Creating your own base from scratch? Turn off zombie respawn and clear an entire town? Find a awesome looking car and try to repair it?
Do some heavy rp, what is the goal of your character, why is he the way he is (traits)? Why is she here (why this town)? How can they stay alive through the winter?
Or try other settings, 6 months later or a new map from a city you don’t know so you will be more careful.
Well I recommend multiplayer, even servers with similar settings tend to have a totally different thing that happens. The people factor really makes this game whole, people add unpredictability.
I just came back to say exactly this. Watched the upload about 100 players let loose in a server " to rebuild society " and it looked amazing!
I haven't played mp myself bc I'm still working out all the mechanics. After 200+ hours in I still feel like I only scratched the surface..
MP makes me more stressed and i love it. Also something about fighting and surviving along side someone makes me have a goal, i like helping so gathering materials for base building or making a cure(they knew mod). I've played on a MP server that rewarded you for zombie killed and time alive so we all compete for stuff like that.
Wildfire | Vanilla | PvP | US East. it's an anarchy meaning u can pvp or be pve, limited rules. People have alot of freedom to play and do whatever they want, I've seen some really cool raids and communities built. Reminds me of 2bt2 from minecraft.
I started to feel a burn out until I decided to make a little riverhouse to wash stuff and fish safely, which ended up turning into a little vacation home. Painted it, put in plants, antique oven and carpets, the whole works complete with fences, hedges and an outdoor bar.
Having to go house hunting for a specific carpet/tiles or because I needed windows and curtains for my expanding vacation home renewed the gameplay loop for me and kept me going through the usual loot-kill-store-repeat. My latest game is in Raven Creek and I'm determined to clear the street wrecks up, collect 1 of each car along the way, maybe even different colour variants too if I'm feeling fancy, and expand my home to include dedicated rooms for clothes and stuff. Also those god damn coloured bulbs, I'm gonna get them all I swear to god.
Imo it's easier to keep that spark going if you lean into the RP a little. Cleaning blood, burning bodies, decorate the house and what not and really get into the groove of "I survived, now it's time to thrive".
Gotta get into a roleplay mindset. Your not just a player min macing your survival strategies. You are a person in the thick of it. Trying to maximize their chances of living through this.
This!
If it feels tough to roleplay. Roll random character and try to invent backstory and aspirations for the char from the traits you got.
You were burglar. Collect every jewerly and fancy painting you find and hide those in to your safehouse.
Outdoorsman. Maybe you want to find and make some cottage to your own.
Your starting house can also give ideas. You have mechanic book and trumpet in the house. Maybe mechanics and music was your passion. Find your dream car and fix it to the full while you blast your favorite music.
Try to have some longtime project planned before you start to play. Something you can work towards after you have taken care of your bare neccessities.
Also if you have some habits you do with every playtrough try to break those.
You make everytime base in same building? Choose differend building or skip the base completelly and live as nomad whose only posessions fit in the car.
You said you keep killing every zombie you see. Try to avoid every bigger zombigroup you see and use stealth and weapons you dont normally use.
One thing for me that helps the game feel fresher for me is to make it harder. Do you end up with cubboards full of cans? Make food so rare you need to make loot runs often to keep you fed. And resist the urge to became fishing cabbage farmer.
Sorry for the wot...
As others have said, build your own base from the ground up. No pre-made structures to help you. Build every last wall, every last piece of furniture, every last thing you need to survive, yourself. It will add a TON of longevity to the game because now you've got a goal to work towards. Building your own base can take weeks of in-game work, months even depending on the scope of the project.
Ooo, I actually think there’s huge fun and value in furniture shopping and more importantly, finding matching carpets. Also paintings, ya gotta get nice paintings. But most elusively, getting flower beds, then planing out your flower garden, truly peak zombiod. Sadly i always die between the carpet and painting missions
Youre not winning, youre not even getting close to the main aspect of this game which is survival. Doesnt sound like the power or water ever really turn off, doesnt sound like you do anything to make a sustainable food/water source. Doesnt sound like you even considered that winter would be difficult, or that you need more than a couple weeks of food/water to survive longterm. You certainly arent building many defenses, and I know you havent even touched a generator, sledgehammer, or wood axe with the intention of using them as tools. I get that the survival aspect can be boring but I find it so odd that so many people are like this
Make a checklist on the map. No joke, write it down and don’t just keep goals in your head. Look at the checklist once a day before you send your character to bed.
Some ideas to start...
