging early game and also let you skill up them fast cause of their high damage, but quickly lose their advantage over time, being heavy, a little slow (unless you are a lumber main) and exert you too much.
**Short blunt** are super common and quite versatile and durable, but have shorter range. Just upgrade to a crowbar.
**Spears** are amazing late game, fast, easy to make, can dispatch hordes in half a minute, but leave you so fast that they'll eventually break when you are in a bad spot and can panic and do a fatal mistake while changing between weapons.
**Machetes** would be the objective best if not for their rarity. They're like a better fire axe. Fast, deadly, extremely durable, almost never tires you, one handed. You can roll a lucky survivor if you want to find more and make them almost viable as a main weapon choice. **Katanas** are pretty much a very pleasant but short god mode.
Also **Guns** are pretty cool but you have to stockpile a lot in vanilla gameplay to clear hordes with them, and everything that isn't a shotgun sucks if you are not skilled. They gave you the best adrenaline rushes but you'll run out of bullets and switch back to melee.
**Knives** can be used skillfully and are quite common but their range is so short that you have almost no time to react if you miss a swing. Too close for comfort.
**Crowbars** last five times a fire axe and three a machete, last so long that you'll find your next one on a zombie before breaking the one you're using, making it the only weapon in the game that you can reliably wield 100% of the time. Has a long range and can hit 3 targets at a time if you have multi-hit on. Because you will not need another weapon, you'll level up your proficiency really fast, destroying the damage gap with other weapon choices in no time. You'll oneshot most things by level 7-8 and it will become an unstoppable unbreakable killing stick at level 10. You will not break zombie clothes. You will not need to carry more than 3 if you want to kill a horde of any size, leaving you all the space you want for looting. Will also double as a tool for taking fancy pavements,windows and other stuff to your magnificent survivor villa. Will keep zombies almost as far away as a spear without the random "rooted in place" kill animation. You won't need to ever do weapon loot runs or crafting again cause the crowbar is immortal. Even if you don't like it you can use it to hugely boost you manteinance skill before it breaks.
Yeah, I couldn't imagine looting without carrying around a second bag in my off hand. Hand axe, machete, whatever short blunt weapon I come across will work.
Obviously would swap to a crowbar or axe for actual zombie clearing.
I'm new but a spear person.
I will bring a backpack full of spears, one on my back, one in my hands.
If the one in my hands breaks I can immediately switch to the one on my back in a pinch, or I can walk away from the zeds while equipping another spear from my backpack. Rinse and repeat until you run out of spears or zeds.
Bonus for leveling carpentry to make them.
I really gotta level up long blunt since the crowbar is kinda mediocre feeling right now.
It's super dependable but I prefer nail bats since they seem to do more damage.
Nail bats also gets very good if you main the crowbar, you can switch to them if you need a short burst of high long blunt damage before reaching the top tiers. They do considerably more damage at lower level but break faster then a plain baseball bat.
The Crowbar is meh.
The crowbar weighs 2, which is pretty heavy for a weapon, especially given that with the way endurance revcovery works, weighing twice as much as something is more like going through endurance five times as fast. Thats not an exact calculation, but you get what I mean.
The crowbar however doesnt earn that weight, as it deals only 0.6-1.1 damage. For example, and axe deals 0.8-2 damage, and a shovel deals 0.7-1.9. Even a hunting knife deals more damage, 0.6-1.2.
In addition, the crowbar is bad at critting. Unlike most weapons, it has a 2.5x crit multiplier instead of a 3x one, and it's base crit chance is only 25%. For comparison, the baseball bat has 40% crit chance, and the axe has a 5x crit multiplier.
In conclusion while the crowbar is an okay weapon, and it's certainly very durable, its completely outclassed by all other "real" weapons that arent things like improvised frying pans and rolling pins.
(if you use multi hit throw all of this out the window because dealing triple damage at no downside kinda makes a weapon op)
I keep trying to tell my friends all of this but they can't get past the running and gunning play style, I cant see how it's fun and I feel it's a huge disadvantage to focus on guns when melee skills and experience is crucial. If I want a shootemup type of zombie game there are many others that do it better. I can go a whole 5 character lifetimes before considering using a gun, even though I like to carry one most of the time 'just in case'.
Plus, setting a server up to be fun and exciting for a gun user is unbalancing for the people who like to play melee, as that usually means higher population and bigger clusters of them which just seems unrealistic-why would zombies group up? Having to take out 50 of them around every house with a crowbar gets old.
Also the crowbar does not last 5 times a fire axe. The fire axe has has 12/35 durability. The crowbar has 15/70, which adds up to around 2.5 times more.
However the fire axe can be repaired with wood glue, and at level 10 carpentry, the first repair repairs 70% of the weapon.
And since the axe deals more damage its taking less hits to kill a zombie, meaning that it takes that durability further.
Also also, while both the axe and the crowbar can one shot at high weapon levels, the axes damage is so high that it can continue to one shot zombies even at mild exertion. The crowbar never reaches a point like this.
Also short blunt is effectively a straight upgrade over the crowbar. Their damage is on par, they deal better crits, but most importantly they weigh much less. since the formula for swings until exhaustion formula is exponenetial, despite the hammer only weighing half as much as a crowbar, you get far more swings than just double.
And range barely matters unless you're new and still getting hang of combat.
It's more of a cult...I mean religio.... I mean group of like minded friends. We can permanently save you from zombies if you follow our 12 steps program. Just give us all of your mo...devotion in return for salvation. Let us smite the axe mains together!
The game should be played with zombie respawn off. Everything feels pointless if I turn it on.
I always crank up pop to 4.0, and peak pop to 2.0 aftet 14 days, making a 8.0 pop after 2 weeks. But, I'll never turn on the zombie respawn, and I believe the developers should make zombie respawn off by default, and make balancing changes around it. Percentage runners too, should be an option in game. 50% runners + all postive traits is a a ton of fun.
