Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Project Zomboid! Tips And Tricks For New Players. 

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The one single biggest tip I can give to new players as a veteran back from 2013 is, you can outrun zombies simply by walking. Even if there is a horde behind you, don't run, slowly walk away and after some time you will lose sight from them while replenishing your stamina. Only jog away from hordes if you are about to be boxed in, same goes for sprinting. Actually I can not think of any reason to sprint in vanilla game, except for sprinters.

When you knock a zombie over you can stand on it to prevent it from getting back up. Instead of panic bashing his brains in and getting bitten by the second zombie, knock the second over and then finish them both. When you get used to it you will find fighting groups much easier.

If you die your character is lost forever but you can respawn in the same world with a new character. This is a nice feature allowing you to continue that cool base you've were building before you died.

For those not playing Raven Creek or other mods, look for houses with boarded windows. These are survivor houses that are randomly generated and usually contain weapons and supplies.

What a game. Very first time playing I had everything, fresh food, tons of water - but no idea how to play the game properly so I walked around with about 45kg of stuff when the max I could was 12. "This is easy enough" I say literally just as a horde came out of the woods and chased me down until I found a house. I dropped all my crap and gave em the slip. Wasn't familiar with the buttons yet and I pushed Q, thinking it would bring up inventory or something. Clearly I didn't learn from the tutorial. They surrounded the house and I was eaten in the bedroom. Lmfao I love it

2:25 Just don't break the driver side window. As that will give zombies access to your neck/head for scratches/bites.

I just found out last playthrough: Not only does the emergency radio broadcast warn you about the helicopter event, it also gives you about 2 days advance notice before the power goes out.

Gonna add to this and share my best tip. PZ is an insanely challenging game and the fact of it is you are going to die, a lot. But here's the fun part, sometimes you get to decide how you die! Whether it's getting a deadly infection, suffering a severe series of wounds with no suture needles in sight, or ust getting shafted by RNG, sometimes runs never get off the ground or crash and burn so spontaneously you aren't sure what went wrong in the first place. In these situations what most people do is simply quit out and start a new character, DO NOT DO THIS! If a character is doomed to die, send them out in a blaze of glory! Load up that horded armory and see how many kills you can get before you drop! Yell a few times in the city and play 'tag' by shoving and dodging your way through the horde! Fire up the first car you can find and put the pedal to the metal until you crash and paste yourself all over the windshield! It's cathartic and undoes a lot of the sorrow, anger and stress at losing a good run and it also helps you hone your skills for the next time you play! Testing random weapons mid run is risky, you may misjudge your reach and recovery and get swarmed, but on a dying character? Who cares, swing away! I've learned some amazing things with this 'Blaze of Glory' mentality and they help me in my runs every time I play. I really can recommend no tip higher, never just 'quit out', go out on your own terms and learn a little more each time, or hell just have some fun with it, it's the end of the world after all ;)

Once you get settled in and you've got a big back pack/rucksack find a small school bag and put disinfectant, sterilized bandages, tweezers, sulture needle and thread (or first aid kit/Docters bag) in it. Also a small spare weapon. I also try to put a spare battery and lighter, energy drink and bottle of water and peanuts, chocolate maybe a MRE ration if you can find one. It'll take time to find all this but you can use this as your emergency bag. Once you've got a vehicle keep it in your trunk and if you somehow lose your main pack you'll always have a survival kit.

Just started playing this but I found out you can sleep in cars using the V radial menu. This has been extremely helpful if you desperately need to sleep but can't find a safe bed. Just make sure the car can actually move if you park it in an unsafe area, because even though they are unlikely to break in before you wake up, if you can't drive off, you basically just turned yourself into a sardine can.

My first experience: I understood the basics fairly easily. Keep water on you, find food, get a good weapon. After a few zombie encounters seemingly unscathed I thought the game was quite easy. Then I discovered the health tab. Infections in 4 places, bleeding in 2 others. Barely had enough bandages to get me through the night. After a day or so, I figured I was gonna go down one way or another, so i crafted a spiked bat, drank a bottle of bleach, and ran through the streets yelling. After downing multiple like a scene from a movie, I was finally surrounded by a horde. Hopefully the bleach got me before I came back.

