Your Guide to Negative Traits in Project Zomboid 

Deaf is a free trait if your speakers or headphones aren't working

i like how the game considered giving people who are actually deaf free points

You forget one thing about the deaf trait. Those who are already Deaf in real life can cash in on 12 free points on audio they can't even hear in the first place!

as a cancer survivor i like to take light stomach, sleepyhead, restless sleeper and must say, it's pretty relatable. it really gives you the feeling of being overly tired even when doing nothing. i usually take the lucky trait cuz well, i'm still here and that's lucky.

Sunday Driver’s acceleration nerf can literally cause you to roll so slowly in grass that the infected can just walk up to your window and eat you

If you gotta choose one out of agoraphobic or claustrophobic go claustro. The main issue is sleep which is countered with large bedroom, sleeping in a car or booze/pills. Agora means the dude is contantly panicked outdoors, cant sleep in a car without meds and is really annoying. Sunday driver...."this is how you died"

About Illiterate, bc I once played with it in a random run. And it gets worse. The most important issue is you can't get a generator running unless you have taken the electrician occupation. Not only does this mean not electricity, but also no gas stations. This means you will most likely end up in a cabin in the woods, using campfire to cook food and purify water. But then you realize most survivalist recipes are locked behind magazine recipes. You can't craft fishing rods, nor repair them. Most traps can't be made either, meaning you can only get them as loot, or if you find the vhs that gives you the recipe... BEFORE the power goes out since you need a tv to watch it. It's still fun to play since it significantly changes the way you approach the game, and works great if you want to do some kind of scavenger run

me when I watch this guide, nod at its thoughtful analysis of the traits, and go back to playing the character I modeled after myself for the 1000th time

I'm already bad at hearing irl, basically the only situation where hard of hearing and deaf are free points. When I'm not home I always do safety spins and shove and whisper at doors to see if they rattle. I am extra careful in combat and back away to look behind me if the area is open.

I cannot stress this enough for new players, always pick conspicuous, especially if your doing a sneaky character. Because it make managing hordes so much easier. While sneaking with conspicuous you can pull a few zombies from the horde at a time and have a much safer experience killing zombies. On the flip side if you pick inconspicuous and try sneaking and killing a horde, by the time you alert 1 zombie the WHOLE horde is alert from you

13:21 I once crashed my car and I fractured my skull. then the slow healer perk is a NIGHTMARE... it took like 3 months to heal. and a fractured skull gives you constant pain lvl 2 and injured lvl 2 (and injured lvl 2 also decreses carry wight -2) it was so so painfull. I went trough 30 packs of painkillers. I am a lootgoblin and I am glad I am... when I had like 40 packs of painkillers I was like I am never going to use them all. well I almost ran out.... Slowhealer is a good negative to take but a fractured skull is the worst. all other injuries are fixable and it doesnt matter if it takes 2 days or 4 days. when you are injured you should always take it slow and easy for a little while. even if you break a arm or something you can at least splint it. you cant splint a fractured skull. so TLDR DONT fracture your skull when you have slow healer its pure pain and almost better to restart haha

Actually explains things, isn't annoying and has good info? I'm here for all this.

It's always tough to find someone actually discussing the extra details, not as easily seen. Thanks for sharing the less known details and definitely looking forward to more.

Perfect process to begin a project zomboid lecture. 1. Speed 2. Crush zombie with car 3. Swerve 4. Drift into your stop, because civil parking in a videogame is for nubs 5. Casual greeting, like he’s Obiwan Kenobi 6. Begin lecture

Wish the fitness grind wasn’t so bad in PZ. Weak/Unfit isn’t unrecoverable, but past level 5 just don’t bother. Ambiguous survived literal years in his CDDA series and didn’t push past around level 7. I swear it’s harder to get in shape in PZ than in actual real life.

I love how deaf people will always get 12 free extra points whenever they play the game

deaf is a free trait if you are splitscreening and only one can have the headphones

Hard of hearing decreases the perception circle, but not the radius. As long as you take cowardly, you can easily tell that a zombie is behind you just as easily as if you didn’t take hard of hearing

I play exclusively deaf on MP, besides having to worry about zombies sneaking up on you it's very worth it, becasu you can negate most of the drawback by walking with a friend

My go to negative traits: 1. Smoker 2.Thin skinned 3. Prone to illness 4. Weak stomach 5. Short sighted 6. Underweight

I used to use your logic with sunday driver but found out its much easier to drive slower yourself than get stuck in 2 inch grass

I use a mod that adds hearing aids. So the "Hard of hearing" trait just means that I need to find a hearing aid and keep it well charged with batteries.