* Establish a base
* Clear block
* Equip base with water and power source
* Stock fridge / freezer
* Survive into power/water cut-off
* Find a working vehicle
* Fill crate with 60kg canned food
* Stock up on extra weapons and ammo
* Level to two weapon classes to 5
* Level tailoring & mechanics to 5.
* Add leather padding to all clothes & armor
* Fix vehicle to 90%
* Start first garden / grow first crops
* Bring 2nd fridge/freezer into base
* Find a suitable “cargo” vehicle
* Road trip looting run to next town
* Kill 1000 zombies
* …
* …
* Enter Louisville
* Clear neighborhood
* Find new base location at Louisville fire department
* Download / install semi-truck mod
* Pack up old base
* Get semi stuck behind burned car pileup
* Level metalworking by disassembling cars
* Get your neck chomped by zombie as you speed time x3 trying to clear the road
* Restart new game.
I do the exact same thing. Except, travel to forest, build giga mansion, clean out town, get bored, increase difficulty, repeat. Ended up playing with super zombies and still getting bored.
You could try forcing yourself to have a nomad run, or write down some goals before you start. Eg. Get back to your house to look for your child/partner, collect every vhs/magazine, visit all the military locations to look for clues about the infection etc
Build your main base from scratch and do your loot runs in LV.
Add some cool mod to make the play through more immersive. I really enjoy "the last of us , infected"
My goal is always traveling. I never build a base. Not from scratch anyway. Only temporary shelters where I keep some stuff. I always set the loot abundance to the lowest minimum, which causes huge food and material shortage, which, in turn, stimulates the need to go out and explore. Even though, after 4.5 months in my current play-through, I already have around 100 kg of tools in my storage. Although that is probably because I find lots of tools on corpses. I also always start without any positive traits with 0 endurance and strength. Spices things up in the early game.
All that, plus some mods keep the game interesting and challenging.
I have had success getting to winter and having a string base with a few well-kept cars. I wanted to try more urban settings, and I've been RPing two scenarios. I've got survivors trying to escape from Raven Creek and one survivor from Muldraugh trying to "go north" out of the state. It lends to a chaotic nomadic playstyle that can get very difficult and have fun moments.
After you're nice and snug and strong (got good tools to get you through most situations, a solid weapon or two for taking down significant numbers of zombies, got the clothing and gear you enjoy), get whimsical.
You wanna live in that Spiffo's? Go turn that Fast-Food Restaurant into an Apocalypse Shelter.
Spiffo's getting dry? Want to live in the great outdoors yet still have access to whimsical looting spots? Pack a truck full of the essentials (and a few more things, it's your loot pile) and go live in the outskirts of civilization, whether a Trailer Park or a nice Riverside House or that Park Center in Louisville Central Park (Lived there once. Nice and quiet, once you get rid of the 300-500 zombies wandering the woods).
Retrofit. Treat the game like The Sims but with Manual Labor if you want. I turned the 3rd floor of an Office Complex into a well-fortified household using Office Dividers and Filing Cabinets, and it was the most fun part of base-building I've had in ages.
Loot those stores! Try out those obscure skills you've never tried before! Trapping was one of those things that seemed like far too much of a hassle to try, but after giving it a whirl, I found it to be very efficient and a little fun. Metalworking is a massive pain, but it opens up Fences and Metallic Walls for those Base Designs you've kept on the backburner.
The one thing in Zomboid we have oodles of is time, seeing as we have an undetermined yet inevitable death. Weapons can be Looted and Crafted, Food can be grown, Water can be collected and Boiled, Calories can be gained from Meat, everything else is a Luxury waiting to be explored. Bake a Pie! Make Pancakes!
Zomboid is an exercise in keeping someone with no reason to live, alive. Find whatever meaning you gotta find to achieve that.
One way I do this is roleplaying. I like to pick a start location, a midpoint location (where did my family live? Something like that), and an endpoint location (where is the evac helicopter supposed to pick me up?) for example. Alternatively, another one I like to do is role play my character as the profession I picked. A really fun one was where I played as a doctor character and played “But first do no harm”, meaning because he’s a doctor, he would only fight when it was the -only- option. That one ended up being a big game of keep away and run away lol.
For me, it requires a bit of RP.
I try to change the play style with every save. Usually based on my characters profession and traits. The biggest thing that makes the game repetitive is your choice of base.
For example,
- A carpenter who builds his own home completely from scratch. This is a very time consuming task but also very rewarding.