Pro tip for the "walk to" option. Select walk to then while you are auto walking, run and sprint both still work.

If you park your car against a wall on your drivers side you can sleep without zombies reaching you

Good tip for building a base with 2 floors. Get at least 4 sheet ropes, some nails, hammer, sledgehammer, and some planks. Go to the second floor and put a escape rope on one of the windows, use the sledgehammer to destroy the stairs. With this zombies can't access the second floor and you can build a wooden window where the stairs use to be to secure another rope to get to the first floor. This way you can barricade the entire first floor and be able to retreat to the second if you need to. It'd also be wise to store food, water, and extra sheet ropes on the second floor in case you get overrun.

A mistake most beginners make is to not care enough about the moodles and then find themselves needing to stomp a zombie on the ground 40 times before it dies because they didn't prepare well and start dealing with the moodles after they've affected them rather than before. You can rest using chairs/beds/sofas... to restore your endurance to its maximum, and you should do it as often as possible to stay in good fighting condition instead of waiting to get exhausted to start looking for a place to rest. If you clear a group of 10 zeds near a house, go in the house and rest. If you ran for a while, rest. Do the same for the sleep moodle to not start getting tired in a bad situation. Try to find a water bottle asap and keep it filled. Start looking for food as soon as you start getting peckish. There is no time limit, so the most important thing is to guarantee that you can keep every moodle in check to be in peak condition to handle whatever the game throws at you.

A close friend gifted me this game when they saw me bored and sitting a bit sad, needless to say I had no prior knowledge besides having another Steam friend who I saw played it from time to time and left a review on. The name “Project Zomboid” didn’t exactly say complex, intricate survival game to me, but when I first opened it up and fully grasped what was going I was hooked. Immediately after my small playthrough (which ended in me running away and always ending up dying to zombies 2 separate times) I knew I had to do further research. 9 years in the making, full-fledged system, not to mention moddable game. God damn. It’ll be a long journey with this one.

I've literally been killed so many times by alarm clocks in this game and I never realized they were set or worked

When fighting zombies, always walk away from them in combat stance. For a zombie to bite you it needs to stop in place. If you are moving away, generally it will miss because it stopped and you're now out of range. If another zombie is approaching you from behind sprint away so that you can face both zombies and continue the slow retreat while fighting. So long as you don't get stuck and a zombie does not sneak up on you, you should be able to fight off entire hoards (at least until your weapons break or you become over-exerted)

Another tip: the basic baseball bat can be crafted into a more lethal version with nails very early on. Also, if it degrades with use, just repair it using nails again. No need for glue and stuff.

I know it’s a little cheesy but my biggest tip is if you find a sledgehammer you can use it to knock down the stairs after putting sheet ropes out the windows then you will always have a place where no matter how many zombies come you will always be safe

Standing on the prone zombie is a great trick when fighting. It prevents them from getting up.

I am currently obsessed with this game, thank you very much for the tips, be well brother

Foraging is a great skill and can supply in almost all needs. It can get you weapons and tools, food that doesn't rot and medicinal herbs. Combined with fishing (foraging will get you bait) you will never run out of food.

I'm watching this on my second monitor and literally the second you mentioned the helicopter event, the helicopter spawned in my game.

No need to drive your car into zombies multiple times; just position your car tire under the fallen foe and they go splat quickly. Also, you can fit generators in car seats for easy transport!

Bought the game 3 days ago and already have 12 hours. Thanks for this guide it really helps.

I just started playing and while my first (and longest) playthrough was just getting a bite almost instantaneously and that long spiral down my favourite playthrough so far was the third or fourth one where I had just figured out the combat to the point that I could deal with 1/2 fairly easily on a neutral build. I ended up accidentally following around a migrating horde from a mod for ages and had about five run ins with them which I can honestly say was the most fun I've had yet. Unfortunately because of this string of accidents I ended up getting really hungry thirsty and tired and made my brilliant last stand in the garden of a house I had tried to loot in desperation before the alarm went off where as I was running I saw I had a bite and simply went fuckit, turned around and took out as many as I could with my penknife and screwdriver. Rip Jarred McDougal, you will be missed

