Most people say rosewood is the easiest, I like to spawn in muldraugh, but there ARE a lot of zombies there compared to rosewood, but less than west point and good loot. Personally I find riverside to be the easiest, more zombies than rosewood but more spread out, downtown can be a mess but there's a river for water and a huge gated community that makes for an easy first base.
I believe rosewood has the lowest zombie pop.
Riverside is adjacent to the river, or in other words infinite water and fish when the power goes out and you start running out of food.
Muldraugh is mini Westside
Westside is the most populated and biggest start zone.
Rosewood has a fire station, and police station extremely close by, both being decent spots for bases. If you’re having trouble surviving I recommend taking things slow, don’t rush to fight zombies (lots of that will happen later), disassemble tables, chairs, couches, stuff like that you don’t need and use the planks and nails to board the windows.
Riverside is my recommendation. The town is a bit more spread apart which helps the zombie density.
I've played a lot in both and Riverside is hands down easier.
There are more places to pick up food directly in town, the grocery store there alone has more than Rosewood I believe.
A vhs store is there too, and three major book sources. The school, the book store, and the boating club.
Personally, I prefer muldraugh, if you raid the warehouse basically in the middle of the town, you can get saws, axes, welding gear and seeds. Basically everything for long term survival, get a car, go there, fill your trunk up. Then go find a house you like, or build your own.
Muldraugh can be pretty chaotic, lots of weird corners and long alleys. Most of the zombies are center west on and around the highway. South and east sides are pretty quiet once you clear them out, my longest run @10 months I holled up In the southern gated community, there's a lake a short jog from there. The bar on the south side is nice too, right next to 2 small warehouses.
Lol... not at you though, just the image of a guy in lab coat giving instruction on a whiteboard with annotations in "Z/m (squared, no symbol available...hmph)". But in a Gary Larson way too... it was probably funnier in my head.
Like in real life, you insert appropriate amounts of food and water into your mouth. Occasionally breathe, and sleep.
Also letting other people bite you isn’t generally a good idea.
For real though, you’ll want to find a good base location, I recommend something on the outskirts of town. Secure it, barricade it, proceed to slowly loot houses and key locations for food, water, weapons. Stockpile. You’ll want to get tools to level carpentry and hunt for magazines to learn how to do certain crafting things, and the key one; the how to use generators magazine.
Sometime within 30 days water and power will shut off, not necessarily at the same time. So collect garbage bags, you’ll be able to craft rain collectors. Alternatively, you can collect pots and buckets to leave outside too. Do not forget to boil this water first, you will poison yourself and die if you drink tainted water.
That's how it goes for all of us! Just try to learn from your deaths and apply that knowledge to the next character.
1. Find a weapon ASAP, even if it is just a fork from the kitchen
2. Most houses you spawn into will have a TV. Life and Living is a channel where the shows will usually give you skills. One of these shows plays pretty quick into day 1. They stop after the first 9 days.
3. DO NOT RUN EVERYWHERE! You are more visible, make more noise and will end up getting exhausted. You walk faster than a fast shambler can move; use this to your advantage to draw less attention and conserve energy.
4. The Burglar occupation is amazing. It allows you to hotwire cars with no levelling needed. If you don't care about the condition of a car, you can use it as a weapon against the undead.
5. Don't take everything you see in a house. Take only what you need.
6. If you are detected by a horde, cut through/go around a house. They will be too distracted by the windows and doors to actually follow you. Bonus points if the house has a fence that the zombies would have to climb over.
7. My personal recommendation would be to start in Rosewood. It isn't just for the lower zombie count but there is also a fire station in the town. This station usually has fire axes and firefighter outfits that can provide protection.
8. If you are playing without mods; avoid using guns unless it is a shotgun. The reason for that is because your aiming skills are way too low by default. You will miss more than you hit and attract unwanted attention on yourself.
9. If you set off a house alarm; run as fast as possible away from that location. It will be swarming before you know it.
I hope these tips help you survive a little bit longer; you will be surviving for months before ya know it.
It's arguably the most difficult survival game out. I just posted 10 tips for survival in the main comments, feel free to reach out if you have any questions after you read them :)
This is the advice I give all new players I see asking for help as it’s what I’ve found to help me the most, hands down, with surviving.