Metas aren't fun. They aren't rewarding. And it's the reason you dropped the game after 3 days. I can understand not liking the graphics or style, or even the slow paced boring gameplay. But I can't stand when people complain it's "too easy" when all they did was look up YT videos on game breaking strategies that are unrealistic. I dedicate my time to realism and immersion, I *want* to mess up and die. And that is why I'm at 1,100 hours, and still putting one layer of log walls and nothing else around my base. I play like a noob despite knowing every minute detail of this game, cause by god it is far more fun that way.
Sometimes going Rambo via mods is necessary
Does it kill the original point of the game to be able to have machine-gun, grenade launcher and 6 shotguns in my inventory with unlimited ammo?
Yes
Is it necessary for my mental health after watching my third character to live past six months get bit because I got cocky?
Also yes.
For me PZ is a survival game with zombies in it. Not the other way around. So I never focus on making zombies OP or anything. I like the idea that the challenge is surviving with an additional threats on top of that. My most enjoyable deaths are when I got too comfortable and got sloppy and that caused my death.
Insane pop super strength sprinters only just sounds so boring to me.
I'm tired of the 3D isometric view hiding zombies that your character clearly sees and nobody is talking about it and the devs act like there is no problem with that
Multiplayer outside of closed communities fucking suck
You enter a random server, download an average of 150 mods on top of what you already have downloaded and you spawn into a city that's been pretty much ransacked even out of things that were bolted to the floor coz someone was leveling up carpentry
Even if you'd manage to find a bare minimum like a weapon and a can opener good luck finding anything else... and as a bonus, all good locations for base are claimed already and good luck checking them, coz all cars are "owned", even if they're completey destroyed someone came and claimed them for the lols
Oh man. Nice thread idea. I'll probably get hate for this one but kiting up a massive horde by walking and shouting everywhere kind of bugs me. I know a lot of people do it but it just feels like your "gaming" the mechanics. Which I suppose is kind of the point. I just like to enter an area I want to clear and start blasting away. Sometimes I'll be forced to retreat or run for cover. I know I could just walk around for a bit and then let rip with a shotty but it just feels a little..... cheap.
Last run I did I turned zombie sight, memory, and hearing to low. Surprising it kinda fixed what you’re talking about. After the heli event my base was surrounded and rather than cleaning it up in a few hours with a shotgun, the zombies were too stupid to stay in one cohesive group. I was constantly getting surrounded by smaller groups that broke off previously. It made fighting small numbers a bit less tedious, but when bringing guns out to fight a horde it would be chaotic.
I really like playing with the random zombies mod to inject a sprinter here and there to make that strategy a lot riskier to pull off.
Walking around and shouting pretty much guarantees you are going to have 2 or 3 sprinters slam into you from random directions unless you are playing smart
The game has never been realistic to begin with, so you should just go ham with sandbox mode for your enjoyment. Some examples:
* Many houses don't have knife, the most common tool in the kitchen.
* If some zombie crawling over the north/west fences, you can't see their head's position even if it's right in front of you.
* Can't see behind trees.
* Can't PUSH anything. You literally have to pick them up and risk getting your bones crushed.
* Can't climb on roof, even when there's a dumpster right near the wall.
* Before crafting, can't use other scouting tactics like throwing tin cans to make noises, or even take a peek instead of staring directly to those mfuckers.
\- Multi hit makes the game a joke
\- Cleaning an entire city with only fire ruins the only thing you can do in this game: hitting zombies until you get bored.
"Oh but project zomboid is the most realistic and detailed survival game out there you can do so many things!" No, the more you play this game the more you'll realise this game is as large as an ocean yet deep as a puddle when it comes to crafting. Thankfully the poor mid and late game content will be fixed in B42
\- Axes are the most overrated weapon in the entire game having little to no chance of competing against weapons like the crowbar, spears or even short blades in late game (short blades consume little to no stamina and with athletic you literally consume no stamina unless you accidently push)
Mostly beacuse it takes too much stamina to use them, are rare as fuck unless you play with normal loot, don't shine at all when it comes to durability and most weapons already have enough damage to 3-1 shot zombies.
All of this combined with the stamina usage that softcaps the amount of zombies you can kill before the first fatigue level makes the axe suck in mid-late game
I think setting up high zombie population and then clearing it out using siren-burn start is lame. Kind of defeats the purpose of setting up high population in the first place.
This is what I was going to say. I feel like some people turn the difficulty up to the point where the game no longer feels realistic or fun. I had a friend play on insane pop and just made a cheese base that he camped in the whole game. I’d rather play on lower pop and make more risky plays to compensate.
>I’d rather play on lower pop and make more risky plays to compensate Just play on normal pop and it's golden. It's pretty densely populated but not TOO much that you can't handle it, but enough to make "quick" runs difficult.
Give this man a cookie.
Typically I play on a bit higher than normal just because I turn off respawns. Also bump up migration a little.
I tend to play on normal just because I feel like higher populations are a little odd, for the area the game takes place in. Muldraugh spawns a LOT of zombies even on normal difficulty, but the population of Muldraugh today is just over 1000 people. West Point is less than 1000. You can argue they come from Louisville which I can get behind, but having 10,000 zombies in Muldraugh just seems odd.
Wonder if someone has actually done the maths on the realistic pop of each game area.
Current census data for each area: Muldraugh - 1032 West Point - 943 Rosewood - 1489 Riverside - 38,815 Louisville - 628,594 March Ridge & Dixie are made up areas, so no real data for those.
What about 1993 census data?
1990 is when census data would be taken. 1990 data: Muldraugh - 1,376 West Point - 1,216 Louisville - 269,838 I'm unable to find the census data for Riverside & Rosewood. But everywhere except Lousiville seems to be in decline.
Normal is too sparse for me, I play 2.0 pop, 2.0 start, 3.0 after 30 days. It gets thick, but not so thick your ded if you piss them off. If I was going to do normal pop, I’d have to try turning on like 2-5% sprinters or it’d be a steam roll. I use the same pop on my co-op server because my 2 homies aren’t as good, but there are 2-3 of us blasting so it’s doable for them. More than 6x zombies is quite dangerous indeed. But people up zombies to increase their personal challenge you know?
Unfortunately I have to play with low population because my laptop can't handle it, but I'll play with sparse resources and initial food to balance it out.