Just started playing after over three years.

a tip i have for new players is to learn how combat works, learn how different weapons function. For example, knifes can insta kill when right in front or behind a zombie ( your character will preform a backstab or jawstab depending on where you attacked them from), long blunt weapons do less damage when the zombies are right in your face, you would have less power in your swing leading to less damage and less range, but long blunt weapons are good for clearing out decent sized hordes of zombies, long blade is a more powerful version of long blunt, short blunt/blade are smaller versions which can be held with one hand and easy to use, making for a good emergency weapon, axe is basically long blade, spear has a gimmick where you can insta kill zombies if you stand still or charge it by running but spears in general are extremely fragile, guns are effective yet noisy as they attract zombies but can be used efficiently if accuracy reducing effects are dealt with and the player takes time to aim their shots, anyone can use a gun effectively even with a low aiming skill, for bare hands stomping a zombie in its head kills it a lot quickly if you were stomping on its chest. That’s all my tips on weapons

You can lure zombies into whatever building you're in and they will have a chance to drop the key to the building on each kill. Useful for accessing police stations or shops. Also nimble increases all your animation successes and speeds, like climbing fences, going inside windows, vaulting over stuff. If you hold shift while sprinting or jogging your char will attempt to auto vault obstacles and if your nimble is low you can rip yourself wide open lol.

One of my best new discoveries is that you roll down the window in your vehicle radial menu and then you can look much farther ahead and around you by using the right click view method like as if you have a weapon readied on foot. (Just don't forget to roll it back up!) But also I tell everybody: Also Lumber Jacks/Rangers can move through trees. Watch your weight!!

Another useful tip for cars: If you intend to smash in the car's window and hotwire it, always break one of the passenger windows and never the driver's window. Zombies can grab you through the window if it's open.

When I stumbled upon how to pick stuff up in-game, it was like my world lit up. Sure furniture barricades are great and all, but because my soul is "green, light green or dark green!" (if you know that reference, what's up!) I choose to set free my unhinged American Spirit by making the BEST GUN SHOWCASE ROOM EVER. A couple double metal shelves, the Red, White & Blue, and all the gear painstakingly found from Brita's Weapons Mod, and I couldn't be more proud of my interior decorating skills. Great thing is that it's functional too, well organized for when I need to suit up for a Raid or defending against Raiders.

I lost 2 of my characters because I didn't understand what was killing me - I put a generator in the upstairs bathroom with the window open but door to rest of house closed. I thought I was smart, boy did that backfire. Another death was not knowing about tyre pressure, blowing out a tyre and crashing/stalling in middle of a group of zombies. I was pissed off beyond belief. Now I know.

another tip for Vehicles: sometimes it can be hard finding the Keys but the Search mode shows all items on the Ground, not only the items from the Gathering perk but also items Dropped from the Z's and Car keys liying on the floor, this is even more helpful if the Key is behind a Car or another Object.

I just started playing and im already addicted. Ill jump on sandbox, then ill try some mods, then ill play with friends or look for ppl to play with. Ill check your vids for mods recommended. Thanks!

Another good tip is your character doesn't automatically hit them when they're down (and stood up), you have to aim with your mouse to rotate your character to land the hit where you think it needs to hit... I go for the head.

When you find a radio you can actually change what station it's tuned in to. So you don't actually have to find a radio that's already tuned to the emergency broadcast system, as you said, you just need to check what stations a given radio can be tuned to, and find a radio that has the emergency broadcast system available as one of it's tunable stations. Also, I've been told that when the radio tells you the helicopter event is coming you can just stay inside your base all day on the day of. Supposedly, if the helicopter doesn't see you running around outside it won't stick around for so long. Just don't let it see you.

Good tip if you use cars as stashes. You can use the radial menu for vehicle interactions (Default V Or U I forget) To open the door of a unlocked car. Now you may be thinking. "Why would I do that if I do that when I press E?" Well the thing is pressing E makes you open and close the door and get in. But if you open it manually you'll stay outside. Allowing quicker entry for one. And also allows you to access the seat without having to enter the vehicle. So you can grab or put item's inside without having to get in then out. Also I'm not sure but I think some vehicles can spawn with doors open. Not 100% sure though.