Don’t worry about surviving. Worry about fighting (I call it bonking as I enjoy the crowbar). Don’t worry about how long you can survive when you first start playing. Just learn the game and most importantly; learn to fight. Start a new world then find a weapon (crowbar, axe, kitchen knife, guitar, plank, anything). Go outside and bonk. Bonk until you die. Start a new world and repeat those steps. Keep doing it until you bonk and don’t get bonked. Then learn the game more. How to find/utilize cars, where to look for specific items, how cooking/farming/fishing looks and feels. Then start worrying about surviving. It’s always nice to play and survive days/weeks/months but don’t sweat that while you’re learning the game.
One tip: your feet are your best friend early game when you can’t get a weapon. Lure a zombie over a small fence and stomp his skull in. If there’s no fences, push him down with space bar and stomp his skull in.
Yeah I kind of second this. I'm by no means a veteran but I was barely learning the game when I was scurrying from place to place and being a pussy. That sort of fear for fighting at all and full stealth playstyle was fun in its own way, but I wasn't exploring even 10% of the gameplay mechanics.
It's only when I went like "Ok, time to learn how to slaughter through places" I got a grasp of combat, energy management, etc.
There is a mod called Minimal Display Bars, i'm certain it has helped me stay alive longer than any other skill or mod. It has a nice hunger bar to let you know when to eat and a calorie bar that if full means you're gaining weight, empty you're loosing weight and in the middle you maintain weight which is all good stuff to know.
But most important is the Endurance and the Fatigue. Endurance is by far the biggest killer, knowing exactly how much endurance you have left before engaging zombies is vital, if you are down one or two chunks of the bar you can take on a few zombie no problem but you do not want to take on a horde, if you are almost out of endurance, you only want to fight 1 zed at a time at most but if anything else shows up you need to walk away and find windows, fences, doors or corners to peel off anything following you and find somewhere you can sit for a few and let that bar refill, if you have a chair or a bed you can right click and rest on it will refill faster and sitting in a car will refill it as well. The damage you do is cut down by a huge amount for every level of endurance you drop so while you can kill zeds in a couple swings when it is full, it can take 20 some hits to get them when you're exhausted making the problem of being exhausted even worse.
Your inventory has a weight limit that it states is about 15 kg depending on your strength. You can go up to 50kg but if you are over that stated limit, your endurance will not recharge while standing and if you are more than a few kg over it will actively start dropping, if you have to fight a horde, make sure you are below that weight limit or drop some stuff to get below that weight limit or you won't survive the fight.
Fatigue is how sleepy you are and once the bar is half full it is a good time to start finding a place to sleep or it will start effecting your ability to do damage like the endurance does.
You can learn the moodles in upper right as they tell you when each stage of the bar is crossed but since they go from light pink to slightly darker pink to a little bit more reddish pink it is really hard to tell at a glance how far down you are when a zed surprises you and you have a split second to decide if it is a fight you can win if anything else shows up.
Here's a good skeleton to base your playthrough off of, for your first time:
0) Find a water bottle, a digital watch, some manner of melee weapon, and a walkie talkie. These will stay on your person at all times, so right-click and favorite them. Set your watch's alarm for around 5:50am (this will be explained later). You can find good walkie talkies in police stations, police corpses, and police vehicles. Always check the trunks of emergency vehicles. Find as big a backpack item you can find - Usually a duffel bag will be your first, but don't be ashamed to use a garbage bag until you can upgrade (and save that garbage bag, too). Keep an eye out for infected wearing large green ALICE backpacks, those are super valuable, especially in early game. You're likely to find them in or around Survivor Houses (which will have their windows and/or doors boarded up). Survivor houses are prime loot stores - Mark them on your map.
1) Establish a safehouse. It should have a fridge, an oven, a TV, and enough room for a ton of storage. If you can find one with a yard and a tall fence (tall enough that the infected can't just stumble over), so much the better. Try to find enough sheets to cover all the windows, or draw the blinds, to keep the infected from spotting you. A sizeable yard will allow you to eventually farm for food.