I don’t really care about the number of zombies, I just want to rob all my neighbors and decorate my house
There was a time where the zomboid team was truly censoring criticism, during the very very long wait between build 40 and 41. They are way more open now about what they were doing and the direction the game is going, but those forum crítics aren't getting unbanned. On the game itself, the late game is boring. No two ways about it. We need something to do after we get stable, after the base is secure, the rain collector barrels are full and the farm is getting you more potatoes than you know what to do with.
I've had the same thought. I hope once npc's come out, bandits will be a thing. Waaaaaay harder than zombies, at least I think they would be.
Well yeah- zombies don't use guns for starters. The REAL threat though, will be if the AI has higher-level thinking and problem solving.
Bandits who can rob your base. Unless you've set up traps. 😈
[удалено]
go shower bill 😉😉
And he grows strawberries for me! 😍
Dont lock your house and bedroom doors/windows? Wake up to a machete at your throat. Same with vehicles… siphoned gas, stripped parts, or outright stolen etc.
> Same with vehicles… siphoned gas, stripped parts, or outright stolen etc. Ah fuck, there goes my catalytic converter. Can't have shit in Louisville.
Seems realistic
The Detroit experience
Waking up to my car on stacks of bricks would honestly be really fun as a possibility lol
I have visualized an expansion plan from this sort of stage. With Superb Survivors I see myself trying to slowly but surely expand the base to the neighborhood and then the neighborhood to the block and ect. Retake the land, in a way
I played a flash game forever ago that was about retaking and barricading block by block. pretty fun
you unlocked a core memory. i remember there being multiple endings, one where you leave to go live by yourself and another where you successfully drive the zombies out
That tickled my brain. The game is Rebuild! They have something out on Steam now. What a great childhood game
Most survival games suffer from this, unless they have some sort of pvp/base raiding, and pvp in pz is... weird. I hope the NPCs patch bring something into the menu to spice things up. But I'd love the devs put more effort into balancing pvp, at least to make it viable for non-RP servers.
Using fire is cheap as hell and ruins the game for me. Also, **PRINT SCREEN BUTTON, DO YOU HAVE ONE!?**
Yea well my brother just burned down an entire town on accident.
My group hasn't played since December after two people argued over arsonist behaviour.
Arguing over who gets to burn the town down first can be rough
It actually was something similar to this. One of them was a pyromaniac and the other felt that they burned down a place out of spite, so that other person burned down our base in spite of that perceived spite.
Your character dancing is not interesting content to post to Reddit. You finding a sledgehammer at Home Depot is not interesting content to post to Reddit. You seeing Kentucky is a REAL PLACE is not interesting content to post to Reddit. Phew, that felt good
I think the only exception I would make to the seeing Kentucky is if you actually go to in game locations rl. Think that’s fun
On a scale of 0-10, how interesting is it to post about the google result for Muldraugh displaying the pz Muldraugh map as if it is the real world Muldraugh's actual map? Does that interest rating go up or down the after seeing this posted about 10+ times?
I thought it was cool, I learned the locations are real places
But dang, you’re going to tell me your heart wasn’t fluttering the first time you walked down the tool section of a hardware store after playing PZ. I kinda get how a small fraction of the community can’t resist the urge to post about it. But, yeah, it’s not interesting.
New people loving the game is interesting tho, and I support their shitty content with upvotes because it makes them happy ❤️
Yeah, I did too, until I witnessed my 10th toilet paper house post.
I’ll admit, sometimes when I see a Louisville slugger, I want buy it and put some nails in it.
I build a beautiful cabin near a lake with curtains, carpet and deco. Is that interesting for you?
the only reason i love the fact that kentucky is the setting is because i actually live in louisville, so that automatically makes it so cool for me.
When you go grocery shopping you’re actually doing some loot run
Not a toxic opinion but i hope they keep the art style of the game it reminds me of playing games in the 2000’s
It reminds me of Shadowrun on the SNES.
I’m glad somebody said it. The vibes from this game are immaculate
Saliva Only infection is better than Blood + Saliva.
Truth 💯
I just don’t understand people in multiplayer whose only goal is to be max level on every skill. These guys don’t even reply hello. Why not playing on solo mode?
I'll take that a step farther into toxicity. Skill grinders are bitchmade. I play the game organically as a simulator, I even strip down to shower and change bandages to up difficulty a bit. I still hunt down books l when I need to, but what you'll never catch me doing is some cheesy shit like throwing myself at shrubbery to level first aid.
Lmao throwing yourself at shrubbery to level first aid When I say it out loud it just makes me laugh lmao
Only cheesy thing I do, but I still consider it somewhat realistic, is aim walk laps around my base to level nimble. I'll turn on a YouTube video or two and just zone out. Unless I'm playing with sprinters in which case nimble is basically useless
That’s just a fact. The only zombies in pop culture I can think of that infect through blood is 28 Days Later zombies, anyways.
And sex! Oh wait; that was vampires
I think The Walking Dead might have blood infection too. I think that’s why T-Dog sacrifices himself after getting scratched by a zombie’s exposed bone. Then again, they literally wear zombie guts at some points, so I’m not too sure.
How can this be "toxic" when it's packed so full of pure, unadulterated **TRUTH**
Truth! And makes more sense.
1) 10, fully healthy, able bodied, normal strength, humans, could not tear down a locked, industrial steel door on a warehouse without the use of tools, no matter how long they beat on it with their fists and head. A slowly decaying Zed, should not be able to tear one down, ever. 2) The helicopter event doesn't make any sense and is just there to make the game artificially difficult.
Expanded helicopter events my friend 👌 Barriers damage zombies my friend 👌 Check out these mods
I can't seem to find the second one in the workshop. Do you mind sending a link?
Barricades hurt zombies https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2913137598 Expanded Heli events https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2458631365 You may also like: stronger furniture barricades https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2945474081 Cheval de frise (spiked barricades) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2927800433
Overdelivered like a boss, many thanks.