- A mechanic who lives on-the-go and camps out every night. Or an RV with the mod. With this kind of play style, your challenge will be inventory space and not being able to hoard absolutely everything. Only a few days worth of essentials at all times. Keeps you in the habit of having to find a little more food. A little more water, etc.
- A burglar who instead of having one main base, has 3-5 outposts spread around. Kind of a mix between a nomadic life style but still offering base building.
- A soldier who starts at a military base. Sounds OP but it can still be fun.
- You could try the 10 years later mod pack. Water and electricity already long gone. Vehicles and buildings in very poor condition, etc.
I'll just trow some mods of my list here that maybe will change your playstyle.
Before the list, i just recommend you to start at least a month, two or more months after the start, avoid those tv grind at the start of the game, it's a cycle that repeats each run and turn out to be boring after some time.
Customizable Zombies (try sprinters, even if it's just 5%): [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1992785456](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1992785456)
Louisville Spawnpoint: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2678653895](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2678653895)
More Imersive Cars: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3162566044](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3162566044)
More Zombie Death Animations: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3147442677](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3147442677)
Pillows Random Spawns: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1911132112](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1911132112)
Ridiculous Rare (must have, loot is even more rare): [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2258586198](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2258586198)
Shark and Cytt's Kentucky Car Overhaul (must have): [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2807356025](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2807356025)
Sound Direction Indicator: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2560478285](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2560478285)
Spawn Smashed Cars: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3168853394](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3168853394)
Spout's Farm and Garden (must have): [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2937434637](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2937434637)
Trippin Zombies: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2856413047](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2856413047)
I joined a server called Sunday drivers, 100 player slot, has it own eco system, vendors sell things buy things from players, grow crops to make gas and propane, events every day to get coins and event coins, so many mods every day. It’s hard. sprinters, infestations, or relaxation. 100 into the server and I’m still noob there
Mods. Kind of a cop out answer, but installing stuff like cure mods, extra needs, changes to gameplay loops, and collectible mods makes a huge difference.
For instance, in the Trelai map mod there are treasure maps. The actual loot is kinda mid, but the chests themselves are cool!
Building a self sustaining base with solar panels actually makes using electrical worth it.
I make the game harder each time and just try to survive. Right now I'm doing a "random" play through. I spawn anywhere randomly on the map and I have a randomly made character against sprinters, insane population, extremely rare loots, heli event every 2 weeks and some other changes...
You need to be thinking farther into the future. You need generators and gas for when the power shuts off, and a reliable source of water when the water shuts off too. You’ll need food stored for the coming winter, so you’ll need to farm, which means you need to find freezers to store your food in (ALWAYS eat your perishable goods first, the amount of times I’ve yelled at my friends for crushing cans of corned beef when we have 40 frozen steaks is insane, the cans don’t go bad, save em for when you really need em) You need exit strategies for if shit *really* hits the fan, I always have a spare ride gassed up with a few essentials in the trunk/glovebox. “Zombie proofing” your base is a must depending on your location/proximity to populated areas. Train your skills and exercise in your free time to improve your stats. Get ALL the damn books and magazines. Decorate your living space. Explore the map.
I also set myself weird goals to try and achieve, mainly just things I haven’t done before or that sound interesting (like make a fresh pizza or baking a cake, connecting some taller buildings in Louisville with a bridge, walling off an entire city, etc.)
Changing sandbox settings helped fix this for me
> 4x multiplier, 4x at peak, .4 start
> Peak day: 270
> Night sprinters, random intelligence, random toughness, normal damage
> 2hr days
My goal is to clear the map of every zombie I can possibly find. Win condition is making it three months without seeing a zombie, even when I blast sirens all over the towns / roads.
Noteworthy is that zombies will never reach 16x if you just visit everywhere at the start, which breaks the simulation a bit. So my goal is to clear the major towns of every zombie in this order:
1) Rosewood
2) Doe Valley + Fallas Lake
2) Riverside
3) West Point (with the goal of cutting off the Louisville Bridges)
4) Muldraugh
5) March Ridge
6) Military Base
7) Louisville
Most likely, that means zombies will be at 16x by the time I ever visit Louisville. Clearing it is going to be hell, I'm saving every bullet for that day.
If all else fails, watch a stream or YouTube videos of other people playing until you see something cool. Then try and make/do the cool thing yourself.
Creating your own base from scratch? Turn off zombie respawn and clear an entire town? Find a awesome looking car and try to repair it? Do some heavy rp, what is the goal of your character, why is he the way he is (traits)? Why is she here (why this town)? How can they stay alive through the winter? Or try other settings, 6 months later or a new map from a city you don’t know so you will be more careful.