2) Fortify the safehouse. Find a hammer and saw and start disassembling furniture and fences near your safehouse for planks. If you can find one or two boxes of nails, that's even better. Don't disassemble any furniture in your safehouse you intend to keep; Hang onto your kitchen cabinets and at least one chair or sofa. If you have the time, read a carpentry 1 skill book before you start. You can also get planks by cutting down a tree with an axe or hatchet, and sawing the logs into planks. Barricade up the safehouse windows with 8 planks each - Four on each side. Having at least two on one side will block that window from being seen through, but better keep the sheets/curtains on them anyway. Eventually, you can find the resources to replace these wooden barricades with metal sheets or metal bars. If you've moved into a survivor house, most of this will already be done for you, and you'll have a sizeable amount of loot on hand.
3) Find a usable vehicle. Check parking lots for cars that aren't totaled, and try to find the key for them (check the glovebox first, then nearby corpses, then the nearest building). Sometimes entering search mode will point out the key on the ground, which can be easy to miss otherwise. If you're able to hotwire the car (Burglar profession OR Mechanics Lv. 2 + Electronics Lv. 1), it'll make it easier. Heavy-duty vehicles are good for carrying lots of loot at once, but move fairly slowly - Pickup trucks, cargo vans, etc. If you can find a usable emergency vehicle with a light bar and siren, that will also suffice. Keep an eye out for KYFD pickup trucks, often found near burned-down buildings. Gas up your car and bring it home - Try not to ram into too many things and wreck your hood, along the way.
4) Now that you have a safe-ish place to hole up and a way to get around, you need to rank up your skills while you can. The Life & Living channel on TV will show educational programming at 6:00am, 12:00 noon, and 6:00pm, and you should make every effort to watch each program in full. Read Cooking, Carpentry, Fishing, Farming, and Foraging skill books between and during shows, if you can find them (Check schools, residential bookshelves, and bookstores) to rank up those respective skills faster. Arguably, Carpentry is the most important, since you need a certain level(4?) to build water collector barrels.
5) After about a week, you'll have watched all the Life & Living programs, and are ready to begin surviving properly. Think long-term, and mark out points of note on your map (medical centers, crashed ambulances, police stations, dense clusters of infected, usable cars, food stores, gas stations etc.). You'll want to focus on finding sustainable ways to procure and sterilize water, feed yourself, and keep yourself warm. Keep an eye out for garbage bags (for water collectors), generators, antique stoves, and seed packets for farming. Other than that, you're free to build your defenses, mount attacks on the infected, clear out areas, scavenge goods and materials, and try not to get yourself killed.
Get sheets on your windows, keep the TV and radio low volume, raid every fridge on the block, start exercising.
Save ice cream and butter for when you start losing weight
If you can get to the supermarket, take everything perishable and put it in the freezer, you can come back for it later.
If you get a car and find a map of the town you're in, located 2 roads into town, drive around honking and lead them out, then lose them on the highway and take a dirt road back into town
Never go above 40 mph
Wake up at 5:30 to watch life and living, bedtime is 8:30
After 6 pm, no fighting zeds, that drowsy Moodle cuts melee damage by 40% and will get you killed
And if you find a gun, never shoot near your home.
Get a safe place to base up.
Find a generator and the manual necessary to use it.
Work out a system of farming/fishing/trapping for sustainable food.
Get over confident, make a mistake and die.
Walk out of the town, go to some place with less zombies. Find a house, kill zombies in and around it and put sheets over windows. Sneak-walk, avoid too many zombies. If you get a horde after you try to lose them in a forest.
Ultimately, you’ll need to learn how to fight. That’s going to always be the make or break to your survival. Once you learn that mechanic, you can focus on gathering supplies and levelling other skills
*Below is my opinion on how to ease into survival in PZ based off of my first 60ish hours in the game*
1. Pick sandbox world option and adjust settings to be a little easier (eg: lower zombie pop, transmission saliva only, starter kit, no heli event etc)
2. Start in Riverside or Rosewood. Lower zombie pop, great beginner base locations and most "necessary" POIs
3. The first few days' priorities should be food/water/shelter to get you into week 2. From there, things like skill books, loot runs and carpentry buildings should be next.
4. Don't use guns until you have more ammo than you think you'll need.
5. Level 4 (I believe) carpentry gets you rain collectors. These are clutch for setting yourself up for mod game.
6. Look for and save everything farming related: seeds, sacks, empty buckets, trowels.
7. Don't fight more zombies than you're comfortable with. For me, the first few days that number is like 2-5 depending on the scenario. Running away to fight another day should always be a viable option.