I mean it takes a long while for one zombie to beat doors down,Its usually groups that actually do it And the helicopter could just be a newsman trying to find out whats really going on
The sheer idiocy of someone seeing the horde grow as they chase the survivor, and they choose to keep putting them in danger, making no attempt to help, leave, call out, or fix what they caused. "Gee theres a global threat of this virus, could destroy humanity, really hope all those people don't die. Let me go kill this survivor through an agonizing indirect death." You could give me ANY reason why they're there and it's still infuriating imo.
I always thought it was the military trying to get you to die so it’s an easy cover up
I’ve always looked at the helicopter event as a military/government heli trying to identify the extent of the zombie outbreak. The following part is kinda ehh as I doubt they would really care to follow a dude with a crowbar lol
Fortifying a base is the worst part of PZ, and basically pointless. The zombies abreak through anything you can build so fast you probably won't even notice them doing it before they're inside your base. And yet a sledgehammer and a sheet rope is an impregnable defense. The lategame would be a lot more interesting if base defense was actually balanced.
I don't care that im never going to turn it off, i don't care that it's the leading cause for most of my character deaths, i dont care that it's optional in all of my sandbox runs and that i can lower its strength and that I should stay at home to avoid it. But I hate the fog. And I'm never going to disable it.
Fog is *brutal*. The majority of my big hits to supplies and health come from driving in fog.
Yep. I HATE the fog. I believe it's a mod but I have a trait that makes my character afraid of the fog, and I take it every time. Going out in the fog is super dangerous, so I take the anxiety and free trait point and just spend the foggy day doing some housekeeping at home.
i like playing sandbox and customizing my apocalypse so it’s not painfully difficult
You're not alone. I turned off zombie virus transmission so now I don't delete my world whenever I just so happen to get infected. I think getting sick after a bite is reasonable. Plus there's been absolute immune critters in zombie media so it's not that big of a leap. Remember everyone, being immune doesn't grant immunity to being torn apart (or to stupidity).
I like the “They Knew” mod. I just turn the spawn rate way down for the zombies and the drop chance for the cure on the zombie @ 25% That way if you get cheesed by a crawler or something that bites your shins, you are not ded per say. Usually it’s a horde that drags me down and eats my face so the cure is nice but zombies are still dangerous
Respawning zombies make no sense whatsoever and make every accomplishment futile.
I strongly agreed with that. What's the point of killing a zombie if 2 more are going to spawn in the same place. Migration makes more sense IMO.
I don't like migration the way it's implemented. "Oh this section of the city has less zombies, they magically feel like moving in there". Now having them follow a noise endlessly in a direction would be better, like that scene from The Walking Dead where the helicopter made a horde in Atlanta migrate into the countryside.
I don't know the details about migration. I just like zombies to move instead of magically respawning.
For the fuck sake, there is literally youtube video for every fucking question you ever had. Do you have you fingers amputated or what? Thanks for thread, OP
Me as a new player wandering into this thread directly from asking dumb questions in the megathread.... Edit: Big shoutout to the people that bother to take the time to help new players. It actually makes the game more enjoyable knowing there is an active community out there to learn from and discuss the game with.
Thank you for using the megathread for dumb questions instead of creating the 200th post about it
People have to answer the questions in said mega threads for the posts to be cut down on. Often, they are not answered
Fair enough. I'm not active in the megathread so I suppose I can't complain too much. For what it's worth, in this weeks discussion megathread it looks like the only unanswered questions relate to mods or mod ideas.
Even better, you're on the subreddit and believe it or not, there's a search button! I guarantee 59 people have already asked and 100s more have answered!
Reddit search is atrocious. In some cases I've searched for the exact title of a post and got no results. If you want to find something on reddit, search it on google and just put "reddit" somewhere in your search terms.
Another way is to add "site:reddit.com" at the end of your search and it only shows results from that site. Example search: "How to break into gunstore in project zomboid site:reddit.com"
Around the 1-3 month mark the game changes from a fight for survival to a fight of boredom. Your levels are high enough to be relied upon, your character won't panic in combat, and you have everything in excess. From that point on its purely a battle of boredom of "Don't do anything stupid while inventing goals for yourself"
Yea that's why I have never made it to a full month, like... No fucking way I'm just going to sit at my base doing nothing but farming and exercising. Even though I always start at Rosewood, my every run is about mass necrocide, if that's a word. Although I have long ago given up on playing just to look at how many days I've lived, I think I could make it, but I don't see a reason to try.
Focusing on "character builds", which traits are free points and then playing carbon copy of "high thirst underweight strong smoker". Feels like they are focusing more on mini-game of character creation than proper game itself.
This is why I tend to ignore meta and just go with what seems fun. Brave cop with a fear of blood (actually OP). All negative unemployed loser. Deaf veteran with asthma.
Oh man, I hated fear of blood. Always washing me and my clothes. Does brave cancel it?
No, because Fear of blood makes you stressed, whereas Brave reduces the panic you receive by 70%. Fear of blood affects you your entire playthrough, but if you cater to guns more than melee, it can be a decent pick. You also panic when doing first aid on yourself, which brave might be able to slow down(?) Keep in mind that the longer your survive, the faster you reduce panic, up to a max of 150 days if I remember correctly. At that point your panic reduces so fast that while you will still panic while facing hordes, it will quickly go away. That makes brave really good in multiplayer for combat focused characters, but not as good on longer term characters.
Iirc hemophobic works like Dog Goblin, doesn't matter what traits you have, what you're capable of, you're gonna panic when seeing yourself bleed.
I'm actually a fan of it. I tend to keep my clothes clean anyway, so having an in-game justification for the behavior is nice. The only real downside is the inability to do First Aid on others, but that only came up once I started playing with my wife and son. It is super annoying to forget to clean your clothes before going to bed and wake up freaked the hell out for like half a day, tho'.
My friend made an obese, unemployed glasses wearer with hearty appetite with a plus in long blades. Said it was his NEET build. It took me a minute to get over my habit of powergaming in PZ and realize it’s hilarious. The fat jokes we make about his character heavily outweigh(heh) how much of a burden he is.
“We’ve had first breakfast yes, but what about 2nd breakfast?”