You can also use sheet ropes in windows to escape swarmed buildings

When breaking into a car you should never break the driver seat window since zombies can attack you through broken windows and that is the seat on which you'll be spending most of the time while inside a car.

For finding keys near cars I wouldn't recommend the inventory tab but the foraging tab will point to it from a larger distance depending on your awareness, combining this with combat stance will allow you to find it fast.

Thanks man! Been trying to get two of my buddies into this game and they're struggling with the learning curve and this 100% helped all three of us!

A tip that is super useful for looting. Keep that search area on. The amount of stuff I found going from one backyard to another. Stones and branches make cheap axes or spears berries can be useful on the run.

I'm glad I played C:DDA before getting into PZ, because it taught me one of the most useful survival tips of all time, and that was to grab and drag furniture into zombies' way as much as possible. Dragging a wardrobe to turn a 2-tile corridor into a 1-tile chokepoint, for instance, saved my ass so many times in that game. Unfortunately zombies can stack in PZ so it doesn't really work so well here.

if youre going to get into fishing, dont use a pole until you have a few levels first because itll be a pain to repair, just use a crafted spear and catch socks to get the experience

A huge tip, which is more of a strategy, but, Spawn as a police officer to uncover the police station part of the map if you get good rng, Then respawn as a veteran if you wanna play with guns.

Just started getting back into the game, and have been watching your videos. These tips are fantastic!

I love this game. The fact they finally setup cars. Now we have changing clothes and stuff. So many cool things in this game. Just wish I could survive on regular mode ahaha

Remember to honk car horn, makes luring zombies away easier than just relaying on engine noise.

I'm not sure if anyone else commented this, but if you enable foraging mode near a car with no key, sometimes you can forage the key somewhere nearby. My sister discovered that during a group play session and it's been extremely beneficial to me in my personal games! If the car is parked outside a building, sometimes the key will be somewhere inside too. I've had this happen to me even at Spiffo's restaurant on the crossroads south of West Point.

Thanks for the advice in this one duck! There are a few things I didn't know so this should help me in the long run for sure! Keep up the great content!!

Just started playing, loving it so far, but still figuring things out. Thank you & the vets in the comments for leaving helpful tips. 👌

BIG RARE INTEL PRO-TIP: set the pan camera keybind (under Options / Keybindings / UI). For some reason this binding is unset by default, but it has two major benefits: it lets you look ahead while driving and scan around without standing up. This can easily save your life by helping you avoid wrecks when driving at speed (because the default vision is truly terrible) or by helping you see zombies before they can see you when looting stealthily in high-density areas. I mean, plowing into a tree and totaling your car while breaking your legs and drawing a hoard of zombies to you is great fun, but after you've done it once set the pan camera keybind.

In my experience cars make for fantastic barricades. For windows a side of the car has to be aligned up towrds it so zombies cant walk to it. With doors you want a wheel blocking the doorway so crawlers can't get in. You can also tow wrecks into place if you don't want to use drivable cars

In combination with killing zombies by luring them through windows, you can also attack zombies nearby through windows as well. This is especially useful for zombies who decide to bang on a window one tile away from a broken one and you can't lure them though it.

A hint for the new playes not mentioned in this video is - use spacebar in combat. If you don't hold any weapon, your character will push or stomp the zombies by default, but if you have a weapon equipped you can still prefer to push and stomp them, instead of using your weapon, because push is faster that swinding your weapon, so if you have multiple enemies approaching pushing might allow you to keep all of them at bay while you get into a better position, while trying to swing your weapon (especially a heavier one) might leave you exposed to the rest of approaching crowd. Stomping is useful alternative to using weapons on prone zombies because it saved weapon durability. Yes, shoes also lose durability when you stomp, but they have a significant amount of it and it is rarely a problem to loot some replacement shoes from zombies. Also to expand the TV shows advice - turn off all the TVs and radios you encounter. If you succeed in making sure there are no working appliances around you in about 100 tile radius, you can actually delay the start of the skill programs to start only once you turn the tv on, rather than at their designated time. This helps you maintain better sleep since you don't have to wake up at 6am to catch the cooking show, and might allow you to return to base around 17:30, turn the tv on and then watch Carpentry and outdoors survival back to back.