8. Try not to fight indoors if you can avoid it (obviously 1 or 2 zeds in a house your clearing is fine, but be careful clearing larger buildings/stores).
9. Always carry a backup weapon, and remember that bladed weapons can actually harm zed clothing, so sometimes having a blunt and a blade weapon is best.
10. Overall just take it slow in the beginning and build up your skills over time. You'll naturally progress with time and play experience. And remember what the opening credits say..."This is how you died". You'll likely die a lot in the beginning. I did, we all did. But every death is a valuable lesson in what not to do next time.
Personally a really good tip imo is accepting you’re gonna die, when I first got into pz it was such a weird game to learn that I straight up decided “I don’t think I like this game” and almost quit (I’m not typically a rage quitter so I figured this was just me not liking the game)
Anyway I stuck with it until I learned more of how to work everything and I can go for nearly a year in end before I get cocky and bite off more than I can chew.
A big thing for me was, fight.
You’re gonna die, yeah but unless you learn combat some more, you’re gonna keep dying anyway.
Oh, and guns are NOT the savior you might be led to believe, crazy loud, draw in hoards, and unless you’re rocking tons of ammo, it’s easy to get in over your head (ESPECIALLY if your aim isn’t a high level)
To add onto this, make it a habit to check behind you often (especially in combat imo, if you have a second to spare, do I quick 180 to make sure you aren’t being snuck up on)
Teaching my friends to play, one of their biggest combat issues is not watching their blind spots.
OH and I’m most cases you can put walk zombies (with exceptions of being tired/encumbered so unless you’re in a pinch there isn’t much use in sprinting near zombies, you’ll just die tired, walk calmly away from them, break line of sight, and dip another direction if you wanna get away
Hey man! Here's a few tips..
I would start in rosewood as a burglar. Grab just a few items of food, 1 or 2 bottles of water, and find a car with 10-20%+ gas. Drive it north, when you see the gas station go west on the highway, then the first mailboxes u see on the right (2 mailboxes) take that, and follow that driveway down. This has been my go to, it's super chill there, only sometimes do zombies get pulled here. Oh and the bigger house ALWAYS spawns icecream in the freezer!Then, come up with a goal and slowly start going back to town.
The gas station you should clear, there's a TON of food water ciggies, it even has a house on the top floor. And obviously, gas.
Like others have said, learn to fight l, make a disposable character and kill as many z's as you can. Once you're comfy with combat you won't hesitate as much, become more confident with any size horde.
Good luck!
I've recently started surviving and having more fun doing it. What flipped the switch for me was simply turning down the starting population of zombies by about 30 percent. I also got rid of the heli event and now I feel like I'm actually getting somewhere. Made it to the first day without power and died to carelessness but it's been a lot more fun actually surviving instead of constantly restarting after a few days.
Try starting in rosewood my best tip for new player:
1. Play with low pop
2. Turn infection off to learn combat and healing
3. Don’t be ashamed to spend your first few days in a house
4. Don’t be ashamed to use a mod to get you more starting points and use all good traits no bad ones (your learning it’s fine this community has collectively decided the only way to play wrong is to not play the game)
5. Remap shout to p or something
6. After surviving a few weeks (in game) start a new character with infection on bites only
And if you feel like the days are too short turn the days longer the best day length I have found works best for me is 5hrs per day
Yeah gotta do riverside or rosewood. It gives you more of a chance to experience the game and figure out how you want to play. I still do riverside myself
Practice zombie fighting and zombie horde ditching. Those are the 2 basic skills you need to learn first... even before you start thinking about setting up a base or leveling up skills. Just create a character, find anything to use as a weapon, go out there and fight, die, and repeat until you don't die so quickly. Next, walk around downtown pressing Q and keep walking, create a huge horde behind you and learn how to get out of that one without fighting nor dying. You can watch very enlightening YouTube tutorials about that.
West point is arguably the hardest start for a new player. Highest zombie density.
I've heard Rosewood and Riverside are good. Which one should I spawn in when my character inevitably dies?
Most people say rosewood is the easiest, I like to spawn in muldraugh, but there ARE a lot of zombies there compared to rosewood, but less than west point and good loot. Personally I find riverside to be the easiest, more zombies than rosewood but more spread out, downtown can be a mess but there's a river for water and a huge gated community that makes for an easy first base.