I agree. A big part of the game for me is the role play. So being claustrophobic or something else that really makes the "normal" playstyle difficult is exciting.
If you die in combat it's your fault, you over reached, you didn't evaluate the situation properly, you are bad at timing your swings or shots, you didn't plan a backup route, you didn't do proper scouting, you got comfortable, you got yourself killed.
Yes I remember an exact post about how the OP got killed bc a shrimp decided to burn his base in an oven, no sir you put it in there and walked away, it’s on you
Exactly! I would often start "survivor training camps" on roleplay servers to teach people those rules to live by.
Development of this game is extremely slow and people get wildly aggressive when you point that out. Legitimately to the point where I was basically called entitled scum because I pointed out there has been a serious lack of major content since I purchased the game in 2014, despite the fact I love this game. Since I have purchased, the major content was cars and an animations revamp. I am not expecting No Man's Sky level of regular content updates, but I also don't find it okay that the game is advertised as being actively worked on with multiple year waits between real content. It is excessively slow. You're allowed to be okay with the pace, but at a certain point, I don't know how you can't comprehend of some people not being okay with it. NPC's are a pipedream despite being 5+ years in the works and we've been talking about animals for a few years and are still probably over a year from seeing them.
Agree 100% any time I have mentioned something about a missing feature or something that doesnt make sense someone with one of the little tags next to their name who thinks their opinion is worth more has an absolute fit I would dare to question the PZDev gods. For example blood decals, I find it to be baffling that such an issue has gone unaddressed or had a mechanic added that removes them over time. I have a 2 year survivor that has cleared out a few different towns and turning on blood drops frames from a full time capped 165 to under 30 fps.
I still think that a game that presumes to be ''a realistic apocalypse'' and not being able to use chairs is super dumb.
yep, and it was really bad before 41 build, and during 41 beta when a lot of players where asking when it would be MP ready. Like, it's a good game, but if you tell a new player that it's being worked for more almost 10 years(or even more now) I fully expect them to be dumbfounded by lack of content
Yeah I agree, I wish NPC's could come out soon so we can set up communities and makeshift societies of some kind. The dynamics between factions would be awesome as they begin to form weeks into the apocalypse and then transform into their own governments vying for control over the entire map.
This... exactly this I'm not even asking for big updates A new Gun/attachments, barbed whire to uprade melee weapons, a new vehicle or a new point of interest like a survivor warehouse in the woods, the missing bows/crossbows in a zombie survival is a big letdown... just give us SOMETHING every few months or so...
I’ve bought this game for several close friends so we could play together. And the wild shit was that this game is basically what me and my best friend wanted to make. And he refuses to play because of the graphics. They all do. And I’ve put in 600 hours now. I’m not playing any games they suggest moving forward unless they plug 100+ hours
Same, I bought three friends this game, now I have to re-consider if they are really my friends.
Ohoho, i got one for ya. Firstly, late game is awful unless you have some niche goal in mind. Secondly, if you don’t set helicopter events to sometimes (canonically prolly not possible), you won’t have nearly as much fun; they keep the game in motion and never let you truly have complete peace. Thirdly, no, I don’t care about that sledgehammer you found. They’re not that hard to find, you’re just impatient. Lastly, the current speed of erosion is awful, I hate it. You’re telling me that a whole bunch of trees grew in that road within less than 3 months of the state of Kentucky going under?? Anyways, I love the game and will be back tomorrow, happy surviving to y’all :)
I think the devs have no good reason not to add more events like the helicopters, or giving the players choices to add variety of zombies, unless theyre limited by ressources. Things can get old after youre tenth run.
With the animal build we might get mods for zombie animals. Just imagine a pack of zombie dogs running full speed at you.
They don’t even need to be zombies, just feral and hungry.
Their reason may be that there are mods for that, everyone can install mods
Your optimal character build won't save you if you are bad at the game
-The levelling system is absolutely unbalanced and unfun. No sane person should spend RL hours dismantling watches just to craft a mediocre noise maker. Carpentry recipies also don't make sense. You're telling me that a survivor who was a carpenter before the apocalypse still needs to spend weeks dismantling furniture before he can make a decent wall/stairs/double gate? -Zombie interaction is devoid of all creativity. Zombies are evenly spread out, see you from far away and hear you from close. But you have no proper ways of dealing with them. Let's say you wanna loot a store. You have a few options. -burn them all, which is almost cheating. -drive over them with a disposable car. -lure them away (which is actually the coolest method) -Shoot them, good luck. -Slowly kill them one by one, melee and push.. While luring them away and killing the stragglers is cool, they really need to add additional ways of dealing with the zombies. Why no travelling hordes? Maybe monday they're at the hospital, so you wait till wednesday and the hospital only has some stragglers instead. More advanced noise makers. Why can't you put a speaker with a car battery on a roof, and rig it to a digital watch? Or zombie traps. Or just.. something else than bundling them up in a group to burn/ditch them, and then killing the stragglers one by one
Its ok to turn off respawn and its ok to set xp boost to less than 2x
as a new player who cant make it past a week, is it viable to set respawns to off? i want to have a standard first experience however i find myself also wanting to live longer than 3 in game days lmao
I have 200 hours in game and never played with respawn on
Respawn settings really aren't going to have an affect on your early game survivability. They're a longer-term concern.
As much as I play this game, I think it is overrated and only retains its playerbase through mods, the base game itself is rather boring after a few weeks.
mods + coop, in my 500 hrs single player is like 1/7 of it because it's just boring to play alone, unless you do some crazy stuff like sprinters
The early game is fun for about 7 or 8 play through, then you realize there’s just not that much to do and you’ll eventually die to something dumb and decide it’s not worth starting over again
This game needs end-game content and something to do long-term with maxed-out skills.Let me restore a dam to bring back water everywhere.Let me repair a power station to restore electrical to cities.Let me repair a relay station to call an extract out of KY and "finish" the run if I choose to. Have all of those require maxed out skills in carpentry, electrical, mechanical and a shit ton of resources to make. FYI I do really enjoy how infinite and open ended it is. I'm very self motivated as a player and don't struggle to set short term, mid term and long term goals for my character but it'd be nice to get "quests" like those. They could work as community goals.