Thanks dude! The car tip was big help man! Much appreciated

Great video😄 I can't wait for the weekend to start a fresh playthrough and use your tips in the early game

my man! i just came back to this game after a few years of not playing and this really helped me out

8:43 This tip can also be used to just disperse massive hordes. Start at one end of a building and get down to the opposite, smash a window and get out.

Thanks man, watched a Spiffing video of Project Zombiod, a fantastic addition to my survival collection.

concise, simple, fast, direct, useful, very good hints man! all other creators of hints in games should copy your style! Thanks! :)

Nice vid, lots of good info for all kinds of players!

Just recently started playing, and so far ive started out finding a duffelbag and a good amount of medical supplies and a bat as well as food from the trailers i spawned around, still a bit intimidated from going forward at night, but working on it!

my favorite tip is that you can pin any window using the button on the top right! that way it only opens when you hover over it (like your inventory). I like to move my inv and the ground inv to the right a bit and have my health/personal window to the left of my inv for easy access to skills, health, etc etc. not sure if many people know that but for me its a life saver!

Good info, but I had to give props to the great lo-fi trip hop in the bg. Such style! Great job, man.

Riverside has awesome spots that you can raid in the first day of you're lucky with spawn location. There is a hardware store with plenty of axes, a book shop, a pharmacy, and the sports store is a bit misleading as it also usually has more books to read. The bar at the western end of town also usually has a sports car with 90%ish condition and so it's super quiet and great to sprint around in. Plus the gas station is like... Right next to the bar so you can usually find some maintenance items and fuel super easily

A tip on the sound que, if you want to access the prison it needs to be cleared out.. outside is a police car, smash the window and get inside it then just turn the sirens and lights on and then run... there's a building to the left of the car park that has windows at the left hand side so you can avoid sneaking past the giant horde.

I find jumping the large wooden fences are great for ditching a large pack of zombies. If I am trying to gain access to an area I will kite them around then pop over a fence then turn sneak on a try to keep out of sight. it usually works well.

One tip I wish I knew was that bags are separate from your main inventory, they don’t expand it. Would’ve helped on a lot of runs where I went back to base to put stuff away when I could’ve thrown it in my hiking bag.

It's fine if you want to build your base in a 1 story building, but it's certainly more secure if you can base somewhere with a second floor. If you hear a window break, or hear something knocking at your barricades, you'll know it's downstairs and it gives you time to figure out if you should fight or flee.

Ay keep up with this amazing work! 👏

Great tips, thank you

I haven't played too much of B41, so I appreciate the tips about the alarm clocks in the closets and the weather channel. Good stuff :)

For those of you who don't know it already, the good shows on Life and Living can be found every 6 hours. That's 00:00, 06:00, 12:00, and 18:00. - HOWEVER - if you happen to be a little bit late to the TV, try turning it on anyway. I've been more than an hour late, and still gotten the full show, with all of the XP.

Thanks for the tips! Having a real hard time staying alive, your advice helped me stay alive for ten whole minutes!

Thanks for this 🙏

Thanks for these great tips!

Binging any and all content on this game i can find. Despite researching for a month I'm still too nervous to start! New laptop, steam account, game downloaded, mods picked and downloaded, traits decided, now if I can just boot it up. Why is this so nerve racking!? Oh yeah, and thanks for all the tips. I subbed. Easier to watch than play. Hahahah!

One of my favorite things I fortunately discovered early...moving furniture for cheap barricades on a 2-story building and having an escape rope from the 2nd floor. Too early for a proper barricaded home, so make-shift it is! Saddest moment I had today, I made a new playthrough (trying the new maps) and I spawned with a watch due to a mod (I like my immersion) and the alarm was set for the time that I spawned in on. I literally hit the ground running...

your channel just made me buy this game. Its crazy that ive never heard of it until yesterday. Cant wait

Great video Mr. A.D! Really one of the top 5 p.z creators I Enjoy!