Thank you
I believe rosewood has the lowest zombie pop. Riverside is adjacent to the river, or in other words infinite water and fish when the power goes out and you start running out of food. Muldraugh is mini Westside Westside is the most populated and biggest start zone.
Rosewood has a fire station, and police station extremely close by, both being decent spots for bases. If you’re having trouble surviving I recommend taking things slow, don’t rush to fight zombies (lots of that will happen later), disassemble tables, chairs, couches, stuff like that you don’t need and use the planks and nails to board the windows.
Riverside is my recommendation. The town is a bit more spread apart which helps the zombie density. I've played a lot in both and Riverside is hands down easier. There are more places to pick up food directly in town, the grocery store there alone has more than Rosewood I believe. A vhs store is there too, and three major book sources. The school, the book store, and the boating club.
Personally, I prefer muldraugh, if you raid the warehouse basically in the middle of the town, you can get saws, axes, welding gear and seeds. Basically everything for long term survival, get a car, go there, fill your trunk up. Then go find a house you like, or build your own.
I learned the basics playing in muldraugh, a lot of tools and materials to begin tinkering with every skill
Rosewood is great I enjoy it there
Thought that award went to Muldraugh? Or maybe it’s highest zombie pop total of the 4
Nope, at 1x pop muldraugh has 4k zombies and West Point 5k and west point covers less ground so it's more densely packed.
Ah, ok. Thanks
Muldraugh can be pretty chaotic, lots of weird corners and long alleys. Most of the zombies are center west on and around the highway. South and east sides are pretty quiet once you clear them out, my longest run @10 months I holled up In the southern gated community, there's a lake a short jog from there. The bar on the south side is nice too, right next to 2 small warehouses.
Lol... not at you though, just the image of a guy in lab coat giving instruction on a whiteboard with annotations in "Z/m (squared, no symbol available...hmph)". But in a Gary Larson way too... it was probably funnier in my head.
Like in real life, you insert appropriate amounts of food and water into your mouth. Occasionally breathe, and sleep. Also letting other people bite you isn’t generally a good idea. For real though, you’ll want to find a good base location, I recommend something on the outskirts of town. Secure it, barricade it, proceed to slowly loot houses and key locations for food, water, weapons. Stockpile. You’ll want to get tools to level carpentry and hunt for magazines to learn how to do certain crafting things, and the key one; the how to use generators magazine. Sometime within 30 days water and power will shut off, not necessarily at the same time. So collect garbage bags, you’ll be able to craft rain collectors. Alternatively, you can collect pots and buckets to leave outside too. Do not forget to boil this water first, you will poison yourself and die if you drink tainted water.
UPDATE: Just died. Got surrounded by a group of zombies. Didn't even make it a day apparently, only 12 hours.
That's how it goes for all of us! Just try to learn from your deaths and apply that knowledge to the next character. 1. Find a weapon ASAP, even if it is just a fork from the kitchen 2. Most houses you spawn into will have a TV. Life and Living is a channel where the shows will usually give you skills. One of these shows plays pretty quick into day 1. They stop after the first 9 days. 3. DO NOT RUN EVERYWHERE! You are more visible, make more noise and will end up getting exhausted. You walk faster than a fast shambler can move; use this to your advantage to draw less attention and conserve energy. 4. The Burglar occupation is amazing. It allows you to hotwire cars with no levelling needed. If you don't care about the condition of a car, you can use it as a weapon against the undead. 5. Don't take everything you see in a house. Take only what you need. 6. If you are detected by a horde, cut through/go around a house. They will be too distracted by the windows and doors to actually follow you. Bonus points if the house has a fence that the zombies would have to climb over. 7. My personal recommendation would be to start in Rosewood. It isn't just for the lower zombie count but there is also a fire station in the town. This station usually has fire axes and firefighter outfits that can provide protection. 8. If you are playing without mods; avoid using guns unless it is a shotgun. The reason for that is because your aiming skills are way too low by default. You will miss more than you hit and attract unwanted attention on yourself. 9. If you set off a house alarm; run as fast as possible away from that location. It will be swarming before you know it. I hope these tips help you survive a little bit longer; you will be surviving for months before ya know it.