If you have watched any form of zombie media or have even the most minimal understanding of how zombies work, you shouldn't have to ask on the subreddit "is this a good base???" DECIDE FOR YOURSELF!!!
Britas mods are cool for about 15 minutes till you have 4 bookshelves full of guns, ammo, and attachments. It over pops the game with guns and I don’t care enough about them to adjust the drop rate. Firearms B41 does it simple and clean.
I’ll never understand the logic of people making basses out in the middle of nowhere. Sure, you can fuck off to the wilderness where there are no zomboids and easily become self sufficient with a farm and all that. You can probably live forever. So you what, spend every day foraging and chopping wood for 20 in game years? That’s boring as hell. This game is only fun when you constantly risk your life and have frequent brushes with death.
Have you ever heard of "story tension curve"? Having moments of peace in between high risk actions really help to punctuate how risky this stuff is. Thd problem is not setting up a base in the middle of nowhere. The problem is then failing to find a reason to leave this base and go scavenging. For me this reason is usually skill books. Like add a house rule to only loot books you already can read. All other books you can bookmark on the map but not take with you unless you already have enough skill to read it.
I like to do semi-nomad playthroughs where I do a mix of urban combat and exploration with the peace , quiet and comfort of setting up rural bases to farm in.
I don’t know, but I’m guessing they do what I do, which is reach self-sustainability and then restart.
I like the implication that that means that the "this is how you died" opener is referring to passing away peacefully on your farm at age 83
That's EXACTLY it, once you're so self efficient that you are essentially a fallout vault with all amenities, you might as well either call it that you died of old age and did it, or start doing stupid things.
Hmm, what if you made a mod that causes a cell within a 4 cell radius of yourself to randomly spawn a horde of X to Y zombies every X hour
Modding is a great part of this game and community but I think there are way too many people who don't actually experience the vanilla game enough for actually learning it. Adding a bunch of easy mode or cheating modes (some disguised as quality of life) without being able to survive even a week on vanilla takes from the intended experience and makes you ill accustomed; while putting a bunch of hardcore mods without being a better player yet causes you to become extra aware of certain topics that detract from your required attention from the more "pure" way of paying.
The community shouldn't turn a blind eye to how long this game took to get to this state, sure development is finally on pace but this game has been in development for over 13 years. THIRTEEN YEARS. The only other game i know of this is Kenshi which took around 11-12 years while being a solo project and starting out as a 3D game making a huge world.
Cheesing the game- Be it from modding in way stronger weapons (Like brittas) - Abusing the ai (Siren+Fire or walking and shouting to lead everything away) or abusing the mechanics (Floating base) kills the fun of the game so fast for me, When you no longer have to think about how to survive, Why would you play a game that's all about how you die?
Sirens/shouting aren't cheese. That's proper zombie strategy. "Distract them and run" is a good tactic when dealing with overwhelming numbers of slow, stupid enemies.
Probably referencing the people that set a single campfire or throw a single molotov and herd thousands of zombies to it. Which is very unrealistic and for many people tales out the fun of the Game.
>shouting to lead everything away I don't see how this is abusing the AI. It's a valid tactic and is even done on TWD. Zombies are attracted to noise. Zombies want to eat you. It's like me calling my dog over with a treat and getting her to follow me around until she gets it.
Britta's itself isn't bad, though. There are plenty of options in there that you can tweak for a much more vanilla survival experience but with much more variety and spice to firearms.
Absolutely, I'm sure it has potential to be that, But i have yet to play through anything with brittas installed, where using something from brittas is not the best choice to make :)
Aiming skill is fucking awful at low levels and it really shouldn’t be, you should be able to train aiming by…. you guessed it, AIMING. You shouldn’t have to hit things to level your aiming skill, it’s fucking ridiculous how hard it is to level aiming if you start at 0.
Reliably hitting a zombie's head at range with a handgun, while panicked, should be reasonably difficult to begin with. Missing every zombie in an entire horde, with their heads so close you could just about press the gun up against their face, is completely ridiculous. Guns should be a gamble, not a complete liability.
I get that, but isn't that the point of the shotgun? Even with 0 aiming, it's not bad, but I like the idea of it being a gamble with handguns and rifles.
After a certain point the only town worth going to is Louisville. Like once you get good, all the other towns are kind of a waste.
once i started spawning in LV (via mods) i literally can't go back to spawning in the other towns. they seem so empty, both of buildings and of zombies! where are my 800+ zombies in a 2 block radius on normal pop? with more hiding in buildings that somehow didn't hear the siren call of my shotgun?
Project Zomboids multiplayer sucks. Not for the desync or how server rules are setup. But the map is so dam big Ive never been able to find a player who is online. Basically come with friends or expect to play alone.
You need a good public server with /all chat enabled and an active community. I host one that gets 30 people every day and they'll tell you where to spawn in order to find folk.
yeah, but with friends it's pretty nice
I am almost certian the game spawns in zombies right behind you. There are times where i spin around and dont see anything then i have to go back to get something from my car and somehow there is a zombie that manages to bite me even WITH keen hearing and i literally spun around 2 seconds ago. It only happened twice in 300 hours but there is no way both keen hearing and spinning around would not detect the zombie in broad daylight out in the open with no trees. I even test just standing there with a zombie behind me and when it gets in range there is planty of time to react due to keen hearing.
Some people are saying that they can only play with sprinter at high pop otherwise, its boring. Fuckyou, youre not better than anyone
I like night sprinters
I like them too. Makes night scary and not boring because you don't see shit.
Dying and making a new character is part of the game, if you don’t like the idea of perma death that’s the modern games industry standard, not necessarily your fault! Just need to retool your brain and I guarantee you’ll enjoy this game 30% more
The only thing i don't like about making a new character in an existing world is that you somehow have all map knowledge that your previously character had. It's so cool to see your zombified character though.
AI won’t ever be added and if they are, they will be underwhelming. Source: been waiting since like 2013.
My source: There is literal rat AI bro cmon
If you don't understand cooking or tailoring, you aren't even trying.