Smoker is top tier trait since it can cure boredom and stress

Hard of Hearing has always been a go to for my character since it’s kind of my self-insert in the game lol

Sunday driver is a death trap, if you get bogged down off-road, sundary driver exacerbates the issue greatly.

Me: (chooses sunday driver) That small strip of dirt on the side of the road when I need to avoid a road block with a hoard behind me: *"Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste."*

not only is disorganized really bad, but on top of that you also kind of need the possitive organised trait, in my multiplayer games i became the inventory manager for my team because i was the only person with the organized trait so only i could use our storrage to it'f full potential. now i always force my friends to pick the trait themselfs so they aren't depending on me to pack the trunk and boxes!^^

Great video, thanks! A few notes for clarity: *Clumsy* is the most unjustifiably described trait in PZ, so here's some justice: sound radius is not only irrelevant unless you're playing stealthy (which is a known noob-trap and not a solid survival strat), but it is also a positive, as most veterans tend to aggro everything and clear out the territory, so this sound radius increase is not hurtful at all. Trip chance is absolutely irrelevant, as it happens in three cases: 1) You run/sprint lounge fences, don't do this, it is easily preventable, literally just stop running and hold E, yes, it is going to be slower, but even with sprinters it is not an issue 2) If you ram zombies, don't do this also unless you know what you're doing and how to avoid tripping altogether, if you have to ram them all the time - your positioning is questionable 3) If zombies grab you after fence lounge, this is also very easily avoidable, don't try to kill zeds near fences/windows if you're not good at combat. Long story short: Clumsy is free points to anyone who considers themselves experienced at the game! You don't get "desentetized" by killing zombies, you get less panic generation for each month you survived (it is supposed to be each day, but unless you're using a mod that fixes the bug it's a month). *Cowardly* is very easy to manage, as any other panic traits like Fear of Blood. Beta-blockers are plenty even on worst loot settings, I never run out of them, *Cowardly* is free points the moment you find them or alcohol, which is like a day 1 objective. *Adrenaline Junkie* is just junk. You can't take it together with *Cowardly, Agoraphobic* or *Claustrophobic* anymore anyway. Bonus to movement speed is irrelevant even with sprinters, as if you have to constantly run from hordes of sprinters - you're not playing correctly for sure. *Short Sighted* from what I remember doesn't actually change your vision arc/fade at all and you only counter foraging debuff, but it is free AF points indeed. *Conspicuous* is not just free points, it's a lowkey positive trait, as you WANT to aggro as much zombies for a faster clear and avoiding zombies is not that hard even with Clumsy + Conspicuous, though outside of some bizarre challenge runs you don't really want to avoid them anyway. *Pacifist* is F tier if you're going to main Spears or Long Blades in late game, otherwise it is easily negated by XP multipliers from weapon skills. Taking +1 to Axes and a *Pacifist* still makes grinding Axe skill a quick process. *Outdoorsman* is the most overrated trait in the game. Catching a cold is very hard even during winter, as all you need is just to wear warm clothing (which people already do even during summer, as there's tons of protection clothing to wear, so during winter you can wear even more stuff). Tree scratch chance is irrelevant. Either use "walk to" function and let your character walk through trees perfectly or just don't walk through forests wtf are you doing, you will get scratched even with this trait. *Lucky* is literally one of the worst traits to take in the game. I won't go into detail, just find "the Lucky trait won't really help you find a Sledgehammer" thread on reddit and it explains in great detail, based on game code, why this trait has no real effect, even compared to Unlucky. Any personal testing is basically irrelevant to this, as unless you're testing it for thousands of times in the same loot areas the data pool is too small. Long story short: Lucky helps you find COMMON items more often and basically has no effect on finding rare stuff, plus the less loot you have in the world the worse Lucky works, which is very counter-productive, not what you expect. *Fear of Blood* is free points. You don't need to wash yourself. Just smoke, as you said, but once you get to 2/4 stress moodle. That's it. You kill two rabbits in one shot. Only wash when you're going to stay at base/out of combat for a day+. *Restless Sleeper* is way better than you expect. Loss of tiredness is definitely not 50% slower, it's closer to 20-30% in my testing. Yes, you will never be fully rested, but once you wake up you can take a sip of alcohol (either drink 1/4 or take a microsip if you're feeling cheesy) to negate the "woke up" penalty that prevents you from sleeping and continue your sleep. I'd argue it is an early game debuff and only feels bad when you can't find vitamins and coffee, but usually I find those in my first day or two on lowest loot settings. Also you can take both Wakeful and Restless Sleeper, they're not opposites. Wakeful and Sleepyhead are opposites. *Thin-skinned* do not actually affect the chance that your clothing will be damaged by trees, both mod and wiki lies about this.