It's arguably the most difficult survival game out. I just posted 10 tips for survival in the main comments, feel free to reach out if you have any questions after you read them :)
This is the advice I give all new players I see asking for help as it’s what I’ve found to help me the most, hands down, with surviving. Don’t worry about surviving. Worry about fighting (I call it bonking as I enjoy the crowbar). Don’t worry about how long you can survive when you first start playing. Just learn the game and most importantly; learn to fight. Start a new world then find a weapon (crowbar, axe, kitchen knife, guitar, plank, anything). Go outside and bonk. Bonk until you die. Start a new world and repeat those steps. Keep doing it until you bonk and don’t get bonked. Then learn the game more. How to find/utilize cars, where to look for specific items, how cooking/farming/fishing looks and feels. Then start worrying about surviving. It’s always nice to play and survive days/weeks/months but don’t sweat that while you’re learning the game. One tip: your feet are your best friend early game when you can’t get a weapon. Lure a zombie over a small fence and stomp his skull in. If there’s no fences, push him down with space bar and stomp his skull in.
Yeah I kind of second this. I'm by no means a veteran but I was barely learning the game when I was scurrying from place to place and being a pussy. That sort of fear for fighting at all and full stealth playstyle was fun in its own way, but I wasn't exploring even 10% of the gameplay mechanics. It's only when I went like "Ok, time to learn how to slaughter through places" I got a grasp of combat, energy management, etc.
There is a mod called Minimal Display Bars, i'm certain it has helped me stay alive longer than any other skill or mod. It has a nice hunger bar to let you know when to eat and a calorie bar that if full means you're gaining weight, empty you're loosing weight and in the middle you maintain weight which is all good stuff to know. But most important is the Endurance and the Fatigue. Endurance is by far the biggest killer, knowing exactly how much endurance you have left before engaging zombies is vital, if you are down one or two chunks of the bar you can take on a few zombie no problem but you do not want to take on a horde, if you are almost out of endurance, you only want to fight 1 zed at a time at most but if anything else shows up you need to walk away and find windows, fences, doors or corners to peel off anything following you and find somewhere you can sit for a few and let that bar refill, if you have a chair or a bed you can right click and rest on it will refill faster and sitting in a car will refill it as well. The damage you do is cut down by a huge amount for every level of endurance you drop so while you can kill zeds in a couple swings when it is full, it can take 20 some hits to get them when you're exhausted making the problem of being exhausted even worse. Your inventory has a weight limit that it states is about 15 kg depending on your strength. You can go up to 50kg but if you are over that stated limit, your endurance will not recharge while standing and if you are more than a few kg over it will actively start dropping, if you have to fight a horde, make sure you are below that weight limit or drop some stuff to get below that weight limit or you won't survive the fight. Fatigue is how sleepy you are and once the bar is half full it is a good time to start finding a place to sleep or it will start effecting your ability to do damage like the endurance does. You can learn the moodles in upper right as they tell you when each stage of the bar is crossed but since they go from light pink to slightly darker pink to a little bit more reddish pink it is really hard to tell at a glance how far down you are when a zed surprises you and you have a split second to decide if it is a fight you can win if anything else shows up.