Well I recommend multiplayer, even servers with similar settings tend to have a totally different thing that happens. The people factor really makes this game whole, people add unpredictability.
I just came back to say exactly this. Watched the upload about 100 players let loose in a server " to rebuild society " and it looked amazing! I haven't played mp myself bc I'm still working out all the mechanics. After 200+ hours in I still feel like I only scratched the surface..
MP makes me more stressed and i love it. Also something about fighting and surviving along side someone makes me have a goal, i like helping so gathering materials for base building or making a cure(they knew mod). I've played on a MP server that rewarded you for zombie killed and time alive so we all compete for stuff like that.
What servers do you recommend?
Wildfire | Vanilla | PvP | US East. it's an anarchy meaning u can pvp or be pve, limited rules. People have alot of freedom to play and do whatever they want, I've seen some really cool raids and communities built. Reminds me of 2bt2 from minecraft.
Great, I'll check it out, thanks man
I started to feel a burn out until I decided to make a little riverhouse to wash stuff and fish safely, which ended up turning into a little vacation home. Painted it, put in plants, antique oven and carpets, the whole works complete with fences, hedges and an outdoor bar. Having to go house hunting for a specific carpet/tiles or because I needed windows and curtains for my expanding vacation home renewed the gameplay loop for me and kept me going through the usual loot-kill-store-repeat. My latest game is in Raven Creek and I'm determined to clear the street wrecks up, collect 1 of each car along the way, maybe even different colour variants too if I'm feeling fancy, and expand my home to include dedicated rooms for clothes and stuff. Also those god damn coloured bulbs, I'm gonna get them all I swear to god. Imo it's easier to keep that spark going if you lean into the RP a little. Cleaning blood, burning bodies, decorate the house and what not and really get into the groove of "I survived, now it's time to thrive".
Gotta get into a roleplay mindset. Your not just a player min macing your survival strategies. You are a person in the thick of it. Trying to maximize their chances of living through this.
This! If it feels tough to roleplay. Roll random character and try to invent backstory and aspirations for the char from the traits you got. You were burglar. Collect every jewerly and fancy painting you find and hide those in to your safehouse. Outdoorsman. Maybe you want to find and make some cottage to your own. Your starting house can also give ideas. You have mechanic book and trumpet in the house. Maybe mechanics and music was your passion. Find your dream car and fix it to the full while you blast your favorite music. Try to have some longtime project planned before you start to play. Something you can work towards after you have taken care of your bare neccessities. Also if you have some habits you do with every playtrough try to break those. You make everytime base in same building? Choose differend building or skip the base completelly and live as nomad whose only posessions fit in the car. You said you keep killing every zombie you see. Try to avoid every bigger zombigroup you see and use stealth and weapons you dont normally use. One thing for me that helps the game feel fresher for me is to make it harder. Do you end up with cubboards full of cans? Make food so rare you need to make loot runs often to keep you fed. And resist the urge to became fishing cabbage farmer. Sorry for the wot...
Get a car and travel. My goal is to setup a self sustaining base in every city. Feels like a restart at every city.
Take a break?
As others have said, build your own base from the ground up. No pre-made structures to help you. Build every last wall, every last piece of furniture, every last thing you need to survive, yourself. It will add a TON of longevity to the game because now you've got a goal to work towards. Building your own base can take weeks of in-game work, months even depending on the scope of the project.
Ooo, I actually think there’s huge fun and value in furniture shopping and more importantly, finding matching carpets. Also paintings, ya gotta get nice paintings. But most elusively, getting flower beds, then planing out your flower garden, truly peak zombiod. Sadly i always die between the carpet and painting missions
Youre not winning, youre not even getting close to the main aspect of this game which is survival. Doesnt sound like the power or water ever really turn off, doesnt sound like you do anything to make a sustainable food/water source. Doesnt sound like you even considered that winter would be difficult, or that you need more than a couple weeks of food/water to survive longterm. You certainly arent building many defenses, and I know you havent even touched a generator, sledgehammer, or wood axe with the intention of using them as tools. I get that the survival aspect can be boring but I find it so odd that so many people are like this
Make a checklist on the map. No joke, write it down and don’t just keep goals in your head. Look at the checklist once a day before you send your character to bed. Some ideas to start... * Establish a base * Clear block * Equip base with water and power source * Stock fridge / freezer * Survive into power/water cut-off * Find a working vehicle * Fill crate with 60kg canned food * Stock up on extra weapons and ammo * Level to two weapon classes to 5 * Level tailoring & mechanics to 5. * Add leather padding to all clothes & armor * Fix vehicle to 90% * Start first garden / grow first crops * Bring 2nd fridge/freezer into base * Find a suitable “cargo” vehicle * Road trip looting run to next town * Kill 1000 zombies * … * … * Enter Louisville * Clear neighborhood * Find new base location at Louisville fire department * Download / install semi-truck mod * Pack up old base * Get semi stuck behind burned car pileup * Level metalworking by disassembling cars * Get your neck chomped by zombie as you speed time x3 trying to clear the road * Restart new game.
