new player seeks good builds

[big bert]

hello everyone
i’m new to PZ and need tips on good builds. What traits/professions are great for beginners?

[MrMinMax]

Thin skinned, prone to illness, weak stomach, athletic, strong, wakeful, dexterous, outdoorsman, hearty appetite and any perk which gives you +1 to maintenance.

Profession wise, any on the long run will do. But if you plan for a firearms run - police officer and veteran. PO on the long run is better than vet.

For melee run - firefighter or lumberjack.
Burglar was another go to profession, but in B42 stealth is not very viable, so not sure.

The rest of professions are either for challenge runs or MP because they give specific bonus for a chosen role in a group and reduce grind for it.

[LeFrench]

Originally posted by MrMinMax:

Thin skinned, prone to illness, weak stomach, athletic, strong, wakeful, dexterous, outdoorsman, hearty appetite and any perk which gives you +1 to maintenance.

why do you have hearty appetite? just to be bothered by the hunger moodles all the time? the points are not worth it.

here is a better list of negatives:
Thin skinned, prone to illness, weak stomach, conspicuous, slow metabolism, unfit

i agree with all these. but now you have more points left over to pick other things too.
strong, wakeful, dexterous, outdoorsman, light eater

with slow metabolism and unfit, you do start with fitness at only 2, But its not that hard to level it up with squats, upto level 5 to clear all the negatives. just do x6 60min sets each morning. you will have leg pain around 6pm mark, and once your consistency is 100% it only lasts 2-3 hours. i felt it was manageable.

and slow metabolism starts you at weight 95 so you basically don't have to worry about calories for at least 3 weeks as you drop down to 80. and thereafter you gain weight more easily from fats which means you can eat less calories which many find difficult to do.

[MrMinMax]

With hearty appetite I can live on 40 cabbages per day. I take it not for points but for the wait loss mitigation.

[San]

As a new player, I wouldn't bother at all with traits, but rather choose basic professions and learn the game to find your playstyle. Once you know how you'd like to play, I'd start paying attention to traits.

[THE REAL CAPT3N]

Firefighter gives the most bang for your buck
and taking strong for the simple quality of life of being able to carry more

[diecastano]

If you are new, go burglar so you can use cars without the key

[San]

Have a look at Nurse, in Youtube. She made a series of short and really cool videos covering all professions. Her channel is at https://www.youtube.com/@NurseVO/videos and, as a sample, you can meet the fire officer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnq_n4vj-Sc.

Enjoy! :)

[Armagenesis]

I've only used these two for now:
Fire Officer:fireofficer;Thinskinned;Conspicuous;HeartyAppitite;ProneToIllness;SlowHealer;WeakStomach;ShortSighted;Weight Gain;SlowReader;Dextrous;Organized;FastLearner;Athletic;Strong;
Police Officer:policeofficer;Thinskinned;Conspicuous;ProneToIllness;SlowHealer;WeakStomach;ShortSighted;Weight Gain;SlowReader;Smoker;HighThirst;Dextrous;Organized;Gymnast;Fit;Strong;

But Smoker is broken right now, so you might want to swap it out with something else.

[Dooly]

Originally posted by bert:

hello everyone
i’m new to PZ and need tips on good builds. What traits/professions are great for beginners?

So I'm just sliding this in here because a lot of people are giving you meta builds and all that.
If you're completely new to the game, just go unemployed for extra points & grab a few positive perks you think you'd find handy without picking negatives.

Then, when you're more comfortable with the game you can start picking negative traits to min/max your preferred build. I wouldn't advise picking said meta builds because you'll get a bunch of extra negative quirks that might be too much of a hassle when still learning the ropes.

Good luck on your runs.

[TheManiac]

Just test things out. There´s no minmaxing in this game. There is dying a lot and do better next time.

[96sawa3]

Carpenters and construction workers are strong professions, as they are good with short blunt weapons.
They have been strengthened recently, making them even more favored.
Please note that just because a trait has a low point value does not mean it is low in value or has few drawbacks.
Rather, there are many useful traits that can be obtained with 2 points.
Cat's Eye is particularly useful at 42. It provides a much brighter light outdoors at night.


On the other hand
if you are a complete beginner, one way to go about it is to go for Pacifist, Slow Reader, and Illiterate.
These will be a bottleneck if you are trying to survive for a long time and level up, but they won't be much of an issue if you can only survive for 3 days.

[d.pras bling-bling]

Smoker and press Q when near the horde