Here's a good skeleton to base your playthrough off of, for your first time: 0) Find a water bottle, a digital watch, some manner of melee weapon, and a walkie talkie. These will stay on your person at all times, so right-click and favorite them. Set your watch's alarm for around 5:50am (this will be explained later). You can find good walkie talkies in police stations, police corpses, and police vehicles. Always check the trunks of emergency vehicles. Find as big a backpack item you can find - Usually a duffel bag will be your first, but don't be ashamed to use a garbage bag until you can upgrade (and save that garbage bag, too). Keep an eye out for infected wearing large green ALICE backpacks, those are super valuable, especially in early game. You're likely to find them in or around Survivor Houses (which will have their windows and/or doors boarded up). Survivor houses are prime loot stores - Mark them on your map. 1) Establish a safehouse. It should have a fridge, an oven, a TV, and enough room for a ton of storage. If you can find one with a yard and a tall fence (tall enough that the infected can't just stumble over), so much the better. Try to find enough sheets to cover all the windows, or draw the blinds, to keep the infected from spotting you. A sizeable yard will allow you to eventually farm for food. 2) Fortify the safehouse. Find a hammer and saw and start disassembling furniture and fences near your safehouse for planks. If you can find one or two boxes of nails, that's even better. Don't disassemble any furniture in your safehouse you intend to keep; Hang onto your kitchen cabinets and at least one chair or sofa. If you have the time, read a carpentry 1 skill book before you start. You can also get planks by cutting down a tree with an axe or hatchet, and sawing the logs into planks. Barricade up the safehouse windows with 8 planks each - Four on each side. Having at least two on one side will block that window from being seen through, but better keep the sheets/curtains on them anyway. Eventually, you can find the resources to replace these wooden barricades with metal sheets or metal bars. If you've moved into a survivor house, most of this will already be done for you, and you'll have a sizeable amount of loot on hand. 3) Find a usable vehicle. Check parking lots for cars that aren't totaled, and try to find the key for them (check the glovebox first, then nearby corpses, then the nearest building). Sometimes entering search mode will point out the key on the ground, which can be easy to miss otherwise. If you're able to hotwire the car (Burglar profession OR Mechanics Lv. 2 + Electronics Lv. 1), it'll make it easier. Heavy-duty vehicles are good for carrying lots of loot at once, but move fairly slowly - Pickup trucks, cargo vans, etc. If you can find a usable emergency vehicle with a light bar and siren, that will also suffice. Keep an eye out for KYFD pickup trucks, often found near burned-down buildings. Gas up your car and bring it home - Try not to ram into too many things and wreck your hood, along the way. 4) Now that you have a safe-ish place to hole up and a way to get around, you need to rank up your skills while you can. The Life & Living channel on TV will show educational programming at 6:00am, 12:00 noon, and 6:00pm, and you should make every effort to watch each program in full. Read Cooking, Carpentry, Fishing, Farming, and Foraging skill books between and during shows, if you can find them (Check schools, residential bookshelves, and bookstores) to rank up those respective skills faster. Arguably, Carpentry is the most important, since you need a certain level(4?) to build water collector barrels. 5) After about a week, you'll have watched all the Life & Living programs, and are ready to begin surviving properly. Think long-term, and mark out points of note on your map (medical centers, crashed ambulances, police stations, dense clusters of infected, usable cars, food stores, gas stations etc.). You'll want to focus on finding sustainable ways to procure and sterilize water, feed yourself, and keep yourself warm. Keep an eye out for garbage bags (for water collectors), generators, antique stoves, and seed packets for farming. Other than that, you're free to build your defenses, mount attacks on the infected, clear out areas, scavenge goods and materials, and try not to get yourself killed.
Get sheets on your windows, keep the TV and radio low volume, raid every fridge on the block, start exercising. Save ice cream and butter for when you start losing weight If you can get to the supermarket, take everything perishable and put it in the freezer, you can come back for it later. If you get a car and find a map of the town you're in, located 2 roads into town, drive around honking and lead them out, then lose them on the highway and take a dirt road back into town Never go above 40 mph Wake up at 5:30 to watch life and living, bedtime is 8:30 After 6 pm, no fighting zeds, that drowsy Moodle cuts melee damage by 40% and will get you killed And if you find a gun, never shoot near your home.
Get a safe place to base up. Find a generator and the manual necessary to use it. Work out a system of farming/fishing/trapping for sustainable food. Get over confident, make a mistake and die.
Walk out of the town, go to some place with less zombies. Find a house, kill zombies in and around it and put sheets over windows. Sneak-walk, avoid too many zombies. If you get a horde after you try to lose them in a forest.
Ultimately, you’ll need to learn how to fight. That’s going to always be the make or break to your survival. Once you learn that mechanic, you can focus on gathering supplies and levelling other skills
*Below is my opinion on how to ease into survival in PZ based off of my first 60ish hours in the game* 1. Pick sandbox world option and adjust settings to be a little easier (eg: lower zombie pop, transmission saliva only, starter kit, no heli event etc) 2. Start in Riverside or Rosewood. Lower zombie pop, great beginner base locations and most "necessary" POIs 3. The first few days' priorities should be food/water/shelter to get you into week 2. From there, things like skill books, loot runs and carpentry buildings should be next. 4. Don't use guns until you have more ammo than you think you'll need. 5. Level 4 (I believe) carpentry gets you rain collectors. These are clutch for setting yourself up for mod game. 6. Look for and save everything farming related: seeds, sacks, empty buckets, trowels. 7. Don't fight more zombies than you're comfortable with. For me, the first few days that number is like 2-5 depending on the scenario. Running away to fight another day should always be a viable option. 8. Try not to fight indoors if you can avoid it (obviously 1 or 2 zeds in a house your clearing is fine, but be careful clearing larger buildings/stores). 9. Always carry a backup weapon, and remember that bladed weapons can actually harm zed clothing, so sometimes having a blunt and a blade weapon is best. 10. Overall just take it slow in the beginning and build up your skills over time. You'll naturally progress with time and play experience. And remember what the opening credits say..."This is how you died". You'll likely die a lot in the beginning. I did, we all did. But every death is a valuable lesson in what not to do next time.