When you pick deaf but you dont have headphones or speakers so it doesnt matter (you have fantastic gaming skills)

I find it extremely hard to play without one of the -phobic traits specifically because I hate managing a characters boredom stat. As a primarily nomadic kind of player. Carry weight management means a hell of a lot and having to dedicate several units of space just to keep my guy from being depressed is just horribly suboptimal when I could just negate the panic with a single bottle of booze or a box of beta blockers.

If you lose the overweight trait, you can then start earning fitness exp towards level 10. I believe it is the same for underweight though the more description for traits mod does not show it. Some of the information in the mod is incorrect but overall it is a great QoL mod. Great video Edit: Endurance and fatigue are connected, therefore anything that increases one will increase the other. So sleepyhead, ashimatic and restless sleeper are pretty terrible choices especially if you are melee combat focused.

I had no idea Hard of Hearing was considered as anything but essentially free points! I always play with HoH and have had zero issues if I stay vigilant (as you should). Then again I always play PZ while listening to podcasts and/or music so I rely almost exclusively on sight anyway and maybe shouldn't be the one to talk lol. I have tried a few runs on Deaf as well but that got too quiet for me so back to HoH it was. Perfect!

My Dude .... the South African runs rampant in you!! Thanks for the tips tho!

One of guides where Thin-skin effect explained without misinformation. Nice work.

Fantastic explanation! The only things I'd probably add is the noob-trap that Sunday Driver sets up if you get your car in a particularly sticky spot and can't get out (such as off-roading), and mentioning that either plumbing your sinks (generally with a ceiling of level 6 carpentry for stairs to the second floor) or foraging for lemongrass will allow a high-thirst, prone-to-illness, character to circumvent the negatives of the trait even further. The only other feedback I can possibly give is to segment your video to solidify this as a guide to return to in a pinch, or provide timestamps. Excellent format and great voice to boot. Hope this channel takes off!

Your reactions to each trait were hilarious. Nice video

Subscribed immediately at that hot hand-break turn. Absolute Lad.

Good content! Congrats and thx for the analysis.

As far as I know, Sunday Driver can be bypassed via Cruise Control. I always use Claustraphobic now. Being paniced means you won't get bored. Not getting bored means you won't get unhappy, not being uphappy is great. Great for those long days inside reading

I usually put Pacifist on my carpenter characters. Between the Carpenter profession and the Handy trait, they have XP boosts to Short Blunt and Maintinence, and they don't exactly need to be combat gods.

This was so helpful. I dindt know glasses could help short sighted!

Superb video. Very well done and explained. Loved the timestamps too

with high thirst i just take a cooking pot full of water 🤷

Illiterate is a really good source of points in the short term run, but if its long term its gonna be pretty painful.

Perks by tier list: I sleep Perks by literally just making yourself: Real shit? (One of my favorite negative trait mods is the neurodivergent traits, which allows me to give myself ADHD like I have in real life, which in reality is literally just a daily roll between 0.5x xp gain rate and 1.5x xp gain rate when you don't take Adderall which is added to the game, that negates the trait and makes it a flat 1.0x xp gain rate.)

Small note: overweight permanently reduces max fitness by 1 and obese does by 2 with no way to overcome it. As underweight states "can not gain xp towards level 10 fitness" meaning you're capped at level 9. Same with obese, underweight, and very underweight. I don't think the last few levels matter much but they can't be gained with these traits

Thanks! Although i usually try to roleplay my survivors so i take traits more randomly. Although, Deaf is insane, since it actually deletes your 360 vision, i think even irl deaf people will struggle with this trait

Why do I watch so many informative videos on games I don’t play?

great editing and infoo ty ty

Such a great video

something i seem to do all the time with pacifist is to pair it with fast learner. it takes 2 points but makes it so everything is free 30% faster learning with just 5% for melee skills

wow watching this video i almost assumed you were a big youtuber. good quality video keep it up

I do think that Sunday driver has a benefit in multiplayer when you were playing solely with friends cuz I found a lot of times you just end up having one person being the dedicated car guy and driver. So the Sunday driver ends up just being free points

10/10 vid, the more popular vids didnt take alot of this into mind (can u make positive traits?)

i always take high thirst, it is free points. I dont even have more than one water bottle in inventory and i only need to refil it like once a day. You need to have a backup waterbottle in your glovebox or somewhere on hand tho.