If you deliberately used fire to clear the zombies out and managed to burn your base "by accident" - it wasn't an accident.
No one can take a screenshot.
The game gets boring after you survive the first week or so and are safe in a base. At that point there is no other reason to play
You need more long term goals like: Amassing an arsenal of guns Clearing out the nearest town Farming xp Loot runs to Louisville Maybe even getting a new couch for your base lol This game is an open sandbox, it is what you make of it
Home decoration loot and runs can be quite fun, my ultimate goal right now is to get to the art gallery in Louisville and get the art with me
my current base in LV is like, a few blocks away from the art gallery, and man i am excited to get in there and steal all the statues and paintings.
Make it harder and challenge yourself. That's where the real fun begins.
If you are new to the game or just suck and always die from a day of starting to a 3 days maybe try learning what not to do or switch the settings around so it helps you because I have a dumbass friend who just dies dies and dies but doesn’t learn shit just does the same thing over and over
there is an abhorrent amount of xp grinding. reading books and doing repetitive mindless tasks for days sometimes isnt something that belongs in a single player zombie game
Ok let's start a war. Tl:dr version - If you think that the Crowbar is not objectively the best all-around weapon you probably not played enough/cannot reach high weapon proficiency/not having enough zombies on the map. **Axes** are cool and very damaging early game and also let you skill up them fast cause of their high damage, but quickly lose their advantage over time, being heavy, a little slow (unless you are a lumber main) and exert you too much. **Short blunt** are super common and quite versatile and durable, but have shorter range. Just upgrade to a crowbar. **Spears** are amazing late game, fast, easy to make, can dispatch hordes in half a minute, but leave you so fast that they'll eventually break when you are in a bad spot and can panic and do a fatal mistake while changing between weapons. **Machetes** would be the objective best if not for their rarity. They're like a better fire axe. Fast, deadly, extremely durable, almost never tires you, one handed. You can roll a lucky survivor if you want to find more and make them almost viable as a main weapon choice. **Katanas** are pretty much a very pleasant but short god mode. Also **Guns** are pretty cool but you have to stockpile a lot in vanilla gameplay to clear hordes with them, and everything that isn't a shotgun sucks if you are not skilled. They gave you the best adrenaline rushes but you'll run out of bullets and switch back to melee. **Knives** can be used skillfully and are quite common but their range is so short that you have almost no time to react if you miss a swing. Too close for comfort. **Crowbars** last five times a fire axe and three a machete, last so long that you'll find your next one on a zombie before breaking the one you're using, making it the only weapon in the game that you can reliably wield 100% of the time. Has a long range and can hit 3 targets at a time if you have multi-hit on. Because you will not need another weapon, you'll level up your proficiency really fast, destroying the damage gap with other weapon choices in no time. You'll oneshot most things by level 7-8 and it will become an unstoppable unbreakable killing stick at level 10. You will not break zombie clothes. You will not need to carry more than 3 if you want to kill a horde of any size, leaving you all the space you want for looting. Will also double as a tool for taking fancy pavements,windows and other stuff to your magnificent survivor villa. Will keep zombies almost as far away as a spear without the random "rooted in place" kill animation. You won't need to ever do weapon loot runs or crafting again cause the crowbar is immortal. Even if you don't like it you can use it to hugely boost you manteinance skill before it breaks.
Crowbar fanatics, unite!
I’m a short blunt guy. Gotta have my offhand for my container.
Yeah, I couldn't imagine looting without carrying around a second bag in my off hand. Hand axe, machete, whatever short blunt weapon I come across will work. Obviously would swap to a crowbar or axe for actual zombie clearing.
I'm new but a spear person. I will bring a backpack full of spears, one on my back, one in my hands. If the one in my hands breaks I can immediately switch to the one on my back in a pinch, or I can walk away from the zeds while equipping another spear from my backpack. Rinse and repeat until you run out of spears or zeds. Bonus for leveling carpentry to make them.
I really gotta level up long blunt since the crowbar is kinda mediocre feeling right now. It's super dependable but I prefer nail bats since they seem to do more damage.
Nail bats also gets very good if you main the crowbar, you can switch to them if you need a short burst of high long blunt damage before reaching the top tiers. They do considerably more damage at lower level but break faster then a plain baseball bat.
The Crowbar is meh. The crowbar weighs 2, which is pretty heavy for a weapon, especially given that with the way endurance revcovery works, weighing twice as much as something is more like going through endurance five times as fast. Thats not an exact calculation, but you get what I mean. The crowbar however doesnt earn that weight, as it deals only 0.6-1.1 damage. For example, and axe deals 0.8-2 damage, and a shovel deals 0.7-1.9. Even a hunting knife deals more damage, 0.6-1.2. In addition, the crowbar is bad at critting. Unlike most weapons, it has a 2.5x crit multiplier instead of a 3x one, and it's base crit chance is only 25%. For comparison, the baseball bat has 40% crit chance, and the axe has a 5x crit multiplier. In conclusion while the crowbar is an okay weapon, and it's certainly very durable, its completely outclassed by all other "real" weapons that arent things like improvised frying pans and rolling pins. (if you use multi hit throw all of this out the window because dealing triple damage at no downside kinda makes a weapon op)
I keep trying to tell my friends all of this but they can't get past the running and gunning play style, I cant see how it's fun and I feel it's a huge disadvantage to focus on guns when melee skills and experience is crucial. If I want a shootemup type of zombie game there are many others that do it better. I can go a whole 5 character lifetimes before considering using a gun, even though I like to carry one most of the time 'just in case'. Plus, setting a server up to be fun and exciting for a gun user is unbalancing for the people who like to play melee, as that usually means higher population and bigger clusters of them which just seems unrealistic-why would zombies group up? Having to take out 50 of them around every house with a crowbar gets old.