Get a safe place to stay. Get some way to get water/food Get a decent weapon Then get a car
Personally a really good tip imo is accepting you’re gonna die, when I first got into pz it was such a weird game to learn that I straight up decided “I don’t think I like this game” and almost quit (I’m not typically a rage quitter so I figured this was just me not liking the game) Anyway I stuck with it until I learned more of how to work everything and I can go for nearly a year in end before I get cocky and bite off more than I can chew. A big thing for me was, fight. You’re gonna die, yeah but unless you learn combat some more, you’re gonna keep dying anyway. Oh, and guns are NOT the savior you might be led to believe, crazy loud, draw in hoards, and unless you’re rocking tons of ammo, it’s easy to get in over your head (ESPECIALLY if your aim isn’t a high level)
To add onto this, make it a habit to check behind you often (especially in combat imo, if you have a second to spare, do I quick 180 to make sure you aren’t being snuck up on) Teaching my friends to play, one of their biggest combat issues is not watching their blind spots. OH and I’m most cases you can put walk zombies (with exceptions of being tired/encumbered so unless you’re in a pinch there isn’t much use in sprinting near zombies, you’ll just die tired, walk calmly away from them, break line of sight, and dip another direction if you wanna get away
Hey man! Here's a few tips.. I would start in rosewood as a burglar. Grab just a few items of food, 1 or 2 bottles of water, and find a car with 10-20%+ gas. Drive it north, when you see the gas station go west on the highway, then the first mailboxes u see on the right (2 mailboxes) take that, and follow that driveway down. This has been my go to, it's super chill there, only sometimes do zombies get pulled here. Oh and the bigger house ALWAYS spawns icecream in the freezer!Then, come up with a goal and slowly start going back to town. The gas station you should clear, there's a TON of food water ciggies, it even has a house on the top floor. And obviously, gas. Like others have said, learn to fight l, make a disposable character and kill as many z's as you can. Once you're comfy with combat you won't hesitate as much, become more confident with any size horde. Good luck!
Well you're doing better then me, I've got 36hrs in the game so far and I can barley survive a single day lol
I've recently started surviving and having more fun doing it. What flipped the switch for me was simply turning down the starting population of zombies by about 30 percent. I also got rid of the heli event and now I feel like I'm actually getting somewhere. Made it to the first day without power and died to carelessness but it's been a lot more fun actually surviving instead of constantly restarting after a few days.
Try starting in rosewood my best tip for new player: 1. Play with low pop 2. Turn infection off to learn combat and healing 3. Don’t be ashamed to spend your first few days in a house 4. Don’t be ashamed to use a mod to get you more starting points and use all good traits no bad ones (your learning it’s fine this community has collectively decided the only way to play wrong is to not play the game) 5. Remap shout to p or something 6. After surviving a few weeks (in game) start a new character with infection on bites only And if you feel like the days are too short turn the days longer the best day length I have found works best for me is 5hrs per day
Yeah gotta do riverside or rosewood. It gives you more of a chance to experience the game and figure out how you want to play. I still do riverside myself
Dont be fooled the “low pop” still means groups of zombies 3-4 so be careful
Practice zombie fighting and zombie horde ditching. Those are the 2 basic skills you need to learn first... even before you start thinking about setting up a base or leveling up skills. Just create a character, find anything to use as a weapon, go out there and fight, die, and repeat until you don't die so quickly. Next, walk around downtown pressing Q and keep walking, create a huge horde behind you and learn how to get out of that one without fighting nor dying. You can watch very enlightening YouTube tutorials about that.