Sunday driver seems to wreck your torque too. Pulling trailers is awful and get stuck around 35mph currently. God forbid you hit a zomboid while hauling. Will almost if not completely stop your vehicle.

PZ traits are either of three things: Must haves in Character creation (Smoking for one negative with obvious reasons). Not good, not bad, just some early to mid game related thing (Brawler or Brave as positives that fizzle out past early stages; Agora or Claustrophobic traits as by mid game, Panic reduction stat fully overwhelms the passive negative). Absolute Useless or Outright death traps. (Iliterate, without the mod that adds VHS tapes to remove it, is only for very short lived characters; Fast reader in SP, Sunday driver is a Big nono, only if you really a masochist, any of the traits that gives recipes or skills that anuone can read a book for...). And then you have Deaf, where aside Alarms on cars or houses, it is essentialy just a matter of adjusting to the lack of sound, though it also kills the value of Mods like True Music. To me, Negative traits that lack either a way to remove it, sideline it no matter how long you want to have your character living in that world, or are likely to hinder or Kill your character due to the issues they bring are usualy not worth picking unless you running a very specific RP or challenge and every spare point counts.

3:13 ... You didn't mention in your video so I guess you didn't know, but Adrenaline Junkie got "nerfed"... kinda. Now it doesn't work with most of the "panic" negative traits besides Fear of Blood. So.... fact of the day I guess.... And I always take Clautrophobic... sleep in cars or a big floor is not too hard to manage.... but that heartbeat when you are panic.... when in combat, you hardly notices it. But when you are in a chill room, 2 months later in your fortified base... with that constant heartbeat... man do I hate the heartbeat sound

Great video! Would love to see a positive trait breakdown in this style

The one and only negative traits guide

Hi. You got a great voice and a good video format!!!!

deaf doesnt actualy affect the perception circle and is a god send in multiplayer cuz the only downside of it is not being able to hear house alarms but if ur with a friend who is withoud deaf he can just tell you that a house alarm went off

Great Video Keep it up!!

16:10 BRO THAT MUSIC 😭😭❤️❤️❤️

Nice to see a fellow South African making PZ Vids. Cheers from JHB Boet!

I played many, many, MANY times in West point using the Smoker trait. Every single time, cigarettes was abundant on Zombie corpses. My last attempt though... had to kill 2000 zombies before I found my first pack of ciggies. 27 days without a ciggie man....

So what i was curious about is, whats your general selection of negative traits in a normal game? meaning, outside of specific challenges, what negatives do you basically always take? This was a great video to show the actual impact of the negative traits and you did mention several you think of as must haves, like smoker and high thirst, but I was curious if you just take them all together or make builds around specific clusters of negative traits that balance out well.

Also. Sunday driver can be a death sentence if you take your car into anywhere populated. Ignoring cars is a classic noob trap in this game.

A few things i want to point out, I believe shortsighted only affects foraging which makes it a good trait i dont think you can use cowardly with adrenaline junky but i believr you can pick army veteran to have the desensitised with it which should fully negate it (free pts basically)

ngl i always play with hard of hearing sure it sucks from time to time not hearing when zombies knock on your door and eventually tear it down but its such a free trait once you get used to the muffled sounds and dont even get me started once you remove this trait you hear EVERYTHING literally no zombie can hide from you

one other thing about underweight is that it for some reason isnt mutually exclusive with the athletic positive trait. athletic sets your fitness to lvl 9 and increases your stamina, recovery speed, and movement speed, I find this trait extremely useful especially in the early game when good weapons are scarce and you wont have the skills to reliably one shot with them, and it's pretty much essential for surviving sprinters. taking underweight reduces fitness by one so it will reduce your fitness to 8 after you start causing you to lose athletic while still having spent those 8 points, unless you took either the fire officer or fitness instructor occupations to cancel out the debuff. you could of course grind that fitness level from 8 to 9, but that will likely take around a year atleast even with eating vegies and maxing out on the relevant excercises, which is far longer than most people are able to survive.

Had you played with more traits before? If you had would you consider making a similar video but with the mod?

I may be wrong but I’m pretty sure glasses only fix the foraging aspect of short sighted and not your actual view distance. Either way, I always take it.