I think the biggest tip would be where to find certain things. I just started play the game after I got it on sale a few days ago and I've not been very happy with my "playthroughs" because I can never seem to find certain things. One time I just couldn't find food, another it was weapons, and another time I just couldn't lose a horde of zombies no matter how many corners I went around or how many buildings I put between myself and them. I got to the point where I just used a custom difficulty and turned down a ton of different things just so I can feel somewhat safe moving around. My experience with the game so far is pretty much "go outside and you are dead, stay inside and you will starve to death a little later."

I survived the helicopter event once staying at home reading, all windows blocked and apparently it didn't see me and passed by faster than other times attracting only 5 zombies to my base. I don't know if the helicopter trigger starts when it sees you or was an special case of me being at the right place, border of town but not far from it.

I didn't know about that best possible pathing tip, cool stuff :)

I found this tip somewhere and it saved my life a lot of times! As you said, crouching and pressing Q makes your character whisper. It is very useful when looting a building. When you approach a door, before you Enter, whisper in front of the door. Sometimes zombie is not directly at the door and is not audible, but when you whisper and hear something from the other side or even see the door banging, retreat from looting this room.

Another great tip: Standing on zombies will prevent them from getting up. Wether it's you or another zombie. If exhausted, standing on zombies that are knocked over will give you a chance to catch your breath. Also, in terms of picking up items: If you have a crowbar, you can dismantle windows. Upon failure the glass will shatter, but if you pull it off you will be able to install the windows as you please, be it as a replacement for broken windows or on your "home made" base. Being able to close your windows will make a big difference once winter kicks in (though it's more of a long-term tip) Also, stacking alarm clocks in a plastic bag, set to go off every hour (provided you can find 24 of them) is a great "mobile" lure for zombies. Dropping the bag near a lit campfire is one way of dealing with a horde, just make sure to do it away from your base.

Thank you, i just played the game a week ago and i really like the game. The part when you said you can move a furniture, it’s really helpful.

I found this video in the reddit, very nice! Thanks!!

Thanks for this. I just started playing but have watched a lot of YT videos so I knew what I wanted to do. What I didn't know was how to do some things like whispering and picking up the furniture. I was starting to think it was some mod (I'm playing vanilla for a while) because I know I've seen people do those things but couldn't figure out how to do them. I've killed so many survivors trying to whisper to break off one or two but yelled instead, calling every Z around, lol. There are some good tips in these comments, also.

About breaking the windshield to get into a car: it is better not to break it on the driver side. When zombies aproach you, when you're sitting in the car, the windshield on the driver side may protect you from a bite. better break another one and switch to the driver seat once inside. About placing furniture as barricades: zombies will attack and destroy most furniture placed by the player, except microwave ovens and TVs, so these are the best barricades. blocking a window doesn't work though, the tile in front and behind a window is allways accessable for players and Zs, no matter what furniture stands there. Best way is to block a window with a vehicle.

Take thick skin trait at the beginning and wear clotes that increase bait resistance. This will allow you to get only scrateches and rarely a bite

im sorry about your loss!

I just picked this game up yesterday and am having so much fun learning and failing each time I create a new character! It's been a while since I have found a game that's proven to be a real challenge and am loving the grind so far. These video guides have been super helpful!

Oooow yea please more more hehe Thanks alot for the Video! Greetings from Belgium.

im sure new guys dont know that u can "jog" using shift button, but u can "sprint" using alt button. That being said; jogging is safe but during sprinting any obstacle such as trees ore zombies often will cause you to stumble and fall to ground, injuring urself or killed by zombies. I use sprinting only on asphalt roads to get rid of zombie her chasing me in mere seconds. also make sure to change "down atack button" from "alt" to anything else since it may cause you to start sprint animation instead of atacking the downed zombie. As they are by default, binded to same key: alt i ruined 2 saves just coz i sprinted into a herd i was kite-kiling, when i was trying to finish the downed one.

Wish this game would come to console sometime, or hope ill get a new computer soon, it looks so fun. Thanks for making this video!

Additional tip for radios. Every car has one and all you need to get it is a screwdriver. The quality will vary from car to car and you can even find a HAM radio in police cars or fire trucks