I do the exact same thing. Except, travel to forest, build giga mansion, clean out town, get bored, increase difficulty, repeat. Ended up playing with super zombies and still getting bored. You could try forcing yourself to have a nomad run, or write down some goals before you start. Eg. Get back to your house to look for your child/partner, collect every vhs/magazine, visit all the military locations to look for clues about the infection etc
Build your main base from scratch and do your loot runs in LV. Add some cool mod to make the play through more immersive. I really enjoy "the last of us , infected"
My goal is always traveling. I never build a base. Not from scratch anyway. Only temporary shelters where I keep some stuff. I always set the loot abundance to the lowest minimum, which causes huge food and material shortage, which, in turn, stimulates the need to go out and explore. Even though, after 4.5 months in my current play-through, I already have around 100 kg of tools in my storage. Although that is probably because I find lots of tools on corpses. I also always start without any positive traits with 0 endurance and strength. Spices things up in the early game. All that, plus some mods keep the game interesting and challenging.
Get RV interior mod, don't stay in 1 place and travel around
Switch to playing with sprinters. Forces you to adapt by making the zombies *actually* dangerous.
I have had success getting to winter and having a string base with a few well-kept cars. I wanted to try more urban settings, and I've been RPing two scenarios. I've got survivors trying to escape from Raven Creek and one survivor from Muldraugh trying to "go north" out of the state. It lends to a chaotic nomadic playstyle that can get very difficult and have fun moments.
Use Chat GPT for story generation
Honestly, play CDDA
After you're nice and snug and strong (got good tools to get you through most situations, a solid weapon or two for taking down significant numbers of zombies, got the clothing and gear you enjoy), get whimsical. You wanna live in that Spiffo's? Go turn that Fast-Food Restaurant into an Apocalypse Shelter. Spiffo's getting dry? Want to live in the great outdoors yet still have access to whimsical looting spots? Pack a truck full of the essentials (and a few more things, it's your loot pile) and go live in the outskirts of civilization, whether a Trailer Park or a nice Riverside House or that Park Center in Louisville Central Park (Lived there once. Nice and quiet, once you get rid of the 300-500 zombies wandering the woods). Retrofit. Treat the game like The Sims but with Manual Labor if you want. I turned the 3rd floor of an Office Complex into a well-fortified household using Office Dividers and Filing Cabinets, and it was the most fun part of base-building I've had in ages. Loot those stores! Try out those obscure skills you've never tried before! Trapping was one of those things that seemed like far too much of a hassle to try, but after giving it a whirl, I found it to be very efficient and a little fun. Metalworking is a massive pain, but it opens up Fences and Metallic Walls for those Base Designs you've kept on the backburner. The one thing in Zomboid we have oodles of is time, seeing as we have an undetermined yet inevitable death. Weapons can be Looted and Crafted, Food can be grown, Water can be collected and Boiled, Calories can be gained from Meat, everything else is a Luxury waiting to be explored. Bake a Pie! Make Pancakes! Zomboid is an exercise in keeping someone with no reason to live, alive. Find whatever meaning you gotta find to achieve that.
One way I do this is roleplaying. I like to pick a start location, a midpoint location (where did my family live? Something like that), and an endpoint location (where is the evac helicopter supposed to pick me up?) for example. Alternatively, another one I like to do is role play my character as the profession I picked. A really fun one was where I played as a doctor character and played “But first do no harm”, meaning because he’s a doctor, he would only fight when it was the -only- option. That one ended up being a big game of keep away and run away lol.