My brother and I started playing and he plays with the sound off so at one point he said “why don’t I just get deaf?? I have the sound off anyway” and now I tell him when stuff is happening and guide him and he gets the 10 points. But yes he’s a masochist

I think deaf its decent if your are not playing alone

All Thumbs is the bane of all traits for 2 points, I never take it and almost always take dexterous but for some reason on my current run with my buddy I didn't. It's so slow not having dexterous, especially while hauling metalworking loot from scraping cars, it makes me want to kms because it takes 1/4 of the day to scrap the cars and the rest to haul all of the mats into my vehicle, everything just feels so slow, and I feel especially dumb for taking lead foot (from the more traits mod) that has the same cost instead because it's only useful in the early game but now I'm never using it, and have to take my friend on every looting run because even having normal inventory management hurt.

I took the smoking trait and it's pretty good 👍🏼 also I've never played this game

You forgot that driving on grass or towing anything with Sunday driver is just agony

Does adrenaline junkie work with agoraphobic? Free move speed?

Never take Sleepy head and Restless sleeper together. Your character will almost always be tired. Trust me, I've tried.

Only one I take usually is fear of blood. The others I take are from the more traits mod

how can I see the % of debuffs when chosing a negative trait? I dont see it normally

What's the name of weapon mod are you using?

Illiterate might be worth it at say.. 12 points or more. Noo.. maybe 20

Tbh single player I tend to just give myself a lot of points to work with. Maybe cheating in a way, but if playing single player tbh prefer being a little thougher and likely to survive the start. And most of these negatives wouldn’t get you killed, just make it more tedious. Haven’t played that much so that probably doesn’t help either. (Like 200h but also a decent chuck of that was testing mods) What have been doing lately is buffing the shit out of xp gain. Like 4-10x buff, realise that’s a lot but it makes it possible to do a lot more early on and need to learn how to base build and stuff you can do with skills. I also pick most of the positive traits in the game with like 100 free points, again might seem cheating but it is far from making you some sort of super man. So far died most times before week 2 even like that (though and such will help sure, but it still only takes 1 bite) To counteract these massive buffs I came up with an idea though. I have set zombies to though so they are harder to kill. But also set the population to insane and changed the setting so it starts at 0.01 and scales to max at the end of the year. Basically you have 3 months before the zombies reach normal starting population (but are though) and from there it’s gonna be pretty crazy. But ideally by then you have a base with a pretty strong character. It would still be hard I bet though. (Just need to get there first XD)

16:43 hey what’s the name of the song that starts here?

investing in this channel🙏🙏

I usually base the traits off of myself to make the game more immersive.

I took slow reader in a multiplayer rp server because they added scarier zombies so i need some way to pass the night

Does anybody else spend the first couple days filling every large container with clean water? And then switch to leaving empty ones outside? Big Picture: No idea, I chose "Anxiety Disorder" during character generation. Short Term Picture: Hasn't hurt me yet

for claustrophobic and agoraphobic, just pair it with smoker, smoking will calm your panic down i've been okay so far i think smoker works with any kind of phobias in game

Slow Reader and High Thirst ARE NOT free points. Slow Reader is a massive annoyance early on and High Thirst is a PERMANENT moderate annoyance. Dont take perks that make your life annoying. You will understand it when you have to carry 3+ bottles of water with you and have to constantly refill them. Dont forget that you will get thirsty when overheated. Obesse trait is almost free points for guns or short blades character. Guns comsume no stamina and short blades very little. Also obesse is lost after surviving for a week. Obesse pairs with Weak much better then Very Underweigth. Very Underweight + Weak = 80% less melee dmg.

Worst part of Sunday Driver is you lose a ton of power when trying to tow. Makes towing some vehicles impossible.

The "very overweight" and "very underweight" description there is very misleading at least to me, it makes it sound like no matter if you get rid of the trait you'll still be locked out of gaining fitness XP past level 6/9 but it's only for as long as you have it, if you eat enough/lose enough weight you'll be able to get fitness XP again.

Disorganized isn't that bad, just be ready to have a mess of a storage room

Deaf multiplayer with a couple friends being your ears at all times...

i've been playing since like 2021 and recently i've found that the most fun i have in pz w/o challenges is i like to run the more traits and schizo mod and what i do is i play as a fitness instructor genius who knows every recipe in the game and has damn-near maxed out strength & fitness but is an unlucky schizophrenic alcoholic depressed smoker with butterfingers. makes for interesting gameplay as you're insanely powerful but have to micromanage all your different bullshits.

What happened to Burn Victim? That one seemed intense.

If you take veteran, do claustrophobic and agorophobic just get countered completely?

10:50, just carry 83 bars of gold. Easy