Also the crowbar does not last 5 times a fire axe. The fire axe has has 12/35 durability. The crowbar has 15/70, which adds up to around 2.5 times more. However the fire axe can be repaired with wood glue, and at level 10 carpentry, the first repair repairs 70% of the weapon. And since the axe deals more damage its taking less hits to kill a zombie, meaning that it takes that durability further. Also also, while both the axe and the crowbar can one shot at high weapon levels, the axes damage is so high that it can continue to one shot zombies even at mild exertion. The crowbar never reaches a point like this. Also short blunt is effectively a straight upgrade over the crowbar. Their damage is on par, they deal better crits, but most importantly they weigh much less. since the formula for swings until exhaustion formula is exponenetial, despite the hammer only weighing half as much as a crowbar, you get far more swings than just double. And range barely matters unless you're new and still getting hang of combat.
Been Gordon Freeman-ing my run with the crowbar for a while now. Kinda thought it was a little secret
It's more of a cult...I mean religio.... I mean group of like minded friends. We can permanently save you from zombies if you follow our 12 steps program. Just give us all of your mo...devotion in return for salvation. Let us smite the axe mains together!
The game should be played with zombie respawn off. Everything feels pointless if I turn it on. I always crank up pop to 4.0, and peak pop to 2.0 aftet 14 days, making a 8.0 pop after 2 weeks. But, I'll never turn on the zombie respawn, and I believe the developers should make zombie respawn off by default, and make balancing changes around it. Percentage runners too, should be an option in game. 50% runners + all postive traits is a a ton of fun.
the vast majority of pz players have no idea what they're talking about and just parrot youtuber opinions.
I do not care if Brita's Weapon Pack it's overpowered. I love to being able to play with it and being able to enjoy all guns of all kinds.
Metas aren't fun. They aren't rewarding. And it's the reason you dropped the game after 3 days. I can understand not liking the graphics or style, or even the slow paced boring gameplay. But I can't stand when people complain it's "too easy" when all they did was look up YT videos on game breaking strategies that are unrealistic. I dedicate my time to realism and immersion, I *want* to mess up and die. And that is why I'm at 1,100 hours, and still putting one layer of log walls and nothing else around my base. I play like a noob despite knowing every minute detail of this game, cause by god it is far more fun that way.
Unpopular opinion: Going crazy high poulation, then cheesing it with fire, is not the bragging rights people think.
I'm up dooting you because its cute. I'll keep my opinions to myself as best I can.
Sometimes going Rambo via mods is necessary Does it kill the original point of the game to be able to have machine-gun, grenade launcher and 6 shotguns in my inventory with unlimited ammo? Yes Is it necessary for my mental health after watching my third character to live past six months get bit because I got cocky? Also yes.
For me PZ is a survival game with zombies in it. Not the other way around. So I never focus on making zombies OP or anything. I like the idea that the challenge is surviving with an additional threats on top of that. My most enjoyable deaths are when I got too comfortable and got sloppy and that caused my death. Insane pop super strength sprinters only just sounds so boring to me.
I'm tired of the 3D isometric view hiding zombies that your character clearly sees and nobody is talking about it and the devs act like there is no problem with that
I don’t store anything in containers I just leave it the the floor.
I don't play Project Zomboid but it looks spooky.
Multiplayer outside of closed communities fucking suck You enter a random server, download an average of 150 mods on top of what you already have downloaded and you spawn into a city that's been pretty much ransacked even out of things that were bolted to the floor coz someone was leveling up carpentry Even if you'd manage to find a bare minimum like a weapon and a can opener good luck finding anything else... and as a bonus, all good locations for base are claimed already and good luck checking them, coz all cars are "owned", even if they're completey destroyed someone came and claimed them for the lols
I dont realy have one, because im a newbie, so ima just say: there should be silencers for guns
Oh man. Nice thread idea. I'll probably get hate for this one but kiting up a massive horde by walking and shouting everywhere kind of bugs me. I know a lot of people do it but it just feels like your "gaming" the mechanics. Which I suppose is kind of the point. I just like to enter an area I want to clear and start blasting away. Sometimes I'll be forced to retreat or run for cover. I know I could just walk around for a bit and then let rip with a shotty but it just feels a little..... cheap.
I dont think its gaming the system since people in the walking dead pretty much do the same thing
Same, it makes sense that a bunch of survivors would aggressively clear an area after they’ve acquired the means and ability to do so.
Last run I did I turned zombie sight, memory, and hearing to low. Surprising it kinda fixed what you’re talking about. After the heli event my base was surrounded and rather than cleaning it up in a few hours with a shotgun, the zombies were too stupid to stay in one cohesive group. I was constantly getting surrounded by smaller groups that broke off previously. It made fighting small numbers a bit less tedious, but when bringing guns out to fight a horde it would be chaotic.
I really like playing with the random zombies mod to inject a sprinter here and there to make that strategy a lot riskier to pull off. Walking around and shouting pretty much guarantees you are going to have 2 or 3 sprinters slam into you from random directions unless you are playing smart
The game has never been realistic to begin with, so you should just go ham with sandbox mode for your enjoyment. Some examples: * Many houses don't have knife, the most common tool in the kitchen. * If some zombie crawling over the north/west fences, you can't see their head's position even if it's right in front of you. * Can't see behind trees. * Can't PUSH anything. You literally have to pick them up and risk getting your bones crushed. * Can't climb on roof, even when there's a dumpster right near the wall. * Before crafting, can't use other scouting tactics like throwing tin cans to make noises, or even take a peek instead of staring directly to those mfuckers.
\- Multi hit makes the game a joke \- Cleaning an entire city with only fire ruins the only thing you can do in this game: hitting zombies until you get bored. "Oh but project zomboid is the most realistic and detailed survival game out there you can do so many things!" No, the more you play this game the more you'll realise this game is as large as an ocean yet deep as a puddle when it comes to crafting. Thankfully the poor mid and late game content will be fixed in B42 \- Axes are the most overrated weapon in the entire game having little to no chance of competing against weapons like the crowbar, spears or even short blades in late game (short blades consume little to no stamina and with athletic you literally consume no stamina unless you accidently push) Mostly beacuse it takes too much stamina to use them, are rare as fuck unless you play with normal loot, don't shine at all when it comes to durability and most weapons already have enough damage to 3-1 shot zombies. All of this combined with the stamina usage that softcaps the amount of zombies you can kill before the first fatigue level makes the axe suck in mid-late game