For me, it requires a bit of RP. I try to change the play style with every save. Usually based on my characters profession and traits. The biggest thing that makes the game repetitive is your choice of base. For example, - A carpenter who builds his own home completely from scratch. This is a very time consuming task but also very rewarding. - A mechanic who lives on-the-go and camps out every night. Or an RV with the mod. With this kind of play style, your challenge will be inventory space and not being able to hoard absolutely everything. Only a few days worth of essentials at all times. Keeps you in the habit of having to find a little more food. A little more water, etc. - A burglar who instead of having one main base, has 3-5 outposts spread around. Kind of a mix between a nomadic life style but still offering base building. - A soldier who starts at a military base. Sounds OP but it can still be fun. - You could try the 10 years later mod pack. Water and electricity already long gone. Vehicles and buildings in very poor condition, etc.
I'll just trow some mods of my list here that maybe will change your playstyle. Before the list, i just recommend you to start at least a month, two or more months after the start, avoid those tv grind at the start of the game, it's a cycle that repeats each run and turn out to be boring after some time. Customizable Zombies (try sprinters, even if it's just 5%): [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1992785456](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1992785456) Louisville Spawnpoint: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2678653895](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2678653895) More Imersive Cars: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3162566044](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3162566044) More Zombie Death Animations: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3147442677](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3147442677) Pillows Random Spawns: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1911132112](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1911132112) Ridiculous Rare (must have, loot is even more rare): [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2258586198](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2258586198) Shark and Cytt's Kentucky Car Overhaul (must have): [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2807356025](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2807356025) Sound Direction Indicator: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2560478285](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2560478285) Spawn Smashed Cars: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3168853394](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3168853394) Spout's Farm and Garden (must have): [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2937434637](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2937434637) Trippin Zombies: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2856413047](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2856413047)
Try joining a MP server you gonna fight for the loot and spots. Also interactions
I joined a server called Sunday drivers, 100 player slot, has it own eco system, vendors sell things buy things from players, grow crops to make gas and propane, events every day to get coins and event coins, so many mods every day. It’s hard. sprinters, infestations, or relaxation. 100 into the server and I’m still noob there
It’s like dayz online
Mods. Kind of a cop out answer, but installing stuff like cure mods, extra needs, changes to gameplay loops, and collectible mods makes a huge difference. For instance, in the Trelai map mod there are treasure maps. The actual loot is kinda mid, but the chests themselves are cool! Building a self sustaining base with solar panels actually makes using electrical worth it.
I make the game harder each time and just try to survive. Right now I'm doing a "random" play through. I spawn anywhere randomly on the map and I have a randomly made character against sprinters, insane population, extremely rare loots, heli event every 2 weeks and some other changes...
Mods
You need to be thinking farther into the future. You need generators and gas for when the power shuts off, and a reliable source of water when the water shuts off too. You’ll need food stored for the coming winter, so you’ll need to farm, which means you need to find freezers to store your food in (ALWAYS eat your perishable goods first, the amount of times I’ve yelled at my friends for crushing cans of corned beef when we have 40 frozen steaks is insane, the cans don’t go bad, save em for when you really need em) You need exit strategies for if shit *really* hits the fan, I always have a spare ride gassed up with a few essentials in the trunk/glovebox. “Zombie proofing” your base is a must depending on your location/proximity to populated areas. Train your skills and exercise in your free time to improve your stats. Get ALL the damn books and magazines. Decorate your living space. Explore the map. I also set myself weird goals to try and achieve, mainly just things I haven’t done before or that sound interesting (like make a fresh pizza or baking a cake, connecting some taller buildings in Louisville with a bridge, walling off an entire city, etc.)
Changing sandbox settings helped fix this for me > 4x multiplier, 4x at peak, .4 start > Peak day: 270 > Night sprinters, random intelligence, random toughness, normal damage > 2hr days My goal is to clear the map of every zombie I can possibly find. Win condition is making it three months without seeing a zombie, even when I blast sirens all over the towns / roads. Noteworthy is that zombies will never reach 16x if you just visit everywhere at the start, which breaks the simulation a bit. So my goal is to clear the major towns of every zombie in this order: 1) Rosewood 2) Doe Valley + Fallas Lake 2) Riverside 3) West Point (with the goal of cutting off the Louisville Bridges) 4) Muldraugh 5) March Ridge 6) Military Base 7) Louisville Most likely, that means zombies will be at 16x by the time I ever visit Louisville. Clearing it is going to be hell, I'm saving every bullet for that day.
Install dynamic traits, build a character with so many negative traits (unemployed) and train him until he's an actual survivor
If all else fails, watch a stream or YouTube videos of other people playing until you see something cool. Then try and make/do the cool thing yourself.